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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for October
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EBay Architecture †Balancing site stability, feature velocity, cost, and performance
Tue, Oct 02, 2007 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
eBay Inc. has interesting challenges around scaling, choice of technologies, and implementation specifics. eBay's search engine is one of the largest and most complex information retrieval machines in the world. eBay operates tens of thousands of servers in locations all over the globe and coordinates their activities from a single location by employing a grid-style architecture. eBay has a variety of research initiatives in Web 2.0, statistical modeling, machine learning, etc., in addition to traditional software development tracts which are Java/C++ based. This talk will give an overview of some of the inner workings of the eBay stack, and of the eBay work environment.Speaker: Mahesh Tyagarajan is a Sr. Manager, Application Architecture, at eBay Inc. Mahesh is an Enterprise Architect with significant industry experience in various technology companies including eBay, Bell Labs (Lucent), and Netscape.Hosted by Prof. Viktor Prasanna
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. -
Performance Improvements and Hardness Results for LDPC
Tue, Oct 02, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Professor Priti Shankar, Indian Institute of ScienceAbstract: A random combinatorial construction for near-regular LDPC codes is proposed. Near-regularity implies that the left or right degree of a node varies by at most one from the average left or right degree respectively. Bounds on achievable girth are derived. Experimental results indicate that these codes perform somewhat better than the well known regular Progressive Edge Growth (PEG) codes. The notion of node credibility is defined and used to modify the sum-product decoding algorithm. Performance improvements in the waterfall region are observed using this modification. Finally it is shown that computing the stopping distance of LDPC codes is computationally intractable.Bio: Priti Shankar is in the Department of Computer Science and Automation at the Indian Institute of Science, where she is currently Professor. Her interests are in algorithmic coding theory, automata and computability, and compiler theory.Host: Professor P. Vijay Kumar, vijayk@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Toyon Research Corporation: Advanced Target Tracking Solutions and Homeland Security Applications
Thu, Oct 04, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract:
Toyon Research Corporation (Santa Barbara, CA) provides engineering & systems analyses, utility studies, and technology development for a variety of government research programs. In our presentation, we will present projects focusing on two technology areas related to homeland security: (1) embedded image processing on wireless sensors and (2) facility protection.One common sensor modality for homeland security applications is video. While imaging sensors are the de facto standard for security and monitoring applications, their ability to be used for persistent surveillance is severely limited. This is largely due to the fact thatan operator must continuously monitor the output of a sensor to determine if a target of interest (TOI) is present. This is time consuming, tedious work that is unacceptable for operating personnel, who are already overburdened. Continuous monitoring by an operator will cause attention to fade and operators will miss potential threats. Additionally, high data bandwidth requirements can make imaging sensors difficult to deploy in large numbers for certain applications; but, a high sensor count is essential for large tactical persistent surveillance. In this talk we provide an overview of Toyon's work in automated image processing as well as work on wireless data transport. Toyon's focus in wireless communications is the translation of novel physical layer waveforms to FPGA-based processors in order to meet size, weight, and power requirements of many embedded applications.For the past ten years, Toyon Research's Homeland Security group has also worked on several applications related to protecting high-value facilities from chemical, biological, radiological and explosive threats. Toyon's work has focused on designing protective systems composed of employing advanced technologies as well as advanced techniques, tactics and procedures (TTP's) for first responders and security personnel. In this talk, we will also describe the overall design approach, discuss some specific experiences and suggest some general problems encountered in designing and implementing these protective systems. Host: Prof. Sanjit Mitra
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
An Overview of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, and a Discussion of Ongoing Research in Video Annotati
Fri, Oct 05, 2007 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Stanley C. Ahalt, Ph.D.
Ohio State UniversityAbstract:In this talk I will provide an overview of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), including a description of some of the ongoing development and research projects that have been initiated while I have been the Executive Director at OSC. OSC provides shared high performance computing and networking for Ohio's scientific and engineering communities. The Center effectively leverages these resources on a collaborative basis to procure significant extramural funding for the Center and a wide range of university and business collaborators in Ohio. In the past four years OSC has built a strong national reputation for providing training, scientific computing, and research services to both Ohio and national collaborators. Additionally, OSC has played a major role in bringing new research communities, such as signal and image processing, to HPC and has provided national leadership in HPC as applied to industrial applications through its Blue Collar Computing (BCC) initiative. OSC and the Third Frontier Network (OSCnet) were recently cited in a 2006 Battelle report as a key collaborative center that marks Ohio's strength in information technology. I will also provide an overview of some of my personal research that has been conducted while I have been at OSC, concentrating on work in video annotation.Biography:Stanley C. Ahalt, Ph.D., oversees high performance computing, networking, and research operations as executive director of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC). Since taking the leadership of OSC in 2003, Ahalt has launched several nationally recognized programs, including Blue Collar Computing, a national program to bring high performance computing to a wide spectrum of industries and applications, and OSCnet, the nation's leading high-speed research network for K-12, higher education and economic development.Ahalt's research expertise involves signal/image/video processing and object identification high performance computing, and neural networks. He has authored or co-authored more than 120 technical papers. Ahalt also serves as the academic lead in the area of signal and image processing for the Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program. This initiative provides essential support for the wide variety of research and development demands that arise from the science and technology programs supporting DoD's development and support systems. Ahalt collaborates with a variety of organizations in his active research programs, including the Army Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Ahalt has been a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University since 1987, and co-founded the Information Processing Systems Laboratory at OSU. He received the OSU Lumley Research Award in 1997 and the OSU College of Engineering Research Award in 1999. Prior to joining OSU, Ahalt worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories where he developed industrial data products.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EE Students Practical Guide Seminar Series - The Start-up Company Experience
Fri, Oct 12, 2007 @ 11:30 AM - 01:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Seminar Speakers: Profs. Keith Chugg and Chris KyriakakisOrganizer: Prof. Alan Willner * Pizza will be graciously provided by the EE Department.*This seminar will give an insider's look at the start-up experience. We will describe the process as we experienced it and look at the pros and cons both for starting a new company and also for joining one in the early stages. The presentation will cover early steps that include not only having a good idea, but coming up with a plan on how to develop it and pitch it. The pitch must be tailored differently for individual investors and venture capital firms as they are looking for different things. Selling a technology takes even more work. We will also cover the funding process, building a management and an engineering team, finding customers, and putting together a roadmap of technologies that follow the one that started the company. For those that are considering joining a start-up in the early stages, we will discuss what these companies are looking for in new employees. We intend to have an interactive discussion rather than a lecture, so please come prepared with questions.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: All EE Students
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. -
Interference Alignment and Degrees of Freedom of Wireless Networks
Fri, Oct 19, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Professor Syed Jafar, University of California, IrvineABSTRACT: The talk will present new insights into the capacity of fully connected wireless networks with finite number of nodes through capacity approximations that are accurate to within a bounded constant for all SNR. While the best known outerbound for the K user interference channel states that there cannot be more than K/2 degrees of freedom, it has been conjectured that in general the constant interference channel with any number of users has only one degree of freedom. In this talk, we show that K/2 degrees of freedom can be achieved by channel design, i.e. if the nodes are allowed to choose the best constant, finite and non-zero channel coefficient values. Even if channel coefficients cannot be controlled by the nodes but are selected by nature, i.e., randomly drawn from a continuous distribution, the total number of spatial degrees of freedom for the K user interference channel is almost surely K/2 per orthogonal time and frequency dimension. In other words we will show how to achieve K/2 interference free channels per time and frequency dimension in a K user interference network of single antenna nodes. Thus, only half the spatial degrees of freedom are lost due to distributed processing of transmitted and received signals on the interference channel. We will also characterize the benefits of cognitive message sharing among nodes from a degrees of freedom perspective.BIO: Syed Ali Jafar received the B. Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, India in 1997, the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) , Pasadena USA in 1999, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA USA in 2003. His industry experience includes positions at Lucent Bell Labs , Qualcomm Inc. and Hughes Software Systems . He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA USA. His research interests include multiuser information theory and wireless communications. Dr. Jafar received the NSF CAREER award and the UC Irvine Engineering Faculty of the Year award in 2006. Dr. Jafar serves as the Editor for Wireless Communication Theory and CDMA for the IEEE Transactions on Communications.Host: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Overview of SIGINT Operations and Research Opportunities
Fri, Oct 26, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bill NeadAbstract:
The main purpose of this talk is to optimize university research and assist with establishing an academic outreach program to best support the warfighters' needs on preparing the Battlespace, Multi-INT collection management, processing techniques, and reporting. Visit introduction will include a detailed overview of the Intelligence Community as it relates to Multi-INT operations and how SIGINT Operations play a critical role.Speaker Bio:
Mr. Bill Nead is Chief Scientist for the Signals Intelligence Systems Acquisition and Operations (SIGINT) Directorate at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) located at Chantilly, Virginia where the NRO develops and operates unique and innovative space reconnaissance systems and conducts related activities essential for U.S. national security. The SIGINT Directorate provides full life-cycle acquisition and operations support for all overhead SIGINT systems. As Chief Scientist, he is responsible for identifying and implementing new and future technologies, architectures, and algorithms and their application to a national intelligence system that improves Global Situational Awareness and providing intelligence on timelines responsive to user needs.
Hosted by Prof. Jay Kuo
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Perceptual Image Segmentation
Tue, Oct 30, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Wanqing Li, Ph.D.
University of WollongongAbstract:
This talk explores the natural mechanisms by which human beings describe and organize images as a means to
develop a computational model for visual tasks. More specifically, the talk focuses on a model for intermediate
image segmentation. The model combines features derived from psychological considerations with neurophysiological
processes. Psychological characteristics are based on Gestalt psychology, in particular we employ
the gestalt properties of similarity in grey-level, continuity, closure and co-circularity, while physiological
processing is achieved through the use of Hierarchical Cluster Model (HCM). The motivation for such a study
stems from the fact that these initiatives will result in an image processing system closely resembling the human
visual system. An implementation of the model with three level HCM and quantified Gestalt properties will be
described. Experimental results have shown that the proposed model can produce more consistent results to
manual segmentation than the well known JSEG and NCuts methods.Bio:
Wanqing Li received his B.Sc. in physics and electronics and M.Sc. in computer science from Zhejiang
University, China in 1983 and 1987 respectively. He received his PhD in electronic engineering from The
University of Western Australia in 1998. He was a Lecturer from 1987 to 1990 and Associate Professor from
1991 to 1992, both with the Department of Computer Science, Zhejiang University. He joined Motorola
AustralianResearch Centre in 1998 as a Senior Research Engineer and later became a Principal Research
Engineer. Since 2004, he has been a Senior Lecturer with the School of Computer Science and Software
Engineering, University of Wollongong. Dr. Li received Motorola CTO's Award in 2003 and is a co-founder of
the Centre for Multimedia Signal Processing and Content Management at University of Wollongong. His
current research interests include human motion analysis, multimodal biometric cryptosystems and automatic
annotation and retrieval of multimedia content and image/video watermarking.Hosted by Prof. C.C.-Jay KuoLocation: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
