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Events for January 13, 2011
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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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Sonny Astani Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Thu, Jan 13, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University Calendar
Speaker: Dr. Navid Saleh, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of South Carolina
Title:
Aggregation and Surface Interaction of Carbonaceous and Metallic Nanomaterials in Environmental and Biologically Relevant Conditions
Abstract:
Carbonaceous (fullerenes and nanotubes) and metallic nanomaterials have a widespread potential for application due to their unique physicochemical properties. There has been lack of studies aimed at understanding the aggregation and surface interaction of such materials in the natural and biological environments. A systematic study of aggregation (kinetics and structure) and surface interaction of such nanomaterials is essential in order to predict their fate and interaction in chemistries relevant to natural and biological environments. Single-walled carbon nanotubes, higher order fullerenes, and gold nanospheres and nanorods are used in aggregation and surface interaction experiments in both natural and biologically relevant background chemistries. Aggregation kinetics and aggregate structural conformation of both carbonaceous and metallic nanoparticles are measured experimentally using state-of-the-art time-resolved dynamic and static light scattering studies. Classical Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO) model has been used to analyze the aggregation behavior. Quartz Crystal Microbalance-Dissipation (QCM-D) has been used to quantify such nanomaterial interaction with natural mineral interfaces. The mineral interfaces were also modified with natural organic matter (NOM) to determine the effect of NOM on deposition behavior. The results thus obtained aid in establishing quantitative structure activity relationships (QSARs) and mechanistically explain nanomaterial interaction with biological species.
Short Biography:
Navid Saleh is an Assistant Professor at Civil and Environmental Engineering at USC. Prior to joining USC in January 2009, he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Menachem Elimelechâs research group in Environmental Engineering at Yale University. Dr. Saleh received his B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh and his M.S. and PhD degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA in 2007 in Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research interests include (1) aggregation and deposition mechanisms of nanomaterials in aquatic environments, (2) development of novel technologies for water treatment and pollutant remediation, and (3) understanding interactions between nanomaterials and biological species in environmental systems. He already has received two major NSF grants as the PI on environmental fate of nanomaterials and nanoeducation.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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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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Got a Brand? Tell Me A Little About Yourself (30 sec. pitch)
Thu, Jan 13, 2011 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Do you know how to talk to employers at networking or hiring events? Do you want to know what a 30 second elevator speech is? Come to this workshop to help prepare for the question, âTell Me A Little About Yourselfâ
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: All Viterbi Students
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
