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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for October
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Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 02, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Aaron Ames, California Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Unified Control of Dynamic Robotic Systems
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Humans have the ability to locomote with deceptive ease, navigating everything from daily environments to uneven and uncertain terrain with efficiency and robustness. With the goal of achieving these capabilities on robotic systems, this talk will present a unified formal framework for realizing dynamic behaviors in an efficient, provably correct and safety-critical fashion, along with the application of these ideas experimentally on a wide variety of robotic systems. In particular, we will introduce an optimization-based control framework that is able to dynamically balance control objectives and safety constraints for dynamic robotic systems. These concepts will be illustrated through their application to the humanoid robot DURUS, with the result being dynamic and efficient locomotion displaying the hallmarks of natural human walking: heel-toe behavior. The translation of these ideas to robotic assistive devices, and specifically powered prostheses, will be described in the context of custom-built hardware. Finally, the extension of these concepts to safety-critical systems-”including automotive applications, multi-agent systems, and swarms of quadrotors-”will be discussed.
Biography: Aaron D. Ames is the Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control and Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Caltech, he was an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Ames received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of St. Thomas in 2001, and he received a M.A. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley in 2006. He served as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Control and Dynamical Systems at Caltech from 2006 to 2008, and began is faculty career at Texas A&M University in 2008. At UC Berkeley, he was the recipient of the 2005 Leon O. Chua Award for achievement in nonlinear science and the 2006 Bernard Friedman Memorial Prize in Applied Mathematics. Dr. Ames received the NSF CAREER award in 2010, and is the recipient of the 2015 Donald P. Eckman Award recognizing an outstanding young engineer in the field of automatic control. His research interests span the areas of robotics, nonlinear control and hybrid systems, with a special focus on applications to bipedal robotic walking-”both formally and through experimental validation. His lab designs, builds and tests novel bipedal robots, humanoids and prostheses with the goal of achieving human-like bipedal robotic locomotion and translating these capabilities to robotic assistive devices.
Host: Mihailo Jovanovic
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
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. -
Cross-listed between CCI-MHI Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems and CSC@USC Seminar Series
Wed, Oct 04, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Carolyn Beck, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Epidemic Processes Over Topologically Varying Networks
Abstract: The study of epidemic processes has been a topic of interest for many years over a wide range of areas, including mathematical systems, biology, physics, computer science, social sciences and economics. More recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of epidemic processes focused on the spread of viruses over networks, motivated not only by recent devastating outbreaks of infectious diseases, but also by the rapid spread of opinions over social networks, and the security threats posed by computer viruses. Most of the models considered in these recent studies have been focused on network models with static network structures, however almost all systems being considered have inherently dynamic structures. In this talk, we will discuss the modeling of epidemic processes over topologically varying networks, and present stability analysis results which elucidate the behavior of these systems. Specifically, we will derive conditions that guarantee convergence to the disease free equilibrium under varying assumptions on the networks and disease process parameters. Simulation results and potential control actions will be presented and discussed to conclude the talk.
Biography: Carolyn L. Beck is a faculty member in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. She completed her Ph.D. at Caltech, her M.S. at Carnegie Mellon, and her B.S. at Cal Poly, all in Electrical Engineering. Prior to completing her Ph.D., she was an R&D engineer at Hewlett- Packard in Santa Clara. Carolyn has held visiting faculty positions at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Stanford University, and Lund University in Lund, Sweden.
She was the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and an ONR Young Investigator award, as well as local teaching awards. Her research interests range from network inference problems to control of anesthetic pharmacodynamics and include mathematical systems theory, model reduction and approximation for the purpose of analysis and control design, and clustering and aggregation methods.
Host: Ketan Savla, ksavla@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
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. -
Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 09, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Allen Tannenbaum, Stony Brook University
Talk Title: Optimal Mass Transport and the Robustness of Complex Networks
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Today's technological world is increasingly dependent upon the reliability, robustness, quality of service and timeliness of networks including those of power distribution, financial, transportation, communication, biological, and social. For the time-critical functionality in transferring resources and information, a key requirement is the ability to adapt and reconfigure in response to structural and dynamic changes, while avoiding disruption of service and catastrophic failures. We will outline some of the major problems for the development of the necessary theory and tools that will permit the understanding of network dynamics in a multiscale manner.
Many interesting networks consist of a finite but very large number of nodes or agents that interact with each other. The main challenge when dealing with such networks is to understand and regulate the collective behavior. Our goal is to develop mathematical models and optimization tools for treating the Big Data nature of large scale networks while providing the means to understand and regulate the collective behavior and the dynamical interactions (short and long-range) across such networks.
The key mathematical technique will be based upon the use optimal mass transport theory and resulting notions of curvature applied to weighted graphs in order to characterize network robustness. Examples will be given from biology, finance, and transportation.
Biography: Allen Tannenbaum is an applied mathematician and presently Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics & Statistics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is also Investigator of Medical Physics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
Tannenbaum has done research in numerous areas including robust control, computer vision, and biomedical imaging, having more than 500 publications. He pioneered the field of robust control with the solution of the gain margin and phase margin problems using techniques from Nevanlinna-“Pick interpolation theory, which was the first H-infinity type control problem solved. He was one of the first to introduce partial differential equations in computer vision and biomedical imaging co-inventing an affine-invariant heat equation for image enhancement. Tannenbaum and collaborators further formulated a new approach to optimal mass transport (Monge-Kantorovich) theory. In recent work, he has developed techniques using graph curvature ideas for analyzing the robustness of complex networks.
His work has won several awards including IEEE Fellow, O. Hugo Schuck Award of the American Automatic Control Council in 2007 (shared with S. Dambreville and Y. Rathi), and the George Taylor Award for Distinguished Research from the University of Minnesota in 1997. He has given numerous plenary talks at major conferences including the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control of the IEEE Control Systems Society in 2000, the International Symposium on the Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (MTNS) in 2012, and the SIAM Conference in 2017.
Host: Mihailo Jovanovic, mihailo@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
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. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Wed, Oct 11, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ufuk Topcu, Assistant Professor, University of Texas Austin
Talk Title: Autonomous systems in the intersection of learning theory, formal methods and controls
Abstract: Autonomous systems are emerging as a driving technology for countlessly many applications. Numerous disciplines tackle the challenges toward making these systems agile, adaptable, reliable, user friendly and economical. On the other hand, the existing disciplinary boundaries delay and possibly even obstruct progress. I argue that the non-conventional problems that arise in the design and verification of autonomous systems require hybrid solutions at the intersection of learning, formal methods and controls.
I will present our recent results in two problems. The first one is on automated synthesis of correct-by-construction, hierarchical control protocols. These results account for dynamics that are subject to rich temporal logic specifications, heterogeneous uncertainties and possibly adversarial environments. They combine ideas from control theory with those from formal methods, and exploit underlying system-theoretic interpretations to suppress the inherent computational complexity. My studies of the second problem have resulted in a series of new reinforcement learning algorithms that build on both learning theory and formal methods. A common feature in these algorithms is the guarantees they provide during both training and execution with respect to given formal specifications expressed in variants of temporal logic.
Biography: Ufuk Topcu joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor in Fall 2015. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 2008. He held research positions at the University of Pennsylvania and California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the theoretical, algorithmic and computational aspects of design and verification of autonomous systems through novel connections between formal methods, learning theory and controls.
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. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Thu, Oct 12, 2017 @ 02:00 AM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mirela Alistar, Postdoc, Hasso-Plattner-Institute, Germany
Talk Title: Are microfluidic biochips the 'arduinos' for biology?
Abstract: Biochips are cyber-physical systems with realistic potential to improve the healthcare process, e.g., by providing faster disease disease diagnosis and at-home direct treatment. Traditionally, biochips are developed to be used by experts in laboratories or clinics. I expand this vision, by exploring the possibility of an integrated platform for personal use of biochips.
In my work, I address the main challenges that users may encounter: accessibility, bio-protocol design and interaction with microfluidics. I believe this is a first step towards personal laboratories: small portable devices that people can own and use to develop customized bio-protocols ('bio-apps'), similar to today's Arduinos.
I will present my work around biochips, finishing with a live demo of my latest device.
Biography: Mirela Alistar is a Postdoc at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute, Germany. She received a PhD in computer engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 2014. Her main research interests are in the area of system-level design of embedded systems, with a special focus on digital microfluidics. She is supporting open access research and she has organized art and science events, where she disseminates to the public with the aim of involving them into creating more knowledge.
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. -
Munushian speaker - Mike Mayberry, Friday, October 13th at 10:00am in EEB 132
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mike Mayberry, Intel Corporation
Talk Title: The Future of Computing
Abstract: In this seminar Dr. Mayberry will share with participants Intel's
view of the future of computing and communication technologies. He will share insights regarding Intel's research agenda and collaborative efforts to deliver innovative products and advanced technology.
Biography: Mike Mayberry is corporate vice president and director
of Intel Labs. He is responsible for Intel's global research efforts in computing and communications. In addition he leads the Corporate Research Council which drives allocation and prioritization of directed university research across Intel.
Since joining Intel in 1984 as a process integration engineer, Mayberry has held a variety of positions. As part of the California Technology Development team, he developed EPROM, flash and logic wafer fabrication processes. In 1994 he moved to Sort Test Technology Development, responsible for roadmaps and development of test processes for Intel microprocessors. In 2005, he moved to Components Research and was responsible for research to enable future process options for Intel's technology development organizations.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
More Info: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures
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, Oct 13, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Sudhakar Pamarti, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
Talk Title: Time Varying Circuits for Radio Receiver Applications
Host: Profs. Hossein Hashemi, Mike Chen, Mahta Moghaddam, Dina El-Damak
More Information: MHI Seminar Series IS -Sudhakar Pamarti.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 Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 16, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bin Hu, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Talk Title: Dissipativity Theory for Optimization and Machine Learning Research
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Empirical risk minimization (ERM) is a central topic for machine learning research, and is typically solved using first-order optimization methods whose convergence proofs are derived in a case-by-case manner. In this talk, we will present a simple routine which unifies the analysis of such optimization methods including gradient descent method, Nesterov's accelerated method, stochastic gradient descent (SGD), stochastic average gradient (SAG), SAGA, Finito, stochastic dual coordinate ascent (SDCA), stochastic variance reduction gradient (SVRG), and SGD with momentum. Specifically, we will view all these optimization methods as dynamical systems and then use a unified dissipativity approach to derive sufficient conditions for convergence rate certifications of such dynamical systems. The derived conditions are all in the form of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). We solve these resultant LMIs and obtain analytical proofs of new convergence rates for various optimization methods (with or without individual convexity). Our proposed analysis can be automated for a large class of first-order optimization methods under various assumptions. In addition, the derived LMIs can always be numerically solved to provide clues for constructions of analytical proofs.
Biography: Bin Hu received his B.S in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Science and Technology of China, and received the M.S. in Computational Mechanics from Carnegie Mellon University. He received the Ph.D in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Minnesota, advised by Peter Seiler. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the optimization group of Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is working with Laurent Lessard and closely collaborating with Stephen Wright. He is interested in building connections between control theory and machine learning research. His current research focuses on tailoring robust control theory (integral quadratic constraints, dissipation inequalities, jump system theory, etc) to unify the study of stochastic optimization methods (stochastic gradient, stochastic average gradient, SAGA, SVRG, Katyusha momentum, etc) and their applications in related machine learning problems (logistic regression, deep neural networks, matrix completion, etc). He is also particularly interested in the generalization mechanism of deep learning.
Host: Insoon Yang, insoonya@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
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. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Wed, Oct 18, 2017 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sajal K. Das, Professor, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla
Talk Title: Smart Living: The Next Frontier
Abstract: We live in an era in which our physical and personal environments are becoming increasingly intertwined and smarter due to the advent of pervasive sensing, wireless communications, computing, and actuation technologies. Indeed our daily living in smart cities and connected communities depend on a wide variety of smart service systems and cyber-physical infrastructures, such as smart energy, transportation, healthcare, supply-chain, etc. Alongside, the availability of low-cost wireless sensor networks (WSNs), Internet of Things (IoTs), and rich mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) are also empowering humans with fine-grained information and opinion collection through crowdsensing about events of interest, thus resulting in actionable inferences and decisions. This synergy has led to the cyber-physical-social (CPS) convergence with human in the loop that exhibits complex interactions, inter-dependencies and adaptations between engineered/natural systems and human users with a goal to improve quality of life experience what we call smart living. However, the main challenges are posed by the scale, heterogeneity, big data, and resource limitations (e.g., energy) in context recognition and situation awareness using sensors, IoTs and CPS networks. This talk will highlight unique research issues and challenges in smart living and CPS systems, solutions for energy-efficient data gathering and fusion, lifetime optimization and security in WSNs, and trade-off between energy and information quality in multi-modal context recognition. Our research is based on online and randomized algorithms, graph theory, game theory, trust model, and information theory. Case studies and experimental results will be presented for energy efficient homes and smart healthcare applications. The talk will be concluded with directions for future research.
Biography: Dr. Sajal K. Das is a professor of Computer Science and Daniel St. Clair Endowed Chair at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla. During 2008-2011, he served the NSF as a Program Director in the Computer and Network Systems Division. Prior to 2013, he was a University Distinguished Scholar Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and founding director of Center for Research in Wireless Mobility and Networking (CReWMaN) at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research interests include wireless and sensor networks, mobile and pervasive computing, cyber-physical systems and smart environments including smart grid and smart healthcare, distributed and cloud computing, security and privacy, big data and IoT, biological and social networks, and applied graph theory and game theory. He has published over 600 research articles in these areas, 52 book chapters, and 5 US patents. He coauthored four books - "Smart Environments: Technology, Protocols, and Applications" (John Wiley, 2005); "Handbook on Securing Cyber-Physical Critical Infrastructure: Foundations and Challenges" (Morgan Kaufman, 2012); "Mobile Agents in Distributed Computing and Networking" (Wiley, 2012); and "Principles of Cyber-Physical Systems: An Interdisciplinary Approach" (Cambridge University Press, 2017). His h-index is 75 with more than 23,500 citations according to Google Scholar. Dr. Das is a recipient of 10 Best Paper Awards in prestigious conferences (e.g., ACM MobiCom and IEEE PerCom) and numerous awards for research, teaching, mentoring and professional services, including IEEE Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award for pioneering contributions to sensor networks and mobile computing. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier's Pervasive and Mobile Computing journal and serves as Associate Editor of several journals including IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, and Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. A founder of IEEE PerCom, IEEE WoWMoM, IEEE SMARTCOMP, and ICDCN conferences, he has served on numerous ACM and IEEE conference committees as General Chair, Technical Program Chair, or Program Committee member. Dr. Das is an IEEE Fellow for pioneering contributions to parallel, distributed and mobile computing.
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. -
Debdeep Jena - Munushian Seminar speaker, Friday, October 20th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Fri, Oct 20, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Debdeep Jena, Cornell University
Talk Title: The Wide-Bandgap Semiconductor Revolution in Electronic, Photonic, and Energy Systems
Abstract: Wide-bandgap nitride materials and devices have revolutionized the electronics and photonics industries in the last two decades. The optical device impact is moving from visible lighting and lasers to deep-UV photonics for biological applications. By exploiting the high electrical breakdown fields, and the high mobility of 2-dimensional electron gases, GaN HEMTs are now capable of generating enormous amounts of microwave power at high frequencies, and have become very attractive for RF amplifiers that power communications. At the same time, both lateral GaN HEMTs, and vertical GaN FETs are making inroads into high-voltage power electronics. Surprisingly, GaN also has a significant role to play in low-power energy-efficient electronics by exploiting internal polarization fields driven by the Berry phase. This talk will review these successes and discuss the physics underlying these revolutionary advances of the past two decades. Then, the same physics and a slew of new nitride materials to augment the conventional nitrides and to take Wide-bandgap electronics well into the future into areas of quantum computation and communications will be discussed.
Biography: Dr. Debdeep Jena is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University. His research and teaching interests are in the MBE growth and electronic and photonic device applications of quantum semiconductor heterostructures (III-V nitrides, oxides, and 2D crystal semiconductors). By combining experiment and theory, his group explores fundamental speed, power, and efficiency limits of electronic and photonic devices based on a deep investigation of charge, heat, and spin transport. He has authored more than 200 scientific publications including articles in Science, Nature Journals, Physical Review Letters, Electron Device Letters, and Applied Physics Letters. During his research career, he has received the International MBE Young Scientist award in 2014, the IBM faculty award in 2012, the ISCS Young Scientist award in 2012, the most valuable contribution awards at the Workshop for Compound Semiconductor Materials and Devices (WOCSEMMAD) in 2014, 2010 and 2008, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award in 2006, a best student paper award at the Electronic Materials Conference in 2002, and a young author best paper award from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) in 2000. He is most proud of the Joyce award for excellence in undergraduate teaching which he received in 2010. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
More Info: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/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. -
Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 23, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Fabio Pasqualetti, University of California, Riverside
Talk Title: Synchronization Patterns in Networks of Kuramoto Oscillators: A Network-Theoretic Approach for Analysis and Control
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Synchronized behaviors among the nodes of a network are ubiquitous in nature and in several man-made systems. While some systems require complete synchronization among all the parts to function properly, others rely on cluster or partial synchronization, where subsets of nodes exhibit coherent behaviors that remain independent from the evolution of other nodes in the network. For example, while patterns of partial synchronization have been observed in healthy individuals, complete synchronization in neural systems is often associated with degenerative diseases including Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases, and epilepsy.
In this talk, I will present novel network-theoretic methods to predict and control the formation of synchronization patterns within a network of Kuramoto oscillators. I will show that exact patterns of synchronized oscillators are possible if and only if the interconnection structure and the oscillators satisfy certain stringent conditions. On the other hand, approximately synchronized patterns, which often appears in experimental time series, can emerge more easily depending on a graded combination of the interconnection structure and the intrinsic properties of the oscillators. Further, I will present structural control schemes to enforce the emergence of a desired synchronization landscape and, lastly, I will show how the proposed techniques find applicability in a broad class of network analysis and control problems.
Biography: Fabio Pasqualetti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Riverside. He completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2012, a Laurea Magistrale degree (M.Sc. equivalent) in Automation Engineering at the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2007, and a Laurea degree (B.Sc. equivalent) in Computer Engineering at the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2004. He received a Young Investigator Program Award from ARO in 2017, and the TCNS Outstanding Paper Award from IEEE CSS in 2016. His main research interest is in secure control systems, with application to multi-agent networks, distributed computing, and power networks. Other interests include computational neuroscience, vehicle routing, and combinatorial optimization, with application to distributed area patrolling and persistent surveillance.
Host: Ashutosh Nayyar, ashutosh.nayyar@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
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. -
Upper Airway Dynamic Imaging During Awake and Asleep Tidal Breathing
Wed, Oct 25, 2017 @ 01:30 AM - 02:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Chantal Darquenne, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Medicine University of California, San Diego
Talk Title: Upper Airway Dynamic Imaging During Awake and Asleep Tidal Breathing
Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
Abstract: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by recurrent partial or complete airway closure during sleep, and has important clinical implications ranging from disruption of sleep with daytime sequelae of excessive sleepiness and poor quality of life to adverse cardiovascular or metabolic outcomes. While polysomnography and studies based on measurements of airway pressures and resistance have provided a wealth of information on upper airway physiology, they are unable to assess the three- dimensional anatomy of the upper airway and its conformational changes during breathing. Knowledge of the morphology and mechanical behavior of this structure is essential for a more complete understanding of the occurrence of upper airway obstruction. Such information can be obtained with imaging technology and will be the focus of this seminar.Data will be presented from a group of OSA subjects and a group of age- and BMI-matched healthy controls that underwent MR imaging to assess upper airway morphometry and changes in airway size during tidal breathing. Data were collected both during wakefulness and natural sleep with simultaneous measurement of nasal-oral flow partition and sleep state and stages. Results show significant differences in the magnitude of the changes in upper airway size over a tidal breath between OSA subjects and controls both during wakefulness and natural sleep suggesting that, for tidal breathing conditions, dynamic OSA imaging during wakefulness is representative of behavior during sleep.
Biography: Chantal Darquenne is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the President-elect of the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Applied Sciences from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) in 1995. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Physiology at UCSD where she still holds her current position. Her laboratory uses an interdisciplinary approach combining engineering principles and lung physiology concepts to address her primary research interests that focus on aerosol transport and deposition in the lung, on lung ventilation inhomogeneities in health and disease, and more recently on upper airway dynamics in obstructive sleep apnea.
Host: Professor Krishna Nayak
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
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, Oct 25, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Thomas Wahl, Northeastern University
Talk Title: Stabilizing Numeric Programs against Platform Uncertainties
Abstract: Floating-point arithmetic (FPA) is a loosely standardized approximation of real arithmetic available on many computers today, and widely employed in cyber-physical systems. The use of approximation incurs commonly underestimated risks for the reliability of numeric software, including reproducibility issues caused by the relatively large degree of freedom for FPA implementers offered by the IEEE 754 floating-point standard. If left untreated, such problems can seriously interfere with program portability and simply our trust in numeric results.
In this talk I discuss numeric programs' lack of robustness against platform variations, including irreproducible control flow and invariants that hold on some platforms but not others. I also demonstrate how such reproducibility violations can be repaired with low impact on performance, which results in a more stable program execution. I illustrate the use of our techniques both on decision-making and on purely numeric programs, and present an outlook to its applicability to addressing reproducibility issues among CPU and GPU versions of kernel support vector machines. Much of this is joint work with Miriam Leeser at Northeastern University, as well as our respective students.
Biography: Thomas Wahl joined the faculty of Northeastern University in 2011. He moved to Boston from Oxford/United Kingdom, where he was a Research Officer in the Computing Laboratory (now Department of Computer Science). Prior to the Oxford experience, Wahl held a postdoctoral position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. He obtained a PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007.
Wahl's research concerns the reliability of complex computing systems. Two domains notorious for their fragility are concurrency and numerical computing. With colleagues, Wahl has developed leading algorithms and techniques for the automated analysis of concurrent software, such as multi-threaded or data-parallel programs, using rigorous formal techniques, which are able to track down deep and unintuitive program bugs. He has also investigated how floating-point arithmetic can "hijack" a program's computation when run on non-standard architectures, such as heterogeneous and custom-made embedded platforms.
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. -
Causal Inference in Complex Networks
Thu, Oct 26, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Negar Kiyavash, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Causal Inference in Complex Networks
Abstract: One of the paramount challenges of this century is that of understanding complex, dynamic, large-scale networks. Such high-dimensional networks, including social, financial, and biological networks, cover the planet and dominate modern life. In this talk, we propose novel approaches to inference in such networks, for both active (interventional) and passive (observational) learning scenarios. We highlight how timing could be utilized as a degree of freedom that provides rich information about the dynamics. This information allows resolving direction of causation even when only a subset of the nodes is observed (latent setting). 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 (IE) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). She is the director of Advance Data Analytics Program in IE and is further affiliated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) and the Information Trust Institute. She received her Ph.D. degree in ECE 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: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 536, 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. -
Towards Fully Flexible Energy Autonomous Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks
Fri, Oct 27, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hans-Peter Bernhard, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Institute for Communications Engineering and RF-Systems
Talk Title: Towards Fully Flexible Energy Autonomous Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks
Abstract: Wireless communication links in industrial environments are gradually replacing wired solutions. This transition offers more flexibility and enables new technologies and applications to arise. However for industrial monitoring tasks, currently available wireless standards do not meet all requirements, and depending on the application, different standards have to be used. In this overview, results from the European research project Dependable Embedded Wireless Infrastructure (DEWI) are presented, which led to the development of a new highly flexible wireless protocol. The degree of flexibility of the protocol not only allows to meet various requirements in industrial monitoring, but also to cover communication needs of the entire operation cycle of sensor nodes. Additionally, to enable a maximum degree of freedom, it is designed to operate energy autonomously with a strictly limited power budget imposed by energy harvesting. Aside of all theses requirements, synchronized sampling is a very important topic in industrial measurement environments using hundreds of sensors. We show the use of a \alpha\epsilon-modulator to synchronize the nodes within a wireless sensor network. This is a new method to achieve long term synchronization, also during long offline periods, with least possible short term sampling jitter. Closely related to synchronization is clock frequency estimation. Without a highly accurate estimated clock, network synchronization won't work. But, in wireless systems or harsh environments, it is likely that clock events can be missed and, therefore, the observed process has to be treated as a sparse periodic process. To parameterize the clock, current research is applying periodogram estimators at a complexity of at least O(N log N). Here a highly accurate iterative frequency estimator for pulse signals with low computational complexity is shown. It is an unbiased estimator with a complexity of O(N). Furthermore, the mean square error (MSE) of this new efficient approach is proportional to O(N_3) and thus as accurate as periodogram or frequency domain based methods. The talk concludes with a short review and an outline of ongoing and future research in highly flexible wireless sensor networks.
Biography: He received the Dipl.-Ing. (M.Sc.) degree in communication engineering and the Dr. techn. (Ph.D.) degree with distinction from Vienna Technical University in 1991 and 1997, respectively.
From 1985 to 1992 he worked for different companies in the area of database and organizational programming. From 1992 to 1998 he was with the Institute for Communications and Radio Frequency Engineering at the Technical University Vienna as a research assistant and became in 1994 assistant professor at this institute. From 1997 on he started teaching at HTBLA-Steyr. In 1999 he joined the Institute for Communications Engineering and RF-Systems, Johannes Kepler University Linz, as a lecturer and he currently holds a senior researcher position at this institute. He was guest researcher with the Institute for Information Theory and Automation, Academy of Sciences Prague and with the University of Cambridge UK, Engineering Department, Inst. f. Vision Speech and Robotics. Starting in 2004 he served as consultant for several companies as there are Infineon, DICE (Danube Integrated Circuit Engineering GmbH & Co KG), and others. In 2007 he founded a scientific consulting company with focus on assisting handicapped persons and nonprofit health care organizations. He is holding patents in the field of computer science and computer assisting systems for handicapped persons. He has contributed to the following research projects "Nonlinear Methods in Speech processing", "Assisting Handicapped Persons in Computer Handling" and he supervised the research project "Information Theoretic Methods for Load Curve Prediction" in collaboration with SIEMENS power grid department. From 2014 to 2017 he worked also with the European ARTEMIS project DEWI (Dependable Embedded Wireless Infrastructure) focussed on energy efficient sensing, signal processing and communication. Currently he is involved in the joint undertaking of Electronic Components and Systems for European Leadership (ECSEL) on Secure Connected Trustable Things (SCOTT) as a senior scientist. His research interests include algorithm design for wireless communications with a special focus on synchronization, security and energy efficient protocols.
Hans-Peter Bernhard received the GIT-Award in 1991, in the year 2000 he was awarded with the innovation award of Upper Austrian government and he was Austrian representative at the Novartis International Science Week Switzerland with the best Austrian education project in health care. Hans-Peter Bernhard is an IEEE senior member and member of the signal processing society.
Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 536, x04667
Location: 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. -
Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 30, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Anil Aswani, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Making Robust Decisions from Data
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Though machine learning has found success in decision-making contexts, these methods are fragile to model mismatch and malicious interference. This is a major impediment to the deployment of automated decision-making in safety-critical systems like those found in healthcare or physical infrastructure. This talk describes three methods we have developed for robust decision-making in different scenarios. The first is a framework for combining robust control with machine learning, and applications to energy efficiency and robotics are highlighted. The second is algorithms to solve inverse optimization (and inverse reinforcement learning) with noisy data. This problem arises when estimating utility functions or modeling human-automation systems, and we show it is NP-hard and that existing approaches are statistically inconsistent. We develop a polynomial time algorithm that is asymptotically optimal as more data is collected. Then we discuss applications of our inverse optimization approach to a clinical trial on personalized goal-setting through smartphone apps to increase physical activity, and to studying an incentive design problem in the Medicare Shared Savings Program where we show that an investment sharing plan could potentially save Medicare an additional $85 million per year. The third is an approach for bandit models where repeated application of an action causes habituation and a decrease of that action's rewards, while refraining from an action causes recovery and an increase of that action's awards. Though such problems are PSPACE-complete, we define a class of models called ROGUE bandits for which we can construct policies that achieve logarithmic regret. We describe an application of ROGUE bandits to a personalized healthcare problem of choosing an optimal sequence of daily messages to encourage an individual to increase their physical activity.
Biography: Anil Aswani is an Assistant Professor in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) at UC Berkeley. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2005, M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from UC Berkeley in 2007, and Ph.D. in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2010. He received a Hellman Fellowship for his research on food insecurity, the Leon O. Chua award from Berkeley for outstanding achievement in an area of nonlinear science, and a William Pierskalla Runner-Up Award from the INFORMS Health Applications Society. His research interests include data-driven decision making, with particular emphasis on addressing inefficiencies and inequities in health systems and physical infrastructure.
Host: Insoon Yang, insoonya@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
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.
