Lecture Previews

BME Seminar: Paul Janmey

Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.

Margaret Morrison 103

University of Pennsylvania physiology professor Paul Janmey will deliver a talk on the modulation of integrin-dependent mechanotransduction by hyaluronic acid. The talk will cover cells that change structure and function depending on the make-up of the surface they adhere to.

Amy Goodman

Thursday at 7 p.m.

McConomy Auditorium

Amy Goodman will deliver a lecture as part of her tour promoting her book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope. Goodman is an investigative journalist and syndicated columnist, as well as the host of the radio show Democracy Now! The show can be heard on WRCT 88.3. The event is free and open to the public, but a $10 donation is suggested at the door, with proceeds to benefit Pittsburgh Community Television and the Pittsburgh Campaign for Democracy Now.

Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture

Friday at 4:30 p.m.

Miller Gallery

Exhibit curators Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi will host a tour of the new Imperfect Health exhibit at the Miller Gallery. The exhibit features works that demonstrate the connection between design and health, and includes works of photography, sculpture, video, architectural models, and design projects. Event coordinators request that attendees RSVP at the exhibit’s Facebook page.

LTI Colloquium: Eduard Hovy

Friday at 2:30 p.m.

Doherty Hall 2315

Professor Eduard Hovy of Carnegie Mellon’s Language Technologies Institute will deliver a lecture titled “NLP: Its Past and 3.5 Possible Futures.” The talk will focus on what Hovy says are three diverging trends in the field of computational linguistics: resource creation, learning, and large-scale hacking.

Hovy holds professorships at universities in China, Korea, and Canada. He has authored or co-edited six books and over 300 articles, and served as the 2001 president of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Robotics Seminar: David Pynadath

Friday at 3:30 p.m.

Mauldin Auditorium (Gates Hillman 1305)

University of Southern California research scientist David Pynadath will give a talk titled “Modeling Social Reasoning Through Recursive, Decision-Theoretic Planning.” Pynadath will describe PsychSim, an architecture for modeling human decision-making that attempts to capture the reasoning people use when interacting with others.

Pynadath is the creator of PsychSim. The architecture is used to deploy simulations to teach people how to operate in social environments.