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This Week’s Events
Slotted E-Graphs
Group: Systems Seminars
Speaker: Prof Michel Steuwer, TU Berlin
Date: 25 April, 2025
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Lilybank Gardens F121 and online -- https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/86057258886?pwd=y2kOP3VMnErustCF9dtN6hHIVZ4VvH.1
Equality saturation has successfully been applied in many domains, exploring the efficient e-graph data structure this rewrite technique is capable of quickly exploring large search spaces. Unfortunately, E-graphs are bad at efficiently representing (bound) variables! Whatever way we represent variables in e-graph (as names or using de Bruijn indices), sub-terms that differ only in the names of their variables are represented separately and not shared. For many practical applications, this results in aggressive e-graph growth, huge memory consumption and bad performance.
In this talk, I will present slotted e-graphs, which makes (bound) variables a first-class feature built into the data structure. Terms that differ only by (bound or free) variable names are represented uniquely and therefore efficiently shared. E-classes are parameterized by slots, abstracting over the free variables of the terms represented by their e-nodes. Referring to an e-class from an e-node now requires relating the variables from its context to the slots of the e-class.
I will demonstrate with the help of two case studies that slotted e-graphs greatly simplify equality saturation for languages with variables. In addition, memory efficiency is greatly improved, allowing slotted e-graphs to solve practical problems that cannot be solved with traditional e-graphs using either names or using de Bruijn indices for variables. Our paper describing slotted e-graphs has recently been accepted for publication at PLDI 2025.
Reduce AI’s Carbon Footprint - Accelerating Deep Learning Models
Group: Computer Vision for Autonomous Systems (CVAS)
Speaker: Dr. Guosheng Hu, University of Bristol
Date: 25 April, 2025
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Location: SAWB 423, Sir Alwyn Williams Building
Abstract: AI-driven data centres, operating continuously and predominantly powered by fossil fuels, contribute significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions (2.5-3.7%). The widespread use of large foundation models such as ChatGPT exacerbates this environmental impact. This talk explores strategies for mitigating AI's carbon footprint through model acceleration, aiming to significantly reduce computations while maintaining the accuracy of AI models. This session will spotlight various model acceleration techniques, including Neural Architecture Search, Knowledge Distillation, and others. Beyond academic advancements, the talk will also delve into successful industrial applications. Last, it will outline potential future research directions in the field of model acceleration.
Bio: Dr. Guosheng Hu is a senior lecturer of AI at University of Bristol. Additionally, he holds the title of Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen’s University Belfast. Before that, he served as the Head of Research at Oosto (a leading visual AI company). Prior to his role at Oosto, he was a Research Fellow in the LEAR team at INRIA Grenoble Rhone-Alpes, France. Dr. Hu earned his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Josef Kittler at the University of Surrey, UK. His expertise lies in the intersection of computer vision and deep learning. With a robust academic background, he has published numerous research papers at major conferences and journals.
Upcoming events
Slotted E-Graphs
Group: Systems Seminars
Speaker: Prof Michel Steuwer, TU Berlin
Date: 25 April, 2025
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Lilybank Gardens F121 and online -- https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/86057258886?pwd=y2kOP3VMnErustCF9dtN6hHIVZ4VvH.1
Equality saturation has successfully been applied in many domains, exploring the efficient e-graph data structure this rewrite technique is capable of quickly exploring large search spaces. Unfortunately, E-graphs are bad at efficiently representing (bound) variables! Whatever way we represent variables in e-graph (as names or using de Bruijn indices), sub-terms that differ only in the names of their variables are represented separately and not shared. For many practical applications, this results in aggressive e-graph growth, huge memory consumption and bad performance.
In this talk, I will present slotted e-graphs, which makes (bound) variables a first-class feature built into the data structure. Terms that differ only by (bound or free) variable names are represented uniquely and therefore efficiently shared. E-classes are parameterized by slots, abstracting over the free variables of the terms represented by their e-nodes. Referring to an e-class from an e-node now requires relating the variables from its context to the slots of the e-class.
I will demonstrate with the help of two case studies that slotted e-graphs greatly simplify equality saturation for languages with variables. In addition, memory efficiency is greatly improved, allowing slotted e-graphs to solve practical problems that cannot be solved with traditional e-graphs using either names or using de Bruijn indices for variables. Our paper describing slotted e-graphs has recently been accepted for publication at PLDI 2025.
Reduce AI’s Carbon Footprint - Accelerating Deep Learning Models
Group: Computer Vision for Autonomous Systems (CVAS)
Speaker: Dr. Guosheng Hu, University of Bristol
Date: 25 April, 2025
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Location: SAWB 423, Sir Alwyn Williams Building
Abstract: AI-driven data centres, operating continuously and predominantly powered by fossil fuels, contribute significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions (2.5-3.7%). The widespread use of large foundation models such as ChatGPT exacerbates this environmental impact. This talk explores strategies for mitigating AI's carbon footprint through model acceleration, aiming to significantly reduce computations while maintaining the accuracy of AI models. This session will spotlight various model acceleration techniques, including Neural Architecture Search, Knowledge Distillation, and others. Beyond academic advancements, the talk will also delve into successful industrial applications. Last, it will outline potential future research directions in the field of model acceleration.
Bio: Dr. Guosheng Hu is a senior lecturer of AI at University of Bristol. Additionally, he holds the title of Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen’s University Belfast. Before that, he served as the Head of Research at Oosto (a leading visual AI company). Prior to his role at Oosto, he was a Research Fellow in the LEAR team at INRIA Grenoble Rhone-Alpes, France. Dr. Hu earned his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Josef Kittler at the University of Surrey, UK. His expertise lies in the intersection of computer vision and deep learning. With a robust academic background, he has published numerous research papers at major conferences and journals.
Quantifying and Applying Green IR
Group: Information Retrieval (IR)
Speaker: Harry Scells, University of Tübingen
Date: 28 April, 2025
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room
Title
Quantifying and Applying Green IR
Abstract
Green IR is research that yields novel results while taking into account the computational cost, encouraging a reduction in resources spent (Schwartz et al. 2020). With the rise of transformer models, especially in the age of LLMs, the energy and water usage of information retrieval research has grown considerably. This talk provides a framework for measuring the utilisation of information retrieval experimentation, highlights the impact of this utilisation by comparing models, and provides an application of Green IR by showing how subsampling corpora can be used to reliably evaluate high utilisation models.
Bio
Harry is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tübingen. Before this he was an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at Leipzig University. His research focuses broadly on retrieval models, query processing, and evaluation. He received his PhD in 2021 from The University of Queensland, Australia under the joint supervision of Prof. Dr Guido Zuccon and Associate Prof. Dr Bevan Koopman.
Pi Vectors
Group: Systems Seminars
Speaker: Dr Paul Cockshott
Date: 29 April, 2025
Time: 14:00 - 15:00
Location: Lilybank Gardens F121 and online -- https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/86057258886?pwd=y2kOP3VMnErustCF9dtN6hHIVZ4VvH.1
In this talk, I will discuss porting the Vector Pascal language to ARM cpu and gpus then apply this sort of maths to environmental planning. The talk will include historical perspectives on parallel architecture and programming languages, discussion of design considerations for language implementation, as well as a live demo with an ‘Orange Pi’ quad-core Arm system.
TBC
Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: Burak Kizilkaya
Date: 30 April, 2025
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 423 Seminar Room
TBC
Upwards seminar: Networking for Research
Group: School of Computing Science
Speaker: Drs Laia Vilà-Nadal and Scott Watson, University of Glasgow
Date: 12 May, 2025
Time: 11:00 - 12:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 422 Seminar Room
Topic: Networking for Research
Speakers: Dr Laia Vilà-Nadal (Lecturer, UofG Chemistry) and Dr Scott Watson (Lecturer, UofG Engineering)
Location: in Room SAWB 422 and on Zoom: https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/88234687959?pwd=dyJztap12wNBUQFrAj6eMF5BwWpvZq.1
What is Upwards?
Upwards is the School of Computing Science’s research culture seminar, covering all facets of developing, conducting, and disseminating research and related topics (e.g. managing a research team, time management to do research, connections between research and teaching). It is open to everyone in the School, but a specific aim is to support ECR development and some sessions are aimed mainly at PGRs and/or PDRAs.
How are the seminars held?
Upwards seminars are held in person in the School to bring people together. However, the sessions are also streamed on Zoom to allow people to join remotely, if they cannot attend in person. The seminars are not recorded and slides are not shared to preserve the off-the-record atmosphere of the seminars, which allows speakers to share personal experiences.
What will this session be about?
It is up to the speakers to set the agenda for their Upwards talks, but the idea of this seminar instance is to hear tips and tricks, strategies, and lessons learned on getting oneself noticed for large collaborative proposals, major research papers, leadership roles in organising important scientific events, getting invited for talks at other universities, being asked to help develop funder priorities and calls, for example.
TBC
Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: TBC
Date: 14 May, 2025
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 203 Meeting Room
Women in Data Science Edinburgh 2025: Empower, Learn and Connect
Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 28 May, 2025
Time: 01:00 - 01:00
Location: Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom
Join us on 28th May 2025 at the National Robotarium at Heriot-Watt University for an inspiring and educational day as part of the Women in Data Science (WiDS) event. This independent event, aligns with the annual #WiDS conference held at #StanfordUniversity and over 200 locations worldwide, bringing together data scientists of all backgrounds to learn, grow, and connect. Event Highlights: Keynote on data visualisation by Cara Thompson Business Pitch workshop by Lissa Rocha Herron -and a prize for the best pitch! Panel Discussion: Career advice and pathways in data science (Fiona Andrews, Khristin Fabien, Kasia Banas) Poster Session: Showcase your work and innovations in data science. Prizes will be awarded to the top poster Fun Data Science Trivia Session: Test your knowledge with a chance to win exciting prizes! This is an excellent opportunity to network, get inspired, and learn – whether you are looking to change careers, advance in your current role, or just connect with like-minded professionals in data science. Registration closes: 14 May Register for the WiDS event Join the LinkedIn group
TBC
Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: TBC
Date: 28 May, 2025
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 203 Meeting Room
SICSA Pre-EC Day 2025
Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 29 May, 2025
Time: 10:00 - 16:00
Location: Andrew Miller Building, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
The SICSA Pre-EC Day will take place on 29 May 2025 at University of Stirling. Find out more, register and submit your extract through our Pre-EC Day page.
TBC
Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: TBC
Date: 11 June, 2025
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 423 Seminar Room
SICSA PhD Conference 2025
Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 25 June, 2025
Time: 01:00 - 01:00
Location: Edinburgh Napier University
Join us for the SICSA PhD Conference 2025 at Edinburgh Napier University! We’re bringing you a jam packed 2 days of fantastic activities, speakers, training, workshops and a Conference Dinner and Awards Ceremony. Check our more details about the programme, accommodation and on our conference website. Register for your place today! We can’t wait to see you there :)
TBC
Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: TBC
Date: 25 June, 2025
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 203 Meeting Room
TBC
Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: TBC
Date: 09 July, 2025
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 423 Seminar Room
45th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems
Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 20 July, 2025
Time: 01:00 - 01:00
Location: TBA
The annual IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS) is a premier international forum for researchers, developers and users to present, discuss and exchange the cutting edge ideas and latest findings on topics related to any aspects of Distributed Computing Systems. ICDCS 2025 is held in the vibrant and compact city of Glasgow, Scotland. Find out more information on the IEEE ICDS 2025 website.
TBC
Group: Networked Systems Research Laboratory (NETLAB)
Speaker: TBC
Date: 23 July, 2025
Time: 10:00
Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, 423 Seminar Room
SAT/SMT/AR - Summer School 2025
Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 06 August, 2025
Time: 01:00 - 01:00
Location: TBA
Satisfiability (SAT), Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT), and Automated Reasoning (AR) continue to make rapid advances and find novel uses in a wide variety of applications, both in computer science and beyond. The SAT/SMT/AR Summer School aims to bring a select group of students up to speed quickly in this exciting research area. The school continues the successful line of Summer Schools that ran from 2011 to 2024. The summer school will take place from Wednesday the 6th to Friday the 8th of August. It will precede the following conferences: 18th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS) 28th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT) 31st International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2025) 23rd International Workshop on Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) Applications will be opening soon on the SAT/SMT/AR – Summer School 2025 website.
24th UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence
Group: Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA)
Speaker: SICSA Event, SICSA
Date: 03 September, 2025
Time: 01:00 - 01:00
Location: Edinburgh Napier University
We invite papers on all aspects of Computational Intelligence to UKCI 2025 (The 24th UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence, first held at University of Edinburgh) which will be held in Edinburgh from the 3rd-5th September 2025 at Edinburgh Napier University We are particularly delighted to welcome this workshop back to Edinburgh – the 1st edition was held at the University of Edinburgh in 2001. UKCI 2025 welcomes original research papers (including significant work-in-progress) in the broad area of Computational Intelligence (CI). Indicative topics include but are not limited to: -Machine-Learning (including Deep Learning) -Evolutionary Computation -Fuzzy Systems -Data-Mining -Intelligent Robotics -Cognitive Computing -Explainable AI (XAI) -Trust and Ethics in AI systems -Applications Papers can cover theoretical approaches, new methods, empirical and/or benchmark studies, and applications, particularly to real-world problems. We accept long papers (12 pages) or short papers (6 pages). The latter are particularly suited to position papers or presenting early results/work in progress IMPORTANT DATES: Submission Deadline 31st May 2025 (non-extensible) Read our guidelines on paper submission. Accepted papers will be published by Springer in the Advances in Computational Intelligence Series (AISC)
Past events
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