Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Talk: Efficient Scaling of Language Models
Speaker: Artidoro Pagnoni, Advisor: Luke Zettlemoyer, Supervisory Committee: Luke Zettlemoyer (Chair), Nadya Peek (GSR, Human Centered Design and Engineering), Hanna Hajishirzi, Pang Wei Koh, Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable capabilities through exponentially increasing computational resources, with training costs now reaching billions of dollars and rapidly exhausting high-quality internet text—raising the critical question of how to unlock further capabilities while curbing this unsustainable growth. This dissertation presents three complementary innovations that demonstrate how to improve scaling efficiency across the LLM development pipeline: (1) Byte Latent Transformer (BLT), a tokenizer-free architecture that learns directly from raw bytes and dynamically groups them into entropy-adaptive patches, achieving up to 50% reduction in inference FLOPs while improving robustness and pretraining scaling trends; (2) Socratic Pretraining, which transforms unlabeled documents into…
Thursday, July 3, 2025, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM.
Independence Day
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Summer. Event Types: Academics.
Friday, July 4, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. AccessCSforAll book club: "El Deafo" by Cece Bell
AccessCSforAll staff invites you to participate in a three-week virtual book club exploring El Deafo, a graphic novel written and illustrated by Cece Bell. The book offers a humorous and heartfelt look at growing up deaf, identity, and fitting in. It’s also available as an accessible audiobook with a full cast and sound effects, making it inclusive for all participants.
Format:
We’ll meet weekly over Zoom to discuss selected sections of the book. Each session will include group discussion and reflection questions. While we encourage you to attend all sessions, we understand life gets busy—joining at least one is appreciated!
Who Can Join:
Everyone is welcome! Due to grant restrictions, we can only provide funding (book vouchers) to individuals who live, work, or study in the United States. However, anyone—regardless of location—is welcome to participate in the Zoom discussions.
Registration: Complete the registration form. After you register, you’ll receive a $20 Amazon voucher to purchase the book…
Event interval: Ongoing event. Accessibility Contact: kayladb@uw.edu. Event Types: Diversity Equity Inclusion. Meetings. Student Activities. Target Audience: Everyone is welcome!
Wednesday, July 9, 2025, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
For more info visit docs.google.com. DUB Seminar: Mary Czerwinski
Mary P. Czerwinski, Affiliate Professor in the UW Information School and a Research Manager of the Visualization and Interaction (VIBE) Research Group. Sign up for DUB mailing list for in-person and virtual attendance details , Confirm logistics on DUB website.
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: dub@dub.washington.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Students and researchers interested in human-computer interface (HCI) research.
Wednesday, July 16, 2025, 11:45 AM – 1:15 PM.
For more info visit dub.washington.edu. Instruction Ends - Summer 2025 - A-term
Dates of Instruction
Instruction ends.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Summer. Event Types: Academics.
Wednesday, July 23, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Instruction Begins - Summer 2025 - B-term
Dates of Instruction
Instruction begins.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Summer. Event Types: Academics.
Thursday, July 24, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Talk: Support from Understanding to Access: A Human-Centered Approach to Designing Responsible AI Systems for Student Academic Well-Being and Inclusive Learning
Speaker: Han Zhang, Advisors: Anind Dey, Jennifer Mankoff, Supervisory Committee: Anind K. Dey (Chair, Information School), Jennifer C Mankoff (Chair), Gary Hsieh (GSR, Human Centered Design and Engineering), Yin Tat Lee, Abstract TBA.
Friday, July 25, 2025, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM.
Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Talk: Primal-dual Methods for Policy Learning in Bandits and Reinforcement Learning
Speaker: Zhihan Xiong, Advisor: Maryam Fazel, Supervisory Committee: Maryam Fazel (Chair, Electrical and Computer Engineering), Yingfei Wang (GSR, Business - Foster School of), KEVIN G JAMIESON, Pang Wei Koh, Lin Xiao (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Abstract TBA.
Monday, July 28, 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM.
Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Talk: Goal-Centered Personal Informatics Tools
Speaker: Yasaman Sefidgar, Advisor: James Fogarty, Supervisory Committee: James Fogarty (Chair), ANDREA HARTZLER (GSR, Biomedical Informatics & Medical Educ), Jeffrey Heer, Sean Munson (Human Centered Design and Engineering), Jina Suh (Microsoft), Abstract TBA.
Tuesday, July 29, 2025, 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM.
Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Talk: Mixed-Initiative Methods for Human-AI Co-Creation in Scientific Research
Speaker: Marissa Radensky, Advisor: Dan Weld, Supervisory Committee: Dan Weld (Chair), Aylin Caliskan (GSR, Information School), Jonathan Bragg (Allen Institute for AI), Jeffrey Heer, Amy Xian Zhang, Abstract TBA.
Wednesday, July 30, 2025, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Talk: Manufacturability-Driven Mechanical Metamaterial Design and Construction
Speaker: Daniel Revier, Advisor: Jeffrey Lipton, Supervisory Committee: Jeffrey Ian Lipton (Chair, Mechanical Engineering), Eleftheria Roumeli (GSR, Materials Science and Engineering), GILBERT L BERNSTEIN, Lucas R Meza (Mechanical Engineering), Adriana Schulz, Abstract TBA.
Friday, August 1, 2025, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM.
Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Talk: Human-AI Methods for Scholarly Knowledge Synthesis
Speaker: Raymond Fok, Advisor: Dan Weld, Supervisory Committee: Dan Weld (Chair), Gary Hsieh (GSR, Human Centered Design and Engineering), James Fogarty, Andrew Head (University of Pennsylvania), Amy Xian Zhang, Abstract TBA.
Wednesday, August 6, 2025, 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM.
Instruction Ends - Summer 2025 - Full and B-term
Dates of Instruction
Instruction ends.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Summer. Event Types: Academics.
Friday, August 22, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Quarter Break - Autumn 2025
Dates of Instruction
Break between summer and autumn quarters.
Event interval: Ongoing event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Autumn. Event Types: Academics.
Saturday, August 23, 2025 – Tuesday, September 23, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Labor Day
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Autumn. Event Types: Academics.
Monday, September 1, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Instruction Begins - Autumn 2025
Dates of Instruction
Instruction begins.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Autumn. Event Types: Academics.
Wednesday, September 24, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu.