CS Colloquium

Jay Pandit
LEGO BrickLink

Stevenson 1301
Monday, March 9, 2026

This talk focuses on real-world engineering practice, system design, and career preparation for internships and early roles.  Come learn what it takes to be considered for positions with companies like Lego BrickLink.  A special 1hr workshop will follow in the same room as this talk where the speaker will help students craft their resumes and research interests towards landing internships and early positions in the industry.

David Israel
SRI/Stanford

Stevenson 1301
Monday, March 30, 2026

Join us for a fascinating discussion between Professor John P. Sullins (SSU Eng & Comp Sic) and Professor David Israel (SRI/Stanford) about Professor Israel's experiences working on one of the largest AI projects of all time, which resulted in the many AI apps we all talk to every day.  We will discuss the state of AI agents today and see if they lived up to the dream of personal AI assistants as they were originally conceived.

Dept Event

Overlook (Student Center, 3rd floor)
Monday, April 6, 2026

CS students, join us for Advise-a-palooza for Fall 2026 registration.

Alyssa Kubota
SFSU

Stevenson 1301
Monday, April 13, 2026

People with complex communication needs (CCN) often use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems to augment or replace their speech. However, these systems typically use generic graphical symbols meant to represent abstract socio-emotional concepts (e.g., emotion, state of being) which limits their ability to support meaningful understanding and expression of these concepts. In this talk, I will discuss our existing and planned work in designing and developing a socially assistive robot to augment these systems and support AAC users. We draw from users’ lived emotions and experiences to bridge the gap between these abstract socio-emotional concepts and the generic graphical icons meant to represent them on AAC systems. We explore ethical considerations, inclusive participatory design with children with CCN, and technical approaches to integrating assistive robots into this context.

Justin Shin
Stanford University

Stevenson 1301
Monday, April 20, 2026

When we hold people accountable for their actions, we often invoke the possibility of punishment. This is especially true in military traditions of dealing with wrongdoing. If the possibility of punishment bears an important role in accountability, and we cannot punish robots, and we require accountability for robots in particular roles, then robots ought not to occupy those roles. How successful this argument is hinges partly on what we count as a successful instance of punishment. I argue that we can and should punish robots. I also argue that, while this debate has so far been constrained to military robots, it is salient for robots and algorithms in other fields, such as carceral algorithms and surveillance robots.

Dept Event

Stevenson 1301
Monday, April 27, 2026

Short presentations of research carried out by Sonoma State Computer Science Students, and CS awards.

Dept Event

Stevenson 1301
Monday, May 4, 2026

Short presentations of capstone projects carried out by Sonoma State Computer Science Students