May 2025 - Sanghani-faculty - mailman.cs.vt.edu

Joyce - today and tomorrow
by Newberry, Joyce 22 May '25

22 May '25

Good afternoon, faculty, I'm back from the doctor's office. Technically, I'm out of the office today and tomorrow. However, currently checking emails, primarily responding to messages regarding CCI proposals. I will be online today until 5p and online tomorrow from 7a-2p Thanks a lot for your patience. Regards, Joyce I. Newberry, MBA Grant Administrator Sanghani Center for AI & Data Analytics - Virginia Tech 3625 Potomac Avenue Alexandria, VA 22305 joyce15(a)vt.edu PLEASE NOTE: I will be out of office on May 21, 22, and 23, June 13 Proposal Submission Deadline Reminder OSP requires that you have all the administrative documents, including Accepted and final budget, in Approved routing status in Summit, and complete sponsor forms by 9:00 AM the day before your proposal is due. Please have your complete technical proposal ready to submit, no later than 9:00 AM the day the proposal is due or we cannot submit. Please see the OSP Procedure 20002 for more details on Proposal Submission. https://osp.vt.edu/content/dam/osp_vt_edu/policies/osp20002.pdf

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Joyce - out of office
by Newberry, Joyce 20 May '25

20 May '25

Good morning, everyone, Just a friendly reminder that I will be out of the office tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. I will be checking emails Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon. For those who are submitting CCI proposals, please send me your technical document, NSF biosketch and current/pending (with CCI proposal listed on it) to me by Friday or upload the documents on Summit. All documents should be uploaded by 9a Tuesday. Thank you in advance for your assistance. Regards, Joyce I. Newberry, MBA Grant Administrator Sanghani Center for AI & Data Analytics - Virginia Tech 3625 Potomac Avenue Alexandria, VA 22305 joyce15(a)vt.edu PLEASE NOTE: I will be out of office on May 21, 22, and 23, June 13 Proposal Submission Deadline Reminder OSP requires that you have all the administrative documents, including Accepted and final budget, in Approved routing status in Summit, and complete sponsor forms by 9:00 AM the day before your proposal is due. Please have your complete technical proposal ready to submit, no later than 9:00 AM the day the proposal is due or we cannot submit. Please see the OSP Procedure 20002 for more details on Proposal Submission. https://osp.vt.edu/content/dam/osp_vt_edu/policies/osp20002.pdf

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FW: May 2025 Newsletter - LDC
by Brian Mayer 19 May '25

19 May '25

From: Ldc-customers1 <ldc-customers1-bounces(a)ldc.upenn.edu> On Behalf Of Penn LDC Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2025 12:26 PM To: Penn LDC <ldc(a)ldc.upenn.edu> Subject: May 2025 Newsletter - LDC In this newsletter: New publications: BOLT CTS CALLFRIEND CALLHOME Mandarin Chinese Audio <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcatalog.l dc.upenn.edu%2FLDC2025S04&data=05%7C02%7Cmayer2%40vt.edu%7Cb079657cbd474d36d d5d08dd93cdd3bd%7C6095688410ad40fa863d4f32c1e3a37a%7C0%7C0%7C638829234413098 209%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAi OiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=jG%2FCZnyGIG GTyFSXg7INE0bL%2BtvPkNvyjJHTAtO78I4%3D&reserved=0> BOLT CTS CALLFRIEND CALLHOME Mandarin Chinese Transcripts and Translations <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcatalog.l dc.upenn.edu%2FLDC2025T05&data=05%7C02%7Cmayer2%40vt.edu%7Cb079657cbd474d36d d5d08dd93cdd3bd%7C6095688410ad40fa863d4f32c1e3a37a%7C0%7C0%7C638829234413123 834%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAi OiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wx%2F2RS05TM Zd25X9dYMF3%2F5Iqqqh5tDkUgEbqkpjqV4%3D&reserved=0> _____ New publications: <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcatalog.l dc.upenn.edu%2FLDC2025S04&data=05%7C02%7Cmayer2%40vt.edu%7Cb079657cbd474d36d d5d08dd93cdd3bd%7C6095688410ad40fa863d4f32c1e3a37a%7C0%7C0%7C638829234413140 758%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAi OiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=l1JJymsIvQcG 7P30fqDgixwqHA8MC5BHdGsoAzcb2Cg%3D&reserved=0> BOLT CTS CALLFRIEND CALLHOME Mainland Mandarin Chinese Audio was developed by LDC and consists of 93 hours of speech from 236 unscripted telephone conversations between native speakers of the Mandarin Chinese dialect spoken in mainland China. The calls were collected by LDC in the CALLFRIEND and CALLHOME series where participants called family members or close friends and spoke on topics of their choice. Around 60% of the recordings (141 calls) are publicly released for the first time. The remaining 95 recordings were previously published by LDC in various CALLFRIEND, CALLHOME, and HUB5 Mandarin datasets. The data is divided into training, development, and evaluation partitions. The DARPA BOLT (Broad Operational Language Translation) program developed machine translation and information retrieval for less formal genres, focusing particularly on user-generated content. LDC supported the BOLT program by collecting informal data sources -- discussion forums, conversational telephone speech, text messaging, and chat -- in Chinese, Egyptian Arabic, and English. The material in this release represents the unannotated Chinese source conversational telephone speech. The telephone data was transcribed, translated, and annotated for various tasks in the BOLT program including word alignment, treebanking, and co-reference. 2025 members can access this corpus through their LDC accounts. Non-members may license this data for $2000. * <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcatalog.l dc.upenn.edu%2FLDC2025T05&data=05%7C02%7Cmayer2%40vt.edu%7Cb079657cbd474d36d d5d08dd93cdd3bd%7C6095688410ad40fa863d4f32c1e3a37a%7C0%7C0%7C638829234413163 569%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAi OiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=slLAqYWR1%2F 8pzbrg1aMOLK1Y4tmx9%2BmHTP1YChZLpC4%3D&reserved=0> BOLT CTS CALLFRIEND CALLHOME Mainland Mandarin Chinese Transcripts and Translations contains transcripts and corresponding English translations for the conversational telephone speech in <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcatalog.l dc.upenn.edu%2FLDC2025S04&data=05%7C02%7Cmayer2%40vt.edu%7Cb079657cbd474d36d d5d08dd93cdd3bd%7C6095688410ad40fa863d4f32c1e3a37a%7C0%7C0%7C638829234413182 040%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAi OiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=QDqcDzCOsztg pUe89guoUkbA7dikc81bAeAUlNCSb0E%3D&reserved=0> BOLT CTS CALLFRIEND CALLHOME Mandarin Chinese Audio and was developed by LDC to support the DARPA BOLT program. Transcribers were required to produce a verbatim transcript of all speech within a file using simplified Chinese orthography and to add minimal markup to capture salient features of the speech. Some transcripts include redactions for potential personally identifying information. All speech data was transcribed and is divided into training, development, and evaluation partitions. The goal of the BOLT translation task was to translate the Chinese transcripts into fluent English while preserving the meaning present in the original Chinese text. Transcripts in the development and evaluation partitions received first pass and gold standard translations. 89% of the transcripts were translated into English. 2025 members can access this corpus through their LDC accounts. Non-members may license this data for $1500. To unsubscribe from this newsletter, log in to your <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcatalog.l dc.upenn.edu%2Flogin&data=05%7C02%7Cmayer2%40vt.edu%7Cb079657cbd474d36dd5d08 dd93cdd3bd%7C6095688410ad40fa863d4f32c1e3a37a%7C0%7C0%7C638829234413198555%7 CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXa W4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Q860iPRk2kgI7tukA egl%2FunvqUdm98dnfrD0ldGg31g%3D&reserved=0> LDC account and uncheck the box next to "Receive Newsletter" under Account Options or contact LDC for assistance. Membership Coordinator <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fldc.upenn. edu%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cmayer2%40vt.edu%7Cb079657cbd474d36dd5d08dd93cdd3bd%7C6 095688410ad40fa863d4f32c1e3a37a%7C0%7C0%7C638829234413216848%7CUnknown%7CTWF pbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjo iTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=S9qjvsmc3Zp0eEuT42KU%2FrhpbYLww FnYIw1SeXl%2F8XU%3D&reserved=0> Linguistic Data Consortium University of Pennsylvania T: +1-215-573-1275 E: <mailto:ldc@ldc.upenn.edu> ldc(a)ldc.upenn.edu M: 3600 Market St. Suite 810 Philadelphia, PA 19104

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Reminders - May
by Newberry, Joyce 13 May '25

13 May '25

Good afternoon, Just a couple of reminders for this month: 1. I will be out of the office from May 21 until May 27. I will check emails/respond if urgent. 2. If anyone is interested in applying for Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Node (see attached). Please let me know NOW. Submission date is 5/27/2025 and as I will only be online two days next week. So far, one faculty member is applying. 3. Keep in mind holiday break is coming up and people may not be available. Thank everyone in advance for your assistance. Regards, Joyce I. Newberry, MBA Grant Administrator Sanghani Center for AI & Data Analytics - Virginia Tech 3625 Potomac Avenue Alexandria, VA 22305 joyce15(a)vt.edu PLEASE NOTE: I will be out of office on May 21, 22, and 23, June 13 Proposal Submission Deadline Reminder OSP requires that you have all the administrative documents, including Accepted and final budget, in Approved routing status in Summit, and complete sponsor forms by 9:00 AM the day before your proposal is due. Please have your complete technical proposal ready to submit, no later than 9:00 AM the day the proposal is due or we cannot submit. Please see the OSP Procedure 20002 for more details on Proposal Submission. https://osp.vt.edu/content/dam/osp_vt_edu/policies/osp20002.pdf

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Early Career Scholarly Impact Award
by Naren Ramakrishnan 08 May '25

08 May '25

Colleagues, I hope you all enjoyed the Metallica Concert yday - wanted to make sure you saw this news today in VT news: https://news.vt.edu/articles/2025/05/research-inaugural-award-winners.html Many congratulations to Ruoxi on being an inaugural winner of the VT early career scholarly impact award! Naren

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Sanghani Faculty Meeting - Friday, May 9 at 12 pm
by Shalaby, Wanawsha 07 May '25

07 May '25

Hi All, Our next Sanghani Faculty meeting is scheduled for Friday, May 9th at 12:00 - 1:30 pm. As usual, if you have any recent news or updates since our last faculty meeting, please send them my way so that I may add them to our meeting slides. Updates include awards, proposals, grants, conference presentations, events, etc. Please send all updates by Wednesday, May 7. I have updated the recurring calendar invite to reflect this date. Those of you in Blacksburg will be meeting in D&DS 337 and those of us in the D.C. area will be meeting in IC 5740. Below is the Zoom information for anyone who needs to join remotely. Join Zoom Meeting Https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/89087118458 Meeting ID: 890 8711 8458 --- One tap mobile +16469313860,,89087118458# US +19294362866,,89087118458# US (New York) --- Dial by your location • +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) Meeting ID: 890 8711 8458 Thanks, Wanawsha Wanawsha Shalaby Manager of Operations Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics - Virginia Tech 3625 Potomac Ave., Alexandria, VA 22305 E-Mail: wanah92(a)vt.edu<mailto:wanah92@vt.edu>

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Innovation Campus: CS Seminar Announcement (Friday, February 21 11:15am-12:15pm, ICAB 4110)
by Lu, Chang-Tien 01 May '25

01 May '25

Learning, introspection, and anticipation for effective and reliable task planning under uncertainty Speaker: Prof. Gregory J. Stein George Mason University Friday, February 21, 2025 11:15AM- 12:15PM, ICAB 4110 Abstract The next generation of service and assistive robots will need to operate under uncertainty, expected to complete tasks and perform well despite missing information about the state of the world or the future needs of itself and other agents. In this talk, I will present a number of recent and ongoing projects that improve long-horizon navigation and task planning in uncertain home-like environments. First, I will discuss our recent developments that improve performance and reliability in unfamiliar environments-environments potentially dissimilar from any seen during training-with a technique that enables fast and reliable deployment-time policy selection despite uncertainty. Second, I will discuss anticipatory planning, by which our robot anticipates and avoids side effects of its actions on undetermined future tasks it may later be assigned; our approach guides the robot towards behaviors that encourage preparation and organization, improving its performance over lengthy deployments. Biography [cid:image001.jpg@01DB83BB.F2C5BD90] Prof. Gregory J. Stein is an Assistant Professor of CS at George Mason University, where he runs the Robotic Anticipatory Intelligence & Learning Group and is the director of the GMU Autonomous Robotics Lab. His research at the intersection of robotics, planning, and learning, develops approaches for planning and learning that allow robots to better understand the impact of their actions, so that they may plan quickly, intelligently, and reliably in a dynamic and uncertain world. Before joining Mason, he received his PhD in 2020 from MIT's EECS Department and previously graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a B.S. in Engineering Physics. His work was a finalist for Best Paper at the 2018 Conference on Robot Learning, at which he was additionally awarded Best Oral Presentation.

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