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MASCOTS 2024

October 21-23, 2024

Krakow, Poland

Keynotes

DAY 1: Monday, October 21, 2024
11:30 – 12:30 

Keynote I: 
What does Performance Mean for Large Language Models?

Prof. Jane Hillston 
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
Abstract: In the last decade there has been a significant leap in the capability of foundation AI models, largely driven by the introduction and refinement of transformer-based machine learning architectures. The most visible consequence of this has been the explosion of interest and application of large language models such as ChatGPT. This is one exemplar of how a foundation model trained on a huge amount of data can be specialised for particular task, often by a phase of reinforcement learning with human feedback. Within the AI community “performance” of such systems is generally taken to mean how well they respond to their users on characteristics such as accuracy, verifiability, and bias. Performance analysis usually considers both the responsiveness of a system to its user and the efficiency and equity of resource use. These foundation models rely on massive amounts of resource but there has so far been little work considering how to understand the resource use of LLMs or the trade-offs that exist between how the system responds to users and the amount of resource used. In this talk I will present initial ideas of what it could mean to develop a framework of performance evaluation for foundation models such as large language models. Such a framework would need to take into consideration the distinct phases of operation for these models, which broadly speaking can be categorised as training, fine-tuning and inference. Evaluating the trade-off between user interests and resource management will require the identification of suitable metrics. The resources in these systems can be more than simply compute, storage, bandwidth; data and even human resources also play crucial roles in training and fine-tuning. I will discuss all these topics.
 

Short Bio: Jane Hillston is Professor of Quantitative Modelling in the School of Informatics and Dean of Research Culture in the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. Her research is concerned with formal approaches to modelling dynamic behaviour of discrete event systems. This includes everything from cloud computing, to biological processes, to transport systems in smart cities. Her research has been recognised by a number of awards including the RSE Lord Kelvin Medal, the BCS Lovelace Award and Fellowship of the Royal Society. She was Head of School in School of Informatics from 2018—2023 and Deputy Vice Principal Research 2020—2022. Professor Hillston was awarded an MBE in the Kings Birthday Honours List in 2023 in recognition of her contribution to computer science and women in science.

 

DAY 1: Monday, October 21, 2024
15:30 – 16:30 

Keynote II: 
TBD

Prof. Karol Życzkowski 
Jagiellonian University
 
 

DAY 3: Wednesday, October 23, 2024
10:30 – 11:30 

Keynote III: 
Security Aspects in the Evolved IoT-Edge-Cloud Continuum Paradigm

Dr Valeria Loscri 
INRIA-Lille

Abstract: Living in our perpetually connected world presents us with an abundance of novel advanced services and automated applications. In order to meet the increasing demand of advanced services and applications, significant activity has been dedicated in the recent years to build the IoT-Edge-Cloud Continuum paradigm. This paradigm shift comes with a change in the security landscape, enabling new and more powerful attacks relying on vulnerabilities of heterogeneous devices, where not all the devices cannot be with same level of security. It is paramount to analyze this new security landscape and estimate the potential impact of attacks at IoT-devices on the upper layers.

Short Bio: Valeria Loscri is researcher director in the FUN Team at Inria Lille (France), that she joined in 2013. From Dec. 2006 to Sept. 2013, she was Research Fellow in the TITAN Lab of the University of Calabria, Italy. She received her MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science in 2003 and 2007, respectively, from the University of Calabria and her HDR (Habilitation à diriger des recherches) in 2018 from Université de Lille (France). Her research interests focus on cyber security in wireless networks, emerging technologies for new communication paradigms such as Visible Light Communication (VLC), mmWave, cooperation and coexistence of wireless heterogeneous devices. She has been involved in several European Projects (Horizon Europe MLSysOps, H2020 CyberSANE, FP7 EU project VITAL, etc.).
She has been nominated to the 2021 Women Stars in Computer Networking and Communications Communications by the IEEE Communication Society. She is in the editorial board of IEEE COMST, Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Elsevier ComNet, ComCom. She is serving as TPC members in several primary international conferences, such as IEEE ESORICS, IEEE CNS, IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE PerCom.
She is Action Chair and scientific Holder of BEiNG-WISE COST Action (since 2023). Since 2019, she is Scientific International Delegate for Inria Lille

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