TCSDLS Speaker Biographies and Talk Abstracts 2023-2024

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET

This talk will also be broadcast live in Sitterson Hall

Title: Data Mining Will Be Reborn with Large Language Models

Host School: Duke

Abstract: Data mining is a discipline that develops scalable and effective methods for knowledge discovery from massive data. However, most data mining studies have been focusing on mining structured, sequenced, and networked data although the real-world data is largely in highly unstructured, text form. With the emergence of deep learning, embedding, and large language models (LLMs), powerful new tools are being created for handling massive text data. In this talk, we examine some recent studies on applying large language models for natural language processing and text mining, including discriminative topic mining, text classification, and taxonomy-guided information extraction and construction of theme-specific knowledge bases. We show that equipped with LLMs, data mining-styled, weakly supervised approach could be promising at transforming massive text into structured knowledge and benefiting many downstream applications. We will also discuss what could be the future of data mining and text mining with the rapid development of large language models.

Speaker Bio: Lorrie Faith Cranor is the Director and Bosch Distinguished Professor of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute and FORE Systems University Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She directs the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS) and co-directs the Privacy Engineering masters program. In 2016 she served as Chief Technologist at the US Federal Trade Commission. She co-founded Wombat Security Technologies. She is a fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and AAAS and a member of the ACM CHI Academy.

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET

This talk will also be broadcast live in Sitterson Hall

Title: The Mathematics of the Computer in the Sky

Host School: Duke

Abstract: Turing-complete blockchain protocols approximate the idealized abstraction of a “computer in the sky” that is open access, runs in plain view, and, in effect, has no owner or operator. This technology can, among other things, enable stronger notions of ownership of digital possessions than we have ever had before. Building the computer in the sky is hard (and scientifically fascinating), and in this talk I’ll highlight three threads in my recent research on this challenge:

• Possibility and impossibility results for permissionless consensus protocols (i.e., implementing an “ownerless” computer).
• Incentive-compatible transaction fee mechanism design (i.e., making an “open-access” computer sustainable and welfare-maximizing).
• A Black-Scholes-type formula for quantifying adverse selection in automated market makers (some of the most popular “programs” running on the computer in the sky).

The talk will emphasize the diversity of mathematical tools necessary for understanding blockchain protocols and their applications (distributed computing, game theory and mechanism design, continuous-time finance, etc.) and the immediate practical impact that mathematical work on this topic has had (Ethereum’s EIP-1559, LVR, etc.).

Speaker Bio: Tim Roughgarden is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at Columbia University and the Founding Head of Research at a16z crypto. Prior to joining Columbia, he spent 15 years on the computer science faculty at Stanford, following a PhD at Cornell and a postdoc at UC Berkeley. His research interests include the many connections between computer science and economics, as well as the design, analysis, applications, and limitations of algorithms. For his research, he has been awarded the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the Kalai Prize in Computer Science and Game Theory, the Social Choice and Welfare Prize, the Mathematical Programming Society’s Tucker Prize, and the EATCS-SIGACT Gödel Prize. He was an invited speaker at the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians, the Shapley Lecturer at the 2008 World Congress of the Game Theory Society, and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2017. He has written or edited ten books and monographs, including Twenty Lectures on Algorithmic Game Theory (2016), Beyond the Worst-Case Analysis of Algorithms (2020), and the Algorithms Illuminated book series (2017-2020).

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET

This talk will also be broadcast live in Sitterson Hall

Title: From Password Requirements to IoT Cybersecurity Labels: Informing Public Policy With Research

Host School: NC State

Abstract: An increasing number of security and privacy researchers are conducting research with the intention of informing public policy discussions. I will talk about how I got interested in public policy and discuss a wide range of research projects I’ve worked on over the past 25 years that had some impact on public policy discussions including research on the usability of privacy tools, the cost of reading privacy policies, various types of privacy labels, password policy, and the California privacy choice icon.

Speaker Bio: Lorrie Faith Cranor is the Director and Bosch Distinguished Professor of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute and FORE Systems University Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She directs the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS) and co-directs the Privacy Engineering masters program. In 2016 she served as Chief Technologist at the US Federal Trade Commission. She co-founded Wombat Security Technologies. She is a fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and AAAS and a member of the ACM CHI Academy.