[Theory] NOW: [Talks at TTIC] 11/19 Young Researcher Seminar Series: Yael Vinker​, MIT CSAIL

[Brandie Jones via Theory]

*When:*        Wednesday, November 19th at *11am CT*

*Where:       *Talk will be given *live, in-person* at

                       TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue

                       5th Floor, Room 530


*Virtually:*  via Panopto (livestream
<https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=ed26b963-25b0-4f84-9ead-b34700f479fb>)
*RESTRICTED TO TTIC/UChicago ONLY*


*Who: *         Yael Vinker, MIT CSAIL

*Title:*          Generative Models for Visual Communication
*Abstract:  *From rough sketches that spark ideas to polished designs that
explain complex concepts, visual communication is central to how humans
think, create, and share knowledge. Yet despite major advances in
generative AI, we are still far from models that can reason and communicate
through visual forms.

I will present my work on bridging generative AI and visual communication,
focusing on three complementary domains: (1) algorithms for generating and
understanding sketches, (2) systems that support exploratory visual
creation beyond one-shot generation, and (3) methods for producing
editable, parametric images for design applications.

These domains pose unique challenges, they are inherently data-scarce and
rely on representations that go beyond pixel-based images commonly used in
standard models.
I will show how the rich priors of vision-language models can be leveraged
to address these challenges through novel optimization objectives and
regularization techniques that connect their learned features with the
specialized representations required for visual communication.
Looking ahead, this research lays the foundation for general-purpose visual
communication technologies: intelligent systems that collaborate with
humans in visual domains, enhancing how we design, learn, and exchange
knowledge.

*Bio*: Yael Vinker is a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT CSAIL, working with
Prof. Antonio Torralba. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tel
Aviv University, advised by Profs. Daniel Cohen-Or and Ariel Shamir. Her
research spans computer graphics, computer vision, and multimodal learning,
with a focus on generative models for visual communication. Her work has
been recognized with two Best Paper Awards at SIGGRAPH 2022 and SIGGRAPH
Asia 2023, and a Best Paper Honorable Mention at SIGGRAPH 2023. She was
selected as an MIT EECS Rising Star (2024) and is a recipient of the
Blavatnik Prize for Outstanding Israeli Doctoral Students in Computer
Science (2024) and the VATAT Ph.D. Fellowship.

*Host: Shiry Ginosar <shiry at ttic.edu>*


*Brandie Jones *
*Executive **Administrative Assistant*
*Outreach Administrator *
Toyota Technological Institute
6045 S. Kenwood Avenue
Chicago, IL  60637
www.ttic.edu
*OOO: November 24th - December 7th*
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