[Cas-allemps] Mark your calendar: May 20 CAS IR Talk with Thanh Nguyen

[CAS Dean]

Dear colleagues,

I’m writing to invite you to the final presentation in the 2020-21 CAS Interdisciplinary Research Talk series—and don’t forget the talk at 3:30 today with Michael Allan, details and link are at the end of this message. The CAS IR talks are approximately 35-45 minutes followed by a Q&A session. Since much of our teaching and research in the liberal arts is multidisciplinary and collaborative, the talks are meant to encourage conversation, interest, and understanding across divisional lines in the college. Please join us.

Decision-focused Learning in an Adversarial Environment and Applications to Wildlife Protection
Thanh Nguyen, Assistant Professor, Computer and Information Science
Thursday, May 20, 3:30-5:00
Zoom meeting: click here<https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/94462963599> to join

Thanh Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science, was a postdoc at the University of Michigan and earned her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. Thanh’s work in the field of Artificial Intelligence is motivated by real-world societal problems, particularly in the areas of public safety and security, cybersecurity, and sustainability. She brings together techniques from multi-agent systems, machine learning, and optimization to solve problems in those areas with a focus on studying deception in security and decision-focused adversarial learning. Thanh’s work has been recognized by multiple awards including the IAAI-16 Deployed Application Award and the AAMAS-16 Runner-up of the Best Innovative Application Paper Award. Her work in wildlife protection, in particular, has contributed to build PAWS, a well-known AI application for wildlife security which has been deployed in multiple national parks around the world.

Talk abstract: Real-world societal problems in the areas of conservation, public safety and security, and cybersecurity are often characterized by uncertainties. These problems typically can be modeled as a multi-agent system in which agents with conflicting goals and limited knowledge interact with each other. For example, in wildlife protection, poachers set up traps to illegally catch animals while rangers patrol the conservation areas to prevent poaching. Often, each agent is uncertain about its opponents' capabilities, objectives, and other underlying characteristics. Through past interactions, agents can collect observation data to reduce these uncertainties and learn an effective action plan. However, opponent agents can manipulate the collected data by changing their behavior to mislead the other agents, influencing the learning process for their own benefit. For example, poachers can intentionally create fake poaching hot spots by laying out many more snares there, leading rangers to put more effort and resources to patrol those “hot-spot” areas while leaving other areas vulnerable to poaching. In this talk, I will present our work on developing new AI models and algorithms to tackle these decision-focused learning problems, with the ultimate goal of generating an effective action planning solution for defenders (e.g., conservation agencies).

This promises to be a fascinating talk and discussion. I hope to see you on May 20! Please see the list of this year’s series below which includes links to previous recorded talks.

Best regards,

Bruce

Bruce Blonigen
Tykeson Dean

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CAS Interdisciplinary Research Talks
2020-2021
All talks are from 3:30 - 5:00

FALL
October 14      Erin Beck, Associate Professor of Political Science
                        Insiders’ Accounts of Guatemala’s Specialized Violence Against Women Courts
                        View recorded talk<https://uoregon-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/lisa_uoregon_edu/ET_BminzCTJHrdyuPbF04LUBnuQdGd8ViN_bNOYJbDCYhA?e=qg5aeN>

WINTER
February 4       Maria Fernanda Escallón, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
                        Heritage and the Trap of Visibility

March 3           Brendan Bohannan, Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology
                        Interdisciplinary Explorations of the Microbial World
                        View recorded talk<https://uoregon-my.sharepoint.com/personal/lisa_uoregon_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Flisa%5Fuoregon%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FIR%20Talks%2FBohannan%20talk%2Emp4&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Flisa%5Fuoregon%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FIR%20Talks&originalPath=aHR0cHM6Ly91b3JlZ29uLW15LnNoYXJlcG9pbnQuY29tLzp2Oi9nL3BlcnNvbmFsL2xpc2FfdW9yZWdvbl9lZHUvRVk5REI5ZkstSXRFZ2lTN3RHc3FjemdCcUZTT0g5Wm5RVHg4TG9XM2RrYWg3UT9ydGltZT1uVmY3aUxINjJFZw>

SPRING
April 29            Michael Allan, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature
Sovereign Images? Envisioning Statecraft in Early Cinema
                        Zoom link<https://uoregon.zoom.us/s/98572706683#success>

May 20            Thanh Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science
Decision-focused Learning in an Adversarial Environment and Applications to Wildlife Protection
                        Zoom link<https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/94462963599>

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