NESTiD Seminar
NESTiD Seminar
NESTiD Seminar Coordinator: Thirupathaiah Vasantam
Here you can find the links to the dedicated webpages for the NESTiD Seminars and videos from previous years: Past NESTiD Seminars
NESTiD Seminar 2026/27
The seminar talks will be streamed online on Teams. Whenever the speaker is physically present in Durham, the presentation will also be in the room MCS3052 at the MCS building (in addition to Teams streaming). Whenever a speaker is not physically present, all people at Durham are invited to watch the Teams seminar in the above room. Below you can find the list of speakers and talks for the year 2026/27. In the schedule of talks below is in UK time.
NOTE: Please refer to the schedule below for any room changes for some selected talks.
Link for 2026-27 Seminar videos: click here
Term 1 of 2026/27:
(online on teams)
| Date and Time | Talk |
|---|---|
| Friday 9 Oct 2026 13:00 – 14:00 (Inaugural talk of the NESTiD seminar series) | Igor Razgon (Durham University, UK) Efficient algorithms for testing equality of Boolean functions Let $f_1$ and $f_2$ be two Boolean functions over the same set of variables and let $C_1$ and $C_2$ be their respective representations. Can we test whether $f_1=f_2$ in time polynomial in $|C_1|$ and $|C_2|$? This problem has natural applications in the area of verification and corresponds to checking equivalence of two circuits. We note that the need of efficient testing in terms of representation sizes rules out the possibility of exhaustive testing on all $2^n$ assignments of the input variables. The efficiency of testing very much depends on the restriction of the representation of the functions. For example the testing is tractable for Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (OBDDs). It is also known to be coRP for a much more general model called Deterministic Decomposable Negation Normal Form (Deterministic). In our recent work https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21842 we demonstrated that polynomial time testing is possible for a recently introduced model Tree Decision Diagram (TDD). Very recently we learned of an AI generated proof for an even more general model. In this talk, I will present the equality problem and discuss the corresponding algorithm for OBDDs and for more general models. I will end the talk with a list of open questions. |
| Friday 16 Oct 2026 13:00 – 14:00 | Prof. Ramesh K. Sitaraman (UMass, Amherst, USA) The Story of the Edge: From Content Delivery to Agentic AI Our story begins in the late 1990s, when we created content delivery networks (CDNs) that placed “edge” servers near users in thousands of locations worldwide to cache and serve content. This edge infrastructure helped web pages load quickly and high-quality videos play smoothly. A few years later, the effort to move application logic closer to users, onto edge servers, gave rise to the first edge computing services. Today, the edge delivers most of the world’s content and online services, bringing new challenges. Its central role makes it a critical target for increasingly sophisticated attacks by AI-enabled adversaries. At the same time, the rapid adoption of AI calls for new edge services that can host and serve ML models and AI agents at a global scale, with low latency and at low cost. As the edge becomes an indispensable part of global AI infrastructure, it must also become more sustainable and energy-efficient. Building the edge services of the future is a major scientific endeavor, with unresolved problems that call for close collaboration between academia and industry. |
| Friday 23 Oct 2026 13:00 – 14:00 | Dr. Maxime Flin (Aalto University, Finland) Title: TBC |
| Friday 30 Oct 2026 15:00 – 16:00 | Prof. Andrea Richa (ASU, USA) Title: TBC |
| Friday 6 Nov 2026 13:00 – 14:00 | Dr. Thorsten Gotte (University of Hamburg, Germany) Title: TBC |
| Friday 13 Nov 2026 13:00 – 14:00 | Johannes Meintrup (THM, University of Applied Sciences Mittelhessen, Germany) Title: TBC |
| Friday 20 Nov 2026 13:00 – 14:00 | Prof. Kin K. Leung (Imperial College London, UK) Title: TBC |
| Friday 27 Nov 2026 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 4 Dec 2026 13:00 – 14:00 | Dr. Shreyas Pai (IIT Madras, India) Title: TBC |
| Friday 11 Dec 2026 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
Term 2 of 2026/27:
(online on teams)
| Friday 15 Jan 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 22 Jan 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 29 Jan 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 5 Feb 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 12 Feb 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 19 Feb 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 26 Feb 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 5 Mar 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 12 Mar 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 19 Mar 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
Term 3 of 2026/27:
(online on teams)
| Friday 30 April 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |
| Friday 7 May 2027 13:00 – 14:00 | TBA |