SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
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Munushian Seminar Michael Roukes
Mon, Feb 02, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Michael Roukes, California Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Integrated Neurophotonics: Toward Massively-Parallel Mapping of Brain Activity
Abstract: In 2011, six U.S. scientists from different disciplines banded together, outlined a vision [1], and managed to convince the Obama administration of the unprecedented opportunity that now exists to launch a coordinated, large-scale effort to map brain activity. This culminated in the U.S. BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), which was launched in 2013. Our vision was predicated on the current level of maturity of diverse fields of nanotechnology that, for the first time, can now be coalesced to realize powerful new tools for neuroscience. I will outline the assertions we made, and focus upon our own collaborative efforts toward these goals - at Caltech and beyond - to realize this exciting potential.
[1] Alivisatos A.P., Chun M., Church G.M., Greenspan R.J., Roukes M.L., Yuste R., The Brain Activity Map project and the challenge of functional connectomics. Neuron 74, 970-4 (2012).
Biography: Michael Roukes is the Robert M. Abbey Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology . His scientific interests range from quantum measurement to applied biotechnology - with a unifying theme of the development, very-large-scale integration and application of complex nanostructures. Roukes was the founding Director of Caltech's Kavli Nanoscience Institute (KNI) from 2003-2006. In 2007, he co-founded the Alliance for Nanosystems VLSI (very-large-scale integration) with scientists and engineers at CEA/LETI in Grenoble, which maintains a $B-scale microelectronics research foundry. He then continued as co-director of Caltech's KNI from 2008-2013, when he stepped down to pursue full-time efforts in nanoscience and neuroscience. Concurrent with his Caltech appointment, he has held a Chaire d'Excellence in nanoscience in Grenoble, France since 2008. Among his honors, Roukes is a recipient of the NIH Director's Pioneer Award and has been awarded Chevalier (Knight) dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the Republic of France.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Tue, Feb 03, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Yasamin Mostofi, UC Santa Barbara
Talk Title: Robotics and RF: From X-Ray Vision with WiFi to Communication-Aware Robotics
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: RF signals are everywhere these days. As we go on with our daily lives, we constantly leave our signature on these signals by breaking them. This naturally raises the question of how much information these signals carry about us or, in general, about their environment. For instance, imagine two unmanned vehicles arriving behind thick concrete walls. They have no prior knowledge of the area behind these walls.
But they are able to see every square inch of the invisible area through the walls, fully imaging what is on the other side with high accuracy. Can the robots achieve this with only WiFi signals and no other sensors? As another example, consider the WiFi network of a building. Can it estimate the occupancy level of the building and the spatial concentration of the people with a good accuracy?
In the first part of the talk, I will discuss our latest theoretical and experimental results to achieve these goals. More specifically, I show that it is possible to achieve x-ray vision with only WiFi signals and image details through thick concrete walls. Furthermore, I discuss occupancy estimation where I show how to extract the level of occupancy from WiFi measurements. With the vision of unmanned vehicles becoming part of our everyday society soon, the talk also shows how WiFi signals can give x-ray vision to robots.
In the second part of the talk, I focus on communication-aware robotics. I will start by developing a foundational understanding for the spatial predictability of wireless channels. This allows each robot to go beyond the over-simplified but commonly-used disk model for connectivity, and realistically assess the impact of a motion decision on its link. By utilizing this framework, I will then show how each unmanned vehicle can best co-optimize its communication, sensing and navigation objectives under resource constraints. This co-optimized approach results in a significant performance improvement as I discuss in the talk.
Biography: Yasamin Mostofi received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 1997, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, Stanford, California, in 1999 and 2004, respectively. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Yasamin is the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, the IEEE 2012 Outstanding Engineer Award of Region 6 (more than 10 Western U.S. states), and the 1999 Bellcore fellow-advisor award from Stanford Center for Telecommunications, among other awards. Her research is on mobile sensor networks. Current research thrusts include RF sensing, see-through imaging with WiFi, X-ray vision for robots, communication-aware robotics, and robotic networks. Her research has appeared in several news outlets such as BBC and Engadget.
Host: Prof. Bhaskar Krishnamachari and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS)
Wed, Feb 11, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Yutaka Hori, Caltech
Talk Title: A Control Theoretic Approach to Designing Biochemical Feedback Circuits
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Recent technological advancements have enabled us to construct artificial biochemical networks, or biocircuits, that produce desired dynamic functions such as bistability, oscillations and logic gates by assembling DNA parts. Toward a systematic engineering of complex biological systems, model-based biocircuit design has been increasingly important in recent years. In this talk, we present a control theoretic framework for the systematic design and identification of biocircuits along with experimental results. In the first part of the talk, we introduce a general model representation of biocircuits and provide rigorous theoretical tools for the analysis of biochemical dynamics. The theoretical tools are demonstrated by experimentally designing biochemical oscillator circuits. In the latter half of the talk, we propose a set-based identification method for identifying a set of parameters that all explain time-series experimental data, using a convex relaxation approach. We show, using an existing biocircuit, that the identification method can systematically characterize the uncertainty of parameters. Finally, we discuss how we can integrate the set-based identification method into a robust biocircuit design problem.
Biography: Yutaka Hori received B.E., M.I.Sc.T. and Ph.D. degrees in information science and technology from the University of Tokyo in 2008, 2010 and 2013, respectively. In 2010-2011, he was a visiting student at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is currently a JSPS postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Richard Murray at California Institute of Technology. His research interests lie in feedback control theory of networked dynamical systems and synthetic biology. He is a recipient of Annual Conference Young Authorâs Award at ICROS-SICE International Joint Conference in 2009 and a Finalist of Best Student Paper Award at IEEE Multi-Conference on Systems and Control in 2010 and Best Paper Award at Asian Control Conference in 2011.
Host: Dr. Ashutosh Nayyar and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EE-Electrophysics Seminar
Fri, Feb 13, 2015 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Alberto Tosi and Federica Villa, Politecnico di Milano - Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria
Talk Title: Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes
Abstract: Photon counting is the technique of choice for attaining the ultimate sensitivity in measurements of optical signals. Thanks to the Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting (TCSPC) technique, it is possible to measure optical waveforms with high sensitivity on very fast (picosecond) time scale. Photon counting and timing was introduced and developed with PMTs, but it received new impulse from solid-state detectors, the Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPAD).
SPADs exploit the avalanche phenomenon in a junction with an approach drastically different from the linear amplification of ordinary Avalanche PhotoDiodes (APD). In response to a single photon, a SPAD produces a standard current pulse with macroscopic size and fast rise, which marks the arrival time of the photon with precision of a few tens of picoseconds.
Nowadays, silicon SPADs (both single point and arrays) and InGaAs/InP SPADs are well developed and are commercially available, while new solutions are under development for attaining even better performance.
Silicon SPADs are employed in a wide range of emerging applications in chemistry, biology, medicine, material science, and physics. Commercially-available modules are regularly employed in many experimental setups and proved to be a reliable and high-performance solution for single-photon counting. Recently, gated mode operation of silicon SPADs with very fast rising edge (hundreds of ps) has been successfully exploited in order to widen the dynamic range and speed-up acquisition time in time-resolved measurements.
CMOS SPAD arrays based on smart pixels (that include counting and timing circuitry) are the basis for a single-photon counting cameras with very high frame rate and single-photon sensitivity. Such cameras can be used also for 3D acquisitions thanks to the capability to measure the distance from the objects in the scene.
Recently, remarkable effort has been devoted to the extension of single photon techniques to the near infrared (NIR) spectral range, developing SPADs in InGaAs/InP semiconductors for longer wavelengths, up to 1.6 um. The driving force comes from various application fields, such as: quantum key distribution (QKD) for cryptography in optical fiber communication systems, non-invasive measurement of signals in VLSI chips, eye-safe laser ranging (LIDAR), Raman spectroscopy, Optical Time-Domain Reflectometry (OTDR), PhotoDynamic Therapy (PDT), time-resolved spectroscopy and other fluorescence decay analysis.
Biography: Alberto Tosi was born in Borgomanero, Italy, in 1975. He received the Master's degree in electronics engineering and the Ph.D. degree in information technology engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, in 2001 and 2005, respectively. He has been Associate Professor of Electronics at Politecnico di Milano since 2014. In 2004, he was a student with the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, working on optical testing of CMOS circuits. Currently, he works on silicon, InGaAs/InP and Ge-on-Si single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs). He develops single-point detectors, arrays of SPADs for 2D/3D applications, and related microelectronics and instrumentation.
Federica Villa received the B.Sc. degree in biomedical engineering and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, in 2008, 2010, and 2014, respectively. In 2010, she interned in the Biochemistry Department, University of California, Los Angeles. She is research associate at Politecnico di Milano and her current research interests include designing CMOS SPAD imagers for 2-D imaging of fluorescence decays and 3-D ranging through on-chip direct time-of-flight method, by means of in-pixel time-to-digital converters.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Munushian Seminar
Fri, Feb 13, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Stephen Chou, Princeton University
Talk Title: âNanostructure Engineering -- A Unique Path to Discovery and Innovation"
Abstract: New advances in engineering nanostructures open up a unique path to discovery and innovation as well as commercialization. This is because (a) as nanostructures become smaller than a fundamental physical length scale, conventional theory may no longer apply, leading to new phenomena, new knowledge, and revolutionary products in a broad range of disciplines; and (b) new high-throughput and low-cost nanomanufacturing methods will not only accelerate R&D, but also are essential to turn inventions in laboratories into commercial products.
The presentation will give some examples of the authorâs research; particularly, (i) nanodevices (e.g. nano-transistors, new magnetic data storage paradigm (bit-patterned media), new high-efficiency solar cells and LEDs enhanced by nanoplasmonics, and (ii) path-changing high-throughput manufacturing methods (e.g. nanoimprint and self-perfection by liquefaction (SPEL)).
Biography: Stephen Y. Chou, Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering, head of NanoStructure Laboratory at Princeton University, PhD from MIT (1986), a member of US National Academy of Engineering, and a recipient of other 30 awards. Dr. Chou is recognized as a world leader, pioneer and inventor in a broad range of nanotechnologies. His work and inventions over 30 years have shaped new paths and opened up new fields in nanofabrication, nanoscale devices and materials (electrical, optical, magnetic, biological), and have significantly impacted both academia and industry.
Dr. Chouâs most well-known invention is nanoimprint (a paradigm-shift method for nanofabrication, which has become a large industry and a key corner-stone in todayâs nanomanufacturing in many industries). His other inventions include new nanotransistors/memories, patterned medium (a new paradigm for data storage), new subwavelength optical elemen
Host: EE-Electrophysics
More Info: http://ee.usc.edu/news/munushian/
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: http://ee.usc.edu/news/munushian/
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. -
From Systems to Networks: Theory and Computation for Distributed Predictive Control
Tue, Feb 17, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Melanie Zeilinger, University of California, Berkeley and the Empirical Inference Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Talk Title: From Systems to Networks: Theory and Computation for Distributed Predictive Control
Abstract: The control of a network of interacting dynamical systems is a central challenge for addressing a range of emerging application problems; examples include energy systems balancing a network of generation, load and storage devices, or robotic systems comprising a large number of components or agents. Utilizing the connectivity and interactions in the network by exploiting advances in communication and computation technologies offers the potential for pushing these systems to higher performance while increasing efficiency of operation, which will reduce system over-design and associated costs. However, safety requirements and high system complexity represent key limiting factors for leveraging these new opportunities.
This talk will present some of our recent work that brings high-performance control with hard guarantees on system safety to distributed systems, offering a scalable and modular approach that exploits interconnection effects and flexibly adjusts to network changes. A new framework for plug and play distributed predictive control will be introduced and we will discuss essential theoretical and practical aspects for certifying distributed decision-making based on an optimization-in-the-loop paradigm. We will show how the proposed scheme ensures the fundamental properties of stability and constraint satisfaction of the global system without recourse to any centralized coordination and even in the presence of online network changes, while allowing the control systems to optimize for performance. Application examples in area generation control and grid-aware electric vehicle charging will demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed theory. Lastly, we will address the computational aspects of the framework and present new results for certifying optimization with limited-precision computation or communication.
Biography: Melanie Zeilinger is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Marie Curie fellow in a joint program with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley and the Empirical Inference Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen, Germany. From 2011-2012 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ãcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. She received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich in Switzerland in 2011, and the diploma in Engineering Cybernetics from the University of Stuttgart in Germany in 2006. She conducted her diploma thesis research at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2005-2006. She received the ETH medal for her dissertation in 2012 and was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship for Career Development by the European Commission in 2011. Her research interests are centered around real-time and distributed control and optimization, as well as safe learning-based control, with applications to energy distribution and management systems and human-in-the-loop control.
Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 540, 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. -
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Feb 18, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mingyue Ji, USC
Talk Title: Turning Memory into Bandwidth via Wireless Edge Caching: Fundamental Limits and Practical Challenges
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Video is responsible for 66% of the 100x increase of wireless data traffic predicted in the next few years. Traditional methods for network capacity increase are very costly, and do not exploit the unique features of video. This talk gives a survey of a novel transmission paradigm based on the following two key properties: (i) video shows a high degree of asynchronous content reuse, and (ii) storage is the fastest-increasing quantity in modern hardware. Based on these properties, we suggest caching at wireless edge, namely, caching in helper stations (femto-caching) and/or directly into the user devices. We study two fundamentally different network structures: shared link caching networks and device-to-device (D2D) caching networks.
First, we present results based on network coded multicast delivery and/or D2D transmissions that show a âMooreâs lawâ for throughput: namely, in a certain regime of sufficiently high content reuse and/or sufficiently high aggregate storage capacity (sum of the storage capacity of all the users) in the network, the per-user throughput increases linearly, or even super-linearly with the cache size, and it is independent of the number of users for large network size, despite the fact that these users make independent and individual video files requests, i.e., the system does not exploit the naive broadcasting property of the wireless medium to send the same source to everybody. On the other hand, for both considered networks, we also provide information theoretic converse, by using which, we show that the proposed schemes achieves the order-optimal capacity. Then, we present the practical challenges and limitations of the achievable schemes. To overcome these challenges, for both network structures, we design novel polynomial-time complexity algorithms, which achieves near optimal performance such that they preserve the promised âMooreâs lawâ for throughput under realistic network parameter regimes.
Biography: Mingyue Ji is a final year PhD candidate at Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California (USC). His adviser is Professor Giuseppe Caire, and he is also very fortunate to collaborate with Professor Andreas Molisch during his PhD study. Prior to USC, he worked as a research engineer and finished his Master thesis at the Access Technologies and Signal Processing Group in Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden. He also obtained his Master of Science (MS) Degree in Electrical Engineering at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden, and obtained his Bachelor Degree in Communication Engineering at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China.
Host: Ashutosh Nayyar and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: 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. -
Integrated Systems Seminar
Fri, Feb 20, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Dragan Maksimovic, University of Colorado
Talk Title: Distributed Power Electronics in Photovoltaic Power Systems
Series: Integrated Systems Seminar
Abstract: This talk is focused on power electronics in photovoltaic (PV) solar power systems. State of the art and emerging trends in PV system architectures are addressed, with emphasis on improvements in energy capture, efficiency, reliability, impact on reduced balance of system and installation costs, and increased levels of integration. Architectures based on distributed power electronics, including dc optimizers and microinverters, are highlighted. A new isolated-port system architecture is introduced, based on differential power processing submodule integrated dc-dc converters and simple distributed controls, leading to smart PV panels with integrated power management. It is shown how fine-granularity maximum power point tracking results in substantial improvements in energy capture in PV systems with mismatches due to partial shading, temperature gradients, dirt, tolerances, or ageing. Advantages of distributed differential power processing are verified by simulation and experimental results in representative scenarios, including rooftop and commercial-scale PV solar power systems.
Biography: Prof. Dragan Maksimovic received his Ph.D. degree from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, in 1989. In 1992, he joined the University of Colorado at Boulder where he is currently a Charles V. Schelke Endowed Professor and Director of the Colorado Power Electronics Center (CoPEC) in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. Prof. Maksimovic is a Fellow of the IEEE and serves as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Power Electronics Society. He is co-author of the textbook Fundamentals of Power Electronics, 2nd edition, Springer 2001. His current research interests include power electronics for renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, high frequency power conversion using wide bandgap semiconductors, digital control of switched-mode power converters, as well as analog, digital and mixed-signal integrated circuits for power management applications.
Host: Hosted by Prof. Hossein Hashemi, Prof. Mike Chen, and Prof. Mahta Moghaddam Organized and hosted by Run Chen
More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=915365
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elise Herrera-Green
Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=915365
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. -
Viterbi/Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar
Mon, Feb 23, 2015 @ 11:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Andrei Faraon, Applied Physics, Materials Science and Medical Engineering at California Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Quantum light-matter interfaces based on rare-earthdoped crystals and nano-photonics
Abstract: Quantum light-matter interfaces that reversibly map the quantum state of photons onto the quantum states of atoms, are essential components in the quantum engineering toolbox with applications in quantum communication, computing, and quantum-enabled sensing. In this talk I present our progress towards developing on-chip quantum light-matter interfaces based on nanophotonic resonators fabricated in rare-earthdoped crystals known to exhibit the longest optical and spin coherence times in the solid state. We recently demonstrated coherent control of neodymium (Nd3+) ions coupled to yttrium orthosilicate Y2SiO5 (YSO) photonic crystal nano-beam resonator. The coupling of the Nd3+ 883 nm 4I9/2-4F3/2 transition to the nanoresonator
results in a 40 fold enhancement of the transition rate (Purcell effect), and increased optical absorption (~80%) - adequate for realizing efficient optical quantum memories via cavity impedance matching. Optical coherence times T2 up to 100 μs with low spectral diffusion were measured for ions embedded in
photonic crystals, which are comparable to those observed in unprocessed bulk samples. This indicates that the remarkable coherence properties of REIs are preserved during nanofabrication process. Multi-temporal mode photon storage using stimulated photon echo and atomic frequency comb (AFC) protocols were implemented in these nano-resonators. Our current technology can be readily transferred to Erbium (Er) doped YSO devices, therefore opening the possibility of efficient on-chip optical quantum memory at 1.5 μm telecom wavelength. Integration with superconducting qubits can lead to devices for reversible quantum conversion of optical photons to microwave photons.
Biography: Dr. Andrei Faraon is an Assistant Professor of Applied Physics, Materials Science and Medical Engineering at California Institute of Technology. After earning a B.S. degree in physics with honors in 2004 at California Institute of Technology, he received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and PhD in Applied Physics both from Stanford University in 2009. At Stanford, Dr. Faraon was involved with seminal experiments on quantum optics
using single indium arsenide quantum dots strongly coupled to photonic crystal cavities in gallium arsenide. After earning his PhD, Dr. Faraon spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Hewlett Packard Laboratories. At HP he was involved with pioneering experiments on diamond quantum photonic devices coupled to solid-state spins. He demonstrated the first nano-resonators coupled to single nitrogen vacancy centers in mono-crystalline diamond. Faraon left HP in 2012 to become an Assistant Professor at Caltech. At Caltech, he set up a laboratory specialized in developing nano-photonic technologies for devices that operate close to the fundamental limit of
light-matter interaction. He is focused both on fundamental challenges on how to control the interaction between single atoms and single photons using nano-technologies, and on using nano-photonics to build cutting edge devices for bio-imaging, bio-sensing and photo-voltaic energy harvesting. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award and the AFOSR young investigator award.
Host: Viterbi/MHI
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Computer engineering seminar
Wed, Feb 25, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Farinaz Koushanfar, Rice University
Talk Title: Engineering scalable privacy-preserving big and dense data analytics
Abstract: Data analytics on massive and often sensitive contents regularly arise in various contemporary settings ranging from cloud computing and social networking, to online services, mobile applications, and distributed processing. In this talk, I present novel computer engineering-based solutions that uniquely enable efficient and scalable explorations of the underlying patterns and dependencies present across a complex dataset, with a focus on sensitive privacy-preserving applications. The first part of the talk addresses the challenge of minimizing the computing, storage and communication overhead of the learning algorithms down to the limits of data subspaces and underlying heterogeneous platform. I demonstrate data-aware, domain-specific methodologies that are applicable to a broad class of iterative matrix-based learning algorithms and particularly efficient for challenging datasets with dense dependencies. The new techniques and methods enable optimizing for hardware acceleration as well as real-time stream processing, while they simultaneously benefit the privacy-preserving computing by pushing the limits of costly data analytics to the theoretical bounds. The second portion of the talk discusses novel scalable engineering solutions for privacy preserving computing by Yao's Garbled Circuit (GC) allowing two parties to jointly compute a function while keeping their inputs private. In contrast with the existing (software based) GC methods, I illustrate how scalable and efficient GC computation can be achieved by leveraging a new folded function description and logic synthesis methods along with our created custom libraries and constraints.
Evaluation results of our methodologies show significant improvements in memory footprint, network bandwidth, and the overall computing cost in terms of time and energy (power) compared with the prior art, often by orders of magnitude. Our scalable privacy-preserving approach enables us to implement functions that have not been reported before, small enough that they befit mobile/embedded devices. To facilitate automated end-to-end implementation, we provide a number of user-friendly APIs supported by our custom libraries. I discuss how our new findings will enable practically addressing several known classical challenges as well as exciting applications such as scalable privacy-preserving classification of visual content, secure data mining, and search.
Biography: Farinaz Koushanfar is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, where she directs the Adaptive Computing and Embedded Systems (ACES) Lab. She also serves as the: principal director of the TI DSP Leadership University program; and, as the associate partner of the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Secure Computing. She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of California Berkeley. Her research interests include embedded/cyber-physical systems (CPS) security, hardware trust, adaptive and customizable embedded systems design, and secure function evaluation. Professor Koushanfar received a number of awards and honors for her research, mentorship, and teaching including the PECASE from president Obama, ACM SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award, NAS Kavli fellowship, Cisco IoT Security Grand Challenge Award, Young faculty/CAREER awards from NSF, DARPA, ONR, ARO, MIT Technology Review TR-35, and a Best Student Paper Award at ACM SIGMOBILE (Mobicom).
Host: Prof. 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. -
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Feb 25, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Negar Kiyavash, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: A Timing Approach to Causal Network Inference
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: One of the paramount challenges of this century is that of understanding complex, dynamic, large-scale networks. Such high-dimensional networks, including communication, social, financial, and biological networks, cover the planet and dominate modern life. In this talk, we propose novel approaches to inference in such networks, using timing as an underutilized degree of freedom that provides rich information. We present a framework for learning the structure of the directed information graphs. These graphs are a new type of probabilistic graphical model based on directed information that succinctly capture casual dynamics among random processes in stochastic networks. In the presence of large data, we propose algorithms that identify optimal or near-optimal approximations to the topology of the network.
Biography: Negar Kiyavash is Willett Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois and a joint Associate Professor of Industrial and Enterprise Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is also affiliated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) and the Information Trust Institute. She received her Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. Her research interests are in design and analysis of algorithms for network inference and security. She is a recipient of NSF CAREER and AFOSR YIP awards and the Illinois College of Engineering Dean's Award for Excellence in Research.
Host: Ashutosh Nayyar and the Ming Hsieh Institute
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. -
Energy Informatics Distinguished Seminar
Thu, Feb 26, 2015 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Yale Patt, University of Texas at Austin
Talk Title: Parallelism: A serious goal or a silly mantra (...and what about the End of the Von Neumann Architecture)
Series: Distinguished Lecture Series in Energy Informatics
Abstract: The microprocessor of 2025 will have two things going for it: more than 50 billion transistors on each chip and an opportunity to properly harness the transformation hierarchy. We hear a lot about the parallelism that one will get from those 50 billion transistors. In fact, almost everyone in the computer industry these days seems to be promoting parallelism, whether or not they have any clue whatsoever as to what they are talking about. And, many also are announcing the demise of the Von Neumann Architecture, whether or not they have any idea what the Von Neumann architecture is. Both pronouncements are due in large part to the highly visible and well advertised continuing (temporarily) benefits of Moore's Law, manifest by more and more cores on a chip, as well as more and more accelerators on the chip. More transistors means more cores, which translates into more opportunity for parallelism. More transistors also means more opportunity to build the wildest of accelerators, touted as non-Von Neumann architecture. By 2025, we will clearly have more than 1000 cores on a chip -- whether we can effectively utilize them or not does not seem to curb the enthusiasm. And by 2025, we will also have lots of powerful accelerators. But without Von Neumann, they won't be of much use. What I would like to do today is examine parallelism, note that it did not start with the multicore chip, observe some of the silliness it has recently generated, identify its fundamental pervasive element, and discuss some of the problems that have surfaced due to its major enabler, Moore's Law. I would also like to try to show how the transformation hierarchy, without any observable fanfare, can turn the bad news of Moore's Law into good news, both for all those cores and for all those non-Von Neumann accelerators, and play an important role in the microprocessor of 2025.
Biography: Yale N. Patt is Professor of ECE and the Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He continues to thrive on teaching both the large (400+ students) freshman introductory course in computing and advanced graduate courses in microarchitecture, directing the research of eight PhD students, and consulting in the microprocessor industry. Some of his research ideas (e.g., HPS, the two-level branch predictor, ACMP) have ended up in the cutting-edge chips of Intel, AMD, etc. and some of his teaching ideas have resulted in his motivated bottom-up approach for introducing computing to serious students. The textbook for his unconventional approach, "Introduction to Computing Systems: from bits and gates to C and beyond," co-authored with Prof. Sanjay Jeram Patel of Illinois (McGraw-Hill, 2nd ed. 2004), has been adopted by more than 100 universities world-wide. He has received the highest honors in his field for both his reasearch (the 1996 IEEE/ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award) and teaching (the 2000 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award). He was the inaugural recipient of the recently established IEEE Computer Society Bob Rau Award in 2011, and was named the 2013 recipient of the IEEE Harry Goode Award. He is a Fellow of both IEEE and ACM, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. More detail can be found on his web page www.ece.utexas.edu/~patt.
Host: Prof. Viktor Prasanna and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/275381990Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/275381990
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. -
Integrated Systems Seminar
Fri, Feb 27, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Tim LaRocca, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
Talk Title: TBD
Series: Integrated Systems Seminar
Host: Hosted by Prof. Hossein Hashemi, Prof. Mike Chen, and Prof. Mahta Moghaddam Organized and hosted by Run Chen
More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=915366
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elise Herrera-Green
Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=915366
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.
