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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for January
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GTHB Seminar
Tue, Jan 11, 2011 @ 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Fan Chung Graham , Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering,UCSD
Talk Title: Graph coloring games and memoryless voter models
Abstract: We analyze a network coloring game which can also describe a voter model. Each node represents a voter and is colored according to its preferred candidate, or undecided. Each hyperedge is a subset of nodes and can be viewed as a chat group. We consider interaction-based strategies involving chat groups: in each round of the game, one chat group is chosen randomly, and voters in the group can change colors based on informed discussion. We analyze the game as a random walk on the associated weighted directed state graph. Under certain `memoryless' conditions on the interaction strategies, the spectrum of the state graph can be explicitly determined and the random walk on the state graph converges to its stationary distribution in $O(m \log n)$ time, where $n$ denotes the number of voters and $m$ denotes the number of chat groups. This can then be used to determine the appropriate cut-off time for voting. For example, we show that the problem of estimating the probability that `blue' wins within an error bound of $\epsilon$ takes $O((\log 1/\epsilon) m \log n)$ rounds, provided the interaction strategies are memoryless.
This is a joint work with Alex Tsiatas and based on previous work with Ron Graham.
Biography: Fan Chung Graham received a B.S. degree in mathematics from National Taiwan University in 1970 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, after which she joined the technical staff of AT&T Bell Laboratories. From 1983 to 1991, she headed the Mathematics, Information Sciences and Operations Research Division at Bellcore. In 1991 she became a Bellcore Fellow. In 1993, she was the Class of 1965 Professor of Mathematics at the the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1998, she has been a Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Computer Science and Enginering at the University of California, San Diego. She is also the Paul Erdos Professor in Combinatorics.
Her research interests are primarily in graph theory, combinatorics, and algorithmic design, in particular in spectral graph theory, extremal graphs, graph labeling, graph decompositions, random graphs, graph algorithms, parallel structures and various applications of graph theory in Internet computing, communication networks, software reliability, chemistry, engineering, and various areas of mathematics.
She was awarded the Allendoerfer Award by Mathematical Association of America in 1990. Since 1998, she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
**Lunch served at 12pm. Talk begins at 12:10pm.
RSVP by Fri 1/7 to gthb-seminar@isi.edu.
Host: Prof. Milind Tambe, USC
Location: Seeley Wintersmith Mudd Memorial Hall (of Philosophy) (MHP) - 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrawal
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Real-Time Feedback Control of a Mesoscopic Superposition
Wed, Jan 12, 2011 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kurt Jacobs, University of Massachusetts Boston
Talk Title: Real-Time Feedback Control of a Mesoscopic Superposition
Abstract: I will talk about how to use continuous real-time feedback to track, control, and protect a mesoscopic superposition of two spatially separated wave-packets. The feedback protocol is enabled by an approximate state-estimator, and requires two continuous measurements, performed simultaneously. Both measurements can be implemented for nanomechanical and superconducting resonators with readily available circuit elements.
Biography: Kurt Jacobs obtained his PhD from Imperial College in 1998. He held postdoctoral research positions at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Griffith University, and LSU, before joining the faculty in the Physics Department at UMass Boston in 2006, where he is presently an Assistant Professor. He has worked on quantum measurement theory, feedback control in mesoscopic systems, the quantum-to-classical transition, and the relationship between information, control, and thermodynamics.
Host: Todd Brun, tbrun@usc.edu, EEB 502, X03503
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Utility Optimal Scheduling in Networks: Small Delay and No Underflow
Wed, Jan 12, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Longbo Huang, USC
Talk Title: Utility Optimal Scheduling in Networks: Small Delay and No Underflow
Abstract: The recently developed Lyapunov optimization technique (commonly known as Backpressure / Max-Weight) is a powerful tool for solving a large class of stochastic network optimization problems. In this talk, we extend the theory in two directions: (i) We prove that dramatically improved delay is achievable with a simple Last-In-First Out (LIFO)-Backpressure rule, (ii) We generalize to "processing networks" where processing actions combine commodities of different queues to produce outputs, which involves a challenging "no underflow" constraint.
In the first part of the talk, we show that the LIFO-Backpressure algorithm can achieve utility within epsilon of optimality (for any epsilon>0), with O([log(1/epsilon)]^2) average delay. This dramatically improves upon the previous O(1/epsilon) delay bounds, and results in 95-98% delay reduction in practical implementations. Remarkably, LIFO-Backpressure achieves this performance by simply changing the queueing discipline of the original Backpressure algorithm. It is also the first algorithm that achieves such poly-logarithmic delay performance without knowing or learning any implicit network parameters.
In the second part of the talk, we consider processing networks that are generalizations of the traditional data networks, where commodities in one or more queues can be combined to produce new commodities that are delivered to other parts of the network. These networks can be used to model problems such as data fusion, stream processing and manufacturing, etc. Scheduling algorithms in such networks must ensure that the queues always have enough contents to support the actions, i.e., no underflow happens. We develop the Perturbed Max-Weight algorithm (PMW) for general processsing networks with random arrivals and activation costs. We show that by carefully perturbing the weights used in the usual Max-Weight algorithm, PMW simultaneously prevents queue underflows and optimizes network utility.
Biography: Longbo Huang received the B.E. degree from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China in June 2003, and the M.S. degree from Columbia University, New York City, in December 2004, both in Electrical Engineering. He is currently working toward his Ph.D. degree at the University of Southern California. His research interests are in the areas of Queueing Theory, Stochastic Network Optimization and Network Pricing.
Host: Alex Dimakis, dimakis@usc.edu, EEB 532, x09264
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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AME Dept. Seminar
Wed, Jan 12, 2011 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Elisa Franco , Graduate Student
Talk Title: Programming Molecular Networks
Abstract: How do living organisms process information and implement their responses to external stimuli? Even in the simplest cells, sensing, computation and actuation are structurally embedded in the biochemistry of complex molecular networks, and we need to develop new paradigms to explain and engineer such structures. Quoting Richard Feynman, what we cannot create, we do not understand: by programming and building simple molecular networks from the bottom-up, scientists have an opportunity to gain insight into the design principles of more complicated, naturally occurring circuits.
In this talk, I will describe how DNA and RNA can be used as simple building blocks to construct molecular circuits encoding complex functionalities, because their interactions can be predicted and specified with high confidence. In particular, we have used nucleic acids to investigate two challenges: synchronization and scalability of biochemical networks. I will describe how the activity of two synthetic genes can be matched, by using their outputs to create positive or negative feedback loops. Scaling up our perspective, to synchronize the operations of a larger number of circuits we may need "timing" devices: for instance, digital clock generators coordinate the state transitions of millions of silicon circuits. I will describe how a tunable synthetic oscillator can be used to time the conformation of a DNA nano-mechanical device called "DNA tweezers," evaluating several modes of connection. Because the biochemical interconnections are created by stoichiometric binding of our oscillator components and its "load" components, we observed a remarkable deterioration of the oscillator behavior as we increased its load concentration. To reduce this undesired retroactivity we engineered an "insulator circuit", the molecular equivalent of an operational amplifier, which improves the modularity and scalability of the system. To our knowledge, this is the first experimental attempt to use a synthetic biochemical oscillator to drive several types of downstream processes, in a plug-and-play fashion.
Biography: Elisa Franco is currently a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, in the Department of Control and Dynamical Systems. She got her Laurea degree in Power Systems Engineering from the University of Trieste, Italy, where she also earned a PhD in Automatic Control. Her current research interests are in the field of synthetic and systems biology.
Host: Prof. Eva Kanso
More Info: http://ame-www.usc.edu/seminars/1-12-11-franco.shtmlLocation: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
Event Link: http://ame-www.usc.edu/seminars/1-12-11-franco.shtml
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Optimization Over Time: Multi-Armed Bandit and Quickest Detection
Thu, Jan 13, 2011 @ 09:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Qing Zhao, UC Davis
Talk Title: Optimization Over Time: Multi-Armed Bandit and Quickest Detection
Abstract: To quote Peter Whittle: "Optimization-over-time is the optimization of decisions to be made for the running of a dynamic system." In this talk, we focus on two broad classes of problems under this subject: multi-armed bandit and quickest detection. While both problems have been studied since early 1930's, we show that emerging applications such as dynamic spectrum access and smart grid of the energy distribution network call for new formulations and new solutions to these classical problems. At the same time, these emerging applications give rise to important classes of practical problems for which much stronger results can be obtained than what can be offered by the original mathematical theory.
Biography: Qing Zhao received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2001 from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. In August 2004, she joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Davis where she is currently an Associate Professor. Her research interests are in the general area of stochastic optimization and decision theory in dynamic systems and communication networks. Qing Zhao holds the title of UC Davis Chancellor's Fellow. She received the 2000 Young Author Best Paper Award from IEEE Signal Processing Society and the 2008 Outstanding Junior Faculty Award from the UC Davis College of Engineering. She is also a co-author of two student paper awards at IEEE ICASSP 2006 and IEEE Asilomar Conference 2006.
http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~qzhao/
Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 540, x04667
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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CS Colloquium
Thu, Jan 13, 2011 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Zornitsa Kozareva, ISI, USC: Natural Language (Lexical Semantics)
Talk Title: Learning the Encyclopedia of the World using the Web
Abstract: How can we automatically build the Encyclopedia of the World, that will contain not only high-level information such as found in Wikipedia, but also particular facts such as "Who appeared in a concert in the Hollywood Bowl last night?" ?This is a challenging problem, which was never solved despite many have worked on it. In this talk, I will present novel algorithms for information gathering, sifting and organization that can rapidly, accurately and completely cover any area of interest mining unstructured text on the Web. I will describe a semi-supervised bootstrapping procedure, which uses a recursive lexico-syntactic pattern and an instance of a given semantic relation to scan billions of Web documents, and automatically harvest and taxonomize thousands to millions of new instances, facts and semantic relations. I will describe graph-based algorithms used to validate and rank the harvested knowledge. Finally, I will show that the algorithms (1) outperform state-of-the-art systems like KnowItAll and Yago, (2) enrich existing human-built knowledge repositories like WordNet, and (3) accurately reconstruct taxonomies starting from scratch. The developed search technology has shown that it is possible to begin the building of the Encyclopedia of the World and has opened up new directions for research.
Biography: Zornitsa Kozareva is a Research Scientist in the Natural Language group at the Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California (USC/ISI). She received her PhD with Cum Laude from the University of Alicante, Spain. Her research interests lie in Web-based knowledge acquisition, text mining, lexical semantics, ontology population and multilingual information extraction. In 2010, Zornitsa co-organized one of the biggest challenges in the area of semantics called SemEval. She co-organized the CCIACADA/VACCINE Reconnect Conference. She was the leader of the team that won the answer validation challenge (AVE-2006) for French and Italian, and a member of the team that won the Spanish Geographic Information Retrieval (GeoClef-2006) challenge.
Host: Prof. Aiichiro Nakano
Location: SSL 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrawal
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium; "The Great Transatlantic Cable"
Fri, Jan 14, 2011 @ 12:55 AM - 01:50 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Screening of the video documentary "The Great Transatlantic Cable."
Abstract: The video documentary "The Great Transatlantic Cable" will be shown as part of the W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium.
Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium
More Info: http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/undergrad/honors/schedules/Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: Amanda Atkinson
Event Link: http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/undergrad/honors/schedules/
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BME 533 - Seminar in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Jan 17, 2011 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Martin Luther King Day (No Seminar)
Host: Department of Biomedical Engineering, USC
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Efficient Solution of Large Overdetermined Systems of Equations by a Monte Carlo Method
Tue, Jan 18, 2011 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yunsong Huang , Ph.D. student
Talk Title: Efficient Solution of Large Overdetermined Systems of Equations by a Monte Carlo Method
Abstract: Large overdetermined system of linear equations, expressed as A x = b, arises from applications such as seismic imaging. The rows of the matrix A can be randomly encoded and lumped up, resulting in a matrix with much fewer number of rows, thereby allowing a more efficient solution. This manipulation step can be embedded in least-squares iterative solution of the original system of equations. At each iteration, an independently encoded and lumped matrix is in effect, guiding the update of x, in the least-squares sense. Overall, this approach results in significant savings in computational cost. Experiments in seismic imaging validate the merits of the proposed method.
Biography: Yunsong Huang received a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China, and a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the Earth Science and Engineering Program at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). His research interests include seismic imaging and signal processing.
Host: Prof. B. Keith Jenkins
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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2011 Ming Hsieh Institute Ph.D. Scholar Finalist Competition
Tue, Jan 18, 2011 @ 12:30 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Each finalist will present a 12-minute talk about their research, Ming Hsieh Institute
Talk Title: MHI Ph.D. Scholar Finalist Presentation
Abstract: You are all invited to an exciting event being held for the first time in our department: talks by nine stellar Ph.D. students competing to become 2011 Ming Hsieh Institute Ph.D. Scholars. The Ph.D. Scholar Program is a venture of the newly-founded Ming Hsieh Institute, that aims to support senior Ph.D. students interested in pursuing an academic career. These finalists have been selected from nominations submitted by faculty. At the event each finalist will present a 12-minute talk about their research. It is anticipated that five MHI Scholars will be selected from this pool, based on an evaluation of their talks by a faculty panel.
All Electrical Engineering students and faculty are invited. Light refreshments will be served.
Please find below the list of finalists and the titles of their talks.
â¢Firooz Aflatouni- "Electronically Assisted Phase Control of Semiconductor Lasers"
â¢Chiranjib Choudhuri -"On the Capacity and State estimation of Networks"
â¢Prasanta Ghosh - "A computational framework for exploring the role of speech production in speech recognition"
â¢Longbo Huang -"Improving the Lyapunov Network Optimization Technique"
â¢Chih-ping Li - "Delay and Power-Optimal Control in Multi-Class Queueing Systems"
â¢Jason Sanders "Megawatts in Nanoseconds: Engineering New Pulsed Power Systems that Enable Scientific Discovery"
â¢Samir Sharma - "Accelerated Water-Fat MRI"
â¢Chuan Wang - "High-Performance Separated Carbon Nanotube Thin-Film Transistors for Macroelectronic Integrated Circuit and Display Electronic applications"
â¢Omer Yilmaz - "Advanced Nonlinear Optical Signal Processing Techniques for High Speed, Reconfigurable Optical Fiber Networks"
Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Co-Director - Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Seeley Wintersmith Mudd Memorial Hall (of Philosophy) (MHP) - 106
Audiences: Department Only
Contact: Danielle Hamra
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Astani Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Tue, Jan 18, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Lea Hildebrandt, Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Chemical Engineering
Talk Title: Atmospheric Organic Nanoparticles:Importance, Challenges and Progress
Abstract: Atmospheric nanoparticles (aerosols) affect society in multiple ways. For example, they affect human health by damaging the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, they degrade visibility, and they perturb Earthâs climate by reducing the penetration of solar radiation and by influencing cloud formation and lifetime.
Organic aerosol globally comprises a significant fraction (20-90%) of the submicron particle mass. It is composed of thousands of species, many of them unidentified, and has a myriad of sources â both anthropogenic and biogenic, particle phase and gas phase. Furthermore, organic aerosol is dynamic: most of its components are semi-volatile and can evaporate, can be transported and further processed in the atmosphere, and can repartition to the particle phase, making it very challenging to trace the organic aerosol sources. Three-dimensional chemical transport models often significantly under-predict the concentration, oxidation state and diurnal cycle of organic aerosol, suggesting that our understanding of organic aerosol and, more generally, atmospheric nanoparticles is incomplete. We need to better understand atmospheric nanoparticles and update our models which will then allow us to develop effective policy actions to mitigate atmospheric particles and their adverse effects.
I will present recent results from our laboratory experiments and ambient measurements which shed light on organic aerosol formation, the interaction of different organic aerosol types, and their chemical transformation (aging). Firstly, aerosol production experiments using a state-of-the-art environmental chamber showed that aerosol mass yields from anthropogenic organic aerosol precursors such as toluene (methylbenzene) are much higher than previously reported. Secondly, in order to understand the interaction of organic aerosol from different sources, we developed a new experimental method using isotopically labeled compounds (13C or D) and a High Resolution Time-of-Flight Aerosol Mass Spectrometer. Our results are consistent with pseudo-ideal mixing of anthropogenic and biogenic organic aerosol components at equilibrium. This confirms that the presence of anthropogenic organic aerosol enhances the concentration of biogenic organic aerosol. Finally, our measurements at a remote coastal site on the island of Crete suggest that the variability between different organic aerosol types decreases significantly with chemical transformation (aging). The photochemical age of organic aerosol may be just as important as the aerosol source in understanding its concentrations and characteristics.
All of these findings have been used to more accurately represent organic aerosol in chemical transport models. The updated models agree well with observations of organic aerosol concentrations, approximate oxidative states and diurnal cycles in highly polluted (Mexico City) as well as pristine environments (Crete).
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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CS Colloquium
Tue, Jan 18, 2011 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. David DeVault, USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT)
Talk Title: Toward flexible, robust, and rapid understanding of user speech in natural language dialogue systems
Abstract: This talk presents recent research that targets two of the major limitations in current natural language dialogue systems. One limitation is that while systems face substantial uncertainty in understanding user speech, they usually have only a rudimentary ability to overcome uncertainty in their dialogues. A second and related limitation arises from the fact that human speakers are by nature highly interactive while speaking, using incremental responses such as backchannels, interruptions, and overlapping speech to signal their understanding and resolve uncertainty when it arises. However, most implemented dialogue systems have little or no support for incremental interaction.
In the first part of the talk, I will present a probabilistic approach to dialogue management, called "contribution tracking", which I developed as a way to improve the flexibility of dialogue systems in overcoming uncertainty. On this approach, when faced with an ambiguous utterance, systems can spawn multiple threads of interpretation to track the likely meanings as the dialogue proceeds. I will highlight several concrete results and benefits of this approach in an implemented dialogue system that plays a collaborative reference game. These benefits include improved robustness to clarification failure, flexible aggregation of information across utterances with probabilistic inference, and the use of successful
ambiguity resolution to automatically improve the agent's understanding models with machine learning.
In the second part of the talk, I will present more recent work, carried out within the dialogue group at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, which has aimed to enable incremental interaction and overlapping speech in our SASO-EN virtual humans. This work has created a data-driven approach to incremental understanding and prediction of user utterance meaning during user speech. Among the results I will discuss is a prototype system that often enables a virtual human to anticipate how a user's utterance will end, and to quickly generate and utter a completion of the user's utterance for them. (Joint work with Kenji Sagae and David Traum.)
Biography: David DeVault is a Research Scientist at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), where he is a member of the natural language dialogue group. David obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University in 2008, and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at USC/ICT from 2008-2010. David's research focuses on the development of techniques to enable dialogue systems to respond to the inevitable uncertainties of communication in a way that is more flexible, more robust, and more human-like. His work spans the areas of natural language understanding, dialogue management, and natural language generation.
Host: Prof. Kevin Knight
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrawal
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Epstein Institute Seminar
Tue, Jan 18, 2011 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: John Fontanesi, PhD., Director, Ctr for Mgmt Science in Health, UC San Diego School of Medicine
Abstract: Health care delivery in the U.S. is wasteful, fragmented, difficult for patients to navigate and too often lethal. Application of modern management techniques have failed to improve Emergency Room overcrowding or ambulance diversion, Operating Room under-utilization or staff overtime, reduce âno-showâ rates or improve access in ambulatory care. A fundamental reason is the failure to establish either a descriptive or explanatory theory of health care quality. This presentation will offer a framework for developing a quantitative model of health care delivery from the perspectives of individual patients, provider, health care organizations and society as a whole generating extensive form sub-game Bayesian Nash Equilibrium.
Biography: Dr. Fontanesi is a professor in the School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego with joint appointments to the Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine and the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. He is a member of a number of national committees committees including a core member of Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee for the Federal government
Dr. Fontanesi is the Principle Investigator for a number of studies examining the operational conditions and organizational structures that facilitate or constrain organizational effectiveness in providing quality care. Recent studies include work flow analysis and simulation in emergency department re-design, optimized scheduling in ambulatory specialty care clinics, the logistical and fiscal requirements of alternative delivery sites for influenza vaccinations, improving patient compliance through work re-design and restructuring the role and relationships between the Vaccines for Children field staff and Providers. Recent publications range form the cost and efficiencies of mass vaccination clinics, discrete event simulation of ambulatory clinics, modeling patient arrival times and the role of measurement in improving quality of care in ambulatory care clinics.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - Room 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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An Optimization-Based Framework for Automated Market-Making
Wed, Jan 19, 2011 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Jenn Wortman Vaughan , UCLA
Talk Title: An Optimization-Based Framework for Automated Market-Making
Abstract: A prediction market is a financial market designed to aggregate information. To facilitate trades, prediction markets are often operated by automated market makers. The market maker trades a set of securities with payoffs that depend on the outcome of a future event. For example, the market maker might offer a security that will pay off $1 if and only if a Democrat wins the 2012 presidential election. A risk neutral trader who believes that the probability of a Democrat winning is p should be willing to purchase this security at any price below p, or sell it at any price above p. The current market price can then be viewed as the traders? collective estimate of how likely it is that a Democrat will win the election.
Market-based estimates have proved to be accurate in a variety of domains, including business, entertainment, and politics. However, when the number of outcomes is very large, it is generally infeasible to run a simple prediction market over the full outcome space. There has been a surge of recent research examining the tractability of running standard prediction market mechanisms (such as the popular Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule) over combinatorial outcome spaces by limiting the space of available securities. While this line of research has led to a few positive results, it has led more often to hardness results or to markets with undesirable properties such as unbounded worst case market maker loss.
We take a different approach. Building on ideas from convex optimization, we propose a general framework for the design of efficient prediction market mechanisms over very large or infinite outcome spaces. We start with an arbitrary space of securities with bounded payoff, and establish a framework to design markets tailored to this space. We prove that any market satisfying a set of intuitive conditions must price securities via a convex potential function and that the space of reachable prices must be precisely the convex hull of the security payoffs. We then show how the convex potential function can be defined in terms of an optimization over the convex hull of the security payoffs. The solution to the optimization problem gives the security prices. Using this framework, we provide an efficient prediction market mechanism for predicting the landing location of an object on a sphere. In addition, we show that we can relax our "no-arbitrage" condition to design a new eff icient market maker for "pair betting" on rank orderings, which is known to be #P-hard to price using existing mechanisms. This relaxation also allows the market maker to charge transaction fees so that the depth of the market can be dynamically increased as the number of trades increases.
This talk is based on joint work with Jake Abernethy and Yiling Chen.
Biography: Jenn Wortman Vaughan is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at UCLA. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. Before arriving at UCLA, she spent a year as a Computing Innovation Fellow at Harvard. Her research interests are in machine learning, algorithmic economics, social computing, and algorithms, all of which she studies using techniques from theoretical computer science. Her recent research has won several best student paper awards, as well as Penn's 2009 Rubinoff dissertation award for innovative applications of computer technology. In her spare time, she is involved in a variety of efforts to provide support for women in computer science; most notably, she co-founded the Annual Workshop for Women in Machine Learning, which was held for the fifth time this year.
Host: Prof. David Kempe
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrawal
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Munushian Seminar -CANCELED
Wed, Jan 19, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Julie Brown, Senior Vice President, Universal Display Corporation
Talk Title: âLighting the way with Organic Lighting Emitting Devicesâ
Abstract: Organic lighting emitting diodes or OLEDs are now catching the attention of the consumer. OLED smart phones can be found in every store, and are offered by all the major carriers. Fabulous early entry small area OLED TVs are now available and offer truly spectacular visual experiences with large area prototypes being exhibited at leading tradeshows. While the early focus of OLED development was for flat panel display applications, through the use of phosphorescent OLEDs, energy efficient solid state lighting is now also being realized. Lighting is now at a cross roads. Incandescent lamps are being banned world wide because of their environmental impact, while compact fluorescent lamps have limited visual appeal, as well as safety concerns for residential lighting due to their mercury content. Both inorganic LEDs and OLEDs provide safe and efficient replacements for these older lighting technologies, and can complement each other in how they are used. Here we will focus on the global interest in solid state lighting and recent rapid progress in OLED lighting panel prototypes and discuss the next set of research, development and commercialization challenges to insure future impact.
Biography: Dr. Brown is Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at Universal Display Corporation (UDC). UDC is an entrepreneurial company pursuing the research, development and commercialization of organic light emitting device (OLEDs) technology into two key growth markets, namely flat panel displays and solid state lighting. UDCâs key position in the industry, along with their academic research teams at USC and U of M, is as pioneers of phosphorescent OLEDs to enable âgreenâ energy efficient OLED solutions for these markets. Under her leadership, UDC is also pursuing the creation of new product concepts based on flexible OLED displays and light sources.
Prior to joining UDC in 1998, she was a Research Manager at Hughes Research Laboratories where she was involved in the pilot line production of high speed Indium Phosphide-based integrated circuits for insertion into advanced airborne radar and satellite communication systems. Dr. Brown received her B. S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University (1983) and then worked at Raytheon Company (1983-1984) and AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984-1986) before returning to graduate school. Dr. Brown received an M.S. (1988) and Ph.D. (1991) in Electrical Eng./Electrophysics at the University of Southern California under the advisement of Professor Stephen R. Forrest.
Dr. Brown was nominated to IEEE Fellow in 2007 and inducted into the New Jersey High Tech Hall of Fame in 2007. She is actively involved in the Society of Information Display and over the past years been involved in a number of other professional societies. She has authored or co-authored numerous publications and patents in the fields of high speed compound semiconductor devices, microelectro-
mechanical systems (MEMs) and organic light emitting devices (OLEDs).
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Donald P. & Katherine B. Loker Hydrocarbon Institute (LHI) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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Feedback Role in Interference Networks
Wed, Jan 19, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Changho Suh, University of California at Berkeley
Talk Title: Feedback Role in Interference Networks
Abstract: Traditionally, it is believed that feedback has had little impact on increasing capacity. This is mainly due to Shannon's original result on feedback capacity, where he showed that feedback cannot increase the capacity in point-to-point communication links. Hence the use of feedback has been so far limited to improving the reliability of communication, usually in the form of ARQ.
In this talk, I will present a promising role of feedback in networks. What we have shown is that when there are two interfering point-to-point links, not only can feedback increase capacity of each link, but it can in fact provide an unbounded increase in capacity as the signal-to-noise ratio of the links increases. In the process of deriving this conclusion, we characterize the feedback capacity of the two-user Gaussian interference channel to within 2 bits, an open problem for more than 30 years.
Furthermore, I will show the potential impact of feedback on practical systems that take feedback cost into account. Specifically, I will present an interesting scenario in the context of multiple (more than 3) interfering point-to-point links, where 1 bit of feedback can provide a capacity increase of an arbitrarily large number of bits.
Biography: Changho Suh received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 2000 and 2002, respectively. Since 2006, he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the University of California at Berkeley, where he is pursuing the Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. David Tse. Prior to that, he had been with the Telecommunication R&D Center, Samsung Electronics.
He is a recipient of the Best Student Paper Award of the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 2009 and the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award in 2010. He awarded several fellowships: the Vodafone U.S. Foundation Fellowship in 2006 and 2007; Kwanjeong Educational Foundation Fellowship in 2009; and Korea Government Fellowship from 1996 to 2002.
Host: Alex Dimakis, dimakis@usc.edu, EEB 532, x09264
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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AME Dept. Seminar
Wed, Jan 19, 2011 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Alfredo Sedun, University of Southern California
Talk Title: Engineering the Human Eye
Abstract:
The human eye reflects elements of design that represent an interesting tension between the rules of evolution (you need a path between steps and each step must at least not have a negative value added) and all sorts of tradeoffs between benefits that would have selection value. We will look at this process by asking how we might design such a system taking the following steps.
1) How big should it be?
a. Too small and you have >1.2mm aperture limit of diffraction
b. Too large and itâs neurologically (and metabolically) expensive
2) Do you grow it after birth (axial length changes require new focal lengths)?
3) How many pixels (separation of less than 30 seconds of arc = diffraction gratings)?
4) Scotopic vs Photopic (predator or prey)?
5) Transient or sustained (integrating over space or time)?
6) Duality approach of M & P cells (How is the hawk eye superior?)
7) Color vs B&W
8) How many color cones do we want (predator vs prey)?
9) Did you forget the heat sink?
10) Super-sustained RGCs (melanopsin) for
a. Pupils
b. Circadian rhythms
How do you get there from here: 10 step plan notwithstanding that evolution doesnât have a trajectory.
1) Discriminating light vs dark = photopigment on a membrane (phototaxis and circadian rhythm)
2) Direction of light (light wall or just a cup)
3) Focus for better resolution (almost close the cup for pinhole aperture)
4) Maintain transparency (close with cornea, use aqueous and vitreous and IOP for sphere).
5) Movable iris to increase light
6) Lens to focus when pupil is not a pinhole
7) Deal with optic nerve that leaves the eye and makes a big blind spot (how do you keep the pressure in when you have an exit?).
8) Put psychophysical filters into the eye to decrease data and limit optic nerve head size by using Bipolars, Horizontals, Amacrine). Edges matter more than filler.
9) Fovea and eye movements
10) M & P cell parallel processing
Biography: Flora Thornton Chair of Vision Research, Professor of Ophthalmology and Neurological Surgery, Doheny Eye Institute, USC-Keck School of Medicine
Host: Professor Firdaus Udwadia
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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CS Colloquium
Thu, Jan 20, 2011 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Aleksander Madry , MIT
Talk Title: Electrical Flows and Laplacian Systems: A New Tool for Graph Algorithms
Abstract: In recent years, the emergence of massive computing tasks that arise in context of web applications and networks has made the need for efficient graph algorithms more pressing than ever. In particular, it lead us to focus on reducing the running time of the algorithms to make them as fast as possible, even if it comes at a cost of reducing the quality of the returned solution. This motivates us to expand our algorithmic toolkit to include techniques capable of addressing this new challenge.
In this talk, I will describe how treating a graph as a network of resistors and relating the combinatorial properties of the graph to the electrical properties of the resulting circuit provides us with a powerful new set of tools for the above pursuit. As an illustration of their applicability, I will use these ideas to develop a new technique for approximating the maximum flow in capacitated, undirected graphs that yields the asymptotically fastest-known algorithm for this problem.
Biography: Aleksander is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at MIT, advised by Michel Goemans and Jonathan Kelner. His research focuses on algorithmic graph theory, i.e. design and analysis of very efficient (approximation) algorithms for fundamental graph problems. He also enjoys investigating topics in combinatorial optimization - especially the ones involving dealing with uncertainty.
Host: Prof. David Kempe
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrawal
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William Spitzer Lecture
Thu, Jan 20, 2011 @ 04:00 PM - 05:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Harry Atwater, California Institute of Technology
Talk Title: New Photonic Material Designs for Solar Energy Conversion
Series: William Spitzer Lecture
Abstract: Solar energy is currently enjoying substantial growth and investment, owing to worldwide sensitivity to energy security and climate change, and this has spurred basic research on light-matter interactions relevant to solar energy. Dr. Atwater will describe approaches to control of light-matter interactions leading to enhanced light-trapping and absorption, as well as increased open circuit voltage and enhanced quantum efficiency in solar photovoltaic structures. Conventionally, photovoltaic cells have a physical thickness comparable to their âoptical thicknessâ for full light absorption and photocarrier current collection. Solar cell design and material synthesis considerations are strongly dictated by this simple optical thickness requirement. Dramatically reducing the absorber layer thickness or volume confers several fundamental and practical benefits, including increased open circuit voltage and conversion efficiency, and also expansion of the scope and quality of absorber materials that are suitable for photovoltaics. He will describe light absorption in thin film and wire array solar cells that demonstrate enhanced absorption compared with conventional photovoltaic cells, and limits to enhanced absorption will be explored. Plasmonics and metamaterials design can also be exploited advantageously in photovoltaics. He will describe design approaches using metallic nanostructures to enhance the radiative emission rate and hence also the photovoltaic material quantum efficiency relative to conventional light-trapping structures. Finally, future design metamaterials for broadband resonant absorption and spectrum-splitting will be discussed.
Biography: Harry Atwater is currently Howard Hughes Professor and Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests center around two interwoven research themes: photovoltaics and solar energy; and plasmonics and optical metamaterials. Atwater and his group have been active in photovoltaics research for more than 20 years. Recently they have created new photovoltaic devices, including the silicon wire array solar cell, and layer-transferred fabrication approaches to III-V semiconductor III-V and multijunction cells, as well as making advances in plasmonic light absorber structures for III-V compound and silicon thin films. He is an early pioneer in surface plasmon photonics; he gave the name to the field of plasmonics in 2001.
Host: Mork Family Dept of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
More Info: http://chems.usc.edu/academics/10-11/w-01-20-11.htmLocation: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce
Event Link: http://chems.usc.edu/academics/10-11/w-01-20-11.htm
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Sensing Compressed Signal, Codes on Graphs and Reliability of Memories
Fri, Jan 21, 2011 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Arya Mazumdar, University of Maryland, College Park
Talk Title: Sensing Compressed Signal, Codes on Graphs and Reliability of Memories
Abstract: Almost all areas of Electrical Engineering are rich sources of problems concerned with discrete mathematical structures. In this talk, we describe an array of such problems dealing with issues of communication, signal processing and storage. To highlight the methods being used, we describe in more detail our work on codes for flash memory and the rank modulation scheme. We reduce this problem to a set of combinatorial questions for the Kendall tau metric space defined on the set of permutations of n elements.
Our results are related to the areas of error-correcting codes (codes on graphs, constrained codes and codes for high-density magnetic recording), data reliability (flash memories), and compressed sensing. We also point out that similar combinatorial and probabilistic methods offer promise in such areas as group testing in Biology and data security.
Biography: Arya Mazumdar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. He received the B.E. degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering and the M.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering (Information Systems) respectively from Jadavpur University, India, and Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur), India. During the summers of 2008 and 2010, he visited the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, and IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, as a research intern. His research interests include Information and Coding Theory, Communications, Networking, Signal Processing, Combinatorics and Probability.
Mr. Mazumdar won the Student Paper Award in the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, 2010. He is a recipient of the ECE Fellowship award in University of Maryland. He was awarded scholarships from Ministry of Human Resource and Development and National Council for Educational Research and Training in India during his graduate and undergraduate studies respectively.
Host: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu, EEB 528, x04683
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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USC Water Institute Seminar
Fri, Jan 21, 2011 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Thomas C. Harmon, University of California, Merced & UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
Talk Title: Whole Stream Metabolism as a Beacon for Change in Aquatic Ecosystems: Results from a Study of the Human-Dominated River Basin
Abstract: Metabolism estimates (gross primary production, GPP and community respiration, CR), based on the continuous monitoring of flow and water properties (primarily dissolved oxygen, temperature), can provide an integrative assessment of the effects of various disturbances on aquatic ecosystem function. The long-term goal of this work is to learn how to relate GPP/CR responses in lotic ecosystems to natural and anthropogenic disturbances, such as short- or long-term reservoir operational changes for drought management, flood control, fish habitat enhancement, or salinity and nutrient discharges due to land management practices. This presentation highlights observations from a GPP/CR observational network embedded in the human-dominated San Joaquin River Basin (SJRB) including reaches of the SJR and the Lower Merced River, located in the Central Valley of California. The network enables spatial (both longitudinal and transverse gradients) and temporal (daily, seasonal and interannual) variation of these metabolism estimates. The observational network will be described in terms of: (1) design and installation of a reproducible infrastructure of GPP/CR observational nodes, (2) analysis aimed linking the spatiotemporal metabolic trends to natural factors such as the seasonal radiation availability or nutrient input from leaf decay, and (3) separating natural effects from the ones triggered by human disturbances in order to better inform water resources management decisions. For example, observations over the 2009-10 water year, demonstrate that the Lower Merced River behaves as a heterotrophic system, with significant human-triggered temporal changes in metabolism clearly observable by the monitoring network. For example, the GPP/CR ratio decreased from 0.6 to 0.2 as a consequence of a large flow disturbance associated with short-term reservoir releases mandated biannually to support salmon migration. This and other examples set at different temporal and spatial scales will be presented and discussed in terms of management implications.
Biography: Tom Harmon is Professor and Chair of the School of Engineering and Founding Faculty member at the University of California, Merced. He is also affiliated with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He directs contaminant transport observation and management research for the UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), and maintains an adjunct position in the UCLA Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Professor Harmon earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. As an environmental engineer, his teaching and research focuses on a variety of topics pertaining to understanding and solving soil, groundwater, and surface water problems in natural and engineered environmental systems.
Host: Prof. Gaurav Sukhatme
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrawal
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USC PSOC Monthly Seminar Series
Fri, Jan 21, 2011 @ 11:30 AM - 01:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Robert Getzenberg, Ph.D., Professor and Director of the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute,
Talk Title: Cancer cell stress response and the evolution of resistance â the connection between the physical microenvironment and nuclear structure
Abstract: The ability of cancer cells to evolve resistance is one of the major limitations in the efficacy of cancer therapies today. This enhanced evolutionary capability appears to have influenced how the cancer cell responds to physical microenvironmental changes. These microenvironmental influences appear to be act, at least in part, through nuclear structural elements and DNA organization, which have been shown to be involved in the development of resistance. Additionally, the disordered nature of protein structure appears to be central to cancer cell responses to stresses. Modification of the physical microenvironment may enhance the efficacy of currently used therapeutic agents as well as open new avenues for the development of novel types of approaches.
Location: Harkness Auditorium, CSC 250, IGM Building
For additional information contact: 323-442-3849 or 323-442-2596
Biography: Robert Getzenberg, Ph.D.
Professor and Director of the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute,
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Host: Dr. Parag Mallick, Center for Applied Molecular Medicine
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Yvonne Suarez
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CiSoft Seminar Series 2011
Fri, Jan 21, 2011 @ 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: SPE Distinguished Lecturer, Jim Crompton, Chevron, Global Upstream IT
Talk Title: âPutting the Focus on Dataâ
Abstract: Data is a critical business asset which drives decisions on where to invest, when to divest and how to operate more efficiently. The business wants to focus on using data and expects IT to manage data. However, IT often focuses on the technology to capture, store data and even to visualize data but the ownership of the lifecycle of data is often ill defined.
This is not a new problem. Many studies point out the productivity loss felt when a lot of time is spent looking for data and making sure what is found is correct, complete and in the right format. While some of the issues are mitigated by our current experienced workforce, what will happen when the experience leaves? The new workforce is digitally literate with high expectations but can they perform at a high level with a poor understanding of data? Can the new engineer recognize when critical data is missing or wrong? Will they be able to recognize when a logical conclusion is not the right one?
The importance of data should be a business priority. Managing data in silos (structured data, documents, transactions, models) increases the resistance to efficient data flow. As many different people are involved in new workflows, a solution design for one specific discipline becomes a barrier for others. In some applications, the need to see the bigger picture becomes more important than reaching specific answers.
Data silos continue to survive waves of new technology development. The data explosion and the availability of powerful desktop tools create hundreds more data silos for the organization to manage. There is not a simple answer or technology to fix the current situation but there are practical recommendations to help us get back on the road to ââtrusted data, easily found.â
The approach starts through a better understanding of business process and how information flow leads to decisions. Other practical steps include: data governance, common reference and master data, data quality management, and looking at the data lifecycle by managing data from its capture/creation, storage, access, use, archive and disposal.
Biography: Jim Crompton holds the position of Manager of Upstream Architecture in the Chevron Global Upstream IT organization. He earned a BS in Geophysical Eng., MS in Geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines and an MBA from Our Lady of the Lake University. In 1993, as IT Manager for the Gulf of Mexico Business Unit, Crompton led one of the first desktop PC standardization projects in Chevron. In 1997, Jim was names the Principal Technical Advisor for IT, where he was responsible assessment of emerging technology and strategic planning for the IT function. He served as chair of the API general committee for electronic commerce ( PIDX) and was able to influence the direction of the standards setting activities towards emerging technologies, such as XML, and new electronic business models in the industry. Jim participated in the IT merger integration study team in 2001 as part of the Chevron & Texaco merger which developed the IT organization structure and IT strategic direction for the corporation, where he received a President's Award for this activity. In 2002, Jim was selected to be a Chevron Fellow. Jim also works on Chevronâs i-field program in the area of emerging solutions.
This CiSoft Seminar will also be webcast.
Please register at:
http://usccisoft.omnovia.com/register/68421291748863
Host: CiSoft & SPE Student Chapter
More Info: http://cisoft.usc.edu/Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) -
Audiences: Please RSVP: legat@usc.edu
Contact: Juli Legat
Event Link: http://cisoft.usc.edu/
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium; The Search for Exoplanets
Fri, Jan 21, 2011 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Jakob van Zyl, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Talk Title: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium; The Search for Exoplanets
Abstract: Dr. Jakob van Zyl of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will present "The Search for Exoplanets" as part of the W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium.
Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium
More Info: http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/undergrad/honors/schedules/Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: Amanda Atkinson
Event Link: http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/undergrad/honors/schedules/
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BME 533 - Seminar in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Jan 24, 2011 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Kyriacos "Kerry" Athanasiou, UC Davis
Talk Title: Toward Mending Cartilage: Is Osteoarthritis Indeed Incurable?
Abstract: Articular cartilage is arguably the tissue most pivotal for motion and overall function. This soft, white tissue that covers the ends of our long bones cannot heal by itself. Indeed, articular cartilage is notorious for its degenerative progression to osteoarthritis following an injury. The demanding biomechanical milieu of a joint, plus cartilageâs relative lack of cells and blood supply, renders this tissue almost unique in its inability to repair adequately. This presentation will describe our group's efforts toward helping joint cartilages, such as hyaline tissue, knee meniscus, and the TMJ disc, repair themselves via tissue engineering approaches. Central to our efforts is the understanding of biomechanical relationships at multiple dimensional levels. Also shown will be some of our latest results using various stem cell sources that indicate that cartilage regeneration is inexorably becoming a tractable problem.
Biography: Kyriacos A. Athanasiou, is a Distinguished Professor and the Chair of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California Davis. He obtained his PhD from Columbia University in 1989 and has been a faculty member at the University of Texas and Rice University, prior to joining Davis in 2009. He has published 225 peer-reviewed papers, four authored books, and 28 patents. He has also served as president of the Biomedical Engineering Society. He has received numerous honors, such as the Thomas Edison Award from ASME, the Presidential Award form BMES, the Marshall Urist Award from ORS, the Van C. Mow Medal from ASME, etc. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of Biomedical Engineering. In addition to his academic interests, he has co-founded numerous bioengineering companies which have collectively brought to the market 15 FDA-approved products.
Host: Department of Biomedical Engineering, USC
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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CS Colloquium
Tue, Jan 25, 2011 @ 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Tudor Dumitras, Senior Research Engineer, Symantec Research Lab
Talk Title: Improving the Dependability of Distributed Systems through AIR Software Upgrades
Abstract: Traditional fault-tolerance approaches concentrate almost entirely on responding to, avoiding, or tolerating unexpected faults or security violations. However, scheduled events, such as software upgrades, account for most of the system unavailability and often introduce data loss or latent errors. In this talk, I will present two empirical studies that identify the leading causes of upgrade failure---breaking hidden dependencies---and of planned downtime---hanging database schemas---in distributed enterprise systems. I will also describe Imago, a system that incorporates end-to-end mechanisms for improving the dependability of large-scale distributed systems that undergo major software upgrades.
The key idea is to isolate the production system from the upgrade operations in order to avoid breaking hidden dependencies. The end-to-end upgrade is an atomic operation, executed online even when performing complex schema and data conversions. Imago harnesses the opportunities provided by emerging technologies, such as cloud computing, to simplify major enterprise-system upgrades and to improve their dependability. This approach separates the functional aspects of the upgrade (e.g., data migration) from the mechanisms for online upgrade (e.g., atomic switchover), enabling an upgrade-as-a-service model.
Biography: Tudor Dumitras is a Senior Research Engineer at Symantec Research Labs. At SRL, he is building the Worldwide Intelligence Network Environment (WINE), which will enable researchers in academia to analyze field data, collected at Symantec. The goal of this project is to create a standard benchmark for cloud-security research. Tudor received a Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University. His prior research focused on improving the dependability of large-scale distributed systems (addressing operator errors during software upgrades), of enterprise systems (addressing the predictability of fault-tolerant middleware), and of embedded systems (addressing soft errors in networks-on-chip). He received the 2009 John Vlissides Award, from ACM SIGPLAN, for showing significant promise in applied software research, and the Best Paper Award at ASP-DAC'03. He holds undergraduate degrees from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and the "Politehnica" University in Bucharest.
Host: Prof. Ramesh Govindan
Location: Charles Lee Powell Hall (PHE) - 631
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrwal
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Optimum Joint Detection and Estimation: Application to MIMO Radar
Tue, Jan 25, 2011 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: George Moustakides, University of Patras
Talk Title: Optimum Joint Detection and Estimation: Application to MIMO Radar
Abstract: We consider the joint detection and parameter estimation problem. By combining the Baysian formulation for estimation with suitable constraints on the detection subproblem we develop optimum one- and two-step test for the joint detection/estimation case. The proposed combined strategies have the very desirable characteristic to allow for the trade-off between detection power and estimation efficiency. Our theoretical developments are then applied to the problem of MIMO radar where we detect a target but also estimate its location. Simulations demonstrate that by using the jointly optimum schemes, we can experience significant improvement in estimation quality with small sacrifice in detection power.
Biography: George V. Moustakides received the diploma in Electrical & Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1979; the MSc in Systems Engineering from the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in 1980, and the PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University, Princeton NJ, in 1983. From 1983 to 1986 he was with INRIA, France and from 1987 to 1990 with the Computer Technology Institute of Patras, Greece. In 1991 he joined the Computer Engineering and Informatics department, University of Patras, Greece as Associate Professor and became Professor in 1996. Since 2007 he is with the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Patras. During the period 2001-2004 he also held a senior researcher position with INRIA, France.
Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 540, x04667
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Astani Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Tue, Jan 25, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jianliang Xiao, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Mechanics of stretchable electronics: theory and experiment
Abstract:
Recently developed materials and mechanics concepts yield classes of integrated circuits that offer the electronic performance of conventional wafer-based devices, but with the mechanical properties of a rubber band. The resulting technology enables applications that are impossible for hard, planar integrated circuits that exist today. Examples range from surgical and diagnostic implements that integrate with the human body to provide advanced therapeutic capabilities, to structural health monitors and inspection systems for civil engineering. The most successful approaches use semiconductor nanomaterials, ranging from silicon nanoribbons to carbon nanotubes, in optimized layouts bonded at strategic locations to soft, elastomer substrates. The controlled mechanics of buckling in these structures provide means to accommodate large strain deformations, without fracture. This talk discusses the fundamental mechanics of these systems, through combined experimental and theoretical studies. We demonstrate use of the resulting knowledge in electronic eye-ball type cameras, whose imaging characteristics offer advantages over comparable systems that use conventional, flat detector arrays.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Bringing Network Coding Closer to Practice
Wed, Jan 26, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Christina Fragouli, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Switzerland
Talk Title: Bringing Network Coding Closer to Practice
Abstract: The paradigm of network coding allows intermediate nodes in a network to not only forward but also combine their incoming information flows. This modern application of coding to the theory and practice of communication networks raises novel and exciting research problems, and is promising to have an impact in diverse areas of network communications that include multicasting, network monitoring, resource sharing, network security, among other areas.
However, one of the main challenges is to realize the benefits of network coding functionalities with implementable computational complexity. We illustrate through two examples how algorithmic and combinatorial tools can be applied to make progress on this challenging question.
One of the challenges in the deployment of network coding is the fact that network nodes may need to perform operations over relatively large finite fields. We propose instead to use vector network coding, where nodes process and combine binary packets by multiplying them with binary coding matrices, as opposed to scalar coefficients over a field. We introduce an algebraic framework for vector network coding, and provide a polynomial time algorithm for the design of coding matrices, that aims to minimize the size of the employed matrices, and thus reduce the encoding complexity. Our algorithm reduces the problem of finding small size matrices to the problem of finding a small degree coprime factor of an algebraic polynomial, and leads to solutions not possible with using scalar network coding.
We then consider a specific application. Our scenario is that a group of wireless nodes want to exchange a secret key, such that no eavesdropper can guess the key. Using network coding techniques, we develop a protocol that enables the group of nodes to agree on secret bits at a rate depending on the properties of the wireless network that interconnects them. Our protocol uses simple, polynomial-time operations and does not require any changes to the physical or MAC-layer of network devices. We formally prove and experimentally demonstrate that our protocol can generate information-theoretically secret keys in a realistic setting.
Biography: Christina Fragouli is a tenure track Professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences, EPFL, Switzerland. She received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece, in 1996, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1998 and 2000, respectively. She has worked at the Information Sciences Center, AT&T Labs, Florham Park New Jersey, and the National University of Athens. She also visited Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, and DIMACS, Rutgers University. From 2006 to 2007, she was an FNS Professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences, EPFL, Switzerland.
Her research interests are in network information flow theory and algorithms, network coding, wireless sensor networks, and connections between communications, networking and computer science. She received the Fulbright Fellowship for her graduate studies, the Outstanding Ph.D. Student Award 2000-2001, UCLA, Electrical Engineering Department, the Zonta award 2008 in Switzerland, and the Young Investigator ERC grant award in 2009. She served as an editor for IEEE Communications Letters, and is currently serving as an editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and Elsevier Computer Communications.
Host: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu, EEB 528, x04683
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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AME Department Seminar
Wed, Jan 26, 2011 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Joanna M. Austin, Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL
Talk Title: The Role of Thermochemistry in Hypersonic Shear Flows
Abstract: In high enthalpy hypersonic flight, thermochemical relaxation times are typically comparable to flow residence times, leading to nonlinear coupling between chemical reactions, vibrational excitation, and fluid mechanics. The chemical species and internal energy of the gas depart significantly from equilibrium. Experimental data in hypervelocity flows are scarce, partly because creating high enthalpy conditions in ground test facilities is extremely challenging and flight tests are expensive.
A new expansion tube facility capable of test gas Mach numbers from 3.0 to 7.4 has been built at Illinois and carefully characterized with experimental measurements and numerical simulations. Two canonical shear flows are being examined in the high enthalpy free stream: triple-point generated free shear layers and boundary layers flows. Initial experiments identified an opposing wedge configuration used to generate a Mach reflection with associated triple-point shear layers. The experimental configuration is chosen to give well-characterized inflow and boundary conditions. In addition, a Mach reflection results in a shear layer that separates a gas stream that has passed through a normal shock from a gas stream that has passed through two oblique shocks, leading to dramatically different temperatures and degree of dissociation across the shear layer. Key diagnostic tools include spectroscopic measurements confirming the presence of dissociated NO behind the Mach reflection, flow visualizations, and temperature measurements benchmarked against calculations using detailed and reduced chemical kinetic mechanisms.
The experimental work is complemented by spatial linear stability analysis. This study is the first linear stability analysis of a hypersonic shear layer to include detailed modeling of molecular effects. An existing molecular-molecular energy transfer rate model is extended to higher collisional energies. Non-equilibrium model results are compared with calculations assuming equilibrium and frozen flow over a range of (frozen) convective Mach numbers from 0.341 to 1.707. Non-equilibrium effects appear in the creation of nitrous oxide due to dissociation. Dissociation and vibration transfer effects on the perturbation evolution remain closely correlated at all convective Mach numbers.
Biography: Joanna Austin is an Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received B.E. (Mechanical and Space Engineering) and B.Sc. (Mathematics) degrees from the University of Queensland, Australia in 1996 and 1997, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from GALCIT at the California Institute of Technology in 1998 and 2003. She directs the Compressible Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at Illinois, where her research interests include hypervelocity flows, bubble collapse under dynamic loading, detonation, compressible geological flows, and experimental fluid mechanics. Honors and awards include the Richard Bruce Chapman award for distinguished research in hydrodynamics in the Engineering and Applied Sciences Division at Caltech, 2003, the Young Investigator Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, 2007, and the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2010.
Host: Prof. V. Eliasson
More Info: http://ame-www.usc.edu/seminars/1-26-11-austin.shtmlLocation: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
Event Link: http://ame-www.usc.edu/seminars/1-26-11-austin.shtml
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Distinguished Lecture Series
Thu, Jan 27, 2011 @ 12:45 PM - 01:50 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Professor Thomas O. Mason, Northwestern University, Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Talk Title: High Performance Oxide Conductors and Semiconductors
Series: Distinguished Lectures Series
Abstract: Highly conductive ceramics (e.g., superconductors, semi-metallic oxides, ionic conductors) are well known, as are highly resistive ceramics (e.g., dielectrics, insulators, ferroelectrics). Since the advent of oxide-based chemical sensors (e.g., SnO2-based) and voltage-dependent resistors or âvaristorsâ (e.g., ZnO-based) circa 1970, there has been a steady rise of interest in oxide semiconductors. The renaissance of oxide semiconductors over the past two decades has been particularly dramatic. For example, publications dealing with ZnO have doubled each half-decade since 1990 to more than 25,000 papers (2006-2010). This talk will focus on âmedium band gapâ (~3 eV) post-transition metal oxides, the basis set of which include CdO, ZnO, In2O3, and SnO2. (Ga2O3 is also of interest, although its band gap is significantly larger.) These compounds and their numerous binary, ternary and multinary compounds and solid solutions are known for their rare combination of high electronic conductivity (when degenerately doped) and optical transparency, and are collectively referred to as transparent conducting oxides or TCOs. TCOs find application as transparent electrodes in display technologies and photovoltaics. When non-degenerately doped, many of the same compounds/solid solutions can serve as thermoelectric oxides or TEOs for direct conversion of heat (solar, commercial, vehicular) to electricity. When very lightly doped, these same materials are excellent âtransparent oxide semiconductorâ (TOS) candidates for channel materials in oxide-based transparent thin film transistors (TTFTs), especially in the amorphous state (so-called âamorphous oxide semiconductorsâ). These can be deposited at low temperatures on flexible (polymer) substrates, thereby enabling oxide-based âtransparentâ and âflexible electronics.â This talk âdusts offâ two long-standing (but under-utilized) semiconductor analysis proceduresâso-called âJonkerâ and âIoffeâ analysesâand applies them to the characterization/optimization of high-performance oxides for advanced applications in display, information technology, and energy conversion technologies.
Host: Professor Thompson
More Info: http://chems.usc.edu/academics/10-11/d-01-27-11.htmLocation: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce
Event Link: http://chems.usc.edu/academics/10-11/d-01-27-11.htm
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CS Colloquium
Thu, Jan 27, 2011 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Donald Metzler, USC, Information Sciences Institute
Talk Title: Learning to Effectively and Efficiently Rank at Scale
Abstract: anking functions serve as the "brains" of modern search engines. Developing ranking functions that are both effective (i.e., produce highly relevant results) and efficient (i.e., produce a ranking in a short amount of time) is a challenging research problem, especially when dealing with large document collections, such as the Web. Machine learning has been shown to be useful for learning highly effective ranking functions, but such approaches typically do not consider efficiency costs which are critical in real applications. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the challenges of ranking at scale and describe my recent research into leveraging machine learning to yield effective and efficient ranking functions for information retrieval applications.
Biography: Donald Metzler is a Research Scientist in the Natural Language group at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute. Prior to joining USC he was a Research Scientist in the Search and Computational Advertising group at Yahoo! Research. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in 2007. His research interests include information retrieval, Web search, computational advertising, and applications of machine learning to large-scale text problems. He is currently serving on the senior program committees of WWW and SIGIR. He has published over 35 research papers, has 16 patents pending, and is the co-author of Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice.
Host: Prof. Louis-Philipe Morency
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrawal
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Distinguished Lecturer Series
Thu, Jan 27, 2011 @ 04:30 PM - 05:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Anna Gilbert, University of Michigan
Talk Title: Sparse Approximations: Algorithms and Analysis
Abstract: The past 10 years have seen a confluence of research in sparse approximation amongst computer science, mathematics, and electrical engineering. Sparse approximation encompasses a large number of mathematical, algorithmic, and signal processing problems which all attempt to balance the size of a (linear) representation of data and the fidelity of that representation. I will discuss several of the basic algorithmic problems and their solutions, including compressive sensing and sublinear algorithms for sparse signal recovery. Also, I will address two application areas, analog-to-digital conversion and biological group testing, in which sparse approximation problems appear and for which we have novel hardware and experimental designs.
Biography: Anna Gilbert received an S.B. degree from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, both in mathematics. In 1997, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University and AT&T Labs-Research. From 1998 to 2004, she was a member of technical staff at AT&T Labs-Research in Florham Park, NJ. Since then she has been with the Department of Mathematics at the University of Michigan, where she is now a Professor. She has received several awards, including a Sloan Research Fellowship (2006), an NSF CAREER award (2006), the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research (2008), the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Douglas Engelbart Best Paper award (2008), and the EURASIP Signal Processing Best Paper award (2010).
Her research interests include analysis, probability, networking, and algorithms. She is especially interested in randomized algorithms with applications to harmonic analysis, signal and image processing, networking, and massive datasets.
Host: Alex Dimakis
More Info: http://ee.usc.edu/news/dls/Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
Event Link: http://ee.usc.edu/news/dls/
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Polarization Attributes of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Fibers
Fri, Jan 28, 2011 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Avi Zadok, Bar-Ilan University
Talk Title: Polarization Attributes of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Fibers
Abstract: Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is a nonlinear optical interaction between a pump wave, and a typically weaker, counter-propagating signal wave. The threshold power of SBS is the lowest of all nonlinear propagation effect in silica optical fibers. The local SBS interaction, at a given point along an optical fiber, is maximal when the state of polarization (SOP) of the pump is aligned with that of the signal, and it vanishes if the two SOPs are orthogonal. In standard single mode fibers, the overall SBS signal amplification (or attenuation) depends on the birefringence properties of the fiber, as well as on the input SOPs of both the pump and the seed signal waves. As SBS is studied intensively for applications such as fiber lasers, distributed sensing and slow light, a thorough examination of its polarization properties is of large relevance.
In this talk, the SBS amplification of an arbitrarily polarized input signal in a randomly birefringent fiber is examined, as well as the role of SBS in the evolution of the signal SOP. The analysis includes Stokes and anti-Stokes waves. A propagation equation for the signal SOP is formulated and analyzed, in Jones and Stokes spaces. In particular, it is found that the output SOP of an SBS amplified Stokes wave in a standard, single mode fiber is drawn towards the complex conjugate of the input pump SOP. On the other hand, the output SOP of the residual, attenuated anti-Stokes signal is repelled from the same SOP. These findings are supported by simulations and experiments. The results are applicable to random SOP synthesis, coherent detection of fiber sensors, advanced modulation formats and implementations of optical filters. Finally, the role of polarization in SBS-based 'slow light' setups is addressed.
Biography: Avi Zadok received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Tel-Aviv University in 2007. In between 2007-2009 he was a post-doc fellow with the group of Prof. Amnon Yariv at the Department of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology. In 2009 he was appointed as a senior lecturer at the School of Engineering, Bar-Ilan University. His research interests include silicon-photonic devices, fiber-optic communication and sensors, microwave photonics and nonlinear optics.
Host: Prof. Alan Willner, willner@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 349
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Jan 28, 2011 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Kris Merkel, President/CEO of S2 Corporation
Talk Title: Sustainable Ultra-Wideband Radio Frequency Signal Analysis Using Spatial-Spectral Holography
Abstract: I will cover the basics of the interaction of coherent light with cryogenically cooled rare earth doped crystal absorbers, and how this science has evolved as a basis for an emerging technology known as spatial-spectral (S2) holography. I will also comment on performing R&D in a commercial small business setting that has been funded primarily by the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program.
The core S2 technology has its roots in the coherent interaction of light with matter, and can combines frequency resolution with angular phase resolution similar to spatial holography. Signal processing functions of spectral analysis, direction finding, correlative signal processing and true time delay will be discussed. The general technical approach to an ultra wideband RF receiver is based on recording and subsequent readout of optical energy that is modulated to represents RF frequencies via conversion by an electro-optical phase modulator (EOPM). The modulated light is absorbed by the holographic crystal. The S2 sensor performs physical phase sensitive Fourier transforms and multiplication of Fourier transforms. These transforms are stored in atomic upper states, and then can be probed or readout by a secondary light source.
A current hardware configuration can support 100% time-continuous coverage for 20 GHz instantaneous bandwidth (IBW) measurements with ~400 kHz resolution bandwidth (RBW), and a full 20 GHz bandwidth readout every 0.5 ms. A spur free dynamic range of 50 dB is observed for these measurements. Other approaches can provide variations on these specifications.
Biography: Dr. Kris Merkel is the President/CEO of S2 Corporation. Dr. Merkel has focused his 15 years of experience on the development and application of S2 technology relative to radar, laser radar, electronic surveillance and true time delay beam-forming systems. Dr. Merkel has overseen the successful execution of several contracts and grant with milestones met within cost. He received his Bachelor of Physics from Georgetown University (1994) and his Masters (1996) and Ph.D (1998) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington. Dr. Merkel is a recognized world leader in the development of S2 systems, and is an inventor on 10 patents and patents pending. Dr. Merkel has unique capabilities related to a combination of project management and technical expertise for systems development efforts. He has over 25 publications in referred journals and conference proceedings.
Host: Prof. Hossein Hashemi and Firooz Aflatouni
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium; Living with Complex Technological Systems: Lessons from Bopal to BP Deep Water Horizon
Fri, Jan 28, 2011 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Najmedin Meshkati, Sonny Astani Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Talk Title: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium; Living with Complex Technological Systems: Lessons from Bopal to BP Deep Water Horizon
Abstract: Prof. Najmedin Meshkati, Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California, will present "Living with Complex Technological Systems: Lessons from Bopal to BP Deep Water Horizon" as part of the W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program.
Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium
More Info: http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/undergrad/honors/schedules/Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: Amanda Atkinson
Event Link: http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/undergrad/honors/schedules/
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Making Run-time Reconfigurable Hardware more Useful
Fri, Jan 28, 2011 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jim Torresen, University of Oslo
Talk Title: Making Run-time Reconfigurable Hardware more Useful
Abstract: Before the introduction of multitasking operating systems around 1985, processors would run one program at a time. The program would be uploaded at startup and run until finished. There would be no swapping to other programs during execution of a given program. With todayâs multitasking operating systems, it would often be the exception not performing multitasking for software. This is in contrast to hardware which normally is static at run-time even though reconfigurable hardware is programmable at run-time.
This talk will introduce and describe how we are applying FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) technology for designing high performance run-time reconfigurable computing architectures. This is research undertaken through the project named Context Switching Reconfigurable Hardware forCommunication Systems (COSRECOS), funded by the Research Council of Norway for 2009 â 2013.
The overall goal of the project is to contribute in making run-time reconfigurable systems more feasible in general. This includes introducing architectures for reducing reconfiguration time as well as undertaking tool development. Case studies by applications in network and communication systems will be a part of the project. The talk includes how we plan to address the challenge of changing hardware configurations while a system is in operation as well as giving an overview of promising initial results so far.
Biography: Jim Torresen received his M.Sc. and Dr.ing. (Ph.D) degree in computer architecture and design from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, University of Trondheim in 1991 and 1996, respectively. He has been employed as a senior hardware designer at NERA Telecommunications (1996-1998) and at Navia Aviation (1998-1999).
Since 1999, he has been a professor at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo (associate professor 1999-2005). Jim Torresen has been a visiting researcher at Kyoto University, Japan for one year (1993-1994), four months at Electrotechnical laboratory, Tsukuba, Japan (1997 and 2000) and is now a visiting professor at Cornell University.
His research interests at the moment include bio-inspired computing, machine learning, reconfigurable hardware, robotics and applying this to complex real-world applications. Several novel methods have been proposed. He has published a number of scientific papers in international journals, books and conference proceedings. 10 tutorials and several invited
talks have been given at international conferences. He is in the program committee of more than ten different international conferences as well as a regular reviewer of a number of international journals. He has also acted as an evaluator for proposals in EU FP7.
Host: Professor Viktor K. Prasanna
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Janice Thompson
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Software Defined Radio, Cognitive Radio, Cognitive Networks: Current Research Efforts and Future Trends
Mon, Jan 31, 2011 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Lizdabel Morales-Tirado, Ph.D., University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
Talk Title: Software Defined Radio, Cognitive Radio, Cognitive Networks: Current Research Efforts and Future Trends
Abstract: Wireless networks have been well studied and optimized with traditional radio resource management techniques, but still there is room for improvement. Cognitive radio technology can bring significant network improvements by providing awareness to the surrounding radio environment, exploiting previous network knowledge and optimizing the use of resources using machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. Cognitive radio can also co-exist with legacy equipment thus acting as a bridge among heterogeneous communication systems. In this seminar, an introduction to the concepts of software defined radio, cognitive radio and cognitive networks is presented. An approach for applying cognition in wireless networks is described. Current research efforts in the area and future trends in the area are discussed.
Biography: Dr. Lizdabel Morales‐Tirado received her Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus in 1996. She received a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University in 1998 and her Doctor in Philosophy in Electrical Engineering in the January 2010 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech).
She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez (UPRM) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She teaches courses in communications, and is conducting research in the areas of wireless communications, cognitive radio and cognitive networks. Her newly formed research group, the Intelligent Wireless and Networked Communications Laboratory (iWiNC), currently is composed of one graduate student and eleven undergraduate students.
Dr. Morales is a GEM Fellow, a Virginia Space Grant Consortium Fellow and a John Lee Pratt Fellow. She is also co‐founder of Divergent Engineering Inc., an engineering consulting company in Puerto Rico. Prior to attending Virginia Tech, Dr. Morales was an instructor at the Interamerican University in San Germán, Puerto Rico. She also worked as a Systems Engineer for Lucent Technologies from 1999 to 2001; and at Motorola's iDEN group from 1995 until 1999.
Host: Professor Timothy M. Pinkston
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Janice Thompson
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BME 533 - Seminar in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Jan 31, 2011 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. George Truskey, Duke University
Talk Title: Engineering Endothelial Progenitor Cells for Vascular Repair
Series: Invited Chair Series
Abstract: Endothelial progenitor cells can be obtained from cord blood, adult blood or bone marrow and serve as a potential source of vascular endothelium for a variety of therapeutic applications. Our own work has focused upon using late outgrowth endothelial progenitor cells for a variety of applications including seeding vascular devices, preparing, tissue engineered blood vessels and repair of endothelial injury. The focus of this talk is upon the use of human endothelial cells derived from late outgrowth cord bold (hCB-ECs) to accelerate vein graft re-endothelialization, and reduce vein graft atherosclerosis.
As a principal cause of vein graft failure, endothelial injury complicates ~500,000 vein graft procedures performed annually in the US to treat atherosclerosis. Over-distension of the vein graft by arterial pressure leads to endothelial injury, which exposes the extracellular matrix to circulating blood and promotes vein graft thrombosis. Neointimal hyperplasia subsequently predisposes vein grafts to accelerated atherosclerosis, and late vein graft failure. The hCB-ECs function similarly to vascular endothelium. The hCB-ECs demonstrate smaller size, superior adhesive properties and higher 51 integrin expression levels compared with EC adhesion to SMC/extracellular matrix is significantly greater under flow conditions with hCB-ECs than with ECs derived from adult human peripheral blood EPCs. When administered intravenously, hCB-ECs enhanced vein graft re-endothelialization, and prevented thrombosis in carotid interposition vein grafts implanted in SCID mice. To better understand the adhesion process, we examined adhesion of hCB-ECs as a function of shear stress in vitro. The number of adherent cells varied with shear stress, with the maximum number of adherent cells and the shear stress at maximum adhesion depending upon fluid viscosity. A dimensional analysis indicated that adhesion was a function of the net force on the cells, the ratio of cell diffusion to sliding speed and molecular diffusivity. This work suggests that delivery conditions can be developed to maximize adhesion of EPCs for repair of damaged arteries.
Host: Department of Biomedical Engineering, USC
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
