Learning by Making: Rockets, Cubesats and More!
Lynn Cominsky
Professor
Sonoma State University
02/05/2024
Over the past decade, Sonoma State University’s EdEon STEM Learning group of educators and technologists has developed an integrated ninth-grade physical science curriculum branded as “Learning by Making” (LbyM). LbyM teaches coding, electronics and sensors as tools for students to design and build their own science experiments. LbyM also teaches computational thinking to help students focus on real world problem solving inspired by various physical phenomena. Solutions to the problems are constructed by teachers and students working together. This innovative curriculum grew out of previous EdEon group projects that taught students how to build rockets, drones, and CubeSats together with experimental payloads using similar technology. In this talk, Prof. Cominsky will review the history of flight projects at EdEon, discuss LbyM and ongoing group projects that have grown from these earlier efforts
Network Analysis and Brain Disorders
Eric Friedman
Senior Research Scientist
International Computer Science Institute (ICSI)
02/12/2024
In this talk I will provide an overview of network analysis and its applications to understanding brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. I will discuss the approach and some of the computational issues that arise in the analysis.
Advancing Explainability Through AI Literacy And Design Resources
Allison Woodruff
ACM Distinguished Speaker
Google
02/19/2024
Explainability helps people understand and interact with the systems that make decisions and inferences about them. This should go beyond providing explanations at the moment of a decision; rather, explainability is best served when information about AI is incorporated into the entire user journey and AI literacy is built continuously throughout a person's life. We share resources that can be used in both industrial and academic environments to encourage AI practitioners to think more broadly about what explanations can look like across products and ways to provide people with a solid foundation that helps them better understand AI systems and decisions.
Robots that Need to Mislead: Biologically-inspired Machine Deception
Ronald Arkin
IEEE Distinguished Speaker, Professor Emeritus
Georgia Institute of Technology
02/26/2024
Expanding our work in understanding the relationships maintained in teams of humans and robots, this talk describes research on deception and its application within robotic systems. Earlier we explored the use of psychology as the basis for producing deceit in robotic systems in order to evade capture. More recent work involves studying squirrel hoarding and bird mobbing behavior as it applies to deception, in the first case for misleading a predator, and in the second for feigning strength when none exists. Next, we discuss other-deception, where deceit is performed for the benefit of the mark. Finally, newly completed research on team deception where groups of agents using shills that serve to mislead others is presented. Results are presented in both simulation and simple robotic systems, as well as consideration of the ethical implications of this research.
From Theory to Practice: How Computer Science Forms a Foundation for Software Engineering
Brandon Hoshi ('19)
Software Engineer
Visual Concepts
03/04/2024
For most, the reason for obtaining a computer science degree is to ultimately pursue a career as a software engineer. While there is inevitably a great deal of programming involved in a computer science program, students may still end up anxious about whether what they’re learning is actually useful or not. In this talk I will explain that the answer is an unequivocal “Yes”. The foundational knowledge created through studying computer science is invaluable in a career as a software engineer. Through personal examples from working as an engineer at a AAA game developer, I will show how theoretical knowledge translates to concrete skills and shine a spotlight on parts of computer science that are significantly more important than most students might realize. I will also talk about important skills for software engineers that aren’t directly related to computer science.