GLODEM proudly presents the 2nd seminar of Spring 2021 AI & CSS Seminar Series with Dr. Elif Sürer’s talk on March 26th.

GLODEM AI & CSS Seminar Series brings together practitioners working on AI usage in various fields and scholars specializing in computational social sciences. The seminar series is moderated by MA-CSSL, which is an interdisciplinary research laboratory at Koç University, established with the purpose of conducting cutting-edge research on the applications of computational methods to social science questions.

Date: 26 March 2021- Friday

Time: 18:00- 19:30

Speaker: Dr. Elif Sürer, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Informatics, Middle East Technical University

Title: Game Research as a Multi-Purpose Domain: Reinforcement Learning Agents, Serious Games, and Extended Reality

Abstract: In this talk, a brief introduction to the game research domain will be presented with recent applications and challenges from the reinforcement learning domain and serious games—games that have ulterior motives rather than entertainment. The reinforcement learning examples will cover game testing agents, Monte Carlo Tree Search Algorithm enhancement for video game testing, and a new relational reasoning environment for relational information extraction. The talk’s serious games section will exemplify virtual reality and mixed reality-based games and case studies from recent interdisciplinary collaborations on mining, architecture, and civil engineering.

Bio: Elif Sürer received her Ph.D. in Bioengineering in 2011 from the University of Bologna. She received her M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Computer Engineering from Boğaziçi University in 2007 and 2005. From 2013 to 2015, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Milan in the EU Project REWIRE, where she developed video games for the rehabilitation of stroke and Neglect patients. She joined METU Graduate School of Informatics’s Modelling and Simulation Department in 2015 and is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the METU Graduate School of Informatics’ Multimedia Informatics program. She is a mentor at METU Design Factory and bang. Art Innovation Prix. She collaborates as a researcher in several interdisciplinary national and EU-funded projects. Her research interests are serious games, virtual/mixed reality, and reinforcement learning.

Please visit ma-cssl.com/news-activities to register for the event (advance registration required)