Graduate School of Informatics

Title: Symposium on Human-Robot Interaction

Date: 13 December 2018

Place: Ural Akbulut Conference Hall

Graduate School of Informatics /Cognitive Sciences

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Borabay Kadirdağ will defend his thesis.

Title: THE EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE REAPPARISAL & EXPRESSIVE SUPPRESSION ON EXAM PERFORMANCE OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Date: 26th November 2018

Time: 11:30 AM

Place: A-212

Thesis Abstract : The main objective of this thesis is to examine the effect of cognitive (re-)appraisal and expressive suppression and on exam performance in Turkish university students. The study is based on the appraisal-tendency framework of Lerner and Keltner (2000) which defines cognitive appraisal as cognitive meaning making that leads to emotions, (Lerner, Li, Valdesolo, & Kassam, 2015). Expressive suppression, on the other hand, is defined as an aspect of emotional regulation where individuals mask their facial giveaways to hide their emotional states (Niedenthal, P. M., Ric, F., & Krauth-Gruber, S. 2006). Based on the cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression abilities of the students, their affective responses (PANAS) to anxiety before and after watching a video of a stressful scene were measured to find out if there is an effect of the emotional regulation abilities to exam performances of the students. 63 students with medium-level of exam anxiety based on the Test Anxiety Questionnaire (Nist & Diehl, 1990) participated. Results of the emotional regulation abilities suggest that expressive suppression has a significant effect on exam performances. Those students who suppressed the expression of their emotions less could increase their exam scores as measured in two exams at the beginning and end of the term. The responses based on PANAS scores indicate no significant difference of emotional regulation abilities on exam performance. Keywords: emotion, exam anxiety, emotional regulation, cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression

Graduate School of Informatics /Information Systems

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Burak Ünaltay will defend his thesis.

Title: A TRANSFORMATIVE EMBEDDED SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE FOR IMAGE PROCESSING APPLICATIONS

Date: 14th November 2018

Time: 14:00 AM

Place: B-116

Thesis Abstract : Real time image processing is often subjected to very harsh constraints due to the nature of the embedded hardware it is implemented on. Embedded hardware offer very limited memory, has low processing power and required to have low power needs.These constraints however, cannot be an excuse to give up on performance, as many of the applications in this field of work are created for high end military systems, border security, medical applications and areas similar to these where performance is critical. Unfortunately, many of the image processing algorithms used in these systems are rarely developed for the limited boundaries of embedded world. As such, there is a need for a methodology where one can transform image processing algorithms that is written in high level languages (matlab, python etc..) or even in pseudo-code to the low level languages (c++, c, assembly) that is more suited for embedded world. In this study, existing software development processes that are being used for this effort will be reviewed, and an embedded software architecture will be proposed as a solution to the problems stated above.

Graduate School of Informatics /Cognitive Sciences

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Dilek Deniz Bilgiç will defend his thesis.

Title: PRESCHOOL CHILDREN’S STORY CONSTRUCTION AND USE OF DEIXIS IN FICTIONAL NARRATIVES

Date: 14th November 2018

Time: 10:00 AM

Place: A-108

Thesis Abstract : The Deictic Shift theory suggests that for interpreting an utterance, deictic terms must be used and one’s deictic center needs to be shifted with respect to the speaker’s. In the present study, Turkish preschool children’s fictional narratives are studied by examining the deictic terms they use to construct the story-world context within the theory of Deictic Shift and Deictic Center. For this goal, narratives elicited by a picture-based book by 47 preschool children between ages 3;6 and 6 are explored and compared to 23 adults’ narratives. Younger children used more demonstrative deictic terms, suggesting that they are tuned to the picture-book rather than the story context. They also used temporal deictics less frequently than adults, indicating that temporal deictics develop alongside the ability of plot organization. Overall, the results show that narrative development goes hand in hand with the development of how the expressions of the real-world context are shifted to the story-world context and the development of deictic expressions to convey psychological proximity.

IS/Bilişim Sistemleri

SM/Yazılım Yönetimi

CSEC/Siber Güvenlik

MMI / Çoklu Ortam Bilişimi

BIN / Biyoenformatik

COGS / Bilişsel Bilimler

MIN / Sağlık Bilişimi

Title: SEQUENCE ALIGNMENT BASED PROCESS FAMILY EXTRACTION

PhD Candidate: Eren Esgin

Program: Informations Systems Department 

Date: 17 December 10:00

Place: Conference Hall-01

Abstract: Business Process Management (BPM) paradigm gains growing attention by generic process design and execution capabilities empowered by process-aware information systems. During execution of these transactional information systems, end-users leave traces in the form of event logs, which can be used as a main data source for end user behavior analysis. Process mining encompasses the techniques for automated process discovery from these event logs, conformance checking between the reference process model and process executions, as well as analyzing, predicting and enhancing the performance of business processes. With the emergence of new shared economical models and system architectures, monolithic process perspective is evolved through cross-organizational applications. While contemporary information systems provide functionality for process management within the organizations, a systematic approach to support and analyze multiorganizational processes is missing. Cross-organizational process mining supports the use of commonality and collaboration for process configuration. However, this functionality surplus creates the challenge of dealing with variability across organizations. In this study, we propose a three phased cross-organizational process mining framework in order to extract the commonalities among different organizations serving the same business values. While dominant behavior extraction phase initially derives the sequence of tasks expressing the most typical behavior within the process instances, sequence alignment phase measures the degree of similarities between the process candidates by confidenceenhanced cost functioning, and depicts the neighborhood among these alternatives in terms of process family tree. At process configuration phase, common regions that indicate a functional inheritance or abstractions in the process families are visualized at sequence alignment matrices and interpreted by new feature sets, namely identical and maximal identical pair. According to the experimental results, proposed approach presents a viable and robust cost function in incorporating the business context at process similarity measurement and clustering the process alternatives into process families. 

Dear Students,

There will be orientation and information meetings for new students who will be registered for 2018-2019 1st semester.

Information Systems Ph.D. and M.S. Programs

On Wednesday, September 26, 2018 at 10.00, class II-04

Cyber Security Non-Thesis M.S. Program

On Wednesday, September 26, 2018 at 10.00, class II-05

Cognitive Science Doctorate and Non-Thesis M.S. Programs

On Wednesday, September 26, 2018 at 10.00, class II-03

Health Informatics Ph.D., M.S. and Bioinformatics M.S Prorams

On Wednesday, September 26, 2018 at 10.00, class II-02

Multimedia Informatics M.S Program

On Wednesday, September 26, 2018 at 10.00, class II-01

The following forms, which will be provided by us to the attending students , will be filled on the same day together with the administrative advisors.

Öğrenci Bilgi Formu/Student Information Form

Öğrenci Not formu/Student Grade Form

Bilimsel Hazırlık Formu/Scientific Preparation Form

In order to complete the forms mentioned above, our students are required to bring the following documents to the meeting.

1 Adet vesikalık resim/1 passport picture

1 Transcript (Undergraduate and Masters Transcript for Ph.D.)

* Participation is mandatory for the meeting. We congratulate our new students and wish them success.

The NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute (DLI) and Graduate School of Informatics, Middle East Technical University (METU) are excited to deliver a hands-on deep learning workshop at Graduate School of Informatics on 22nd September 2018 Saturday exclusively for verifiable academic students, staff, and researchers.

In this full-day workshop, you’ll learn the basics of deep learning by training and deploying neural networks.

Organizer: Dr. Alptekin Temizel is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Informatics, Middle East Technical University. He is a Deep Learning Institute (DLI) Certified Instructor and DLI University Ambassador