Grounding Foundation Models with Local Context for Societal Impact
Speaker: 
Nitesh CHAWLA
Frank M. Freimann Professor of
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Notre Dame
| Date: Time: Venue: | | 13 November 2026, Friday 10:30am – 11:30am School of Computing & Information Systems 1 (SCIS 1)
Level 3, Seminar Room 3-4
Singapore Management University
Singapore 178902
Please register by 11 November 2026 
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About the Talk
Foundation models are remarkably capable but fundamentally lack local context, which are the domain-specific, community-specific, and structurally rich knowledge required by real-world applications. In this talk, I will discuss our work on bridging this gap through knowledge graphs, retrieval-grounded architectures, and domain-aware reasoning. I will show how these approaches enable deployed tools for wildlife conservation research, navigation of Colombia's Truth Commission archives, and personalized nutritional reasoning; the very settings where generic model knowledge falls short and local context is everything. I will close with reflections on what it takes to move from innovative methods to tools that practitioners actually use.
About the Speaker
Nitesh CHAWLA is the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and the Lucy Family Director for Data & AI Academic Strategy, leading the Data, AI, and Computing Initiative at the University of Notre Dame. His research is focused on artificial intelligence, data science, and network science, and is motivated by the question of how technology can advance the common good through convergence. His research has led to more than 103,000 citations with an h-index of 98. He is a Fellow of: the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE); the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM); the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the National Academy of Engineers New Faculty Fellowship, IEEE CIS Outstanding Early Career Award, Rodney F. Ganey Community Impact Award, IBM Big Data & Analytics Faculty Award, IBM Watson Faculty Award, Notre Dame All Faculty Team Award, and the 1st Source Bank Technology Commercialization Award. He is a serial entrepreneur, having (co-) founded multiple start-ups.
