Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for October
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AI Seminar
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Erick Moen, USC
Talk Title: ADVANCED METHODOLOGIES FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF TRANSIENT MEMBRANE BEHAVIOR
Abstract: Understanding how biology responds to stimuli is one of the most challenging, yet fundamental, questions in biophysics. An in depth analysis of this relationship would allow for the development of more powerful biomedical tools and could provide a roadmap for more intelligent artificial systems. To conduct this type of research, though, we need tools to ask increasingly incisive questions of the cell membrane, the epicenter of cell function. In light of these needs, this talk will describe a nonlinear optical measurement technique developed to rapidly detect subtle changes in cell membrane structure. The method is tested in multiple cell lines and the in vitro results are validated against a complementary model of the cell membrane. The measurement technique is then used to explore transmembrane potential and investigate the mechanisms underlying neuronal stimulation and inhibition. The talk will conclude with an overview of concurrent efforts to develop a multi-faceted virtual reality VR suite for immersive scientific computing and data visualization. While this work is broadly applicable to a number of fields, the approach is used here to help better understand results from in silico studies of dynamic membrane behavior. As time allows, I will discuss how specific aspects of this research could be improved by machine learning approaches and how the projects can be extended from the single cell level to networked systems.
Biography: Personal Bio:
Erick Moen is a Research Associate with the Center for Cyber Physical Systems and the Internet of Things at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. He is multidisciplinary scientist who develops new ways to measure and understand biology through nonlinear optics, high performance computing, and virtual reality. In addition to his primary lines of research, his interests extend to resonator physics, sensor technology, and artificial intelligence.
Dr. Moen received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from USC. He also holds M.S. degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Last year, he was named a Ming Hsieh Institute Scholar awarded to the top students in the department. Dr. Moen also serves as a consultant for the Entertainment Technology Center at USC holding the mirror for an organization helping Hollywood see around corners. Prior to entering graduate school, he converted a Porsche 914 into a rolling testbed for electric vehicle research and spent time in industry as a principal of a building design and engineering firm.
Host: Kristina LermanLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th floor large conference room
WebCast Link: http://webcastermshd.isi.edu/Mediasite/Play/ffdb85fc430947539dc2e22215f9a6531d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kary LAU
Event Link: http://webcastermshd.isi.edu/Mediasite/Play/ffdb85fc430947539dc2e22215f9a6531d
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. -
NL Seminar: Context is Everything: From language modeling to language generation
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yangfeng Ji , University of Washington
Talk Title: Context is Everything: From language modeling to language generation
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: Contextual information is critical for language processing and generation. Particularly for large texts consisting of multiple sentences or paragraphs, how to capture the contextual information beyond sentence boundaries is important for building better language processing systems. This talk will discuss our recent effort on incorporating contextual information to language modeling and generation. It presents three models with each of them corresponds a specific linguistic phenomenon of context shared in written texts: i. local context from preceding sentences; ii. semantic and pragmatic relations between adjacent sentences; and iii. evolving of entities e.g., characters in novels through coreference links in texts. The starting point of our model design is sentence-level recurrent neural network language models RNNLMs. To capture these aspects of contextual information, we extend RNNLMs by either adding extra connections among existing network components, or adding dedicated components particularly to encode specific linguistic information. Evaluation results show that these models outperforms strong baselines and prior work language modeling tasks. Their ability of capturing contextual information is also verified by the quantitative evaluation on each corresponding task, such as identifying the relation between sentences, and resolving coreference ambiguity. Qualitative analysis is also included to demonstrate the ability of these models for text generation.
Biography: Yangfeng Ji is a postdoc researcher at University of Washington working with Noah Smith. His research interests lie in the interaction of natural language processing and machine learning. He is interested in designing machine learning models and algorithms for language processing, and also fascinated by how linguistic knowledge helps build better learning models. He completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016, advised by Jacob Eisenstein. He was one of the area co-chairs on Discourse and Pragmatics in ACL 2017.
Host: Marjan Ghazvininejad and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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.
