Optimization problems are everywhere in engineering: Balancing design tradeoffs is an optimization problem, as are scheduling and logistical planning. The theory -- and sometimes the implementation -- of control systems relies heavily on optimization, and so does machine learning, which has been the basis of most recent advances in artificial intelligence. This week, at the IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, a trio of present and past MIT graduate students won a best-student-paper award for a new "cutting-plane" algorithm, a general-purpose algorithm for solving optimization problems. The algorithm improves on the running time of its most efficient predecessor, and the researchers offer some reason to think that they may have reached the theoretical limit. But they also present a new method for applying their general algorithm to specific problems, which yields huge efficiency gains -- several orders of magnitude.

D. Fox Harrell, associate professor of digital media with appointments in the MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing program and in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), has recently been awarded several grants to advance his research at the intersection of the social sciences and digital technology. These grants, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the MIT CSAIL Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) Alliance, and the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST), together amount to $1.35 million in support for Harrell's groundbreaking interdisciplinary research. Harrell's new set of complementary initiatives builds upon his NSF CAREER Grant research project, "Computing for Advanced Identity Representation," to delve more deeply into the dynamic relationship between virtual avatars and personal identities. He was able to push this work in innovative new directions while spending the 2014-15 year as a fellow at Stanford University in the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (with the support of the Lenore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellowship in Communication). "For five years I have been researching this intersection between human experiences and our identities as implemented across digital technologies such as video games and social media," Harrell says.

On Friday, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) hosted 150 local high school students for its second annual "Hour of Code" event, tied to the international initiative focused on getting kids interested in programming. Researchers showed off robots, 3-D-printing technology, and other projects to math and computer science students from schools throughout the greater Boston area, including Cambridge, Charlestown, Roxbury, and Somerville. The event also included a surprise video message from John Green, author of the bestselling young-adult novels-turned-movies "The Fault In Our Stars" and "Papertowns." Green commended the students on participating the event and elaborated on why coding is important. "I cannot emphasize enough how much I believe in learning computer science, not least because I am basically a first-grader when it comes to computer literacy," Green said.

If you're too lazy to mow your own lawn, and too lazy to supervise a robot that will mow your own lawn, then outdoor equipment maker Husqvarna has an app for you. My Automower is a free app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that lets you control Husqvarna Automowers with GPS such as the 260 ACX from anywhere. The app displays the location of the Automower on Google Maps, and can order the machine to start or stop mowing, and automatically recharge itself. Users can also set mowing times and check the status of their Automower, as well as view instructional videos on its use. GPS is standard on the 260 ACX, which can mow 1.4 acres, recharge automatically, and text users if something disturbs its mowing.

Children too sick to go to school are still getting an education--thanks to robots in the classroom that transmit lessons back to the student. Stepan Supin, 12, of Moscow has been battling leukemia for two years, and his immune system is so weak he can't leave home. However, telepresence technology allows him to go to school via remote-controlled robot. The R.BOT 100 was developed by Moscow's 3Detection Labs several years ago, and it's been helping Stepan study history, geography, and languages since September. Priced at roughly $3,000, the R.BOT 100 moves around on a wheeled base and has a display, Web cam, microphone, speakers, and an Internet link so Stepan can interact with his classmates and teacher.

If you thought your English teacher was a robotic bore, spare a thought for kids in South Korea. They're being taught by real robots. The city of Daegu introduced 29 robot teachers in 19 elementary schools as part of a large-scale project to robotize teaching. The ambitious effort envisioned robots in all 8,400 kindergartens in Korea by 2013. Kids at Hakjung Elementary School seemed thrilled to interact with robots like the globular Engkey (above and in the vid below).

Results of the census, we are told, can influence the allocation of federal funds for education programs, law enforcement, and highways--and apparently tell us how many crazy robots are running loose. Well, at least the Carnegie Mellon Robot Census 2010 can tell us the last one. So far, it has tallied 547 robots on the CMU campus, including Tank LaFleur the "roboceptionist," Boss, winner of the 2008 DARPA Grand Challenge, and Opto-Isolator, the artbot that watches you with its big roving eye. It all started when Heather Knight, a first-year Ph.D. student at CMU's Robotics Institute, decided bots at the school deserved to stand up and be formally counted. "As much as we're here for the professors," she explained, "we're also here for the robots."

If you think robots are heartless piles of plastic and silicon, you're correct. But soccer-playing humanoid robot Nao has been evolving by developing "emotions" under a European project and is now being used in the U.S. in sessions to treat autistic children. Under the recently concluded Feelix Growing project--aimed at designing bots that can detect and respond to human emotional cues--researchers at the University of Hertfordshire's Adaptive Systems Group and other centers have been trying to get Nao to simulate human emotions. Researcher Lola Canamero and colleagues have been programming Nao--created by Aldebaran Robotics and used worldwide as a research bot--based on how human and chimpanzee infants interact with others. Working with a budget of some $3.2 million, the researchers have been trying to create robots that can be better companions for people.

I remember programming turtle graphics in Logo when I was in high school. These days, students can learn basic computer science from a robot developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon. The Finch was co-developed by Tom Lauwers at CMU's Create lab. It's designed to be an interactive, programmable teaching aid to get students into computer science and robotics. Programmable with Java and Python, the bird-like bot runs on a 15-foot USB cable and comes with temperature and light sensors, a bump sensor, and a three-axis accelerometer that can be used as a mouse.

The machine learning summer school series was started in 2002 with the motivation to promulgate modern methods of statistical machine learning and inference. It was motivated by the observation that while many students are keen to learn about machine learning, and an increasing number of researchers want to apply machine learning methods to their research problems, only few machine learning courses are taught at universities. Machine learning summer schools present topics which are at the core of modern Machine Learning, from fundamentals to state-of-the-art practice. The speakers are leading experts in their field who talk with enthusiasm about their subjects. This page contains links to past and current schools, as well as the tentative plans for the next years. Note that the videos of many past MLSS courses are available at Videolectures.