SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for January
-
EE-EP Seminar, Ashwin Seshia, January 13th, EEB 132 @ 11:00am
Wed, Jan 13, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ashwin A. Seshia, University of Cambridge
Talk Title: Dynamics-Enhanced Sensory Processing
Abstract: Instruments based on resonant and oscillatory elements have historically been employed to conduct some of the most accurate physical measurements. This talk describes research to enable miniaturized electromechanical sensor systems wherein precise engineering of the dynamical response is instrumental in enabling new modes of transduction, energy conversion and sensing. A series of research results from my group will be provided to illustrate the approach. First, seismic-grade accelerometers based on resonant output principles will be described where the interaction of mechanical nonlinearities and noise processes sets limits on the achievable resolution. Further, by engineering the principle of vibration mode localization in weakly coupled resonators, passive immunity to environmental drift is achieved by recording eigenstate variations as a measure of differential structural perturbations. Next, net-zero power strain sensors for structural health monitoring applications are enabled by integrating vibration energy harvesters together with low-power temperature compensated resonant strain gauges. By engineering the principle of parametric resonance for vibration energy harvesting it is possible to engineer vibration energy harvesters with multi-frequency responsivity and substantially larger recoverable electrical power as compared to classical approaches based on direct (linear) resonance under specified conditions. Finally, with a view towards future application of engineered non-linearity in micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems, I will describe results from electro-acoustic biosensors utilizing noise and non-linear response as readout modalities, and the mutual synchronization of non-linear microelectromechanical oscillators demonstrating significantly improved frequency stability and potentially enabling fundamentally new energy-efficient approaches to sensory information processing. Micro- and nanofabricated devices engineered using these and similar approaches are now being integrated into monitoring tools and sensor systems for a variety of application scenarios.
Biography: Ashwin A. Seshia received the B. Tech. degree in engineering physics from IIT Bombay, India, in 1996; the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA, in 1999 and 2002, respectively; and the M.A. degree from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., in 2008. He joined the faculty of the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, in 2002, where he is currently a Reader in Microsystems Technology and a Fellow of Queens' College. His Research interests are in the domain of micro- and nano-engineered dynamical systems. He serves on the editorial boards of the IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, IOP Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, and the IEEE Transactions of Nanotechnology.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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. -
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Jan 13, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Emrah Akyol, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: "Communication in Strategic Environments: Crawford-Sobel Meet Shannon"
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Over thirty years ago, economists Vincent Crawford and Joel Sobel introduced the concepts of strategic information transmission (SIT) and cheap talk in their seminal Econometrica paper, as a way of understanding how information is strategically revealed (or not) by agents whose interests are only partially aligned. This theory has had tremendous success in explaining situations ranging from advertising to expert advice sharing, and many extensions of the original SIT model and the broader "principal-agent" class of problems have been extensively studied in the economics literature since. However, despite its name and even superficially obvious connection with information theory (IT), SIT has so far received very little attention from the IT community.
In this talk, I will present approaches to address such strategic communication problems from the lens of information and game theories. Specifically, I will focus on a strategic communication paradigm where the better-informed transmitter communicates with a receiver who makes the ultimate decision concerning both agents. While the economists have extensively studied the Nash equilibrium variant of this problem, the more relevant Stackelberg equilibrium enables the use of Shannon theoretic tools. I will present the fundamental limits of strategic compression and communication problems in the SIT context. Particularly, three problem settings will be considered, focusing on the quadratic distortion measures and jointly Gaussian variables: compression, communication, and the simple equilibrium conditions without any compression or communication. The analysis will then be extended to the receiver side information setting, where the strategic aspect of the problem yields rather surprising results regarding optimality of uncoded communication. Finally, several applications of the results within the broader context of decision theory will be presented.
Biography: Emrah Akyol received the Ph.D. degree in 2011 from the University of California at Santa Barbara. From 2006 to 2007, he held positions at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and NTT Docomo Laboratories, both in Palo Alto, CA where he worked on topics in video compression and streaming. From 2013 to 2014, Dr. Akyol was a postdoctoral researcher in the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Southern California. Currently, Dr. Akyol is a postdoctoral research associate in the Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His current research is on the interplay of networked information theory, game theory, communications, sensing and control. Dr. Akyol received the 2010 UCSB Dissertation Fellowship, the 2014 USC Postdoctoral Training Award and was an invited participant of the 2015 NSF Early-Career Investigators Workshop on CPS and Smart City.
Host: Prof. Ashutosh Nayyar
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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. -
Shared Memory Reconfigurable Computing for the Cloud
Fri, Jan 15, 2016 @ 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Peter Hofstee, IBM Austin Research Laboratory
Talk Title: Shared Memory Reconfigurable Computing for the Cloud
Abstract: This talk covers recent work on shared memory reconfigurable computing. We start with enhancements made to the Power 8 processor, in particular the CAPI interface that allows for off-chip accelerators with full coherent access to all shared system resources. Next we cover some examples of how this kind of acceleration can improve system functions such as networking and storage. We then turn to gene sequencing as an example of compute acceleration and show that each of the major stages can be improved with reconfigurable logic. We end by discussing prototype cloud-based infrastructure that researchers can use to develop and deploy their own solutions.
Biography: H. Peter Hofstee (Ph.D. California Inst. of Technology, 1995) is a distinguished research staff member at the IBM Austin Research Laboratory, USA, and a part-time professor in Big Data Systems at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. Peter is best known for his contributions to heterogeneous computer architecture as the chief architect of the Synergistic Processor Elements in the Cell Broadband Engine processor, used in the Sony Playstation3 and the first supercomputer to reach sustained Petaflop operation. After returning to IBM research in 2011 he has focused on optimizing the system roadmap for big data, analytics, and cloud, including the use of accelerated compute. His early research work on coherently attached reconfigurable acceleration on Power 7 paved the way for the new coherent attach processor interface on POWER 8. Peter is an IBM master inventor with more than 100 issued patents and a member of the IBM Academy of technology.
Host: Prof. Viktor Prasanna
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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. -
EE-EP Seminar, Jae-Sun Seo, Friday, January 22nd at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Fri, Jan 22, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jae-sun Seo, Arizona State University
Talk Title: Designing Power-Efficient Neuromorphic VLSI Systems That Can Learn and Infer
Abstract: In recent years, both industry and academia have shown large interest in low-power hardware designs for neuromorphic computing (e.g. TrueNorth) and machine learning algorithms (e.g. convolutional neural networks) for a wide range of image, speech, and biomedical applications. State-of-the-art algorithms are computation-/memory-/communication-intensive, however, making it difficult to perform low-power real-time training and classification. Furthermore, to optimize system-level power, efficient power delivery and voltage regulation of such VLSI systems also becomes a critical concern.
In this talk, I will present our exemplary research on low-power digital neuromorphic processor design with on-chip learning, as well as workload-adaptive integrated voltage regulators. I will discuss our work on on-chip STDP (spike-timing dependent plasticity) learning for pattern recognition (45nm), spiking clustering for deep-brain sensing (65nm), and a versatile neuromorphic processor design that can support various STDP learning / inhibition rules found in neuroscience literature with large fan-in/out per neuron. To provide an efficient and stable power supply for such processors against fluctuating workloads, integrated switched-capacitor voltage regulator designs are proposed with fast on-chip current sensing (32nm) and capacitance dithering (65nm).
I will also briefly discuss our machine learning hardware designs for speech and biometric applications, and present future research directions to vertically integrate and further improve the power-efficiency of neuromorphic systems while bridging the gap with machine learning approaches.
Biography: Jae-sun Seo received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 2010 in electrical engineering. From 2010 to 2013, he was with IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, where he worked on neuromorphic chip design for the DARPA SyNAPSE project and energy-efficient circuits for IBM's high-performance processors. Since January 2014, he has been with Arizona State University as an assistant professor in the School of ECEE. During the summer of 2015, he was a visiting faculty at Intel Circuits Research Lab. His research interests include efficient hardware design of learning algorithms and integrated power management. He received the IBM outstanding technical achievement award in 2012, and serves on the technical program committee for ISLPED and the organizing committee for ICCD.
Host: EE-EP
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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. -
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Jan 27, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Adel Javanmard, USC
Talk Title: Phase Transitions in Semidefinite Relaxations
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Statistical inference problems arising within signal processing, data mining, and machine learning naturally give rise to hard combinatorial optimization problems. These problems become intractable when the dimensionality of the data is large, as is often the case for modern datasets. A popular idea is to construct convex relaxations of these combinatorial problems, which can be solved efficiently for large scale datasets. Semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations are among the most powerful methods in this family, and are surprisingly well-suited for a broad range of problems where data take the form of matrices or graphs. It has been observed several times that, when the 'statistical noise' is small enough, SDP relaxations correctly detect the underlying combinatorial structures.
In this talk, I will present some classical SDP relaxations for finding hidden partitions in sparse graphs (clustering) with asymptotic predictions for its performance. Time permitting, I will compare such relaxations with the recently developed local algorithms such as non-backtracking spectral partitioning. [Based on joint work with Federico Ricci-Tersenghi and Andrea Montanari]
Biography: Adel Javanmard is an assistant professor in the department of Data Sciences and Operation, Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining USC, he was a postdoctoral research fellow for a year at the Center for Science of Information, with worksite at UC Berkeley and Stanford University. He received his PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2014 and 2011 advised by Andrea Montanari. His research interests are broadly in the area of high-dimensional statistics, machine learning, optimization, and graphical models. Adel has won several awards and fellowships, including the Thomas Cover dissertation award from IEEE Society (2015), the CSoI Postdoctoral Fellowship (2014), the Caroline and Fabian Pease Stanford Graduate Fellowship (2010-2012).
Host: Dr. Ashutosh Nayyar
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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. -
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Thu, Jan 28, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Alireza Vahid, Duke University
Talk Title: Improving Wireless Networks and Data Storage Through Information Theory
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: In this talk, we describe two very different applications of Information and Coding Theory. The first is Wireless Packet Networks, where we turn collisions into opportunities by treating the received analog signal as a linear combination of the collided packets. These linear equations can then be used to greatly improve the network throughput in future phases of communications. We describe how the benefits of this approach depend on the delay in learning the channel state and on the spatial correlation of the communication links.
The second is Computer Memory Systems, where scaling down the feature size requires new coding strategies to prevent significant degradation to the lifetime of memory. We develop a new interface that acts as a bridge between theory and practice, making it possible to introduce coding schemes that extend the lifetime of Flash Memory. We derive a fundamental tradeoff between host-visible capacity and lifetime, and describe several operating points.
Biography: Alireza Vahid received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Iran. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University in 2012 and 2015 respectively, where he worked with Professor Salman Avestimehr. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University, where he works with Professor Robert Calderbank. His research interests include Information and Coding Theory, Wireless Communications, Computer Architecture, and Memory Systems.
He received the Outstanding PhD Thesis Research Award in 2015, and the Director's Ph.D. Teaching Award in 2010 from Cornell University. He was the recipient of the Qualcomm Innovation Award in 2013, and the Jacobs Scholar Fellowship in 2009. He was ranked 2nd in the Iranian National Entrance Exam, and received the Silver Medal in the Iranian National Physics Olympiad.
Host: Dr. Ashutosh Nayyar
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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. -
EE-EP Seminar - Zheshen Zhang, Friday, January 29th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Fri, Jan 29, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Zheshen Zhang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: High-Rate Quantum-Secured Communication
Abstract: The advent of quantum computers will doom public-key cryptography's RSA encryption standard. Quantum key distribution (QKD), however, offers a solution for the post-RSA era: quantum physics' no-cloning theorem can ensure safe creation of one-time pads that permit communication with full information-theoretic security. Prevailing QKD protocols use one-photon-per-bit encoding to be protected by the no-cloning theorem. Propagation loss in long-distance transmission then dramatically reduces their received photon flux, and thus limits their secret-key rates to far less than what will be needed for one-time pad encryption of large files. In this talk, I introduce floodlight quantum-secured communication (FL-QSC), a radically different paradigm that thrives by breaking QKD's one-photon-per-bit barrier. FL-QSC employs many photons per bit, so that propagation loss is mitigated. In addition, it uses a huge number of low-brightness optical modes per bit, to maintain the protection afforded by the no-cloning theorem. We show that no-cloning, plus photon-coincidence channel monitoring, makes the new protocol capable of a 2 Gb/s secret-key rate over a 50-km fiber link. Our initial proof-of-concept experiment, done with 10-dB propagation loss (equivalent to a 50-km fiber link), demonstrated a 52 Mb/s secret-key rate against the optimum collective Gaussian attack. This rate is already a two-orders-of-magnitude improvement over all existing QKD demonstrations. Moreover, FL-QSC could be pushed to the long-sought Gb/s secret-key rates with available equipment, i.e., no new technology need be developed.
Biography: Zheshen Zhang is a Research Scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. He received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in June 2006 and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in December 2011. He joined MIT in March 2012 as a Postdoctoral Associate. Dr. Zhang's research covers a wide swath of the theoretical and experimental aspects of quantum communications, quantum sensing, and novel materials for scalable quantum information processing platforms.
Host: EE-EP
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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.
