November 2021 - Gradstudents - mailman.cs.vt.edu

Fwd: We are hiring
by Bo Ji 17 Nov '21

17 Nov '21

FYI - please apply online directly if you are interested. Best regards, Bo ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: YE, WEIHUA <WY4973(a)att.com> Date: Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 9:31 PM Subject: We are hiring Dear Colleagues and Partners, We are looking for talents to expand and strengthen our team. If you are interested or you know someone who would be, please forward the resume to me or apply online. Below are the links for internal/external applicants (requisition 2168708): - AT&T Internal *Principal Member of Technical Staff - 2168708 <https://att.taleo.net/careersection/10630/moresearch.ftl?lang=en&SID=B69A26…>* - External *Search our Job Opportunities at AT&T (att.jobs) <https://www.att.jobs/search-jobs/2168708/117/1?glat=39.77090072631836&glon=…>* Best Regards, Weihua Ye Director Member of Technical Staff Network Analytics and Automation, AT&T Labs 225 W Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60606 (cell) 708-502-3731 *This* *email, and any attachments, are intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally* *privileged and/or confidential information. It is the property of AT&T. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email, any attachments thereto, and any use of the information contained is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify me at (708-502-3731) and permanently delete the original and any copy thereof.*

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Before the Break!
by Myles Frantz 17 Nov '21

17 Nov '21

To all, I hope everyone has a good break next week and I only have a few tidbits to go over. We will not have a meeting next week since we are on break! For those of you who don't know there is an ideal Advisor/Advisee compact located here <https://gpc.cs.vt.edu/resources/CSCompact.pdf>. You can also send the council elected members your questions and concerns via the email gradcouncil(a)cs.vt.edu. I hope everyone has a happy break! Cheers, *------------------------------------------* Miles Frantz (*PhD.CS*) Ph.D. Student President of VT CS Grad Student Council <https://csgrad.cs.vt.edu/> Timezone: EDT/EST (UTC - 4/AoE +8) Website <https://people.cs.vt.edu/~frantzme/> *|* Public Key <https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0xC1081F9E88F1F00B> *|* Lab <https://yaogroup.cs.vt.edu/> *|* Email <frantzme(a)vt.edu> *CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE:* The contents of this email message and any attachments are intended solely for the addressee(s) and may contain confidential and/or privileged information and may be legally protected from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient of this message or their agent, or if this message has been addressed to you in error, please immediately alert the sender by reply email and then delete this message and any attachments. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, copying, or storage of this message or its attachments is strictly prohibited.

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MD Momen Bhuiyan's Ph.D. preliminary proposal
by Sang Won Lee 16 Nov '21

16 Nov '21

Hi, You are cordially invited to MD Momen Bhuiyan's preliminary exam. The details appear below. Sang Won Lee *When/Where* 11/19/2021 5PM-7PM https://virginiatech.zoom.us/my/momenbhuiyan *Committee* Sang Won Lee (Co-chair) Tanushree Mitra (Co-chair) Kurt Luther Mike Horning Nitesh Goyal *Title*: Supporting Dual-Process Information Consumption Online Through Design *Abstract*: Online information feeds on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google News are increasingly becoming complicated for lay users from the confluence of two developments: i) the influx of information from named or unnamed sources makes it hard to differentiate misinformation from credible ones, and ii) the platform-led push for personalization to im-prove engagement results in filter bubbles that are hard to escape from. These challenges become daunting due to the cognitive overload users suffer from browsing endless content within an insufficient amount of time, and the inadequate support platforms provide to assist them. Utilizing the dual-process theories of mind from cognitive psychology, I introduce a set of systems and design frameworks that assists users in automatic and reflective information processing in online news feeds. First, in NudgeCred, I show the development and effectiveness of design cues built around heuristics to engage automatic information processing and nudge users’ perception of information credibility on social media. Second, throughCrowdCred, I examine whether design cues built around annotation or labels from the users(or the crowd), can be reliable by comparing them against the experts. Third, Transparency Cue answers how stakeholders’ values in a system—in this case, the value of transparency on news platforms—can be adopted while designing such cues to help its audience differentiate content quality. Fourth, I developed RecXchange by repurposing system-generated recommendations to let users see diverse content and reflect on the filters imposed on their interests by YouTube. Overall, this thesis proposes guides for creating design-driven support for dual-process information consumption online by appropriating platform affordances.

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Jiameng Pu's Ph.D. preliminary proposal
by Bimal Viswanath 16 Nov '21

16 Nov '21

You're cordially invited to Jiameng Pu's Ph.D. preliminary proposal presentation on Thursday, 18 November 2021, at 1pm. Zoom link: https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/81881081504 Title: Defending Against Misuse of Synthetic Media: Understanding Real-world Challenges and Building Robust Defenses Committee: Dr. Bimal Viswanath (chair) Dr. Daphne Yao Dr. Chandan Reddy Dr. Tijay Chung Dr. Gang Wang (UIUC) Abstract: Recent advances in deep generative models have enabled the generation of realistic synthetic content or deepfakes. This includes synthetic images, videos, and text. However, synthetic media can be misused for malicious purposes and damage users' trust in online content. This preliminary proposal aims to address several challenges associated with defending against misuse of synthetic media. Key contributions and ongoing work include the following: (1) Understanding challenges with the real-world applicability of existing defenses that aim to detect synthetic content. We curate synthetic videos and text from the wild (i.e., the Internet community), and assess the effectiveness of state-of-the-art defenses on content in the wild. In addition, we measure the adversarial robustness of existing defenses, and also propose novel low-cost adversarial attacks against existing defenses. Our findings reveal that most defenses show significant degradation in performance under real-world detection scenarios, which leads to the second thread of my research work: (2) Building synthetic content detection schemes with improved generalization and robustness. Most existing synthetic image detection schemes are highly content-specific (e.g., only designed for faces), thus limiting their application. I propose an unsupervised content-agnostic detection scheme called NoiseScope, which can be applied to a wide variety of synthetic images, and is more resilient against an adaptive attacker. My ongoing work further aims to extend this approach to synthetic videos. For the text modality, my preliminary work reveals that state-of-the-art defenses that mine sequential patterns in the text using Transformer models are vulnerable to simple evasion schemes. My ongoing work aims to address this challenge by developing defenses that leverage the semantic structure of text. --Bimal

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NCR students only: RSVP for Thursday Thanksgiving luncheon
by Roxanne Paul 16 Nov '21

16 Nov '21

Dear NCR CS & ECE students, Thursday is our annual Thanksgiving lunch at the Northern Virginia Center. Please see the attached flyer. This is always a fun event. If you would like to attend please email Susan Merten smerten(a)vt.edu preferably today, but at latest by tomorrow at noon, so that she knows how much food to order. I hope to see you there! Roxanne Nersesian Paul Administrative & Program Specialist Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering Northern Virginia Center 7054 Haycock Road, Room 312A Falls Church, VA 22043 703-538-8370 roxpaul(a)vt.edu

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Re: [Gradstudents] 2022 CRA Career Mentoring Workshop – Applications Open from CRA Bulletin
by Cliff Shaffer 15 Nov '21

15 Nov '21

FYI. > > *From: *CRA Bulletin <shar(a)cra.org> > *Subject: **2022 CRA Career Mentoring Workshop – Applications Open from > CRA Bulletin* > *Date: *November 10, 2021 at 5:01:40 PM EST > *To: *Barbara Ryder <ryder(a)cs.vt.edu> > *Reply-To: *CRA Bulletin <shar(a)cra.org> > > > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > 2022 CRA Career Mentoring Workshop – Applications Open > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > > An in-person Career Mentoring Workshop > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> will > be offered by the Computing Research Association February 24-25, 2022 in > Washington, DC. This workshop provides advice and mentoring activities for > those starting an academic computing research career. Most attendees are in > their first or second year as assistant professors. The workshop will > include a series of panels, plus valuable opportunities to network with > other participants, CRA board members, senior researchers and > representatives from government agencies. Participants will have the > opportunity to discuss one pagers on their research with NSF CISE Program > Directors. There is a registration fee of $450 for CRA member departments > and $650 for non-CRA member departments for the in person workshop. > > In the next few weeks, we will be announcing the full agenda which will be > similar to the 2020 agenda available here > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…>. > Click here > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> to > apply. The workshop application deadline is December 10, 2021. > > CRA policy requires that attendees at in-person CRA events must be fully > vaccinated against COVID-19 and abide by CDC guidance on masking and social > distancing. CRA may record some sessions for those unable to attend in > person, but the real value of the event comes from the ability to ask > questions and interact with the speakers, board members and the other > participants, so please plan to attend in-person if possible. > > Read in browser » > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > [image: share on Twitter] > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > [image: Like 2022 CRA Career Mentoring Workshop – Applications Open on > Facebook] > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > > > > Recent Articles:Nominations Open for CRA Distinguished Service and A. > Nico Habermann Awards > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program Accepting Nominations > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > Best Practices on Using the Cloud for Computing Research > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > Third National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Task > Force Meeting and CCC Response to the NAIRR Implementation Plan > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > CRA and CERP Welcome Roohia Meer > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > *Copyright © 2021 Computing Research Association, All rights reserved.* > You are receiving this email because you are either a CRA Board Member, > CRA Committee Member, or CRA Member Contact. > > *Our mailing address is:* > Computing Research Association > 1828 L Street, NW Suite 800 > Washington, DC 20036 > > Add us to your address book > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/vcard?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=0f664b…> > > > Want to change how you receive these emails? > You can update your preferences > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/profile?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=0f66…> > or unsubscribe from this list > <https://cra.us5.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=…> > > > > -- Dr. Cliff Shaffer Professor and Associate Department Head for Graduate Studies Department of Computer Science Phone: (540) 231-4354 Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 WWW: www.cs.vt.edu/~shaffer

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GPSS Nov 18th Resolutions
by Shakiba Davari 15 Nov '21

15 Nov '21

Dear CS Grad Students, Please take a look and comment on the resolutions <https://forms.gle/YAP1RurkHHgY72g2A> that will be voted on at the upcoming Graduate and Professional Student Senate(GPSS) meeting on Thursday (11/18). If you are For, or Against a resolution, please leave your comments on that resolution in this Google Form <https://forms.gle/YAP1RurkHHgY72g2A> so we can effectively relay this to GPSS, and represent your concerns before the resolution is voted on. You can email your GPSS representatives at: csgc-gpss(a)cs.vt.edu *Stay Healthy and Happy,* *Shakiba Davari* *Ph.D. Student, **3D-Interaction Group, **Computer Science**, * *Virginia Tech* *Pronoun: She/her * *E-mail <sdavari(a)vt.edu> | Website <https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/sdavari>| 3DI-Lab <https://research.cs.vt.edu/3di/> *

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Fwd: Land grant or land grab? webinar Nov. 17
by Trey Mayo 15 Nov '21

15 Nov '21

Please see the opportunity below. ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Waller, Tremayne <trwaller(a)vt.edu> Date: Mon, Nov 15, 2021 at 11:47 AM Subject: Land grant or land grab? webinar Nov. 17 To: coe-grad-coordinators-g(a)vt.edu <coe-grad-coordinators-g(a)vt.edu> FYI. Please share with your students. Thanks, Trey I'm happy to announce a History Department & American Indian and Indigenous Community Center webinar. Please circulate to your networks. Flier attached. *Land Grant or Land Grab? Indigenous Resistance to Selective Histories.* While land grant universities are often hailed as bastions of service to the citizens of the states where they exist, the truth is that the lands they occupy were funded through the sale of Indigenous lands, often without even due compensation to those who lost land. This panel includes the lead authors on a comprehensive study revealing the extent of Indigenous land loss as well as scholars and Indigenous knowledge keepers who have been impacted by the legacy of land loss and restricted access to public education. Sponsored by the Department of History and the American Indian and Indigenous Community Center (AIICC) at Virginia Tech. Featuring Tristan Ahtone (Kiowa), Editor-At-Large, Grist, co-author of “Land Grab Universities''; Robert Lee, Lecturer in US History, Cambridge University, co-author of “Land Grab Universities''; Theresa Rocha Beardall (Oneida), Assistant professor of Sociology, University of Washington; and Victoria Ferguson, Monacan historian and horticulturalist, Interim Director, AIICC Virginia Tech. *Wednesday, November 17, 2021 12:15-1:15 PM ET* Via Zoom – Please Register: https://bit.ly/3C2M7Ho Brett L. Shadle Professor of African History Chair, Department of History <http://liberalarts.vt.edu/departments-and-schools/department-of-history.html> Associate Director, Center for Refugee, <https://liberalarts.vt.edu/research-centers/center-for-refugee-migrant-and-…> Migrant, and Displacement Studies <https://liberalarts.vt.edu/research-centers/center-for-refugee-migrant-and-…> Core faculty ASPECT <http://liberalarts.vt.edu/departments-and-schools/alliance-for-social-polit…> 431 Major Williams (0117) Virginia Tech* Blacksburg VA 24061 **Tutelo/Monacan people are the traditional custodians of this land* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "COE Grad Coordinators" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coe-grad-coordinators-g+unsubscribe(a)vt.edu. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/vt.edu/d/msgid/coe-grad-coordinators-g/BN7PR05M… <https://groups.google.com/a/vt.edu/d/msgid/coe-grad-coordinators-g/BN7PR05M…> . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/a/vt.edu/d/optout.

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Plans of Study for MS/PhD students
by Cliff Shaffer 14 Nov '21

14 Nov '21

This is a reminder about Plan of Study expectations. If you have not already submitted your plan of study, then yours might be due by the end of this semester. Or if you are late on your plan, then it is due immediately. If you have requested a GTA, note that whether you have submitted a Plan of Study does affect your chances of getting it. In that case, you might want to get your plan submitted right away to improve your ranking. To submit the plan: I am happy to do a quick pre-check for you to make sure that the course list and committee list looks OK -- just send me an email with a copy. But to actually submit it, use the CS Grad Forms Submission Portal (https://forms.gle/fTLi1fP6saoLMkGe7). You should submit a copy with all signatures needed* except mine*. You should also include signed forms for any courses that you hope to transfer. MS students: If you joined the program in Spring 2021, then your plan is due by the end of this semester. If you joined prior to Spring 2021, and your plan has not been submitted, then you are late. Accelerated UG/G students: If you are already officially in the grad program, then your plan should have already been submitted. If yours has not, then please submit as soon as possible. If you will officially join the grad program in Spring 2022, then you ought to submit your plan by the end of this semester. PhD students: If you joined the program in Fall 2020, then your plan is now due by the end of the semester. If you joined the program earlier and have not submitted your plan yet, then you are late. PhD students who started in the MS program: Depending on your individual circumstances, this might not be so simple to define your due date. But generally, sooner is better. Talk to me if you are uncertain about when you should complete your plan. -- Dr. Cliff Shaffer Professor and Associate Department Head for Graduate Studies Department of Computer Science Phone: (540) 231-4354 Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 WWW: www.cs.vt.edu/~shaffer

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Dr. Hooshangi's virtual advising sessions this week
by Sara Hooshangi 14 Nov '21

14 Nov '21

This message is ONLY for MEng students. In anticipation of the start of the add/drop period on Friday Nov. 26 (which is a university holiday), I am holding several virtual office hours this coming week. Please sign-up using this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B_-kJ8Xonx9O_SpREikLPf4TH5BtwD75PRt… <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B_-kJ8Xonx9O_SpREikLPf4TH5BtwD75PRt…> All sessions will be on Zoom at: https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/84596072770 <https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/84596072770> Please note that the University is closed for the Thanksgiving holiday starting Wednesday, November 24, so waiting until week of Nov. 22nd, or right before the start of add/drop to ask questions is not ideal and your emails will received a delayed response the week after Thanksgiving. We recommend that you look into finalizing your spring plans and resolve any issues this week. Thank you ---------------------------------- Sara Hooshangi, Ph.D. Collegiate Associate Professor Director, MEng Program Department of Computer Science Virginia Tech

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