Reading Groups

These groups meet regularly in our department to discuss papers on a given research area. New students are welcome to attend.

If you would like to add a new reading group to this list please send us an email to gracs@cs.utexas.edu with the group information as shown in the examples below. Alternatively, feel free to add and/or update the information of the currently listed groups by registering to edit this Wiki.

Contents

Reading Groups
1. Currently Updated Groups (as of Spring 2008)
2. Groups that need to be updated or inactive groups

Currently Updated Groups (as of Spring 2008)

ACL2 Seminar

Description	The ACL2 seminar focuses on the development and application of automated reasoning tools, especially the ACL2 theorem prover. ACL2 is both a programming language in which you can model computer systems and a tool to help you prove properties of those models, and is part of the Boyer-Moore family of provers, for which its authors have received the 2005 ACM Software System Award. Typically, the seminar begins with a "round table", which is a free-form discussion based on questions and replies on a variety of topics such as existing work and ACL2 usage questions. A prepared talk is then given. There is a tradition of encouraging questions and welcoming newcomers.
Meets	Most Wednesdays, 4:00-5:45 pm in ACES 3.116
Faculty & Research Scientists	Warren Hunt, J Moore, Matt Kaufmann, Bill Young
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/seminar
Last Active	Fall 2007

Cognitive Systems Reading Group

Description	This is a group that aims to develop synergies between Systems and AI with the goal of making computer systems more able to self-configure, self-diagnose failures, self-repair, etc.
Meets	Every other Tuesday, 11:00-12:00am in ACES 2.404B
Faculty	Emmett Witchel, Peter Stone, Ray Mooney, Yin Zhang, Mike Dahlin, Kathryn McKinley, J.C. Browne, Vitaly Shmatikov
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ml/cogsys
Last Active	Fall 2007

Connecting Language Acquisition with Machine Perception Group

Description	We explore integrations of various areas of AI such as vision, natural language processing, machine learning, robotics, etc with particular emphasis on language learning with the aid of perceptual data.
Meets	Every other Wednesday, 1:00-2:00pm in ACES 5.444
Faculty	Raymond J. Mooney, Kristen Grauman, Risto Miikkulainen, Benjamin Kuipers, Jason Baldridge, Katrin Erk, Dana H. Ballard
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~ml/clamp/
Last Active	Fall 2007

Natural Language Acquisition Group

Description	We explore and discuss papers in the area of natural language acquisition and learning.
Meets	Every other Wednesday, 4:00-5:00pm in ACES 5.444
Faculty	Raymond J. Mooney, Jason Baldridge, Katrin Erk
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/nl-acq
Last Active	Fall 2007

Machine Learning Group

Description	We read and discuss papers in the area of machine learning (recent topics include clustering, active learning and recommendation systems).
Meets	Every other Wednesday, 4:00-5:00pm in ACES 5.444
Faculty	Raymond J. Mooney, Jason Baldridge, Katrin Erk
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~ml/meeting/index.html
Last Active	Fall 2007

PL Lunch Group

Description	The Programming Languages lunch offers a chance for current PL students, as well as students interested in PL topics, to discuss current research. Weekly presentations will be on recent papers or ongoing work by students in the department. Occasionally, outside speakers will be invited to present. New students are welcome. Lunch provided.
Meets	Every Monday, 11:45-1:00pm in TAY 3.128 (unless otherwise noted)
Faculty	Keshav Pingali, Kathryn McKinley, William Cook, Calvin Lin, J.C. Browne
More info	http://z.cs.utexas.edu/wiki/speedway.wiki/PLLunch
Last Active	Spring 2008

Knowledge Representation & Reasoning Reading Group

Description	We read papers on general issues of AI, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and Natural Language Processing. Newcomers are always welcomed.
Meets	Every other Tuesday, 4:00-5:00, location varies
Faculty & Research Scientists	Bruce Porter, Ken Barker
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/sudipta/krr
Last Active	Fall 2007

Developmental Robotics Reading Group

Description	We read papers on developmental robotics and bootstrap learning. This reading group is starting this semester, so new people are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Meets	Every other Monday, 4:00-5:00, ENS AI Lab
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~stober/devrobot.html http://developmentalrobotics.org/
Last Active	Spring 2008

Groups that need to be updated or inactive groups

Debugging Reading Group

Description	In this reading, we are looking for the current issues and techniques related to the software debugging. At the beginning, we will focus on the concurrency bugs including both data race and atomicity violation. Note that we do not limit our interest to the concurrency problems.
Meets	Every other Thursday, 3:00PM-4:00PM, ACES 2.444
Faculty	Kathryn McKinley
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/speedway/meetingwiki/wiki.scgi?DebugReadingGroup
Last Active	Spring 2007

Reinforcement Learning Reading Group

Description	This is a student-run reading group (with food) aimed at reading current papers on RL.
Meets	Every other Friday, 2:00-3:00pm in TAY 3.144 (unless otherwise noted)
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shivaram/RLReadingGroup
Last Active	Spring 2007

Transfer Learning Reading Group

Description	This is a reading group connected with a DARPA grant on transfer learning. We read papers devoted to this topic.
Meets	Every other Friday, 10:00-11:00am in ACES 6.444
Faculty	Peter Stone, Ray Mooney
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~mtaylor/TL/ or email mtaylor
Last Active	Spring 2007

Graphics Seminar

Description	We discuss the cutting edge research papers on variety of graphics topics ranging from real-time rendering to physically based simulation, character animation, graphics hardware, modeling, surface representation/acquisition, photorealistic rendering, etc.
Meets	Every Tuesday, 4:00-5:00pm in ACES 3.408
Faculty	Okan Arikan, Don Fussell, Bill Mark
More info	The group uses a mailing list. Write to Greg Johnson if you would like to be added to the list.
Last Active	Spring 2007

Algorithms and Computation Theory Seminar

Description	Topics covered are recent results in algorithms and complexity theory. Presentations are sometimes by visitors, or faculty as well as students. New students are welcome and can join any time during the semester.
Meets	Every Friday, 11:00am-12:00pm in ACES 3.408
Faculty	Anna Gal, Adam Klivans, Greg Plaxton, Vijaya Ramachandran, David Zuckerman
More info	Please subscribe to the algorithms@cs mailing list for information on the scheduling of talks as well as for announcements regarding upcoming talks.
Last Active	Spring 2007

Theory Student Seminar

Description	This is a seminar in theoretical computer science run by students. Anyone is welcome to attend the seminar, though the talks will mostly be given by students.
Meets	Every Monday, 4:00-5:00pm. (See website for details)
Faculty	Adam Klivans, David Zuckerman, Anna Gal
More info	Please use this website or subscribe to the algorithms@cs mailing list for information on the scheduling of talks as well as for announcements regarding upcoming talks.
Last Active	Spring 2007

ITTY Reading Group

Description	The purpose of this reading group is to look at security and privacy-related applications of (broadly defined) information-theoretic techniques, including extractors and error-correcting codes.
Meets	Every other Monday, 2:00-3:00pm, location varies
Faculty	Vitaly Shmatikov, Anna Gal, David Zuckerman
More info	http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~arvindn/itty.html
Last Active	Fall 2006