2026's Seminars
[INMA] 2026-07-02 (10:00) : A two-level inexact smoothing framework for nonsmooth optimization
At Euler building (room A.002)
Speaker :
Masoud Ahookhosh (University of Antwerp)
Abstract : We introduce an inexact two-level optimization framework, ItsOPT, for computing first- and second-order critical points of nonsmooth and nonconvex optimization problems. The framework consists of two interconnected levels. At the upper level, a smoothing technique—such as the high-order Moreau envelope, high-order forward-backward envelope, or high-order tensor envelope—is employed to construct a smooth approximation of the original objective function while preserving its minimizers. First- or second-order optimization methods are then applied to minimize the resulting smooth surrogate. At the lower level, the associated high-order proximal subproblems (e.g., high-order proximal, forward-backward, or tensor subproblems) are solved inexactly using subgradient-based or Bregman proximal methods. The resulting approximate solutions provide inexact evaluations of the smoothing function and its derivative information, which are subsequently used by the upper-level optimization methods. The overall complexity of the proposed framework is given by the product of the computational complexities of the upper- and lower-level procedures. By combining accelerated first- or second-order methods at the upper level with lower-level algorithms whose complexity is negligible (e.g., logarithmic in the desired accuracy), the resulting methods may achieve overall iteration complexities that improve upon existing worst-case complexity bounds. Finally, we present several concrete algorithms within the proposed framework and report preliminary numerical results demonstrating their practical performance.
[ELEN] 2026-06-18 (11:00) : Interfacing molecules with silicon metamaterials for sensing applications
At Shannon
Speaker :
Michael J. Sailor (University of California)
Abstract : Combining the functions of biologics or reporter molecules within microelectronic systems is a growing discipline, with a wide range of applications in sensing, healthcare, robotics, and human factors engineering. There are many examples in which native or near-native proteins have been integrated into devices (e.g., glucose sensors, antigen detection kits, DNA sequencing devices, etc.), and some examples of engineered proteins that can function in non-native media or in more challenging environments. There are needs both for new molecules and for new materials that can enable hybrid optical sensor systems with enhanced performance in terms of sensitivity, selectivity, or long-term stability. Mesoporous silicon, generated by anodization of single-crystal silicon wafers, provides a means to integrate potential reporter molecules (indicator dyes, fluorescent proteins, enzymes, etc.) within nanoscale silicon metamaterials (such as photonic crystals) to achieve such enhanced performance. The effects of modulating mesopore dimensions, surface charge, and surface chemistry on performance characteristics such as enzyme turnover rates, ingress/egress of reactants/products, and enhanced optical responses will be discussed.
[INGI] 2026-06-04 (13:00) : Human-like game playing beyond behavioral alignment
At Shannon (Maxwell - a.105)
Speaker :
Aloïs Rautureau (ENS Rennes)
Abstract : Game playing systems have been extensively studied with the prospect of improving their playing strength, but little work has been done on making them play "like humans". Such "human-like" systems would have a number of advantages and potential use cases: designers wanting to test early prototypes of their game quickly and extensively, players hoping to learn actionable and realistic strategies, or researchers in humanities trying to better understand how human players approach ancient games. While current approaches center their definition around the Turing test (an agent is human-like if it is indistinguishable from one), and are thus mainly based around imitation learning, we argue that human-like play is broader than move selection. The way humans approach games is deeply rooted in cognition, psychology, and the social context in which they play. This seminar will present exploratory work on defining what "human-like" even means in the context of game playing agents, present methods and algorithms aiming to bridge the gap between human cognition and computational approaches, and discuss future work and research directions that stem from this exploration.
[ELEN] 2026-05-19 (10:00) : Structured Sparsity from Wavelets to Transformer Attention via Conic Projections
At Shannon
Speaker :
Michel Barlaud (I3S-Nice Sophia Antipolis)
Abstract : Structured Sparsity from Wavelets to Transformer Attention via Conic Projections
[INGI] 2026-05-13 (13:00) : Scala, WebAssembly, and JavaScript interoperability
At Shannon (Maxwell - a.105)
Speaker :
Sébastien Doeraene (EPFL, Switzerland)
Abstract : Since Scala.js 1.17.0, released in September 2024, users have been able to target WebAssembly (Wasm) for their applications. With a single build tool configuration switch, the Scala.js linker generates Wasm code to be used in a JavaScript host. It does so while preserving the semantics of the Scala.js language. In particular, you still get all the nice JavaScript interoperability features that Scala.js is known for (well … except @JSExport, but more on that in the talk). That also means you get to reuse the entire ecosystem of libraries. This is unusual among languages targeting Wasm. Most significantly compromise on their ability to talk to JavaScript in the process.
This talk explores some of the challenges we faced, and the unusual solutions we designed. We will talk about weird language semantics, low-level performance aspects (including where JS still beats Wasm), and even new proposals to Wasm.
Seminars
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