[CSEE Talk] talk: Leveraging Human Insights into Problem Structure for Scientific Discovery, 1pm Tue 2/23, UMBC

[Tim Finin]

                  Leveraging Human Insights into
            Problem Structure for Scientific Discovery

                 Ronan Le Bras, Cornell University

          1:00pm Tuesday, 23 February 2016, ITE325b, UMBC


Most problems, from theoretical problems in combinatorics to
real-world applications, comprise hidden structural properties
not directly captured by the problem definition. A key to the
recent progress in automated reasoning and combinatorial
optimization has been to automatically uncover and exploit this
hidden problem structure, resulting in a dramatic increase in the
scale and complexity of the problems within our reach. The most
complex tasks, however, still require human abilities and
ingenuity. In this talk, I will show how we can leverage human
insights to effectively complement and dramatically boost
state-of-the-art optimization techniques. I will demonstrate the
effectiveness of the approach with a series of scientific
discoveries, from experimental designs to materials discovery.


Ronan Le Bras is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Cornell
University. He received his M.S. and B.S. from Ecole
Polytechnique Montreal in computer engineering and in software
engineering. His research interests include computational methods
for large-scale combinatorial optimization, reasoning, learning
and human computation. His work is motivated by a range of
applications, especially in the emerging field of computational
sustainability. It has led to a series of scientific discoveries
in areas such as graph theory, combinatorics, and discrepancy
theory as well as materials science, experimental design and
conservation biology. His work appears in the proceedings of
AAAI, IJCAI, HCOMP, SAT, CP and VLDB.

Host:  Tim Finin, finin at Umbc.edu

  -- more information and directions: https://bit.ly/UMBCtalks --