CAST IT (audio)
17 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 months ago - ★★★★ - 2 ratingsMeet Associate Professor Thore Husfeldt from IT University as host while he talks to other researchers about the fundations of IT.
The podcast is a popular science program about foundational issues of IT hosted at IT University of Copenhagen.
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Episodes
Felienne Hermans: The Programmer’s Brain and Hedy
October 16, 2023 13:03 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBFelienne Hermans is full professor of Computer Science Education at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Felienne is the author of the 2021 book The Programmer's Brain, a very readable and highly insightful introduction to the cognitive science behind how human brains learn programming. Why is programming hard to learn, and what can we do about that, both as learners and teachers? We recommended this for everyone, but it is particularly useful for those who just started to learn programming, a...
Nutan Limaye: Computational complexity
February 18, 2022 10:05 - 1 hour - 59.8 MBNutan Limaye is an associate professor at IT University of Copenhagen and an internationally leading researcher in computational complexity. Nutan’s research focus is on the most prestigious and fundamental questions in computer science, namely: which problems can be solved with limited computational resources? Her recent breakthrough result, with Srinivasan and Tavenas, received the best paper award at the Foundations of Computer Science conference in 2021 and shows that algebraic circuits...
Mikkel Thorup: Digital Contact Tracing
December 14, 2020 14:34 - 1 hour - 38.4 MBMikkel Thorup is professor of Computer Science at Copenhagen University and an internationally leading researcher in the theory of algorithms. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he has served on the scientific board advising the Danish authorities on the development of a national contact tracing app using mobile phones for exposure notification. We sit down with Mikkel, exposure notification apps dutifully switched on, and talk about how such an application works. The Danish system, “SmitteStop...
Robin Hanson: The Age of Mind Uploading
November 02, 2018 09:19 - 2 hours - 77.1 MBRobin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University and one the world’s most influential futurists. We talk to Robin about how rigorous social science can help us describe a society in which “mind uploading” – the idea of simulating whole brains on digital hardware – might actually look. How does a society look where most minds live their lives in virtual reality, immortals in a wor...
Tim Roughgarden: The Price of Anarchy
September 17, 2018 09:42 - 1 hour - 76.7 MBTim Roughgarden is professor in the Computer Science and Management Science and Engineering Departments at Stanford University. He is also a very active science communicator, hosting a popular algorithms course on the Coursera online learning platform. Among many recognitions, Tim has received the Gödel Prize for his research in computational game theory, a field that resides in the intersection of two disciplines: economics and computer science. We talk to Tim about one of the central ins...
Claire Mathieu: College Admission Algorithms in the Real World
September 03, 2018 13:16 - 47 minutes - 44.6 MBClaire Mathieu is a leading researcher in algorithms design and director of research at Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, France.) Claire has been involved in the 2018 redesign of the college admission procedure in France, where close to a million students apply for more than ten thousand different college programmes. At the root of the procedure is the famous and widely used Stable Marriage method of Gale and Shapley (1962), a result that was recognised with the ...
Yves Bertot: Verifying One Million Digits of Pi
April 19, 2018 15:23 - 1 hour - 38.4 MBYves Bertot is a senior researcher that the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA) in Sophia Antipolis and a leading researcher on correctness of software and the verification of mathematical proofs. Recently, his team was able to formally verify the correctness of the computation on the one millionth decimal digit of pi (which is 1, by the way), including a formally verifiable proof of the mathematics behind the formula and the correctness of the implementa...
Sarah Pink: Digital Ethnography
February 26, 2018 11:11 - 47 minutes - 26.1 MBSarah Pink is a Professor of Design and Media Ethnography at RMIT University, Australia, and the author or co-editor of several books about digital ethnography. To approach this area, we get Sarah’s help with some conceptual groundwork about the methods, values, and history of ethnography, and its relation to neighbouring fields such as anthropology or cultural geography. But the conversation focusses on digital ethnography: Information technology changes not only the methods of ethnograph...
Roman Beck: Blockchain
February 09, 2018 10:07 - 1 hour - 39.1 MBRoman Beck is professor of Business Informatics at IT University of Copenhagen and the head of the European Blockchain Center. We talk to Roman about blockchain, a cryptographically secure, distributed database technology sometimes called a “trust machine.” Blockchain applications include the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, as well as various ideas for ensuring trust across institutional boundaries, such as contracts. It may also serve as the conceptual infrastructure of the next generation Internet...
Ivan Damgård: Secure Multi-Party Computation
December 06, 2017 10:55 - 1 hour - 36 MBIvan Bjerre Damgård is professor of theoretical computer science at Aarhus University, Denmark, and one of the world’s leading researchers in the foundations of cryptography. Among other things, Ivan is known for the Merkle–Damgård construction, which underlies many modern digital signatures. We talk to Ivan about the mathematical basics of modern cryptography, internet security, authentication, secret sharing, and privacy. This includes the emerging field of secure multiparty computation: h...
Espen Aarseth: Game Studies from The Hobbit to Minecraft
October 13, 2017 14:37 - 1 hour - 60.9 MBEspen Aarseth, professor in Game Studies, is the Head of the Center of Computer Games Research at IT University of Copenhagen and the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Game Studies. We talk to Espen about founding computer games research as an academic discipline, the Games study programme at ITU, what a game is (entertainment? sports? waste of time? cultural artefact? social activity? storytelling? shared illusion?), PewDiePie, how the established narratological concepts of literary t...
Rebecca Slayton: Cybersecurity and Star Wars
September 20, 2017 13:59 - 53 minutes - 29.8 MBRebecca Slayton is a professor at the Department of Science and Technology Studies and Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University. We talk to Rebecca about cybersecurity, the early history of software engineering during the Cold War, the role of scientific and technological expertise in public policy, and how to think about risk and reliability. Rebecca’s book on how knowledge about computing was shaped by and influenced the development of US missile defence...
Vincent F. Hendricks: The truth in digital society
September 19, 2017 14:23 - 55 minutes - 30.5 MBWe ask Vincent F. Hendricks, professor of formal philosophy at Copenhagen University and the director of the Center for Information and Bubble Studies how to think about information, knowledge, and truth, in the internet age, where information is quickly shared or algorithmically curated, and where the model of liberal democracy, such as the public sphere, are undergoing rapid change. We talk about fake news, Trump, radical scepticism, social psychology, filter bubbles, power laws of atten...
Olle Häggström: Technology and the Future of Humanity
June 29, 2017 13:04 - 1 hour - 43.7 MBOlle Häggström is a Professor of mathematical statistics at Chalmers University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. He is also a leading Swedish public intellectual and prolific debater in science, pseudoscience, technology, and education. We talk to Olle about the potential dangers associated with various emerging technologies—how do we start thinking about the catastrophic risks that may be associated with scientific advances that we have not comp...
Carsten Schürmann: Electronic Elections
May 19, 2017 17:47 - 1 hour - 42.7 MBCarsten Schürmann is the leader of the Demtech research center, which studies the interplay between technology and democracy. Carsten is a world leading expert in computer security and critical digital infrastructure, with a background in the theory of programming languages and logics. We talk to him about digital democracy, in particular electronic elections, including online voting. The goal of democratic elections is the peaceful transition of government, which means that both winners an...
Toby Walsh: Kidneys, Cars, and Killer Robots
March 29, 2017 12:06 - 1 hour - 36.2 MBToby Walsh is a leading researcher in artificial intelligence and a prolific populariser of computer science. We talk about the mechanisms behind fair allocation of transplanted kidneys, autonomous cars, the ethics of artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision making, and killer robots from autonomous weapon systems to the Singularity. Toby’s blog is at http://thefutureofai.blogspot.com.au; his forthcoming book on many of these issues will be titled “Android Dreams.”
Troels Bjerre Lund: Poker-Playing Bots
March 14, 2017 15:57 - 58 minutes - 32.9 MBIn early 2017, two independent research teams announced progress in artificial intelligence: Libratus from Carnagie Mellon University and DeepStack from University of Alberta. Computer programs are now able to beat the best human players in the two-player card game Heads-Up No Limit Texas’ Hold-Em Poker. But what are poker-playing bots? And how do they work work? In this podcast Thore Husfeldt talks to Associate Professor Troels Bjerre Lund, IT University of Copenhagen, a researcher in a...