Upcoming Seminars

Speaker

Ning Shi, PhD student at the University of Alberta, & David Basil, MSc student at the University of Alberta, supervised by Dr. Greg Kondrak

Title

LLMs and Concepts in Natural Language

Abstract
This presentation will cover five recent publications on computational semantics, which address the following research questions:

1. How can word senses be generated across languages? (Canadian AI 2026)

2. Can breaking a difficult task into smaller steps help LLMs understand ambiguous words? (SemEval 2026 Task 5 - Best Paper Award)

3. How does an LLM respond to semantic inconsistency? (EACL 2026)

4. Does mutual entailment characterize semantic equivalence or paraphrase? (IJCAI-ECAI LogiSymb 2026)

5. How well do LLMs understand and use different languages? (EMNLP 2023)

Across these studies, we hypothesize that concepts can serve as a bridge between lexical and sentence semantics, and large language models allow us to cross that bridge. Our results show connections among semantic tasks and reveal the limits of current models, especially in reasoning and multilingual contexts.

Presenter Bios
Ning Shi is a PhD candidate working with Prof. Grzegorz Kondrak. Before starting at the UofA, he worked as a senior algorithm engineer at Alibaba Group. Ning has graduate degrees from Georgia Tech, Syracuse University, and NYU. His doctoral research centers on establishing theoretical and computational connections between various semantic tasks in natural language processing, with the aim of enhancing their understanding and interpretability. 

David Basil is an MSc student working with Prof. Grzegorz Kondrak. His research focuses on cross-lingual lexical semantics, with an emphasis on evaluating conceptual correspondence in translation.

Timing & Location

UComm Seminar Room 2-108

pizza from 11:30, seminar from noon to 1

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Dr. Jocelyn Chen, Amii Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta

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Jocelyn Chen

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Amii HQ, 2nd floor event space (10065 Jasper Ave)

pizza from 11:30, seminar from noon to 1

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Dr. Eugene Feinberg, Distinguished Professor, Stony Brook University, hosted by Dr. Janey Yu

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UComm Seminar Room 2-108

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Dr. Xi Ye, Amii Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta

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Xi Ye

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Amii HQ, 2nd floor event space (10065 Jasper Ave)

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Owen Randal

Title

Astrus: AlphaGo-Inspired Search and Learning for Physics-Aware Chip Design

Abstract

AMS (analog mixed-signal) layout is the art of arranging transistors and wires for a chip’s most performance-critical parts. Every placement and routing decision can profoundly impact performance, which is why engineers spend weeks hand-tuning transistor placement and routing, through intuition and painstaking trial and error to meet performance requirements in circuit simulation. Although AMS circuits occupy only a small fraction of a sophisticated chip like a GPU, they can account for a disproportionate share of the manual design effort and cost.

Like AlphaGo, we use search as the engine for discovering novel configurations. A physics-based evaluation engine measures the physical properties of each layout, allowing us to trade off among many competing design objectives. Predictive neural network models approximate complex routing and computationally expensive evaluation to accelerate search, while generative models distill the results to guide future exploration. Together, these techniques allow us to discover layouts that satisfy stringent physical constraints and satisfy user-specified performance objectives.

Bio

Owen Randall is a current PhD candidate at the University of Alberta and former CMPUT 455 instructor, supervised by AMII fellow Martin Müller. His research is primarily concerned with search algorithms and combinatorial optimization. He is doing research at Astrus, a Toronto based startup using AI and search to automate and optimize analog chip layouts.

Website

Astrus AI

Timing & Location IN-PERSON ONLY

UComm Seminar Room 2-108

pizza from 11:30, seminar from noon to 1

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Dr. Lazar Atanackovic, Amii Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta

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Lazar Atanackovic

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Amii HQ, 2nd floor event space (10065 Jasper Ave)

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Dr. Ife Adebara, Amii Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta

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Amii HQ, 2nd floor event space (10065 Jasper Ave)

pizza from 11:30, seminar from noon to 1

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NO SEMINARS - Winter Closure