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Workshops & Infosessions
Events for April
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2-part seminar on Scientific Integrity and Research Ethice
Tue, Apr 08, 2008 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Workshops & Infosessions
Seminar on Scientific Integrity and Research Ethics
Professor Michael W. QuickThe USC Center for Excellence in Teaching and the USC College Research Office invite graduate students from all disciplines, particularly those in the sciences, to register for this two-part seminar. Professor Michael W. Quick, Executive Vice Dean for the USC College and Faculty Fellow of the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching, will lead this seminar.April 8 & 10, 2008
3:30pm to 5:30pm (GFS 118)
Limited to the first 60 registrations - REGISTER NOW Most major national funding agencies now require that students conducting research have a course in Scientific Integrity as part of their graduate training. This seminar will fulfill this requirement. The majority of the class will be organized around the discussion of cases that illustrate legal or ethical aspects of conducting scientific research. Successful completion of the course is based upon attendance of both sessions and class participation. At the end of the two-part seminar, students will receive a letter stating that they have successfully completed this course. There are no prerequisites to enroll. There is no cost to participate. Purpose
If one asks most people, including scientists, about the concept of scientific integrity they will often focus on the idea of scientific misconduct related to faking data. But the greater issue of scientific integrity is the proper conduct of oneself as an academician and a scientist. This course is designed to present philosophical but also practical aspects of the following issues to up-and-coming investigators:
o What is appropriate scientific method and why is it different from other endeavors of learning about the world around us?
o What are the specific federal and state laws that govern what we do as scientists?
o What are the appropriate methods for record-keeping, authorship, and citation?
o What are our obligations to animals and humans who are part of our experiments?
o What are our obligations to our peers, colleagues, and society?Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 118
Audiences: First 60 Respondants - Graduate Students >
Contact: B.Krishnamachari
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. -
Analysis of complex heterogeneous networks: scalability, robustness and fundamental limitations.
Thu, Apr 10, 2008 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Workshops & Infosessions
Abstract:
Complex networks are receiving an increasing attention by various scientific communities, as a result of their
significance and enormous impact in both natural and man made systems. Such examples could range from
Internet protocols, power networks, vehicle platoons to flocking phenomena and gene regulatory networks. On the
one hand it is important to understand the fundamental principles and theories behind the success of networks
present in nature, but, at the same time, there is an urgent need to develop methodologies that enable the design of
networkswhere robustness and scalability can be guaranteed. This talk is going to address such challenges by
presenting recently developed tools that can lead to scalable network designs, and by deriving fundamental
limitations in biological networks.
By scalability we refer to the requirement that robust stability is guaranteed for an arbitrary interconnection by
conditions on only local interactions, without having to redesign the whole network whenever a new
heterogeneous agent is added or removed. It would be, for example unrealistic to carry out a centralized analysis,
whenever a computer/router enters the Internet or a generator becomes part of a power network. We show in the
talk, how the new notion of an S-hull, a relaxed convexification in the complex plane, can lead to stability
certificates that are both decentralized and scalable. This creates an abstraction that is relevant in diverse
applications such as data network protocols and group coordination problems.
For the case of biological networks we focus on regulatory processes at the molecular level. These are well known
to be inherently stochastic, with a substantial part of the noise being intrinsic, arising from the random births and
deaths of individual molecules. We establish in the talk fundamental limitations for the suppression of intrinsic
noise in gene regulatory networks. These are hard bounds that hold for arbitrary feedback, being a result of simple
generic features of the underlying jump processes. Such features include causality in conjunction with limited
information, arising from the inevitable presence of delays and feedback channels with finite Shannon capacity.
Bio:
Ioannis Lestas graduated with a BA (Starred First) and an MEng (Distinction) in Electrical and Information
Sciences from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College). Prior to that he was chosen to participate in
International Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry Olympiads (two bronze medals in International Chemistry
Olympiads and first prizes in several national mathematics and physics competitions). From 2002 to 2006 he was a
PhD student in the Control Group at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar and Trinity College Research
Scholar. Since October 2006 he is a class A Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge (and a member of the University
governing body). These are prestigious appointments at Cambridge previously held by a number of Cambridge's
distinguished academics and Nobel laureates. His research interests lie within the area of complex networks,
focusing on the development of theoretical frameworks for addressing issues of scalability, robustness and
fundamental limitations, with applications in data networks, multiagent systems and biological networks.Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Shane Goodoff
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. -
Point Process Models and Their Applications in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks
Fri, Apr 25, 2008 @ 01:00 PM - 02:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Workshops & Infosessions
Dr. Martin Haenggi
University of Notre DameAbstract:
The node distribution in ad hoc and sensor networks is typically modeled as a stochastic point process. Due to its analytical tractability, the (homogeneous) Poisson point process (PPP) is widely popular. We give an overview of interference and outage results for the PPP, and we present an approach to extend these to more general point processes. Next we show how fading can be incorporated in the point process, which leads to a geometric interpretation of fading that permits a convenient characterization of single-hop connectivity and transport capacity. We also present a recent result for the sentry selection problem in sensor networks, where the goal is to partition a PPP into subsets that each cover the plane.Bio:
Martin Haenggi is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He received the Dipl. Ing. (M.Sc.) and Ph.D. degrees from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) in 1995 and 1999, respectively. In 1999/2000, he spent a postdoctoral year at the University of California in Berkeley. He received an NSF CAREER award in 2005, and he is a member of the Editorial Board of the Elsevier Journal of Ad Hoc Networks and the lead guest editor of an upcoming JSAC issue on stochastic geometry and random graphs for wireless networks. His scientific interests include networking and wireless communications, with an emphasis on ad hoc and sensor networks. He is currently on leave at UCSD.Host: Prof. Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Ext. 12528 http://engineering.usc.edu/calendar/
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 107
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: B.Krishnamachari
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.
