For the second IRIF Distinguished Talk of 2024, we have the pleasure to receive Omer Reingold, professor of computer science at Stanford University and the director of the Simons Collaboration on the Theory of Algorithmic Fairness, who will give a talk on The multitude of group affiliations: Algorithmic Fairness, Loss Minimization and Outcome Indistinguishability

He granted us an interview to give us an overview of his theme, which he will present on 14 May 2024, from 11am to 12.30pm.

“To address this challenge, we employ the concept of multi-group fairness, which involves scrutinizing numerous subpopulations simultaneously to ensure accuracy across all groups. Traditionally, fairness considerations focused on only a handful of subpopulations based on factors like gender, race, or age. However, this approach has proven inadequate, particularly due to issues of intersectionality, where individuals may face unique challenges at the intersection of multiple identity categories.”

Read the full interview here.

Tayssir Touili, directrice de recherche a très récemment rejoint l'Irif. Elle fait partie du pôle Automates, structures et vérification et de l'équipe Modélisation et vérification.

Comme un automate à piles, Tayssir Touili déborde d'énergie. Grande passionnée de mathématiques, elle s'est jetée corps et âme dans une grande aventure, celle de contrer les malware. Amatrice de sports d'extérieurs, elle sera également heureuse de vous rencontrer autour d'une partie d'échec. Rencontre avec Tayssir Touili, nouvelle directrice de recherche à l'IRIF.

“Ce qu'il nous faut, c'est une technique qui va analyser le comportement du programme et non pas sa syntaxe, comme la signature matching et sans l'exécuter puisqu'il ne peut pas l'être indéfiniment. C’est justement ce que permet de faire le model checking, une technique qui analyse les comportements des systèmes. Mon idée a donc été de dire, appliquons le model cheking pour la détection de malware. C'est ce sur quoi porte mon travail aujourd'hui.”

Retrouvez l'article complet ici.

The world of scientific research is not immune to fraud. While the scientific journal “Science” recently faced a scandal involving a number of images that were hijacked to misrepresent some of its articles, AI tools will now be used to ensure that this is no longer possible. AI is being used more and more, not only for images but also to detect plagiarism and ensure the integrity of articles. This use of artificial intelligence would also enable researchers to avoid unintentional errors, which sometimes affect their careers. Finally, given the general public's growing distrust of scientific research, this is also a way of preventing the dissemination of false information.

Read the (french) article here : L’intelligence artificielle pour prévenir la fraude scientifique, par Hervé Morin. Journal Le Monde, 02/02/2024
Read directly on Le Monde website.

Avi Wigderson has been honored with the Turing Award for “groundbreaking insights on randomness”. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) grants “Innovation and Recognizing Achievements and Lasting Contributions. ACM recognizes excellence in computer science and information technology through its eminent series of awards.”

“Wigderson is recognized for reshaping our understanding of the role of randomness in computation, and for decades of intellectual leadership in theoretical computer science.
ACM has named Avi Wigderson as recipient of the 2023 ACM A.M. Turing Award for foundational contributions to the theory of computation, including reshaping our understanding of the role of randomness in computation, and for his decades of intellectual leadership in theoretical computer science.
Wigderson is the Herbert H. Maass Professor in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He has been a leading figure in areas including computational complexity theory, algorithms and optimization, randomness and cryptography, parallel and distributed computation, combinatorics, and graph theory, as well as connections between theoretical computer science and mathematics and science.”

Find here the announce of the attribution of the Turing Award
More information on the importance of Avi Wigderson research on Theoretical Computer Science
Read here the QuantaMagazine article: Avi Wigderson, Complexity Theory Pioneer, Wins Turing Award

The Best Qubits for Quantum Computing Might Just Be Atoms

“At the end of last year, the tech giant IBM announced what might sound like a milestone in quantum computing: the first-ever chip, called the Condor, with more than 1,000 quantum bits, or qubits. Given that this was barely two years after the company unveiled the Eagle, the first chip with more than 100 qubits, it looked as though the field was racing forward. Making quantum computers that can solve useful problems beyond the scope of even the mightiest of today’s classical supercomputers demands scaling them up even more — to perhaps many tens or hundreds of thousands of qubits. But that’s surely just a matter of engineering, right?

Not necessarily. The challenges of scaling up are so great that some researchers think it will require totally different hardware from the microelectronics used by the likes of IBM and Google. The qubits in the Condor and in Google’s Sycamore chip are made from loops of superconducting material. These superconducting qubits have so far been the hare in the race to full-scale quantum computing. But now there’s a tortoise coming from behind: qubits made from individual atoms.

Recent advances have transformed these “neutral-atom qubits” from outsiders to leading contenders.”

Read the full article in Quanta Magazine.

🎉 Three projects from IRIF researchers have been selected to be presented at the 2024 Pint of Science France event.
This event aims to popularize scientific subjects in a very informal place, a bar. Join them to discover in a new way new aspects of computer science.

🎟 Tickets go on sale on 8 April.

1️⃣ 🔐 Can we use algorithms to stay private?
David FindmyName
Theme of the night: Navigating a digital maze: Trust, bias & privacy

“Most of the systems we use daily collect our #data, from our phones to our Navigo cards. Our activities are tracked and analyzed to improve the performance of the metro or to target better commercial products. Would this be possible “privately”? There is a wide range of options, though not all of them are wise. Looking at some historical failures, we can grasp how powerful computers and big data have changed the privacy game. We will examine together some of the new challenges and possible solutions. As a warm-up: can you discover my name?”

📅 May, 13
📍 Les Marquises , 145 Rue Oberkampf, 75011, Paris
🗣 English speaking
🔗 https://pintofscience.fr/event/navigating-a-digital-maze-trust-bias-and-privacy

2️⃣ 🗺 Graphs as model for networks
Reza Naserasr
Theme of the night: Infinity's whimsy: A graphical odyssey

“Graphs are like #maps that help us understand connections between different things, like friends in a social network or streets in a city. They are made of dots (nodes) connected by lines (edges), showing how things are linked. Tonight, we will talk about some common problems involving graphs and how they're used to solve everyday issues. And for a bit of fun, we'll try out a classic puzzle from way back in Euler's time (1736): finding a route on a map that crosses every bridge exactly once.”

📅 May, 14
📍 La Ferme, 5 Rue des Petites Écuries 75010, Paris
🗣 English speaking
🔗 https://pintofscience.fr/event/infinitys-whimsy-a-graphical-odyssey

3️⃣ ⚛ A la découverte du calcul quantique
Sophie Laplante
Theme of the night: Call of Physics

“Comment les ordinateurs quantiques utilisent-ils à leur avantage les propriétés singulières de la mécanique #quantique ? Nous éclaircirons ce mystère à l’aide d'une joyeuse collection d’objets hauts en couleurs qui vous permettront de vous emparer de l’insaisissable état quantique. Nous les manipulerons dans un jeu collectif, à la manière des opérations qui sont au cœur des calculs quantiques.”

📅 May, 15
📍 Bistrot des Artistes, 6 Rue des Anglais 75005, Paris
🗣 French speaking
🔗 https://pintofscience.fr/event/call-of-physics

Michel Talagrand, former research director at CNRS in the Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu – Paris Rive Gauche has been awarded the Abel prize 2024, an international mathematics prize awarded annually. The jury has honored him with this prize for his contibutions to probability theory and functional analysis, with applications in mathematical physics and statistics. He is a member of the Académie des Sciences.

“A student of Gustave Choquet, his scientific contributions cover topics ranging from measurement theory and functional analysis to probability theory and statistical physics. He proved several important conjectures, such as Fernique's conjecture on the regularity of Gaussian processes, the three-space problem for L1, Parisi's formula in spin glass theory, and Maharam's problem in measurement theory. With his original and innovative ideas and methods, Michel Talagrand has left his mark on several fields of mathematics with results and contributions of the highest order.”

Read here the CNRS Mathematiques article: Michel Talagrand awarded the 2024 Abel Prize
Watch here the CNRS meeting with Michel Talagrand (in french) : Rencontre avec Michel Talagrand, mathématicien, lauréat du Prix Abel 2024 | Actu CNRS
The Abel Prize : 2024: Michel Talagrand
To have an insight of his life and how he became such a mathematician, read the Quantum article: Michel Talagrand Wins Abel Prize for Work Wrangling Randomness

“New Breakthrough Brings Matrix Multiplication Closer to Ideal
By eliminating a hidden inefficiency, computer scientists have come up with a new way to multiply large matrices that’s faster than ever.

[…]

Now, three researchers — Ran Duan and Renfei Zhou of Tsinghua University and Hongxun Wu of the University of California, Berkeley — have taken a major step forward in attacking this perennial problem. Their new results, presented last November at the Foundations of Computer Science conference, stem from an unexpected new technique, Le Gall said. Although the improvement itself was relatively small, Le Gall called it “conceptually larger than other previous ones.”

The technique reveals a previously unknown and hence untapped source of potential improvements, and it has already borne fruit: A second paper, published in January, builds upon the first to show how matrix multiplication can be boosted even further.”

Read the full article on Quanta Magazine.

Il ne faut pas se méprendre ; sous ses airs timides, Guillaume Baudart apprécie plus que tout les rencontres et les échanges. En sciences ou en musique ? Pourquoi pas les deux ! Curieux, il aime découvrir de nouvelles choses, et s'intéresse beaucoup aux nouvelles technologies. Rencontre avec Guillaume Baudart, nouveau chargé de recherche à l'IRIF.

“La programmation probabiliste est un projet que j'ai démarré à IBM. L'idée, c'est de prendre un language de programmation classique et d'ajouter la possibilité de manipuler des distributions et de faire du résonnement bayésien, donc de faire de l'apprentissage sur les distributions.” Guillaume Baudart, chargé de recherche | Pôle Preuves, programmes et systèmes - Équipes Analyse et conception de systèmes, Preuves et programmes et Picube (Inria).

Retrouvez l'intégralité de son portrait ici.

Organized within the Computer Science Department by François Laroussinie, the second french speaking conference « On éteint, on réfléchit, on discute » on «Les communs numériques» (“Digital Commons”) will take place on Tuesday, March 19, from 4 pm to 6 pm in auditorium 10E at La Halle aux Farines.

“While we often talk about the GAFAM, the monopolization of internet users' data, and their commercial exploitation, we also know and use open encyclopedia Wikipedia, the cartographic project OpenStreetMap, or open-source software that, conversely, relies on collaboration among internet users. So, there's a realm of computing that shares, cooperates, that creates 'common' resources. The term 'digital commons' has recently emerged, and we invite Serge Abiteboul and Valérie Peugeot to discuss it.”

Find all the information on the UFR conference page.

Claire Mathieu, chercheuse en informatique et en mathématiques sur la conception et l'analyse d'algorithmes au CNRS à l’IRIF, a obtenu de nombreuses marques reconnaissance dans le monde académique, par sa nomination à la Chaire annuelle Informatique et sciences numériques du Collège de France de 2017 à 2018, suivie de la médaille d'argent du CNRS en 2019. Elle a participé à la conception des algorithmes de Parcoursup. En décembre 2019, elle intègre l'Académie des Sciences, dans la section des sciences mécaniques et informatiques, puis obtient le titre de Fellow de l'EATCS en 2023 pour ses contributions fondamentales aux algorithmes d'approximation, aux algorithmes en ligne et à la théorie des enchères. En 2020, elle est faite Chevalière de la Légion d'honneur. Et fin 2023, elle est retenue pour intégrer le Conseil Présidentiel de la Science. Retour sur une participation éclair mais non pas moins remarquée.

Le portrait complet est disponible ici.

To keep up with scientific innovations in computer science, such as those in quantum computing, it is necessary to enhance the power of computers. To achieve this, electronics play a crucial role, and silicon, widely used, is facing its limits.

Graphene, a two-dimensional crystal of carbon atoms arranged regularly in a hexagonal lattice resembling a honeycomb, is defined as a “miracle” or “revolutionary” material. It is said to be in the process of replacing copper and steel because it is a better conductor, much more resistant, lighter, flexible, and impermeable. A semiconductor has recently been created from this material and it could “revolutionize the world of electronics and computing.”

“In their graphene-based semiconductor, electrons encounter very low resistance. Researchers speak of mobility ten times higher than that of silicon, suggesting much higher calculation speeds. Without the creation of unwanted heat.
Researchers also reveal that the electrical charges they have observed, like photons in an optical fiber, can travel long distances without dispersing. Specifically, tens of thousands of nanometers. In the new device, electrons seem to exhibit wave-like properties of quantum mechanics accessible in devices, particularly at very low temperatures. They could thus help overcome the numerous challenges related to the creation of quantum computers.”

You can read the full article on Futura.

Following a sociological study of 45 16-year-old girls taking part in a maths course, a book was published by CNRS: Matheuses: les filles, avenir des mathématiques.

The study was conducted as part of Les Cigales, a free maths course for Year 11 and 11 students at CIRM, aimed exclusively at women.

10 chapters highlighting gender inequalities in mathematics and computer science, and offering ways of combating them. Each sociology chapter is followed by an open-ended maths problem that can be tackled from the start of secondary school, to help them discover the research process.

Who said that the humanities and social sciences couldn't form a whole?