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Events for January 19, 2011
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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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Preparing for the Career Expo
Wed, Jan 19, 2011 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Make a great first impression! Learn how to optimize your time, approach employers and prepare for the recruiting event of the semester.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: All Viterbi Students
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
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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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Southern California Edison IT Info Session
Wed, Jan 19, 2011 @ 05:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Join representatives of this company as they share general company information and available opportunities.
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 106
Audiences: All Viterbi Students
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
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Alpha Omega Epsilon Info Night
Wed, Jan 19, 2011 @ 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Workshops & Infosessions
In Alpha Omega Epsilon, we promote individual integrity and honesty, while stressing the importance of character and self-confidence. As a sorority, we promote unity, friendship and professionalism. As an integral part of the Viterbi School of Engineering, we strive to achieve high scholastic standards and a strong relationship with faculty and fellow students.
Come enjoy an hour of fun with the sisters of AOE. Our info nights are a great way to learn more about the sorority. Food and drink will be provided.
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - Lobby
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: Alpha Omega Epsilon USC
