The Class of 1960’s Scholars Program is a program funded by an endowment from the Class of 1960 to encourage students to consider academic careers. Speakers are brought to campus each year for a colloquium series that is open to everyone. CS Faculty nominate students from the junior and senior classes to be Scholars. Scholars attend the colloquium talks and meet in a small group setting for discussions with the speaker.
2023-2024
David Jensen, UMass Amherst
- What’s So Important About Explanation? Science, Machine Learning, and Large Language Models
- Explanation, Causation, and Mechanism in AI systems
2021-2022
Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Brown University
- Machine Readable: The Power and Limits of Algorithms that are Shaping Society
- On Equity in Access
Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University
- Designing Algorithms for High-Stakes Decisions
- Monoculture and Simplicity in Algorithmic Decision-Making
2019-2020
Kathi Fisler ’91, Brown University
- Curriculum Design as an Engineering Problem: Lessons from the Field
- In Defense of Little Code
Joshua Smith ’91, University of Washington
- Perpetual Computing: Technologies for Banishing Batteries
- Electric Field Sensing, Pretouch Sensing & Robotics
2018-2019
James Mickens, Harvard
- Blockchains Are A Bad Idea (More Specifically, Blockchains Are A Very Bad Idea)
2017-2018
Chris Umans ’96, Caltech
- Algorithmic Magic: Behind the Scenes of Modern Computer Science
- New Algorithms for Matrix Multiplication
Elissa Shevinsky ’01
- Women in Silicon Valley: Success and Dodging Bullets
- Cryptography and Bug Bounties: Building a Secure Application
2016-2017
Hany Farid, Dartmouth College
- Reigning in Online Abuses
- Photo Forensics
2015-2016
Turner Whitted, NVIDIA Research
- A Half-Century of Virtual Realities
Douglas Hofstadter, Indiana University
- Russia’s Greatest Poet Reincarnated in English
- A Tale of Luck and Pluck: The Fortuitous Discovery, Forty Two Years Ago, of the Hofstadter Butterfly
2014-2015
Tom Mitchell, Carnegie Mellon University
- Neural Representations of Language Meaning
- Never-Ending Machine Learning
2012-2013
Lorrie Faith Cranor, Carnegie Mellon University
- Security, Privacy, and Usability: Better Together
- Spoofing Operating System Security Interfaces to Study User Security Behaviors
2011-2012
David Ferrucci, IBM Research
- Beyond Jeopardy! The Future of Watson
2010-2011
Lance Fortnow, Northwestern University
- P versus NP: An Epic Struggle
- Bounding Rationality by Computational Complexity
Luis von Ahn, Carnegie Mellon University
- Human Computation
- [captcha]
2009-2010
Melanie Mitchell, Portland State University and Santa Fe Institute
- Complexity: A Guided Tour
- Four Principles of Pattern Recognition in Living Systems
Paul Hudak, Yale University
- Euterpea: From Signals to Symphonies
- Causal Commutative Arrows
2008-2009
Robert J. Lang
- NP-Complete Folding, or Why Origami Is Hard: and Vertex Adventures on the Gaussian Sphere
- From Flapping Birds to Space Telescopes: the Modern Science of Origami
Cliff Stein, Columbia University
- Algorithmic Issues in Internet Advertising
- Scheduling to Minimize Average Response Time
2007-2008
Jonathan Schaeffer, University of Alberta
- Computer (and Human) Perfection at Checkers
- Raising the Stakes
2006-2007
Terrence Masson, Digital Fauxtography and VFX
- CG101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference
2005-2006
Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation
- Free Software in Ethics and in Practice
- The Danger of Software Patents or Copyright Laws (?)
Chris Johnson, University of Utah
- Large-Scale Scientific Visualization
- Computing the Future of Biomedicine
2003-2004
Rebecca Mercuri, John F. Kennedy School of Government
- The Electronic Voting Enigma
- Why Computers Can’t Count Votes
Manuela Veloso, Carnegie Mellon University
- Autonomous Teams of Robots
- Multi-Robot Coordination in Highly Dynamic Environments
2002-2003
Allan Fisher, iCarnegie, Inc.
- Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing
- iCarnegie: Collaborative Education of Software Developers
2001-2002
David Garlan, Carnegie Mellon University
- Software Challenges for Ubiquitous Computing
2000-2001
Susan Landau, Sun Microsystems Laboratories
- Cryptology, Technology, and Policy
- Designing Cryptology for the Twenty-First Century
Larry L. Peterson, Princeton University
- Limits of the Internet Architecture
- Preliminary Experience Implementing an Extensible Router
1999-2000
Dexter Kozen, Cornell University
- Language-Based Security
- Is Hoare Logic Obsolete?
1998-1999
Lawrence Snyder, University of Washington
- ‘WWW’ Is Not Short For ‘World Wide Web,’ And Other Stuff Everyone Should Know about Computers
- The Principles of ZPL
Adam Finkelstein, Princeton University
- Texture Mapping for Cel Animation
1997-1998
Philip Wadler, Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies
- From `00 to OO: Millennium Bombs and Java Wars
- Pizza to Go, Don’t Spill Your Java
1996-1997
Dean Pomerleau, Carnegie Mellon University
- No Hands Across America: A Chronicle of Recent Progress in Robot Vehicles
Lynn Andrea Stein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Changing Conceptions of Computation: Pedagogic Implications
1995-1996
Stuart Russell, University of California – Berkeley
- Rationality and Intelligence
- Probabilistic Networks vs. Neural Networks
1994-1995
John Savage, Brown University
- The Role of Theory in Computer Science
- A Model for Multi-Grained Parallelism
Dorothy Denning, Georgetown University
- Codes, Crime, and Clipper: The Encryption and Privacy Debate
- The Clipper Chip: Safeguarding the Keys
1993-1994
Jeannette Wing, Carnegie Mellon University
- What is a Formal Method?
- LARCH: A Two-Tiered Approach to Specifying Programs
1992-1993
David MacQueen, AT&T Bell Laboratories
- Standard ML, Functional Programming for the Real World
Richard Karp, University of California – Berkeley
- Computers as Puzzle Solvers: The Challenge of Efficient Search