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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260527T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260527T110000
DTSTAMP:20260515T163555Z
CREATED:20260515T163555Z
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UID:10014642-1779872400-1779879600@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Baskaran\, D. (CM) - More than Just Fun: Exploring Meaningful Play\, Communities of Play\, and Relatedness of Play
DESCRIPTION:Play is often seen as a form of entertainment\, leisure\, or childhood development. However\, it also acts as a meaningful experience that shapes how people connect with others and interact with the world around them throughout their lives. Prior work on meaningful play and communities of play has mainly focused on individual experiences and participation\, giving less attention to how meaning is socially co-constructed through playful interactions and to how these experiences contribute to relatedness\, or the human need to feel connected to and belong with others\, across physical\, digital\, and hybrid environments. \nUsing qualitative methods\, this dissertation proposal explores how meaningful play is collectively constructed within communities of play and how it shapes relatedness among members. This work positions meaningful play as a socially and technologically embedded relational phenomenon rather than solely an individual experience. Across case studies of PlayStation trophy hunting\, Pokémon Nuzlocke\, LEGO\, and theme park communities of play\, this research explores how meaningful play within these communities contributes to relatedness among members. Ultimately\, this dissertation proposal aims to advance a more holistic understanding of play as a process through which people build shared meaning\, connection\, and belonging in increasingly digital and hybrid social spaces. \n  \nEvent Host: Derusha Baskaran\, Ph.D. Student\, Computational Media \nAdvisor: Kathryn Ringland \n  \nZoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96290198842?pwd=xtoEw1aIa2fciTbhr6eB9s3PqbWGdF.1 \nPasscode: 404425
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/baskaran-d-cm-more-than-just-fun-exploring-meaningful-play-communities-of-play-and-relatedness-of-play/
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260527T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260527T110000
DTSTAMP:20260518T163634Z
CREATED:20260518T163634Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260518T163634Z
UID:10014652-1779872400-1779879600@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Tu\, H. (CSE) - From Evaluation to Adaptation: Building Reliable Multimodal Intelligence
DESCRIPTION:Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) are rapidly becoming general-purpose AI systems\, yet their capabilities are advancing faster than our ability to evaluate\, improve\, and validate their reliability in realistic use. Standard benchmarks mainly measure in-distribution final-answer accuracy\, leaving critical gaps in safety\, robustness\, fine-grained reasoning evaluation\, and reliability in real-world agentic settings. My research proposes an evaluation-to-adaptation framework for building reliable multimodal intelligence: developing rigorous evaluations that expose failures beyond conventional benchmarks\, learning feedback models that guide inference-time reasoning\, and studying how multimodal systems can adapt through experience. We instantiate this agenda through two completed works and two proposed directions. Unicorn evaluates safety and robustness under out-of-distribution and adversarial conditions\, revealing substantial vulnerabilities across 22 vision-language models. ViLBench studies vision-language process reward modeling as both an evaluation challenge and a mechanism for inference-time improvement\, showing that process-guided reasoning selection can improve reliability. Building on these foundations\, we further study test-time experience accumulation and explore reliable multimodal agents for GUI and computer-use tasks. Together\, my research aims to move beyond capability-driven progress alone\, toward multimodal AI systems whose reliability can be evaluated\, improved\, and tested in realistic deployment settings. \nEvent Host: Haoqin Tu\, Ph.D. Student\, Computer Science & Engineering \nAdvisor: Cihang Xie \nZoom: 964 1355 0550 \nPasscode: zWxU8A
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/tu-h-cse-from-evaluation-to-adaptation-building-reliable-multimodal-intelligence/
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260527T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260527T140000
DTSTAMP:20260518T162624Z
CREATED:20260518T162624Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260518T162624Z
UID:10014651-1779883200-1779890400@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Zheng\, Y. (CSE) - Extending eBPF Beyond Kernel Extensions: Verified Interfaces for Runtime System Extensibility
DESCRIPTION:Modern system software increasingly needs runtime extensibility: userspace applications need safe ways to expose domain-specific extension points\, GPU resource management needs workload-specific memory and scheduling policies\, and kernel eBPF JIT compilers need different runtime optimizations as workloads and hardware vary. However\, built-in policies are safe but difficult to specialize across rapidly changing workloads and hardware environments\, limiting efficiency\, while code modifications are flexible but difficult to deploy safely. This dissertation argues that verified eBPF interfaces can turn eBPF from a kernel-extension mechanism into a general substrate for safe runtime extensibility. In this model\, trusted mechanisms expose narrow\, constrained programmable hooks; extensions declare their requirements; verifier-enforced checks preserve safety; and execution remains low-overhead. \nI develop this thesis through three systems spanning userspace applications\, heterogeneous GPU subsystems\, and the kernel eBPF compiler itself. EIM\, implemented in bpftime\, applies verified eBPF interfaces to userspace applications\, allowing application behavior to be extended through explicit constraints and efficient userspace eBPF execution. gpu_ext extends the same idea to heterogeneous systems by exposing programmable resource management hooks for GPU memory and scheduling policy across driver and device. BpfReJIT with kinsn makes the eBPF JIT compiler itself extensible: it enables runtime-guided optimization through dynamic recompilation and extends eBPF bytecode to express diverse hardware capabilities. Together\, these systems show how verified eBPF interfaces can support safe programmability\, separation of policy and mechanisms\, and runtime specialization across applications\, GPU subsystems\, and the kernel JIT infrastructure. \nEvent Host: Yusheng Zheng\, Ph.D. Student\, Computer Science & Engineering \nAdvisor: Andi Quinn \nZoom: 504 350 0245 \nPasscode: 521336
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/zheng-y-cse-extending-ebpf-beyond-kernel-extensions-verified-interfaces-for-runtime-system-extensibility/
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
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