Overview On March 21, 2025, Dr. Mona Rahimi, an associate professor in the Computer Science department, delivered a presentation on An AI-Driven Requirements Engineering Framework Tailored for Evaluating AI-Based Software, a problem she and her students have been investigating. With the rise of AI-based software, many traditional software engineering methodologies have become ineffective. In her talk, Dr. Rahimi discussed the redefinition of requirement specification and proposed methods for aligning AI perception with requirements engineering.

Overview On March 7, 2025, Mosab Rezaei, a PhD student from the CS department, presented on the Forward-Forward algorithm for neural network models, originally proposed by Hinton. The talk explored the biological foundations and intuition behind the algorithm, its working principles, and related follow-up research. During the Q&A session, participants discussed neuron-inspired AI, alternative neural network architectures, and the differences and connections between the Forward-Forward algorithm and traditional feedforward networks.

Overview On 02/21/2025, the first NIU AI/ML Research Seminar was held in PM103. Ibrahim Al Azher, a PhD student from the CS department, delivered a general introduction to current studies on Large Language Models, their limitations, and recent advancements in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). The presentation, which lasted about an hour, was well received by the participants and sparked engaging discussions afterward. This event marked a successful start to the AI/ML research seminar series.