Spring 2022 Schedule

Spring 2022 Speakers and Recordings

 Date Dept Name of the Speaker Title of the Talk Host
1/21 IFSC Dr. John Talburt, CIS Program Coordinator This session will provide a recap to date of this semester’s colloquium series as well as hosting an open forum to answer questions from doctoral students on how to navigate the doctoral degree path from courses to candidacy to dissertation proposal and final defense. You can watch a recording of this session via this link: https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/9bf4ec226b8f4db8b50919bdd20f46f4 Dr. John Talburt
1/28 IFSC Dr. Daniel Balasubramanian is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Balasubramanian will be talking to students about his NSF funded research on improving community and neighborhood safety through open data collection. This project studies how data obtained by members of the public through camera pictures, video feeds, and similar technology can be used to improve public safety without unduly infringing on personal rights such as privacy. To date, this effort has been driven by governments, through CCTV and similar technology, or private companies, through devices such as doorbell cameras. In contrast, our project focuses on how public safety can be enhanced through the use of data that are obtained and contributed voluntarily by individuals and are publicly maintained. For example, individuals might choose to capture the license plate identifiers of the automobiles that drive through their streets. The community might then agree to share this information with policing agencies seeking to track down stolen vehicles, reckless driving, or other criminal activities. We study these issues from multiple perspectives – technological, historical, and legal – with the aim of developing a workable and publicly vetted approach to concerns around privacy and public safety raised by recent commercial and technological developments. You can catch a recording of this session via this link: https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/ce71b24e929a479a98fffa8cbee78065 Dr. John Talburt
2/4 IFSC Dr. Lawrence Whitman, Dean of the CSTEM College, UA Little Rock Dr. Whitman will be talking to graduate students about how to successfully pursue an academic career You can catch a recording of this session via this link: https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/88176c5ddff3441a8d0e4c70fa2b3409. Dr. John Talburt
2/11 INFQ Danette McGilvray, Owner, Granite Falls Consulting, Inc. and Management Consulting Consultant, Author: Executing Data Quality Projects: Ten Steps to Quality Data and Trusted Information™, 2nd Edition. Title: Business Value – Where Data and Quality Meet – Our world is enamored with technology. Yet without data, technology is an empty shell. Without high-quality data, organizations will fall short of what they want to accomplish – or fail completely. It is not unusual to find that data quality issues and lack of basic data literacy prevent organizations from realizing the full benefits from their investments in business processes and systems. Worst case they can cause real harm. Join Danette for this presentation which includes:

  • What’s ahead for data – highlights from the Wall Street Journal’s The Future of Everything Series
  • Just any data is not enough – only high-quality data will allow business value to be fully realized and the promises of technology to be truly fulfilled
  • The Ten Steps™ approach to high-quality data – a practical how-to methodology for any organization
  • What all this means for you and where you work

You can catch the full recorded session at this link: https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/08a633b9907445a3a80b7a145b7fed37

Dr. John Talburt
2/18 IFSC Dr. Xiaowei Xu, Professor of Information Science Dr. Xu will be talking about Causal Discovery from Texts. He will speak about the new frontier of AI that combines Natural Language Processing with Causal Inference from texts. The goal is to discover causalities that can help us address challenges in sciences and society. The approach shown promising results for Opioid crisis and Covid’19 pandemics. You can catch the full recorded session at this link: https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/643c6111b47947a5901d0af4b54f1c04 Dr. Liz Pierce
2/25 IFSC Dr. Avinash Gupta is a Specialized Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Dr. Gupta will be talking to students about the Role of HCI based Framework to Support the Design of XR based Training and Simulation Environments in the Healthcare domain. You can catch the full recorded session at this link: https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/96798556246d42269f23f3038c1f6343 Dr. Liz Pierce
3/4 IFSC Dr. Belinda Blevins-Knabe, Ida Umphers, and Angela Willis Dr. Blevins-Knabe and her colleagues will be talking to students about the IRB, including what students need to know about submitting their IRB review to ensure human subject research compliance. You can catch the full recorded session at this link: https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/0d5ba2c99ca2434cb027039724409d8f Dr. Liz Pierce
3/11 INFQ Mr. Randy Bean, Founder and CEO, NewVantage Partners Randy Bean will be talking to students about “Why Data Matters Now More Than Ever”, based on his book: Fail Fast, Learn Faster: Lessons in Data-Driven Leadership in an Age of Disruption, Big Data, and AI. Dr. Liz Pierce
3/18 IFSC Professor Jeremy Frey, Professor of Physical Chemistry, Head of Computational Systems Chemistry, PI AI for Scientific Discovery Network The Role of AI and Machine Learning in Scientific Discovery: Will an AI win a Nobel Prize. Please see the Blackboard Seminar Course Shell for the audio recording and the powerpoint slides. Dr. Bob Belford
3/25 Spring Break **No Seminar**
4/1 IFSC Dr. Bob Belford, Professor of Chemistry, UA Little Rock Dr. Belford will be talking about research and data science opportunities in the area of Informatics Advancing Science through Chemistry Education. You can find the recorded session at this link: https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/11ea2f2bfcc44597a3d228f232a2b643 Dr. Liz Pierce
4/8 CPSC Dr. Al Baker, Chair of Computer Science, UA Little Rock Self-reference: Pondering the Implications of Gödel’s Proof. A reflection of the type of thinking that researchers should be doing. You can find the recorded session at this link: https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/a7ca52cbb6064302b1e135ca91fa9dc2 Dr. John Talburt
4/15 SYEN Dr. Tariq Masood Challenges and Opportunities for Smart Grid Operations and Control. You can catch the full recording of this session at https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/de458a42a18247829ced4433b616050c. Dr. Kamran Iqbal
4/22 IFSC Dr. Islam (Akef) Ebeid Dr. Akef Ebeid will be sharing with students his experiences with knowledge graphs. Knowledge graphs, known as semantic networks, have been used as a representation for Artificial Intelligence since the early days of the field. They have many applications and there is a growing list of software options for students wishing to use this technique in their research projects. You can catch the full recording at https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/64fd6a085f254a03acc714826307a6c2 Dr. John Talburt
4/29 IFSC Dr. Ningning Wu, Professor of Information Science Design and Development of Data-Driven Risk Assessment through the Integration of Federal Acquisition Data with Open, Internet Sources: The publicly accessible acquisition databases at usaspending.gov and fpds.gov contain rich contract information from all U.S. departments for the last two decades. Hidden in these huge data repositories, there may be patterns that are unknown, yet potentially useful for acquisition research and practice. In this presentation, we will discuss our research on leveraging the information available in the public domain to complement internal acquisition and purchasing data in order to support effective acquisition planning and management. You can catch the recording at https://us-lti.bbcollab.com/recording/c0e82ed487004990b235135ca0ec088d Dr. John Talburt