11:30AM Seminars for April 20, 27,
May and June of 2011

Intelligent Technologies Seminar Series

Hosted by: Prof. Marilyn Walker

Dates and Times: Every Wed, from 11:30AM-1:00PM

Sponsor: UCSC Class CMPS191/280A Computer Software Seminar
Co-sponsor: IEEE Monterey Bay Subsection, http://ee.com/ieee
Place:Simularium Room at the University of California in Santa Cruz (Room 180, Engineering Bldg 2). Follow directions and parking Information at the bottom of this page. Please visit booth at University Entrance for Parking information. There will be a small parking fee.

Abstract

Seminar series focusing on new and emerging intelligent technologies for the range of applications from teaching english, to computer games, to online markets and advertising. All IEEE members are welcome, no cost, only a small parking fee.

Schedule

April 6th	Title: Speak 4 It Author: Dr. Patrick Elhen, AT&T Yellow Pages Mobile interfaces need to allow the user and system to adapt their choice of com- munication modes according to user pref- erences, the task at hand, and the physi- cal and social environment. We describe a multimodal application architecture which combines finite-state multimodal language processing, a speech-act based multimodal dialogue manager, dynamic multimodal output generation, and user-tailored text planning to enable rapid prototyping of multimodal interfaces with flexible input and adaptive output. Our testbed appli- cation MATCH (Multimodal Access To City Help) provides a mobile multimodal speech-pen interface to restaurant and sub- way information for New York City. Paper: MATCH: An Architecture for Multimodal Dialogue Systems
April 13th	Title: The Future of Our Pasts: Abstracting Information From Complete Records of Our Lives. Author: Prof. Steve Whittaker, UCSC (link) The Lifelogging vision to 'digital memory' is that in the future we will have rich records of everything that we did, everything that we saw and everything that we accessed, created or read. I will review this vision, briefly present various studies that challenge the vision, moving on to suggest an alternative approach that is informed by cognitive science, suggesting that instead of focusing on exhaustive capture we should be designing prosthetic memory devices that are (a) synergistic with our organic memories (b) have mechanisms for selecting and abstracting critical events from the memory record. I will describe various systems that we have built and analysed that are designed according to these principles. Paper: Beyond Total Capture: A Constructive Critique of Lifelogging
April 20th	Title: Playing What We Mean: Games, Fiction, and Expressive Processing. Author: Prof. N. Wardrip-Fruin, UCSC (link) Today's games have well-developed models of spatial movement, combat, and economics. But their models of fiction barely deserve the name. Even those supporting the most ambitious games are burdensome and bug-prone for authors - while providing the player quite limited ranges of meaningful choice. This talk discusses examples of more dynamic approaches to fiction, considering lessons past work presents for those wishing to craft models that express new visions for playable fiction. At the same time, the talk argues that critics need to more deeply interpret the computational processes of computer games (and digital media generally) and connect them to an understanding of audience experience. Paper: The Eliza Effect
April 27th	Title: SystemT: an Algebraic Approach to Declarative Information Extraction Author: Dr. Yung Yao Li, IBM Almaden As information extraction (IE) becomes more central to enterprise applications, rule-based IE engines have become in- creasingly important. In this paper, we describe SystemT, a rule-based IE sys- tem whose basic design removes the ex- pressivity and performance limitations of current systems based on cascading gram- mars. SystemT uses a declarative rule language, AQL, and an optimizer that generates high-performance algebraic ex- ecution plans for AQL rules. We com- pare SystemT’s approach against cascad- ing grammars, both theoretically and with a thorough experimental evaluation. Our results show that SystemT can deliver re- sult quality comparable to the state-of-the- art and an order of magnitude higher an- notation throughput. Paper: SystemT: an Algebraic Approach to Declarative Information Extraction
May 4th	Title: Speech and Robotics at HRI Author: Dr. Antoine Raux, Honda Research Institute, Mountain View Starting from simple information access systems over the phone, which are now an everyday encounter for many of us, research spoken dialog systems has pushed their use to more and more complex and open domains, including intelligent assistants, virtual humans for language or management training, as well as physical robots. In this talk, I will give an overview of spoken dialog research conducted in the last few years at Honda Research Institute USA. One common characteristic among spoken dialog systems is that they have to deal with uncertainty about the state of the world, and particularly about user intention. I will describe how graphical models can be used to capture this uncertainty and build a robust representation of the user intention that gets refined as the dialog progresses. Then I will present HRI's approach which simplifies the construction of such models and makes usable in real-time interactive systems. When dealing with situated systems, such as physical, or simulated, robots, the system's belief over user intention should not only be affected by the user's utterances but also from their physical actions, as well as the interaction context. I will illustrate this issue using human-human dialog data we collected using a simulated world, and show how the timing of correction utterances can be related to the occurrence of physical actions on the part of the participants. This information can be used to improve language understanding and provide more natural and efficient behavior in automated agents. Paper: Probabilistic Ontology Trees for Belief Tracking in Dialog Systems, SIGdial 2010, Tokyo, Japan. N. Mehta, R. Gupta, A. Raux, D. Ramachandran and S. Krawczyk Paper: The Dynamics of Action Corrections in Situated Interaction, SIGdial 2010, Tokyo, Japan. A. Raux and M. Nakano
May 11th	Title: Analytics and Big Data in the Largest Online Data Marketplace Author: Dr. Lucian Vlad-Lita, Blue Kai (link) The online advertising ecosystem is undergoing a seismic shift with data at its core. Increased quality, better optimization and reuse, full transparency and privacy are the yardsticks used to measure this transformation, with data management platforms and data exchanges are fueling it. In the old world, targeting occurs via proxies: site, page content, and where available: spotty and unreliable audience knowledge. In the new world, audiences and intent are what makes a difference for technologically sophisticated platforms. Big data, machine learning, and real-time forecasting are the some of the tools that are needed to make it happen. Come learn (and chat) about some of the data challenges and opportunities that have recently surfaced in online advertising. Paper: What Happens after an Ad Click? Quantifying the Impact of Landing Pages in Web Advertising
May 18th	Title: TBALL, Speech and Language Technologies for Teaching English (VENUE CHANGED TO E2-506 THIS WEEK) Author: Dr. Patti Price. PPRICE Solutions (link) If a child sees the word "car" and reads it as "cow", or another reads "sit" as "seat", how do we know if these are pronunciation issues or reading issues? Since no one classroom teacher can be expected to be familiar with as many dialect/ideolect systems as might occur in an urban classroom today, making progress in automated assessments in this area can improve the consistency and fairness of reading assessment . This talk will survey some recent work in using speech and language technology in the area of language and literacy. It will also introduce some issues in this area that are ripe for further research! Paper: Assessment of Emerging Reading Skills in Young Native Speakers and Language Learners
May 25th	Title: Data Science at LinkedIn: Turning Data into Products and Stories Author: Dr. Monica Rogati. LinkedIn How do you know Darth Vader’s LinkedIn account is not real? How do you train a recommender system before it goes live? What are the hottest companies, industries or jobs this year, and more importantly, how do you leverage terabytes of data to define “hot”? What algorithms will find your next sharp CTO in a 100MM resume haystack? Data scientists ask (and answer) these questions every day. We'll discuss how to handle big & noisy data, technologies and methods used in data science, and how to build data driven products that bring value to a hundred million professionals. Paper: Modeling Relationship Strength in Online Social Networks
June 1st	Title: Recommendations on Ebay Author: Dr. Neel Sundaresan, EBAY Research A networked marketplace like eBay is defined by the network of buyers and sellers who define the activity and diversity of the market. Unlike an online retail site the marketplace provides choices for the participants of the market. The marketplace aids sellers distinguish themselves from others and assists buyers participate according to their preference for value or quality. The reputation system (aka feedback rating) lets the market thrive and keep it from deteriorating into a lemon market. All aspects of the user experience – search, navigation, recommender systems are driven by this reputation system. In this talk we will discuss challenges and opportunities for research and technology in such a marketplace. Online Trust and Reputation Systems

Biography

Marilyn Walker is a Professor of Computer Science and head of the Natural Language and Dialogue Systems Lab in the Baskin's School of Engineering at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). She received her Ph.D. in 1993 in Computer Science from University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to UCSC, she was a Professor of Computer Science at University of Sheffield. From 1996 to 2003, she was a Principal Member of Research Staff in the Speech and Information Processing Lab at AT&T Bell Labs and AT&T Research. While she was at AT&T, she was a PI on two DARPA projects. The first was the Communicator Evaluation project, where she was the chair of the Evaluation Committee and led the design of the cross-site evaluation experiments with implementation help from NIST. The second project funded by DARPA was the AT&T Communicator project where she developed a new architecture for spoken dialogue systems and statistical methods for dialogue management and generation. She received a DARPA award for her contribution to the evaluation team "Miles Per Watt". Also while at AT&T she received the AT&T Labs Mentoring Award in 2001 for her excellence in mentoring Ph.D. students and junior researchers. At UCSC, her lab is part of the Computational Media Group, whose research focuses on next-generation computer games, incorporating concepts from dramatic theory and social interaction, and notably extending the language capabilities of current interactive games focusing specifically on training, assistive and educational games. She has supervised 6 doctoral students and 10 undergraduate senior theses. She has published over 200 papers, and has 10 granted/pending U.S. patents. For more information about Marilyn Walker, visit her web page here.

Directions and Parking Information

For directions to UCSC from different parts of the bay area, click here .

The Baskin Engineering Buildings are located in the northwest corner of UCSC, on "Science Hill." Once at UCSC proceed up Coolidge Drive following the main road onto McLaughlin Drive. as McLaughlin Drive ends, turn left onto Heller Drive, then left again into the multi-level "West Core Parking" Structure (the closest parking to Baskin Engineering).

The best parking choice is to buy a parking permit at the Main Entrance Kiosk (Bay & High) for a nominal fee, get a map and ask for further directions. The kiosk is open until 7:00AM to 8:00 p.m., Monday-Friday. These permits will be valid for any Core West Parking space (except specially marked spaces).

For any additional details related to parking in Core West click here. You can also just feed a meter in the parking lot as an alternative. A complete UCSC campus map(.pdf) is available, as well as a map/web site which shows the location of the Jack Baskin Engineering Bldg and Engineering Bldg 2.

Once in the Parking lot, to get to the Simularium go to the streeet level (2nd) floor of the Parking Space, cross the street go past the Baskin Engineering Bldg 1 to Bldg 2, the Simularium is off the courtyard lying between Baskin (E1) and Engineering 2 (E2) buildings.

11:30AM Seminars for April 20, 27, May and June of 2011