Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for November
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Technology Challenges and Opportunities in Africa
Mon, Nov 02, 2009 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Professor Guy Berger,
Head of School of Journalism & Media Studies Rhodes
University, South AfricaAbstract: Ubiquitous computing is coming to Africa in the guise of the cellphone. There is some
truth in the notion that this has entailed some 'leapfrogging' over stages seen in more developed
parts of the world, as evident in a range of adoption and innovative uses of ICT. Yet, at the same
time, there is also a degree of insulation from the technology-implicated disruptions of institutions
such as the mass media industry. Meanwhile, the huge potential of the digital revolution in Africa is
nevertheless constrained in many places by a poor and fragmented policy environment and limited
public understanding of what's needed to build an African Information SocietyIn this context, the Highway Africa project at Rhodes University is an intervention that seeks to enlist
journalists into making a positive difference around technology around the continent Africa. Over 13
years, this multi-faceted initiative has worked to ensure that mass communicators around the
continent understand, use and report on ICT issues. As such, it operates a conference every
September that has become the world's largest annual gathering of African journalists. This event
exposes the cohort to debates around open source and proprietary software, broadcast digital
migration, blogging and citizen journalism, etc., as well as to hands-on training workshops in the
use of technologies like Twitter and cutting-edge Content Management Systems. Highway Africa
also operates further training programs outside of the conference, and its activities further include a
news-agency and a research arm. The staging of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa in 2010
provides an opportunity to intensify and amplify the impact of Highway Africa.Bio: Prof. Berger is one of the leading figures in African media and media studies. For a decade, he
has directed Rhodes University's journalism and media studies program, and he has been a leading
figure in journalism and technology on the African continent. His visit is part of the Provost
Distinguished Visitor program for the fall. His programs at USC are being coordinated by USC
Annenberg's Geneva Overholser and Erna Smith.VSoE Host: Professor Shrikanth Narayanan, (213) 740-6432Location: 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. -
FPGA On-Chip Debugging Tools and Methodologies
Wed, Nov 04, 2009 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract:
State-of-the-art field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) contain multi-million gates of configurable logic. The integration of hard and soft processor cores has turned FPGAs into configurable System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms, an attractive choice for implementing many embedded and high-performance computing systems. This challenges the on-chip debugging tools and methodologies to keep up with the increasing design complexity.
We begin the talk with a brief review of current on-chip hardware and software debugging tools. The limitations of these tools are also discussed. To address these limitations, a run-time reconfigurable signal probing technique and a common debugging framework are presented. We conclude the talk with some ongoing and future work regarding on-chip debugging tools and methodologies.Short Bio:
Jingzhao Ou joined Xilinx in 2006 after obtaining his Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineer at the University of Southern California. He actively performs research and development in the area of hardware/software codesign and co-debugging. Recently, he is heavily involved in the design of Xilinx next generation hardware platforms and software development tools.Host: Prof. Viktor K. PrasannaLocation: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
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. -
Future (and Direction of ) Wireless Technologies
Fri, Nov 06, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Future (and Direction of ) Wireless Technologies by Upkar Dhaliwal (CEO/Founder - Future Wireless Technologies)Everything You Know About Wireless Is About to Change.
Everything beyond and around us in old Wired World is undergoing a rapid
change in terms of networks, devices/boxes and in terms of technologies.The Talk covers the following topics relating to the evolution of our Wired
and Wireless World:• Quick Introduction into exiting Radio Uses
– Quick update of our Radios & Cellular Wireless - 4G
• Overview of Consumer World - Wireless Electronics Evolution
– 7 New Worlds of RF-Wireless with the Internet & the Screen
• Overview of Wireless Connected Power Networks
– IEEE, NIST, DoE and Other Groups
• Overview of Wireless Health Connected Devices
– IEEE, Alliance Groups and NIST
• Overview of Broadband Wireless Stimulus Plan – DoE, NIST, IEEE
• A Brief look beyond to the Cognitive Radio World uses as being
envisioned by ITU - 5GLocation: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 200
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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 of MIMO Radar with Angular Diversity under Swerling Scattering Models
Fri, Nov 06, 2009 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Visa Koivunen,
Helsinki Univ. of Technology, FinlandAbstract: A brief overview of different MIMO radar concepts is provided. The performance of statistical MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) radar configurations that use distributed antennas is analyzed in detail. Statistical MIMO radars exploit angular diversity to mitigate the impact of radar cross section (RCS) fluctuations. The fluctuations can be modeled with the Swerling scattering model consisting of four different cases with either fast or slow target RCS fluctuations. In this paper, the performance of different statistical MIMO radar configurations is compared in the different Swerling cases. Both target detection and direction of arrival estimation tasks are considered.We derive the optimal test statistics for target detection for non-orthogonal waveforms in all the Swerling cases in single-pulse as well as multi-pulse scenarios. In the direction finding task, confidence bounds of the squared estimation error of the different configurations are compared. The comparison is done in terms of the confidence bounds as the Cramer-Rao bounds are not defined for all the cases and configurations. The pros and cons of the angular diversity and each radar configuration are pointed out in different fluctuation scenarios.If time allows, beampattern optimization in MIMO radar will be considered as well.This is joint work with my student Tuomas AittomäkiBiography: Visa Koivunen (Senior Member, IEEE) received his D.Sc. (Tech) degree with honors from the University of Oulu, Dept. of Electrical Engineering. He received the primus doctor (best graduate) award among the doctoral graduates in years 1989-1994. From 1992 to 1995 he was a visiting researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. Since 1999 he has been a Professor of Signal Processing at Helsinki University of Technology (HUT), Finland. He is one of the Principal Investigators in SMARAD (Smart Radios and Wireless Systems) Center of Excellence in Radio and Communications Engineering nominated by the Academy of Finland. Years 2003-2007 he was also adjunct full professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. During his sabbatical leave in 2006-2007 he was Visiting Fellow at Nokia Research Center as well as visiting fellow at Princeton University. Year 2009 he was appointed to Academy of Finland distinguished professor position until year 2014.Dr. Koivunen's research interest include statistical, communications and sensor array signal processing. He has published about 300 papers in international scientific conferences and journals. He co-authored the several papers receiving the best papers in conferences. He has been awarded the IEEE Signal Processing Society best paper award for the year 2007 (co-authored with J. Eriksson). He is member of the IEEE SAM and SPCOM technical committees.Host: Andreas Molisch, 04670, EEB 530, molisch@usc.edu
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. -
Greedy Routing with Guaranteed Delivery Using Ricci Flows
Mon, Nov 09, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Jie Gao
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science,
Stony Brook UniversityAbstract: Greedy forwarding with geographical locations in a wireless sensor
network may fail at a local minimum. In this paper we propose to use conformal
mapping to compute a new embedding of the sensor nodes in the plane such that
greedy forwarding with the virtual coordinates guarantees delivery. In
particular, we extract a planar triangulation of the sensor network with nontriangular
faces as holes, by either using the nodes location or using a
landmark‐based scheme without node location. The conformal map is computed with
Ricci flow such that all the non‐triangular faces are mapped to perfect circles.
Thus greedy forwarding will never get stuck at an intermediate node. The
computation of the conformal map and the virtual coordinates is performed at a
preprocessing phase and can be implemented by local gossip‐style computation. The
method applies to both unit disk graph models and quasi‐unit disk graph models.
Simulation results are presented for these scenarios.
This is joint work with Rik Sarkar, Xiaotian Yin, Feng Luo and Xianfeng David Gu.
Bio: Jie Gao is currently an assistant professor at Department of Computer
Science, Stony Brook University. She received Ph.D from Computer Science
department, Stanford University in 2004 and B.S. from the special class for the
gifted young, University of Science and Technology of China in 1999. She works on
algorithms, sensor networks, and computational geometry. She received NSF CAREER
award in 2006 and she is an associate editor of ACM Transaction on Sensor
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. -
Control Science, Artificial Intelligence and the Use of Statistical Methods
Tue, Nov 10, 2009 @ 03:45 PM - 04:45 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Distinguished Lecturer Series
Dr. Roger Brockett, Harvard UniversityAbstract:
When first discussed by Wiener, cybernetics captured the imagination of the scientific public and served as the rallying cry for groups of scientists and engineers seeking a broadly encompassing view of what engineering and life scientists might hope to achieve by working together. Aided by the work of luminaries such as John von Neumann and Claude Shannon, a rosy picture emerged, warmed by the aura of mathematical truth. Looking back, it seems fair to say that the results achieved by this movement in the 50's and 60's are more apparent in terms of the organizations and journals that flourished, rather than the new modes of thought that emerged. When the proponents of artificial intelligence came along a bit later, cybernetics was not able to hold its ground. The same fate awaited artificial intelligence as its first summer soon fell prey to the famous A. I. winter during which it lost considerable credibility. However, today we have, for example, robots that do our work and search engines that supplement our memory, fulfilling at least part of the vision that fueled the early hopes for cybernetics. In this talk we will trace this history and peer into the future, interpreting the various stages of these developments in terms of the mathematical paradigms each stage relied on. In a nutshell, Wiener set the world down a path dominated by continuous mathematics, Fourier transforms, and stationary stochastic processes. A. I. took different path based on the expectation that loosely structured computer programs could replicate in machine form, most of what was needed. Neither was entirely successful. At the present time, data collection and data processing are important parts of many of the more impressive real time applications. It will be argued that to attain the "broadly encompassing view of information processing in engineering and life science" sought by earlier researchers we must find a suitable place for these topics as well. Some examples will be given.Biography:
Roger Brockett is the An Wang professor of electrical engineering and Computer Science at Harvard University. He has been exploring questions in engineering and applied sciences since starting graduate school in 1960, and has been teaching since his appointment as an Assistant Professor at MIT in 1963. He is one of the most influential pioneers and leaders in the field of systems and control theory with seminal contributions to differential geometric methods in nonlinear control, the geometric approach to the sufficient statistics problem in nonlinear estimation, formal languages for motion control, hybrid systems, flows for computation related to integrable systems, stabilization theory, quantum control, and, most recently, optimal control of Markov processes. He has received major awards from IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), SIAM (Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics), and AACC (American Automatic Control Council), is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and is this year recipient of the IEEE Leon Kirchmayer Award for Graduate Education. He has directed more than 60 Ph.D. theses and authored about 200 research papers.Reception to follow
SAL Lobby
4:45PM - 5:30PM
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - -101
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. -
A Novel Approach to C-to-HDL Compilation for FPGA Accelerators
Wed, Nov 11, 2009 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
ABSTRACT:
While FPGA-based hardware accelerators have repeatedly been demonstrated as a viable option for faster computing with very large speed-ups, their programmability remains a major barrier to their wider acceptance by application code developers. These platforms are typically programmed in a low level hardware description language, a skill not common among application developers and a process that is often tedious and error-prone. Programming FPGAs from high-level languages would provide easier integration with software systems as well as open up hardware accelerators to a wider spectrum of application developers. SHORT BIO:
Walid A. Najjar is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California Riverside. His research interests are in the fields of computer architecture and compiler optimizations, embedded systems and sensor networks. Lately, he has been very active in the area of compilation for FPGA-based code acceleration and reconfigurable computing. NSF, DARPA and various industry sponsors have supported his research. He received a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from the American University of Beirut in 1979 and the M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1985 and 1988 respectively. He was on the faculty of the Department of Computer Science at Colorado State University (from 1989 to 2000), before that he was with the USC- Information Sciences Institute. He currently serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Computers and IEEE Computer Architecture Letters. He has served on the program committees for a number of leading conferences including FPL, FPT, CASES, ISSS-CODES, DATE, Computing Frontiers, ICCD, HPCA, and MICRO. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. Hosted by Prof. Viktor K. PrasannaLocation: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - -122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Janice Thompson
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. -
Throughput Optimal Opportunistic Scheduling in the Presence of Flow-Level Dynamics
Fri, Nov 13, 2009 @ 03:15 PM - 04:15 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract:
Multiuser scheduling is one of the core challenges in wireless communications. Due to channel
fading and wireless interference, scheduling algorithms need to dynamically allocate resources
based on both the demands of the users and the channel states to maximize network throughput.
Recently, it has been shown that the MaxWeight algorithm, which is throughput-optimal in
networks with a fixed number of users, fails to achieve the maximum throughput in the presence
of flow-level dynamics. In this talk, we introduce a new class of scheduling algorithms, called
workload-based scheduling with learning, which are provably throughput-optimal, require no
prior knowledge of channels and user demands, and perform significantly better than previously
suggested algorithms.
Dr. Lei Ying
Assistant Professor
Iowa State University
Bio:
Lei Ying received his B.E. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, in 2001, his M.S. and
Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003 and
2007, respectively. During Fall 2007, he worked as a Postdoctoral fellow in the University of
Texas at Austin. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. His research interest is broadly in the area of
communication networks, including wireless communication networks, wireless sensor
networks, P2P networks, and distributed algorithms. He received a Young Investigator Award
from the Defense Thread Reduction Agency (DTRA) in 2009.
Host: Bhaskar KrishnamachariLocation: Frank R. Seaver Science Center (SSC) - 319
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. -
Reliable Circuits and Systems
Mon, Nov 16, 2009 @ 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract: As devices become smaller, circuits and systems are more vulnerable to soft errors caused by radiation and other environmental upsets. Fault tolerance measured by mean time to failure (MTTF) is desired, especially if no extra area, power and delay and little change of the existing design flow are introduced.
Using FPGA and internet router as a testbed, this talk first presents fault tolerance techniques applying (1) logic don't care and path re-convergence (ROSE) and (2) in-place logic re-writing (IPR). Both increase MTTF by 2X with little or no overhead. Particularly, IPR does not change circuit placement and routing, and can be readily used with the existing industrial design flow. It also leads to a self evolution method to enhance fault tolerance
for FPGA based circuits and systems. Finally, I will briefly introduce other ongoing research at my group related to reliability, including circuit tuning for device aging, robust analog circuit, and system-level reliability for cyber-physical systems such as hybrid/plug-in cars and renewal energy storage.Bio: Dr. Lei He is an associate professor at UCLA’s electrical engineering department, and was a faculty member at University of Wisconsin, Madison between 1999 and 2001. He also held visiting or consulting positions with Intel, Hewlett-Package, Cadence and Synopsys, was a technical advisory board member for Rio Design Automation, and Apache Design Solutions, and is a guest professor at Fudan University at Shanghai and China National Laboratory for Optoelectronics. His research interests include electronic design automation, VLSI circuits and systems, and cyber-physical systems. He has published one book and over 200 technical papers and has been a technical program committee member for a number of conferences including Design Automation Conference, International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design, International Symposium on Field Programmable Gate Array, and International Symposium on Physical Design. Dr. He was granted the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2000, UCLA Chancellor's faculty career development award in 2003, IBM Faculty Award in 2003, and Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching award in 2005. Host: Prof. Massoud Pedram, pedram@ceng.usc.eduLocation: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 349
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. -
Intergrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Nov 20, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Information Processing for Future Healthcare SystemsProf. Dejan Markovic
UCLAAbstract: The talk will present methods for practical realization of sophisticated digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms for healthcare applications that require many-channel electrophysiological recordings. An automated architecture design framework will generate dual output: real-time solution that meets power density constraints of medical implants, and solution for accelerated processing by hardware emulation. Orders of magnitude improvements in the number of recording channels and decreased hardware cost will be demonstrated. A real-time implantable DSP chip will demonstrate simultaneous processing of 64 channels, with over 90% data compression for wireless telemetry. A DSP architecture for hardware emulation can achieve a 10,000 times speed-up in data processing compared to state-of-the-art computers. A successful integration of neural-data processing will significantly advance many applications such as visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive prosthetics. Methods for achieving faster analysis of electrophysiological data will provide neuroscientists quicker access to important research data and improve the overall quality of living for persons with neurological disorders. The methods presented here are also applicable to other emerging biomedical applications that require energy- and cost-efficient data processing.Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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.
