Events
Past Event
WED@NICO WEBINAR: Cristopher Moore, Santa Fe Institute "Physics, phase transitions, and community detection"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
Details
Speaker:
Cristopher Moore, Professor, Santa Fe Institute
Title:
Physics, phase transitions, and community detection
Abstract:
There is a deep analogy between Bayesian inference and statistical physics. Whenever we try to fit a model to noisy data, we can think about the “energy landscape" of possible models, and look for phase transitions where the ground truth suddenly gets lost in this landscape. I’ll use this framework to describe a phase transition in community detection in networks, where communities suddenly become hard or impossible to find. I will discuss why and how this detectability transition occurs, look at related spectral algorithms, and give a hint of similar phase transitions in other inference problems.
Speaker Bio:
Cristopher Moore received his B.A. in Physics, Mathematics, and Integrated Science from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell. From 2000 to 2012 he was a professor at the University of New Mexico, with joint appointments in Computer Science and Physics. Since 2012, Moore has been a resident professor at the Santa Fe Institute; he has also held visiting positions at École Normale Superieure, École Polytechnique, Université Paris 7, the Niels Bohr Institute, Northeastern University, the University of Michigan, and Microsoft Research. He has published over 150 papers at the boundary between physics and computer science, ranging from quantum computing, to phase transitions in NP-complete problems, to the theory of social networks and efficient algorithms for analyzing their structure. He is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Mathematical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. With Stephan Mertens, he is the author of The Nature of Computation from Oxford University Press.
Webinar:
Webinar link: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/95212915008
Passcode: nico
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between.
Time
Wednesday, October 28, 2020 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Mayank Agrawal, Proof of Human "The Invisible Turing Test for the Internet"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Mayank Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO, Proof of Human
Title:
Proof of Human: the Invisible Turing Test for the Internet
Abstract:
This presentation introduces the Process Turing Test, a new framework for distinguishing humans from AI that goes beyond linguistic output to analyze behavioral dynamics. As LLMs routinely pass text-based Turing Tests, we need methods that probe the underlying architecture of intelligence through perception, control, and decision-making patterns. Using process tracing data from canonical cognitive tasks, we demonstrate how behavioral embeddings capture computational signatures unique to human cognition. This provides robust proof-of-personhood that resists adversarial attacks while revealing fundamental principles about how humans and machines process information differently.
Speaker Bio:
Mayank Agrawal is the co-founder and CEO of Proof of Human, a research and deployment company building the proof-of-human layer in digital identity. The company develops high-impact research and translates that work into systems for bot detection, fraud prevention, and continuous authentication. Mayank’s work focuses on new approaches to distinguishing humans from AI through behavioral and cognitive signals. He earned his PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Princeton University, where he studied computational models of human decision-making with Jonathan Cohen, Tom Griffiths, and Nathaniel Daw. His research spans cognitive science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, with work published in Science, PNAS, and Psychological Review. He previously studied Computer Science and Philosophy at Swarthmore College.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/96392420891
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, networks, and artificial intelligence. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, November 11, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)