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Events for March 28, 2025
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AI Seminar- Designing Priors for Bayesian Neural Networks to Enhance Probabilistic Predictive Modeling in Engineering Applications
Fri, Mar 28, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Audrey Olivier, USC
Talk Title: Designing Priors for Bayesian Neural Networks to Enhance Probabilistic Predictive Modeling in Engineering Applications
Series: AI Seminar
Abstract: The conjuncton of data mining and physics-based modeling holds great potential to help design, monitor and optimize engineering systems. Efficient ML algorithms can uncover patterns from data to learn missing physics, detect abnormal behaviors and identify damaged systems, or serve as surrogates of complex mechanistic models, enabling real-time analysis or integration within optimization frameworks. However, the use of ML for engineering applications and high-consequence decision-making presents unique challenges. Engineering datasets are often noisy, sparse and imbalanced, due to the inherent randomness of the underlying physical processes and constraints on data collection. Whenever possible, ML predictors must assimilate physics-based knowledge and intuitions to improve accuracy and generalization away from training data. Most importantly, ML models must embed robust and reliable prediction of uncertainties to improve trustworthiness for high-consequence decision-making. Framing ML training within a Bayesian inference framework allows for a robust quantification of both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties that arise from data inadequacies, integration of physics intuitions through prior design, and assessment of the model’s confidence in its predictions. However, due to the high-dimensionality and non-physicality of parameters that characterize typical ML models such as neural networks, application of Bayesian methods in this context raises several technical challenges, from prior and likelihood design to posterior inference. This talk will introduce enhanced algorithms based on ensembling with anchoring for approximate Bayesian learning of neural networks. We will demonstrate the importance of carefully designing the prior, integrating knowledge from low-fidelity models via ensemble pre-training and designing parameter-space prior densities that account for low-rank correlations between neural network weights. The talk will illustrate the benefits of these methods through a variety of example applications in civil engineering, from surrogate training to accelerate materials and structural modeling, contingency analysis in power grid systems, or ambulance travel time prediction in a dense urban network to help optimize emergency medical services.
Biography: Dr. Olivier holds a Diplôme d’Ingénieur from École Centrale de Nantes, France, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University, USA. She held a postdoctoral appointment at Johns Hopkins University before joining the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2021. Dr. Olivier’s research aims to predict and monitor civil infrastructure systems behavior under uncertainty, by combining innovations in probabilistic data analytics and mechanistic modeling. Applications span various scales, from systems to structures to materials, and include development of adaptive Bayesian filters for identification of dynamical structural systems, probabilistic surrogate models to accelerate multi-scale materials simulations or Bayesian graph neural networks for contingency analysis of power grids.
Host: Eric Boxer and Justina Gilleland
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/5453/designing-priors-for-bayesian-neural-networks-to-enhance-probabilistic-predictive-modeling-in-engineering-applications/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94409584905?pwd=Sm5LVkd0bndUdEluM3piK0NWTUQrUT09Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Conf Rm#1135 and Virtual
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94409584905?pwd=Sm5LVkd0bndUdEluM3piK0NWTUQrUT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CA DREAMS - Technical Seminar Series
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Fri, Mar 28, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mark Rodwell, Professor, University of California at Santa Barbara
Talk Title: The Role of InP Technologies in Next-Generation 50-300 GHz Systems
Abstract: Present InP bipolar transistors attain 1.1 THz fmax; InP field-effect transistors attain 1.5 THz. These can support emerging applications in 100-300 GHz wireless communications and imaging radar, 400-1000 Gb/s wireline and optical communications, and high-frequency instruments. After summarizing the applications and the required circuit and transistor performance, I will review transistor design, present transistor performance, and the design of next-generation THz bipolar and field-effect transistors.
Biography: Mark J. W. Rodwell (Fellow, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University 1988. He holds the Doluca Family Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering with the University of California at Santa Barbara. During 2017-2023, he directed the SRC/DARPA ComSenTer Wireless Research Center. His research group develops high-frequency transistors, ICs, and communication systems. Dr. Rodwell was a recipient of the 1997 IEEE Microwave Prize, the 1998 European Microwave Conference Microwave Prize, the 2009 IEEE IPRM Conference Award, the 2010 IEEE Sarnoff Award, the 2012 Marconi Prize Paper Award, and the 2022 SIA/SRC University Research Award. For 2024-2025, he is serving as an IEEE-MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer.
Host: Dr. Steve Crago
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/5442/the-role-of-inp-technologies-in-next-generation-50-300-ghz-systems/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97017422125?pwd=Dbrt8MNMrmBV3xalKQJcAiNsggFJjJ.1&from=addonWebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97017422125?pwd=Dbrt8MNMrmBV3xalKQJcAiNsggFJjJ.1&from=addon
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Amy Kasmir
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/events/5442/the-role-of-inp-technologies-in-next-generation-50-300-ghz-systems/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
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