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Bio-Inspired Cognition, Adaptation, and Learning over Networks
Thu, Feb 02, 2012 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ali H. Sayed, UCLA Electrical Engineering
Talk Title: Bio-Inspired Cognition, Adaptation, and Learning Over Networks
Abstract: Complex patterns of behavior are common in many biological networks, where no single agent is in command and yet forms of decentralized intelligence are evident. Examples include fish joining together in schools, birds flying in formation, bees swarming towards a new hive, and bacteria diffusing towards a nutrient source. While each individual agent in these biological networks is not capable of complex behavior, it is the combined coordination among multiple agents that leads to the manifestation of sophisticated order at the network level. The study of these phenomena opens up opportunities for collaborative research across several domains including economics, life sciences, biology, and information processing, in order to address and clarify several relevant questions such as: (a) how and why organized and complex behavior arises at the group level from interactions among agents without central control? (b) What communication topologies enable the emergence of order at the higher level from interactions at the lower level? (c) How is information quantized during the diffusion of knowledge through the network? And (d) how does mobility influence the learning abilities of the agents and the network. Several disciplines are concerned in elucidating different aspects of these questions including evolutionary biology, animal behavior studies, physical biology, and even computer graphics. In the realm of signal processing, these questions motivate the need to study and develop decentralized strategies for information processing that are able to endow networks with real-time adaptation and learning abilities. This presentation examines several patterns of decentralized intelligence in biological networks, and describes powerful diffusion adaptation and online learning strategies that our research group has been developing in recent years to model and reproduce these kinds of behavior.
Biography: A. H. Sayed is Professor and former Chairman of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also the Principal Investigator of the UCLA Adaptive Systems Laboratory (www.ee.ucla.edu/asl). He has published widely in the areas of adaptation and learning with over 350 articles and 5 books. His research interests span several fields including adaptation and learning, adaptive and cognitive networks, biological networks, cooperative behavior, distributed processing, and statistical signal processing. His research contributions have been recognized with several awards and prizes.
Host: Prof. C.-C. Jay Kuo
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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. -
Fundamental Limits of Passive and Active Learning: A New Look via Feedback Information Theory
Fri, Feb 03, 2012 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Max Raginsky , UIUC
Talk Title: Fundamental Limits of Passive and Active Learning: A New Look via Feedback Information Theory
Abstract: Statistical learning theory is concerned with making accurate predictions on the basis of past observations. One of the main characteristics of any learning problem is its sample complexity: the minimum number of observations needed to ensure a given prediction accuracy at a given confidence level. For the most part, the focus has been on passive learning, in which the learning agent receives independent training samples. However, recently there has been increasing interest in active learning, in which past observations are used to control the process of gathering future observations. The main question is whether active learning is strictly more powerful than its passive counterpart. One way to answer this is to compare the sample complexities of passive and active learning for the same accuracy and confidence.
In this talk, based on joint work with Sasha Rakhlin (Department of Statistics, University of Pennsylvania), I will present a new unified approach to deriving tight lower bounds on the sample complexity of both passive and active learning in the setting of binary classification. This approach is fundamentally rooted in information theory, in particular, the simple but powerful data processing inequality for the f divergence. I will give a high-level overview of the proof technique and discuss the connections between active learning and hypothesis testing with feedback.
Biography: Maxim Raginsky received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in 2000 and the Ph.D. degree in 2002 from Northwestern University, all in electrical engineering. He has held research positions with Northwestern, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where he was a Beckman Foundation Fellow from 2004 to 2007), and Duke University. In 2012, he has returned to the UIUC, where he is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Research Assistant Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory. His research interests lie at the intersection of information theory, learning, and control.
Host: Urbashi Mitra
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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. -
Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Feb 03, 2012 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Tomás Palacios, MIT
Talk Title: GaN and Graphene: Extreme Materials for Advanced Electronics
Host: Hossein Hashemi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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. -
Decomposition Methods for Large Scale LP Decoding
Wed, Feb 08, 2012 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Stark Draper, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Talk Title: Decomposition Methods for Large Scale LP Decoding
Abstract: Feldman et al. showed that linear programming (LP) can be used to decode linear error correcting codes. The bit-error-rate performance of LP decoding is comparable to state-of-the- art decoders based on message passing, but has significantly stronger theoretical guarantees. However, LP decoding when implemented with standard LP solvers does not easily scale to the block lengths of modern error correcting codes. In this talk we draw on decomposition methods from optimization theory to develop efficient distributed algorithms for LP decoding. The key enabling technical result is a nearly linear time algorithm for two-norm projection onto the parity polytope. This allows us to use LP decoding, with all its theoretical guarantees, to decode large-scale error correcting codes efficiently.
Joint work with Siddarth Barman, Xishuo Liu, and Benjamin Recht
Biography: Stark Draper is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Prior to joining UW he worked at the Misubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) in Cambridge, MA. He did his graduate work at MIT and postdoctoral work at UC-Berkeley and the University of Toronto. His research interests include communications and information theory, statistical signal processing, optimization, security, and the application of these disciplines to computer architecture.
Host: Prof. Andreas Molisch, molisch@usc.edu, x04670
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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 Distinguished Lecturer Series
Thu, Feb 09, 2012 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Mark D. Hill, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Talk Title: Amdahl's Law in the Multicore Era
Abstract: Over the last several decades computer architects have been phenomenally successful turning the transistor bounty provided by Moore's Law into chips with ever increasing single-threaded performance. During many of these successful years, however, many researchers paid scant attention to multiprocessor work. Now as vendors turn to multicore chips, researchers are reacting with more papers on multi-threaded systems. While this is good, we are concerned that further work on single-thread performance will be squashed.
To help understand future high-level trade-offs, we develop a corollary to Amdahl's Law for multicore chips [Hill and Marty, IEEE Computer 2008]. It models fixed chip resources for alternative designs that use symmetric cores, asymmetric cores, or dynamic techniques that allow cores to work together on sequential execution. Our results encourage multicore designers to view performance of the entire chip rather than focus on core efficiencies. Moreover, we observe that obtaining optimal multicore performance requires further research BOTH in extracting more parallelism and making sequential cores faster.
Biography: Mark D. Hill is professor in both the Computer Sciences Department and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also co-leads the Wisconsin Multifacet project with David Wood. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an ACM Fellow and a Fellow of the IEEE. His past work ranges from refining multiprocessor memory consistency models to developing the 3C model of cache behavior (compulsory, capacity, and conflict misses).
Host: Prof. Murali Annavaram
More Info: http://ee.usc.edu/news/dls/2011-2012-lectures/mark-hill.htmLocation: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
Event Link: http://ee.usc.edu/news/dls/2011-2012-lectures/mark-hill.htm
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
Fri, Feb 10, 2012 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Irfan Bulu, Harvard University, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Talk Title: Nano-plasmonics and Nano-photonics: Applications to Enhanced Single Photon Sources, and Mid-Infrared Photonics
Abstract: Plasmonics and photonics at the nano-scale offer new possibilities for improving the performance of photonic devices such as lasers, creating new functionality, and building chip-scale integrated optical devices. In the first part of my talk, I will present our recent experimental and theoretical work on plasmonic nano-cavities for efficient, room temperature single photon sources based on nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers in diamond. NV center is a stable single photon source even at room temperature, and exhibits long coherence times for both electronic and nuclear spins. As a result, it is a robust quantum system for applications ranging from quantum information processing to nano-scale magnetometry. These applications benefit from large single photon rates, which can be improved by the use of nano-photonic devices. I will discuss various plasmonic cavity designs and show that the emission rate, excitation rate, and collection efficiency from single NV centers can be improved significantly in an extremely small footprint device. Furthermore, I show that our scalable, top-down nanofabrication technique maintains the crucial properties of embedded NV centers, and is therefore compatible with requirements needed for realization of quantum systems based on diamond. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss our work on mid-infrared photonics. The mid-infrared is an exciting wavelength range for on chip photonic devices, with important applications in spectroscopy and gas sensing. We recently developed record high-Q (45,000) photonic crystal cavities on a CMOS compatible platform for trace gas sensing applications. I will discuss some of the methods that we developed in order to improve the quality factors of photonic crystal cavities at mid-infrared (4.5 µm), and report the observation and origin of optical bi-stability at this wavelength range. Finally, I will discuss the prospects for future devices ranging from all-optical signal processing to on chip frequency combs at the mid-infrared.
Biography: Dr. Bulu received his Ph.D. from the department of physics at Bilkent University for his work on photonic crystals, surface plasmons, and metamaterials. He joined Professor Loncarâs lab at Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow. Since joining Prof. Loncarâs lab, he developed efficient room temperature single photon sources based on single nitrogen vacany centers in diamond by using plasmonic nano-cavities, demonstrated optically reconfigurable photonic crystal filters, and worked on photonic crystal cavities at mid-infrared for sensing applications. He also collaborated with Schlumberger Limited and developed photonic platforms for oil and gas exploration. His current research interests include non-linear diamond nano-photonic devices for quantum information processing applications, silicon photonics at the mid-infrared wavelengths for applications in gas sensing and spectroscopy, development of new quantum emitters such as gallium nitride nanowires with embedded quantum dots/wells, and graphene plasmonics. His research resulted in more than 40 journal publications.
Host: EE-EP/USC Quantum Information and Condensed Matter Physics
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
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. -
Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Feb 10, 2012 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Arun Natarajan, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
Talk Title: Millimeter-Wave Integrated Phased Arrays for Wireless Communication and Imaging
Host: Hossein Hashemi
More Information: Seminar_Speaker_Arun_2012_2_10.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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-Electrophysics Seminar
Mon, Feb 13, 2012 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: John Teufel, NIST Boulder
Talk Title: Quantum Microwave Optomechanical Circuits
Abstract: While mechanical oscillators are the basis for ultrasensitive detection of force, mass and displacement, only recently are these systems poised to encounter the limits and possibilities afforded by quantum mechanics. Accessing the full quantum nature of a macroscopic mechanical oscillator first requires elimination of its classical, thermal motion. The flourishing field of cavity optomechanics provides a nearly ideal architecture for both preparation and detection of mechanical motion at the quantum level. We realize a microwave cavity optomechanical system by coupling the motion of an aluminum membrane to the resonance frequency of a superconducting circuit [1]. By exciting the microwave circuit below its resonance frequency, we damp and cool the membrane motion with radiation pressure forces, analogous to laser cooling of the motion of trapped ions. The microwave excitation serves not only to cool, but also to monitor the displacement of the membrane. A nearly quantum-limited, Josephson parametric amplifier is used to detect the mechanical sidebands of this microwave excitation and quantify the thermal motion as it is cooled with radiation pressure forces to its quantum ground state [2].
[1] Teufel, J. D. et al. ìCircuit cavity electromechanics in the strong-coupling regime,î Nature 471, 204ñ208 (2011).
[2] Teufel, J. D. et al. ìSideband cooling micromechanical motion to the quantum ground state,î Nature 475, 359ñ363 (2011).
Biography: Dr. John Teufel completed his Ph.D. in physics at Yale University in the group of Robert Schoelkopf while developing superconducting photon detectors.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
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. -
Reshaping the Mind: The Benefits of Bilingualism
Tue, Feb 14, 2012 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Professor Ellen Bialystok, York University
Talk Title: Reshaping the Mind: The Benefits of Bilingualism
Abstract: A growing body of research using both behavioral and neuroimaging data points to a significant effect of bilingualism on cognitive outcomes across the lifespan. The main finding is evidence for the enhancement of executive control at all stages in the lifespan, with the most dramatic results being maintained cognitive performance in elderly adults, and protection against the onset of dementia. A more complex picture emerges when the cognitive advantages of bilingualism are considered together with the costs to linguistic processing. I will review evidence for both these outcomes and propose a framework for understanding the mechanism that could lead to these positive and negative consequences of bilingualism, including protection against dementia in older age.
Biography: Ellen Bialystok is a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University and Associate Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1976 studying the relation between childrenâs conceptual and linguistic development, especially as it applied to spatial cognition. Her subsequent research investigated issues in second language acquisition, metalinguistic awareness, and literacy acquisition in young children. Much of her research in the past 20 years has focused on the effect of bilingualism on childrenâs language and cognitive development, showing accelerated mastery of specific cognitive processes for bilingual children. This research was then extended to investigations of adult processing and cognitive aging, showing the continuity of these bilingual advantages into adulthood and the protection against cognitive decline in healthy aging for bilingual older adults. She is the author or editor of 7 books and over 100 scientific papers in journals and books. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and among her awards are a Killam Research Fellowship, Walter Gordon Research Fellowship, Deanâs Award for Outstanding Research, the Donald T. Stuss Award for Research Excellence at the Baycrest Geriatric Centre, the Presidentâs Research Award of Merit at York University, the Donald Hebb Award for Outstanding Contribution to Psychology, and the Killam Prize for the Social Sciences.
Host: Professor Shrikanth Narayanan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mary Francis
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. -
Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Feb 17, 2012 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Hamid Rategh, Inphi
Talk Title: Next Generation 100 Gigabit Ethernet, Low Power CMOS SerDes, and Signal Integrity Challenges
Host: Hossein Hashemi
More Information: Seminar_Speaker_Rategh_2012_2_17.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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. -
Technology-Aware Circuit Design of Low Power Robust Memories for Future Processors
Tue, Feb 21, 2012 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sumeet Kumar Gupta,
Talk Title: Technology-Aware Circuit Design of Low Power Robust Memories for Future Processors
Abstract: The past few decades have seen the evolution of the semiconductor industry driven by technology scaling. However, as conventional MOSFETs are scaled further, exponential increase in leakage and higher sensitivity to process variations are expected to pose severe challenges. This has led to the exploration of alternate technologies and computing paradigms. In order to harness the full potential of the emerging technologies, there is a strong need for design methodologies which utilize the unique technology features to achieve lower power, higher performance and increased robustness of VLSI circuits and systems. In my talk, I will discuss our work on device-circuit co-design techniques for low power robust memories in emerging technologies, with a focus on FinFET-based SRAMs. We have developed a mixed mode simulation framework for device-circuit analysis of FinFET-based circuits and I will share some key features of this simulator. I will highlight the importance of exploring device-circuit interactions and show how technology-circuit co-optimization leads to expansion of the design space of 6T SRAMs. We have proposed asymmetric FinFET devices and tri-mode independent gate FinFETs, which achieve mitigation of design conflicts in 6T SRAMs. A detailed discussion on low power robust SRAM design using these devices will be presented. I will also discuss the possibilities of using emerging memory technologies like spin-transfer torque (STT) MRAM in on-chip caches, based on our âdevices to systemsâ simulation framework. I will end my talk by highlighting my future research directions and possibilities in modeling and device-circuit co-design of emerging technologies.
Biography: Sumeet Kumar Gupta received B. Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India in 2006 and M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN in 2008. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. degree at the school of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.
He was an intern at National Semiconductor, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Intel Corporation in
2005, 2007 and 2010, respectively. His research interests include low power variation aware VLSI circuit
design, nano-electronics and spintronics, device-circuit co-design and nano-scale device modeling and
simulations. He has published over 20 articles in refereed journals and conferences.
Mr. Gupta was the recipient of the Magoon Award and the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
from Purdue University in 2007 and Intel PhD Fellowship Award in 2009. He has also received a
certificate of recognition for an outstanding job during the summer internship by Intel Labs and
certificates of merit for excellent academic performance at IIT Delhi.
Host: Professor Viktor K. Prasanna
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Janice Thompson
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. -
Imaging-driven Translational Research: Engineering Solutions for Applications in Neurology
Wed, Feb 22, 2012 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mehul P. Sampat, Ph.D., Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine
Talk Title: Imaging-driven Translational Research: Engineering Solutions for Applications in Neurology
Abstract: The World Health Organization estimates that neurological diseases affect millions of people around the world. Many neurological diseases are difficult to detect in the early stages when molecular and physiological changes are generally subtle. With disease progression, the treatment and care of patients with advanced neurological conditions puts a greater burden on the patient, their families and society.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has evolved as a core tool for the diagnosis, longitudinal monitoring and scientific investigation of a number of neurological disorders. MRI provides a noninvasive assessment of brain structures and a more objective and quantitative measure as compared to clinical scores. However, given the complexity of neurological disorders and the huge volume of imaging data, analyzing this data is very challenging. My research focuses on the development of new engineering solutions to address challenging clinically motivated research questions. Specifically, I aim to: (a) Discover imaging based biomarkers of important disease mechanisms implicated in neurological disorders (b) Apply these biomarkers for longitudinal monitoring and prediction of disease progression and (c) Develop new quantitative imaging-based metrics of drug response and treatment efficacy.
In this talk, I will describe my past, current and future work towards these goals. First, I will describe a project, in which I have shown that regional MRI-based variables can be used to classify patients into the different subtypes of Multiple Sclerosis. A key aspect of this work is that the results from a cross-sectional dataset were tested in an independent longitudinal data set. Then I will describe my investigations on the effects of Multiple Sclerosis on cortical gray matter. The major aims of this work were to compare cortical thickness of patients against healthy controls and to estimate the predictive value of cortical thickness on physical impairment over time. This will be followed by a discussion on the reliability of MRI-derived measurements. I will summarize the results from a new model for assessing and quantifying the sources of variability in MRI derived measurements. A key feature of this work is its flexibility and adaptability, which makes it applicable to study the effect of various factors on any imaging-based quantitative measurement. Finally, I will conclude my talk by presenting my future research directions in (a) extracting biomarkers from Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and (b) developing quantitative imaging based metrics for the evaluation of treatment response and efficacy.
Biography: Dr. Mehul Sampat received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. Following this, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Neurological Imaging at Brigham and Womenâs Hospital and Harvard Medical School. From 2009 to 2010, he was a staff researcher in the Department of Neurology at UCSF. Since January 2011, he has been appointed as a junior faculty member in the Dept. of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine. His research interests include neuro-informatics and biomedical image analysis & pattern recognition. He has published 15 peer-reviewed journal articles and more than 30 conference papers and abstracts. Since 2005, his work has been cited 350 times.
Dr. Sampat received a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program from 2004 to 2006. In 2011, he was awarded approximately 1 million computing hours from the NSF sponsored TeraGrid initiative for performing computational neuro-imaging research.
Host: Prof. Richard Leahy
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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. -
CENG Seminar
Thu, Feb 23, 2012 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Omer Khan, University of Massachusetts, Lowell & Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Talk Title: Mechanisms for Scalable Multicores
Abstract: Todayâs microprocessor is the system, where not only cores and interconnects with varying computational and communication capabilities are being integrated and connected on the same die, but traditional off-chip devices, such as memory controllers, DMA engines and video/graphic accelerators are being integrated on-chip. Spanning embedded, personal, supercomputing, cloud computing, and cyber-physical systems, single-chip multicores are expected to utilize integration and specialization to offer an opportunity for improvement in energy efficiency and processing performance. This talk introduces new architectural mechanisms which enable applications to utilize scalable multicore processors by addressing the question of what models for inter-core communication will result in highest performance, lowest energy consumption, and lowest programmer effort.
I will introduce the Execution Migration Machine (EM²); a thread migration based shared memory architecture that provides speedy access to on-chip distributed cache data by either migrating execution context or via round-trip remote cache accesses. Since only one copy of data is stored on-chip in a Non Uniform Cache Access (NUCA)-style organization, cache coherence and sequential consistency are trivially ensured without the need for complex directory coherence logic and large directories. I will present a one-step, hardware-level migration protocol that is deadlock-free, based on the concept of cores native to a thread. Finally, I will present hardware implementable migration prediction heuristics under this protocol that decide when to migrate or otherwise perform a remote access, and decide what part of the context to carry during a migration. EM² performs better than conventional remote access in a NUCA organization, because it better exploits locality.
Biography: Omer Khan is a Research Affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. During 2009-11, he was a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2009. His teaching and research interests can be generalized to the field of computer architecture, digital system design and VLSI, and he has authored numerous papers in these areas. He also has more than seven years of industry experience at leading computer and semiconductor companies, Motorola (now Freescale) and Intel. He is a member of the IEEE.
Host: Prof. Sandeep Gupta
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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. -
Unique Word Prefix OFDM: An Overview
Fri, Feb 24, 2012 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Johannes Huber, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
Talk Title: Unique Word Prefix OFDM: An Overview
Abstract: In unique word OFDM (UW-OFDM), cyclic prefixes (CP) of usual OFDM are replaced by a deterministic sequence, the unique word (UW), for conversion of linear convolution due to a dispersive channel into cyclic convolution. This fixed UW may be employed for synchronization and/or channel estimation purposes etc. at the receiver side. In order to generate space for the UW, a block of zeros is created in time domain by means of appropriately loading of redundant subcarriers. By this, a systematic complex number Reed Solomon (RS) code construction is inherently introduced along the subcarriers which additionally can be exploited at the receiver by means of Bayesian linear data estimation (LMMSE) or decision-directed methods (SIC, Noise Prediction). A remaining problem in the UW-OFDM concept is the fact that the energy on the redundant subcarrier symbols contributes disproportionately to average symbol energy. Two methods for a reduction of this redundant energy are proposed, i.e. allowing some small systematic noise in the guard interval and spreading of redundant energy over all subcarrier symbols by which a nonsystematic complex number RS code construction is introduced. Numerical results and comparisons to usual CP-OFDM are presented for the example 802.11a WLAN standard which illustrate benefits of UW-OFDM.
Biography: Johannes Huber received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany in 1977. From 1977 to 1982 he was research assistant at the Lehrstuhl für Nachrichtentechnik of the Universität der Bundeswehr München, Munich, from which he received the Dr.-Ing. degree with a thesis on coding for channels with memory. From 1982 to 1990, he was an Akademischer Oberrat at the Universität der Bundeswehr München, Munich and received the Dr.-Ing. habil. degree with a thesis on trellis coded modulation. In 1991 he joined the IBM Research Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland. He is currently a Professor at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He is a former: dean for student affairs, chairman of the department of electrical, electronic, and communication engineering and dean of the Technical Faculty. Dr. Huber is a Fellow of the IEEE, has served two terms on the Board of Governors for the IEEE Information Theory Society (1999-2001,2004-2006. In 2008, he was appointed a corresponding fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Since 2009, Dr. Huber is an ordinary fellow of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Dr. Huber has held editorial positions for the IEEE Transactions on Communications and the International Journal on Electronics and Communications for which he has also served as editor-in-chief. Johannes Huber is author and co-author of textbooks on trellis coding and information combining. He has published more than 220 papers in international journals or conference records. Papers authored or co-authored by Johannes Huber were awarded the best paper award of the German Society of Information Technology (ITG) in 1988, 2000, and 2006. He received the Vodafone award for innovations in mobile communications 2004.
Host: Prof. Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, x04667
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 222
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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. -
Advances in Clouds and Their Application to Data Intensive Problems
Fri, Feb 24, 2012 @ 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Geoffrey Fox, Distinguished Chair Professor, School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
Talk Title: Advances in Clouds and Their Application to Data Intensive Problems
Abstract: We introduce clouds and discuss the characteristics of problems that run well on them. We try to answer when you need your own cluster; when you need a Grid; when a national supercomputer; and when a cloud. We compare "academic" and commercial clouds and the experience on FutureGrid with Nimbus, Eucalyptus, OpenStack and OpenNebula. We look at programming models especially MapReduce and Iterative Mapreduce and their use on data analytics. We compare with an Internet of Things application with a Sensor Grid controlled by a cloud infrastructure.
Biography: Fox received a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University and is now distinguished professor of Informatics and Computing, and Physics at Indiana University where he is director of the Digital Science Center and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the School of Informatics and Computing. He previously held positions at Caltech, Syracuse University and Florida State University. He has supervised the PhD of 62 students and published over 600 papers in physics and computer science with a hindex of 61 and over 18700 citations. He currently works in applying computer science to Bioinformatics, Defense, Earthquake and Ice-sheet Science, Particle Physics and Chemical Informatics. He is principal investigator of FutureGrid â a facility to enable development of new approaches to computing. He is involved in several projects to enhance the capabilities of Minority Serving Institutions.
Host: Professor Kai Hwang
Location: Hedco Petroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Janice Thompson
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. -
Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Feb 24, 2012 @ 02:00 PM - 03:50 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ramesh Harjani, University of Minnesota
Talk Title: Analog Circuits for Digital Systems
Host: Hossein Hashemi
Location: Mark Taper Hall Of Humanities (THH) - 112
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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. -
Theoretical Foundations of Multi-Core Systems Design: A Dynamical Systems Perspective
Tue, Feb 28, 2012 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Paul Bogdan, Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Theoretical Foundations of Multi-Core Systems Design: A Dynamical Systems Perspective
Abstract: Recent advances in CMOS technology enable the integration of tens and soon thousands of heterogeneous processing cores communicating via the Networks-on-Chip (NoC) paradigm. Many of the modeling and optimization approaches based on queuing theory have ignored important traffic characteristics (e.g., non-stationarity, fractality) that can pose serious challenges such as buffer overflows or deadline missing. Under these circumstances, it is crucial to take into account traffic characterization for both dynamic and static NoC optimization.
In this presentation, I will show that a statistical physics inspired approach designed to capture NoC traffic characteristics via a dynamical master equation can provide a viable solution for solving the above-mentioned problems. Compared to existing Markovian models, this radically new approach facilitates a more accurate evaluation of various performance metrics and reshapes the space models used for the online optimization of communication infrastructures. Starting from fractal state-space models of NoC traffic, I formulate the power and peak temperature management of heterogeneous NoCs as a constrained finite horizon fractal optimal control problem. Towards this end, I show that fractal characteristics can be accounted for via fractional state space models and that the online controller can be efficiently synthesized via linear programming. This approach not only contributes to significant power savings, but it also opens new avenues for the dynamic optimization of large-scale systems exhibiting fractal dynamics.
This statistical physics approach to dynamic processes taking place on networked architectures has many practical applications ranging from multi-core systems power management, to bacteria propelled micro-robotic swarms, green transportation via vehicular traffic optimization, and regenerative medicine.
Biography: Paul Bogdan received his BSc degree in Automatic Control and Computer Science from the âPolitehnicaâ University of Bucharest and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He was awarded the Roberto Rocca PhD Fellowship. His research interests include performance analysis and design methodologies for multicore systems, the theoretical foundations of cyber-physical systems, the modeling and analysis of bio-inspired computing, and the applications of statistical physics to biological systems and regenerative medicine.
Host: Massoud Pedram
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. -
Low-Complexity Equalization for Multi-scale Multi-lag OFDM Channels
Tue, Feb 28, 2012 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Zijian Tang, Research Scientist of TNO the Hague, the Netherlands
Talk Title: Low-Complexity Equalization for Multi-scale Multi-lag OFDM Channels
Abstract: We consider an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission scheme over wideband underwater acoustic channels, where the propagation paths can experience distinct Doppler effects (manifested in signal scales) and time of arrivals (manifested in delays). We capture such an effect in this paper with a multi-scale multi-lag (MSML) model, and show that the resulting frequency-domain MSML-OFDM channel is subject to inter-carrier interference (ICI), whose amount differs per subcarrier. The corresponding channel matrix can still be approximated as highly sparse, but lacks a specific structure that can optimally be exploited by those low-complexity equalizers proposed for narrowband channels. In this paper, we propose to use the conjugate gradient (CG) algorithm to equalize the channel iteratively. The suitability of the preconditioning technique, that often accompanies the CG to accelerate the convergence, is discussed for the MSML-OFDM channel. We show that in order for the preconditioner to function properly, optimal resampling is indispensable.
Biography: Zijian Tang received the MSc in electrical engineering and the PhD degree from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in 2003 and 2007, respectively. After working with Mathworks for one year, he joined the Sonar Group at Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) in 2008 as a research scientist, where the research area covers underwater acoustic communications, anti-submarine warfare, marine mammal detection etc. Since 2010, he has also been holding a (part-time) research fellow position at the Network & Circuits Group of TU Delft. Zijian Tang is the recipient of the best student paper award (honourable mention) at ICASSP 2007, and was nominated to the Simon Stevin Gezel prize in 2008.
Host: Prof. Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, x04667
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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. -
Geometry as a Prior in Signal Processing
Wed, Feb 29, 2012 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yuejie Chi, Ph.D., Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University
Talk Title: Geometry as a Prior in Signal Processing
Abstract: My theme is that geometry provides a compressive representation of the worlds that surround us. I will present examples of waveform design in radar and communications where geometric structure is used to probe the physical world more precisely. I will present applications to mobile healthcare where the focus is preserving diagnostic content in wireless Electrocardiogram monitoring using body area networks. When signals of interest live in a low dimensional subspace that evolves over time I will derive a new algorithm (PETRELS) that is able to track the subspace from incomplete data and then demonstrate improvements to Direction of Arrival Estimation in array processing. Finally I will address mismatch between the actual and the assumed geometry which limits the opportunity to simplify signal representation and reduce the complexity of signal processing.
Biography: Yuejie Chi is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, advised by Professor Robert Calderbank. She received her B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University 2007 and her M.A. from Princeton University in 2009. She has interned with the Machine Learning Group at Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab in Cambridge, MA in 2011 and with the Mobile Health Group at Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego, CA in 2010, where she won a Roberto Padovani Scholarship. Her research interests include statistical signal processing, high-dimensional data analysis, machine learning and her work is inspired by applications to communications, networks, wireless healthcare, sensing and image processing.
Host: Professor C.C. Jay Kuo
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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. -
Signal Processing for Next-Generation Sequencing and Biosensing
Wed, Feb 29, 2012 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Haris Vikalo, University of Texas at Austin
Talk Title: Signal Processing for Next-Generation Sequencing and Biosensing
Abstract: Next-generation DNA sequencing technology will help determine an individual's susceptibility to a broad range of chronic and acute diseases or disorders, enable the discovery and clinical testing of new pharmaceutical products, and generally personalize and improve the delivery of health care. In this talk, I will discuss the use of concepts from signal processing in the acquisition and analysis of next-generation sequencing data. Following a brief overview of state-of-the-art sequencing technology, I will present some recent results on modeling, optimal base calling, error correction, and analytical characterization of the achievable performance of sequencing-by-synthesis. The results demonstrate beneficial effects of the developed base calling and error correction techniques on downstream applications. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss signal processing aspects of real-time affinity biosensors which are capable of temporally sampling the process of binding between molecular targets and their probes. The results on modeling, inference, and limits of performance demonstrate significant performance improvements over conventional affinity biosensors.
Biography: Haris Vikalo received the B.S. degree from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, in 1995, the M.S. degree from Lehigh University in 1997, and the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in 2003, all in electrical engineering. He held a short-term appointment at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, in the summer of 1999. From January 2003 to July 2003 he was a Postdoctoral Researcher, and from July 2003 to August 2007 he was an Associate Scientist at the California Institute of Technology. Since September 2007, he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of Texas at Austin, where he is currently an Assistant Professor. He is a recipient of the 2009 National Science Foundation Career Award. His research interests include genomic signal processing, stochastic signal processing, and communications.
Host: Prof. Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, x04667
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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.
