SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
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Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Wed, Feb 01, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Georgios Fainekos, Associate Professor, Arizona State University (ASU)
Talk Title: Beyond Requirements Falsification: Semi-formal methods and tools for the analysis of Cyber-Physical Systems
Abstract: Correct-by-design synthesis methods for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are still in their infancy for CPS with complex physical dynamics. For that reason, a combination of design theories for simpler systems and/or ad-hoc design approaches are utilized. Hence, numerous design and implementation errors are discovered while CPS are operational in the field. Such errors can have catastrophic effects to human life and to the economy. Over the last few years, requirements guided falsification methods have proven to be a practical approach to the verification problem of industrial size CPS. However, requirements falsification is just one component of the necessary tools for the development of safe and reliable CPS. In this talk, we provide an overview of our research in providing support for all the stages of the development for CPS, from formal requirements elicitation and mining to system conformance to on-line monitoring. Most of our methods have been implemented in a Matlab (TM) toolbox called S-TaLiRo (System's TemporAl LogIc Robustness). Finally, in this talk, we demonstrate that S-TaLiRo can provide answers to challenge problems from the automotive industry.
Biography: Georgios Fainekos is an Associate Professor at the School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering (SCIDSE) at Arizona State University (ASU). He is director of the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Lab and he is currently affiliated with the NSF I/UCR Center for Embedded Systems (CES) at ASU. He received his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 where he was affiliated with the GRASP laboratory. He holds a Diploma degree (B.Sc. & M.Sc.) in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens and an M.Sc. degree in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining ASU, he held a Postdoctoral Researcher position at NEC Laboratories America in the System Analysis & Verification Group. He is currently working on Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and robotics. In particular, his expertise is on formal methods, logic, artificial intelligence, optimization and control theory. His research has applications on automotive systems, medical devices, autonomous (ground and aerial) robots and human-robot interaction (HRI). In 2013, Dr. Fainekos received the NSF CAREER award. He was also recipient of the SCIDSE Best Researcher Junior Faculty award for 2013 and of the 2008 Frank Anger Memorial ACM SIGBED/SIGSOFT Student Award. Two of his conference papers have been nominated for student best paper awards.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 105
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. -
MHI CommNetS Seminar
Wed, Feb 01, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Nikolai Matni, Caltech
Talk Title: A system level approach to controller synthesis
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Biological and advanced cyberphysical control systems often have limited, sparse, uncertain, and distributed communication and computing in addition to sensing and actuation. Fortunately, the corresponding plants and performance requirements are also sparse and structured, and this must be exploited to make constrained controller design feasible and tractable. We introduce a new "system level" (SL) approach involving three complementary SL elements. System Level Parameterizations (SLPs) generalize state space and Youla parameterizations of all stabilizing controllers and the responses they achieve, and combine with System Level Constraints (SLCs) to parameterize the largest known class of constrained stabilizing controllers that admit a convex characterization, generalizing quadratic invariance. SLPs also lead to a generalization of detectability and stabilizability, suggesting the existence of a rich separation structure, that when combined with SLCs, is naturally applicable to structurally constrained controllers and systems. We further provide a catalog of useful SLCs, most importantly including sparsity, delay, and locality constraints on both communication and computing internal to the controller, and external system performance. The resulting System Level Synthesis (SLS) problems that arise define the broadest known class of constrained optimal control problems that can be solved using convex programming. We end with an example that illustrates how this system level approach can systematically explore tradeoffs in controller performance, robustness, and synthesis/implementation complexity. This is joint work with Yuh-Shyang Wang and John C. Doyle at Caltech.
Biography: Nikolai is a postdoctoral scholar in Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. He received the B.A.Sc. and M.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, and the Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology in June 2016. His research interests broadly encompass the use of layering, dynamics, control and optimization in the design and analysis of complex cyber-physical systems; current application areas include software defined networking and sensorimotor control.
Host: Prof. Insoon Yang
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. -
USC Physics Seminar, Eli Kapon, Friday, February 3, 2017 in SSL 150 @ 2:00pm
Fri, Feb 03, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Eli Kapon, Laboratory of Physics of Nanostructures, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
Talk Title: Quantum Photonics with Ordered Quantum Dot and Quantum Wire Systems
Abstract: Quantum wire (QWR) and quantum dot (QD) systems offer means for tailoring the electronic structure of semiconductors thanks to multi-dimensional quantum confinement. By placing them in confined photonic structures (waveguides, cavities) it is possible to tailor light-matter interaction via the introduced modifications in the density of states of excitons and photons. We review the technology of ordered QWR and QD structures grown by metallolrganic vapor phase epitaxy on patterned substrates and their integration with photonic components. Tailoring exciton wavefunctions, controlling their recombination dynamics, and observing cavity quantum electrodynamic effects in the integrated structures are described. Applications in quantum information technology and ultralow threshold lasers are discussed.
Biography: Eli Kapon received his Ph.D. in physics from Tel Aviv University, Israel in 1982. He then spent two years at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, as a Chaim Weizmann Research Fellow, and then nine years at Bellcore, New Jersey, as member of technical staff and District Manager. Since 1993 he has been Professor of Physics of Nanostructures at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where he heads the Laboratory of Physics of Nanostructures. In 1999-2000 he was a Sackler Scholar at the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies in Tel Aviv University, Israel. During that period he helped establishing the Tel Aviv University Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and served as its first Director from 2000 to 2002. In 2001 he founded the start up BeamExpress, serving as its Chief Scientist. His research interests include quantum- and nano-photonics, low-dimensional semiconductors, and vertical cavity semiconductor lasers. Prof. Kapon is Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Physical Society of America, a recipient of a 2007 Humboldt Research Award, and a Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer for 2105-2017.
Host: Physics Seminar, Quantum Information - Condensed Matter - Biophysics
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. -
Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series on Integrated Systems
Fri, Feb 03, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Vivienne Sze, Professor at MIT
Talk Title: Energy-Efficient Hardware for Embedded Vision and Deep Convolutional Neural Network
Host: Prof. Dina Reda El-Damak
More Information: MHI Seminar Series IS - Vivienne Sze.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jenny Lin
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. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Mon, Feb 06, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Karl Henrik Johansson, Professor, KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Talk Title: Collaborative Road Freight Transport
Abstract: Freight transportation is of outmost importance for our society. Road transporting accounts for about 26% of all energy consumption and 18% of greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union. Goods transport in the EU amounts to 3.5 trillion tonne-km per year with 3 million people employed in this sector, whereas people transport amounts to 6.5 trillion passenger-km with 2 million employees. Despite the influence the transportation system has on our energy consumption and the environment, road goods transportation is mainly done by individual long-haulage trucks with no real-time coordination or global optimization. In this talk, we will discuss how modern information and communication technology supports a cyber-physical transportation system architecture with an integrated logistic system coordinating fleets of trucks traveling together in vehicle platoons. From the reduced air drag, platooning trucks traveling close together can save more than 10% of their fuel consumption. Control and estimation challenges and solutions on various level of this transportation system will be presented. It will be argued that a system architecture utilizing vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication enable optimal and safe control of individual trucks as well as optimised vehicle fleet collaborations and new markets. Extensive experiments done on European highways will illustrate system performance and safety requirements. The presentation will be based on joint work over the last ten years with collaborators at KTH and at the truck manufacturer Scania.
Biography: Karl H. Johansson is Director of the Stockholm Strategic Research Area ICT The Next Generation and Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He received MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Lund University. He has held visiting positions at UC Berkeley, Caltech, NTU, HKUST Institute of Advanced Studies, and NTNU. His research interests are in networked control systems, cyber-physical systems, and applications in transportation, energy, and automation. He is a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society Board of Governors and the European Control Association Council. He has received several best paper awards and other distinctions, including a ten-year Wallenberg Scholar Grant, a Senior Researcher Position with the Swedish Research Council, and Future Research Leader Award from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. He is Fellow of the IEEE and IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.
Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
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. -
Neuromorphic Systems to Reverse Engineer Reflex Function
Thu, Feb 09, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Professor Francisco Valero-Cuevas, USC
Talk Title: Neuromorphic Systems to Reverse Engineer Reflex Function
Abstract: The objective of this work is to build a neuromorphic robotic system that can interact with the physical world by implementing neuromechanical principles. It is a faithful implementation of the spinal circuitry responsible for the afferentation of muscles and is capable of producing both normal and pathological functions.
We used state-of-the-art models of muscle spindle mechanoreceptors with fusimotor drive, monosynaptic circuitry of the stretch reflex, and alpha motoneuron recruitment and rate coding. This multi-scale, hybrid system driven by populations of 1024 spiking neurons, emulated the physiological characteristics of the afferented mammalian muscles. We implemented these models on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) which are capable of running these complex computations in real-time. The FPGAs control the forces of two muscles acting on a joint via long tendons. We performed ramp-and-hold perturbations and systematically explored a range of muscle spindle gains (fusimotor drive) to characterize the stretch reflex response in different phases of the perturbation. Finally, we explored the fidelity of four models for isometric muscle force production by testing their responses to rate-coding using spike trains and produced force ramps.
This autonomous integrated system was self-stable and the closed-loop behavior of populations of muscle spindles, alpha and gamma motoneurones, and muscle fibers emulated muscle tone and function. Sweeping the range of muscle spindle gains provided us with a subset of values that produced tenable physiological and pathological responses. Moreover, isometric force generation revealed that the dynamic response in the tendons is very sensitive to tendon elasticity, especially at high firing rates.
This hybrid, neuromorphic, neuromechanical system is a precursor to neuromorphic robotic systems. It provides a platform to study healthy function and the potential spinal and/or supraspinal sources of pathologic behavior.
Biography: I attended Swarthmore College from 1984-88 where I obtained a BS degree in Engineering. After spending a year in the Indian subcontinent as a Thomas J Watson Fellow, I joined Queen's University in Ontario and worked with Dr. Carolyn Small. The research for my Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering at Queen's focused on developing non-invasive methods to estimate the kinematic integrity of the wrist joint.
In 1991, I joined the doctoral program in the Design Division of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford University. I worked with Dr. Felix Zajac developing a realistic biomechanical model of the human digits. This research, done at the Rehabilitation R & D Center in Palo Alto, focused on predicting optimal coordination patterns of finger musculature during static force production.
After completing my doctoral degree in 1997, I joined the core faculty of the Biomechanical Engineering Division at Stanford University as a Research Associate and Lecturer. In 1999, I joined the faculty of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University as Assistant Professor, and was tenured in 2005. In 2007, I joined the faculty at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the Division of Biokinesiology & Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California as Associate Professor; where I was promoted to Full Professor in 2011. In 2013 I was elected Senior Member of the IEEE, and in 2014 to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineers.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Thu, Feb 09, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Justinian Rosca , Siemens Corporate Technology, Princeton, NJ
Talk Title: Synchronizing the Real and Digital Worlds: Lessons from Autonomous Cars
Abstract: Computational estimation problems for real-world applications are rife with myriad sources of uncertainty from noise, sensor inaccuracies, incompleteness of the data, unmeasured effects, calibration errors, to physical principles not modeled in computation. We are interested in inference and reasoning frameworks with capabilities for characterizing and handling uncertainty throughout the computational process in all phases of the unified digital twin of a cyber physical system.
In this talk I present examples from my research on uncertainty handling for two problems. Each deals with a different phase for building the digital twin of an automated system, such as an autonomously driven connected car. Automated vehicle technology senses the driving environment and operates a vehicle with limited or even without human input. Digital twins offer the potential to unify models across the lifecycle phases of a complex cyber physical system, from design (CAD models), engineering (CAE models), production (CAM and simulation models), to operation and maintenance (PHM and reliability models).
The first use case is from the engineering phase of an autonomous vehicle that drives safely through intersections. Simulation is a powerful cost-effective method for developing, testing, and evaluating various components of new technologies, where a limited initial market penetration and unknown human behavioral responses are the status-quo. Realistic modeling of how connected vehicles "talk" to each other while moving in traffic is essential for large scale simulations of time-critical applications. However, there is no widely agreed upon physical model for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) over the 75 MHz of spectrum using the IEEE 802.11p standard. How do we sum up and exploit real world measurements of interference, fading, antennas, weather, environment type, vehicle movement and traffic density, which are difficult to characterize and rich in uncertainty at all levels? Brought into simulation, these will affect the very algorithms that control the vehicle and acquire new data. Therefore, we bring data from the real world into the digital twin to affect the design and engineering phases and vet the application on a large scale. At the other end of the digital twin, the second use case is about edge intelligence in a vehicle perpetually connected to its physical world through hundreds of sensors and communication links, which offer fast analogue and digital data to be exploited in understanding the patterns of operation for machine health management and ultimately, for control. Again we face the challenge of processing a river of data and reasoning with uncertainty pro-actively about the past and the future, to explain system dynamics, gain immediate insights for control, and connect to the prior lifecycle phases of design and engineering.
Biography: Justinian Rosca is Senior Key Expert of Siemens Corp., Corporate Technology in Princeton NJ, where he has been managing research and innovation since 1999. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Rochester, NY. He also holds the M.S. degree in Computers and Control Engineering from Polytechnic University Bucharest. He was Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington, 2008-2011, and obtained a certificate in executive management for innovation, from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business.
Dr. Rosca's primary research interests span sensing and communication, statistical signal processing, machine learning, probabilistic inference, and artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on embedded intelligence in autonomous systems. Dr. Rosca holds close to 50 patents, 100 publications in the areas of signal processing, machine learning, and cyber-physical systems, and co-authored two books in mathematics and signal processing. Several of his innovations are at the foundation of Siemens' multi-channel digital hearing aids technology, and affect the quality of hearing for millions of people worldwide. His scientific contributions were transferred into a variety of products and systems such as microphone array technologies for hearing aids and mobile phones, adaptive multimedia wireless network management, traffic services for connected vehicles, and edge analytics in industry, and earned him multiple Siemens business unit awards. He served as program chair of the 6th Independent Component Analysis and Blind Signal Separation International Conference, chair of the Neural Information and Processing Systems workshop on Sparse Representations in Signal Processing, and recently as chair of the Data Challenge 2015 and 2016 competitions of the Prognostics and Health Management Society.
Host: Paul Bogdan
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. -
PhD Defense: Analysis and Modeling of Multi-Level Dynamics of Multimodal Behavior in Affective Human Interactions
Thu, Feb 09, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Zhaojun Yang, University of Southern California, PhD Candidate
Talk Title: Analysis and Modeling of Multi-Level Dynamics of Multimodal Behavior in Affective Human Interactions
Abstract: Human communication is a dynamical and interactive process that is established on a common ground of conveying emotions, achieving the interaction goals and sharing mutual interests of the interaction participants. Such an interactive process naturally induces a multi-level dynamical flow along various verbal and nonverbal behavior dimensions of spoken words, speech prosody, body gestures, and facial expressions. As one of the major components that shape the structure of social interactions, emotions greatly affect the multi-level dynamics of multimodal behavior throughout the course of an interaction. This thesis, from three perspectives, explores computational methodologies to understand, analyze and model human behaviors dynamics that relate to and arise from affective processes underlying human interactions: 1) modeling the dynamics of body gesture expression of emotions; 2) studying how multimodal behavior channels, speech and body particularly, of an individual dynamically interact with one another towards emotion expression; and 3) exploring interpersonal coordination of multimodal behavior induced in human interactions.
Defense committee: Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan (Chair), Prof. C.-C. Jay Kuo, Prof. Gayla Margolin (Outside member)
Biography: Zhaojun Yang is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). She received her B.E. Degree from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) 2009 and M.Phil. Degree from Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) 2011. She was awarded with the USC Annenberg Fellowship (2011-2015). Her work (with S. S. Narayanan) has won the Best Student Paper Award at IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2016. Her research interests include Affective Computing, Machine Learning, and Human-centered multimodal signal processing.
Host: Shrikanth Narayanan
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 320
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-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. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Mon, Feb 13, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Michael Shlesinger, Office of Naval Research
Talk Title: Pitfalls and Paradoxes in the History of Probability Theory
Abstract: This lecture traces the history of probability theory from the throwing of bones, sticks, and dice to modern times. Early 18th century books, Jacob Bernouill's "The Art of Conjecturing" and Abraham DeMoivre's "The Doctrine of Chances" were rich with new mathematics, insight and gambling odds. Progress was often made by confronting paradoxes. The first of these confused probabilities with expectations and was explained in the Pascal-Fermat letters of 1654. The St. Petersburg Paradox involved a distribution with an infinite first moment, and Levy discovered a whole class of probabilities with infinite moments that have found a surprising utility in physics connected to fractals. Through conditional probabilities, Bayes introduced what later has become hypothesis testing. Arriving at two different answers, the Bertrand paradox involved measure theory for continuous probabilities, Poisson discovered that adding random variables need not always produce the Gaussian, and Daniel Bernoulli and D'Alembert argued over the probabilities for the safety of smallpox vaccinations. Using these and other anecdotes, this lecture discusses vignettes that have brought us to today's widespread use of probability and statistics.
Biography: Dr. Michael Shlesinger manages the nonlinear physics program at the Office of Naval Research. He has published over 200 scientific papers on topics in stochastic processes, glassy materials, proteins, neurons, and nonlinear dynamics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was a Divisional Associate Editor of the Physical Review Letters. In 2006 he received ONR's Saalfeld Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Science, and earlier the federal government's Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Senior Professionals, and the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award. He held the Kinnear Chair in Physics at the USNA, was the Michelson Lecturer at the USNA, the Regents' Lecturer at UCSD and received the U. Maryland's Distinguished Postdoc Alum award. His Ph. D., in Physics, is from the U. of Rochester in 1975, and his 1970 B.S. in Mathematics and Physics is from SUNY Stony Brook.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
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. -
MHI CommNetS seminar
Wed, Feb 15, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Marcella M. Gomez, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Delays in biological networks and feedback design
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Gene regulatory networks lie at the crux of life and, despite rapidly evolving tools in synthetic biology, our ability to replicate the robustness of these systems remains a challenge. We have not been able to fully understand and, hence, design effective feedback mechanisms. I present work towards said challenge through extensions in control and dynamical systems lending to an effective network design in the presence of delays, an adversarial facet of biology.
In this talk I focus on the role of delays in biological networks. I show how understanding the effects of delays and stochastic processes on gene expression dynamics can be used to design effective controllers for stability. First, I present a stability condition for stochastic linear systems with identically, independently, distributed stochastic delays. In an application to a single gene oscillator, I demonstrate the stabilizing effects of increasing the relative variance of the delay uncertainty. Using the insight gained from this analysis along with inspiration from nature, I present a stabilizing controller for the single gene oscillator based on adding a larger delay in parallel. A generalized delay-based feedback design approach shows this architecture to be near optimal. In summary, through a deeper understanding of the effects of delays on dynamics, I arrive at an effective stabilizing controller in a system with large delays, where traditional methods in controls cannot be used for feedback design.
Biography: Marcella M. Gomez is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She received her bachelors from UC Berkeley in 2008 and her PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 2015, both in Mechanical Engineering. Her research interests lie in developing synergistic methods combining control and dynamical systems with synthetic biology for the advancement in understanding and designing of complex genetic networks.
Host: Prof. Paul Bogdan
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. -
Munushian Keynote Lecture - William E. Moerner, Friday, February 17th at 2:00pm in GER124
Fri, Feb 17, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. William E. Moerner - Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Foundation (2014), Stanford University
Talk Title: The Story of Photonics and Single Molecules, from Early Spectroscopy in Solids, to Super-Resolution Nanoscopy in Cells and Beyond
Abstract: More than 25 years ago, low temperature experiments aimed at establishing the ultimate limits to optical storage in solids led to the first optical detection and spectroscopy of a single molecule in the condensed phase. At this unexplored ultimate limit, many surprises occurred where single molecules showed both spontaneous changes (blinking) and light-driven control of emission, properties that were also observed in 1997 at room temperature with single green fluorescent protein variants. In 2006, PALM and subsequent approaches showed that the optical diffraction limit of ~200 nm can be circumvented to achieve super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, or nanoscopy, with relatively nonperturbative visible light. Essential to this is the combination of single-molecule fluorescence imaging with active control of the emitting concentration and sequential localization of single fluorophores decorating a structure. Super-resolution microscopy has opened up a new frontier in which biological structures and behavior can be observed in live cells with resolutions down to 20-40 nm and below. Examples range from protein superstructures in bacteria to bands in actin filaments to details of the shapes of amyloid fibrils and much more. Current methods development research addresses ways to extract more information from each single molecule such as 3D position and orientation, and to assure not only precision, but also accuracy. Still, it is worth noting that in spite of all the interest in super-resolution, even in the "conventional" single-molecule tracking regime where the motions of individual biomolecules are recorded in solution or in cells rather than the shapes of extended structures, much can still be learned about biological processes when ensemble averaging is removed.
Biography: William Moerner is an American physical chemist and chemical physicist with current work in the biophysics and imaging of single molecules. He is credited with achieving the first optical detection and spectroscopy of a single molecule in condensed phases, along with his postdoc, Lothar Kador. Optical study of single molecules has subsequently become a widely used single-molecule experiment in chemistry, physics and biology. In 2014 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
He attended Washington University in St. Louis for undergraduate studies as an Alexander S. Langsdorf Engineering Fellow, and obtained three degrees: a B.S. in physics with Final Honors, a B.S. in electrical engineering with Final Honors, and an A.B. in mathematics summa cum laude in 1975. This was followed by graduate study, partially supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, at Cornell University in the group of Albert J. Sievers III. Here he received an M.S. degree and a Ph.D. degree in physics in 1978 and 1982, respectively.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
More Info: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian-lecture
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 124
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian-lecture
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. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Wed, Feb 22, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sanjit A. Seshia , Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Formal Inductive Synthesis for Cyber-Physical Systems
Abstract: Cyber-physical systems are computational systems tightly integrated with physical processes. Examples include modern automobiles,fly-by-wire aircraft, software-controlled medical devices, robots, and many more. In recent times, these systems have exploded in complexity due to the growing amount of software and networking integrated into physical environments via real-time control loops. At the same time, they typically must be designed with strong verifiable guarantees.
In this talk, I will describe how formal inductive synthesis --- algorithmic synthesis from examples with formal guarantees --- can be brought to bear on some important problems in the modeling, design, and analysis of cyber-physical systems. Both theory and industrial case studies will be discussed, with a special focus on the automotive domain.
Biography: Sanjit A. Seshia is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. His research interests are in dependable computing and computational logic, with a current focus on applying automated formal methods to problems in cyber-physical systems, computer security, electronic design automation, and synthetic biology. His Ph.D. thesis work on the UCLID verifier and decision procedure helped pioneer the area of satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) and SMT-based verification. He is co-author of a widely-used textbook on embedded systems and has led the development of technologies for cyber-physical systems education based on formal methods. His awards and honors include a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Frederick Emmons Terman Award for contributions to electrical engineering and computer science education, and the School of Computer Science Distinguished Dissertation Award at Carnegie Mellon University.
Host: Pierluigi Nuzzo
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
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. -
MHI CommNetS seminar
Wed, Feb 22, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Ram Vasudevan, University of Michigan
Talk Title: Infinite Dimensional Optimization for Safety Critical Human-in-the-Loop Systems
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: A predominant portion of healthcare spending is devoted to the medical care of unintentional injuries, such as those arising from car accidents or falls. By incorporating automation to predict the likelihood of injury and to design and verify personalized treatment, the burden on healthcare professionals, and thus the overall cost of treatment, can be greatly reduced. Unfortunately, the adoption of automation has been forestalled due to a lack of computationally tractable tools able to identify models of human interaction with the environment and machines, analyze extracted models for perceived threats to determine when aid is required, and synthesize strategies to increase safety in unforeseen circumstances. To address these issues as part of an emerging systems theory for Human-in-the-Loop Systems (HLS), this talk will describe two new techniques each relying upon a new algorithmic framework for infinite dimensional optimization.
The first technique is a provably convergent hybrid optimal control algorithm that can automatically identify an individual-specific model of locomotion. When applied to a nine person motion capture walking experiment, the models identified by the algorithm revealed morphological and neurological pathologies. The second technique is a scalable convex programming approach for simultaneous reachable set computation and personalized controller synthesis for safety critical HLS. For locomotion, this approach determines a likelihood for falling while constructing an optimal feedback control law to reduce the risk of injury. This tool is able to tractable predict those who are greatest risk of falling in a completely non-invasive manner.
Biography: Ram Vasudevan is an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan with appointments in the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and the University of Michigan's Robotics Program. He received a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and an Honors Degree in Physics in May 2006, an MS degree in Electrical Engineering in May 2009, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering in December 2012 all from the University of California, Berkeley. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral associate in the Locomotion Group at MIT from 2012 till 2014 before joining the University of Michigan in 2015. His research interests include dynamical systems, optimization, and robotics especially to applications involving human interaction with Cyber Physical Systems.
Host: Prof. Insoon Yang
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. -
Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series on Integrated Systems
Fri, Feb 24, 2017 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Yuanxun Ethan Wang, Professor at UCLA
Talk Title: Time-Varying Electromagnetic Devices: Breaking the Fundamental Limits of Passives
Host: Profs. Hossein Hashemi, Mike Chen, Dina El-Damak, and Mahta Moghaddam
More Information: MHI Seminar Series IS - Yuanxun Ethan Wang.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jenny Lin
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. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Mon, Feb 27, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Geir E. Dullerud, Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Statistical Validation and Principle-Based Simulation of Complex Cyber-Controlled Systems
Abstract: The talk will focus on simulation and a computational approach to verification of the hybrid mathematical models that are formed when combining physics-based models with discrete-transition models, such as those which model software algorithms. Namely, the mathematical models that arise when for instance considering Cyberphysical Systems, or the Internet of Things.
In many game theory and filtering problems it is not possible to analytically obtain solutions for statistical properties of systems under study, and in the first part of the talk we will describe our recent work on numerical approaches to obtaining estimates of these properties, and the application of the techniques developed to particle filtering. Monte Carlo simulation of Markov processes allows the numerical estimation of their statistical properties from an ensemble of sample system paths. We present methods for generating reduced-variance path ensembles for the tau-leaping discrete-time simulation algorithm, which allows mean stochastic process dynamics to be estimated with substantially smaller ensemble sizes. Our methods are based on antithetic and stratified sampling of Poisson random variates, and we provide a combination of analytical proofs and numerical evidence for their performance, which can frequently be a 2-3 orders of magnitude improvement over standard Monte Carlo. Application examples will be discussed.
The second part of the talk will concentrate on system verification, and will present a new verification algorithm for continuous-time stochastic hybrid systems, whose specifications are expressed in metric interval temporal logic (MITL), by deploying a novel model reduction method. By partitioning the state space of the hybrid system and computing the optimal transition rates between partitions, we provide a procedure to both reduce the system to a continuous-time Markov chain, and the associated specification formulas. We prove that the unreduced formulas hold (or do not) if the corresponding reduced formula on the Markov chain is robustly true (or false) under certain perturbations. In addition, a stochastic algorithm to complete the verification has been developed. We have extended the approach of this algorithm, and have developed a direct stochastic algorithm for probabilistically verifying a certain hybrid system class, and applied this technique to an extensive benchmark problem with realistic dynamics.
Biography: Geir E. Dullerud is the W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There he is also a member of the Coordinated Science Laboratory, where he is Director of the Decision and Control Laboratory (21 faculty); he is an Affiliate Professor of both Computer Science, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has held visiting positions in Electrical Engineering KTH, Stockholm (2013), and Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University (2005-2006). Earlier he was on faculty in Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo (1996-1998), after being a Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology (1994-1995), in the Control and Dynamical Systems Department. He has published two books: "A Course in Robust Control Theory", Texts in Applied Mathematics, Springer, 2000, and "Control of Uncertain Sampled-data Systems", Birkhauser 1996. His areas of current research interest include convex optimization in control, cyber-physical system security, cooperative robotics, stochastic simulation, and hybrid dynamical systems. In 1999 he received the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, and in 2005 the Xerox Faculty Research Award at UIUC. He is a Fellow of both IEEE (2008) and ASME (2011).
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
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.
