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Events for January 18, 2018

  • M.S. Spatial Informatics Info Session

    Thu, Jan 18, 2018 @ 12:00 AM - 01:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Come learn about this new and exciting Master of Science in Spatial Informatics degree offered by the Viterbi School of Engineering Department of Computer Science and the Dornsife Spatial Sciences Institute. Spatial Informatics students draw upon engineering, computer science, math, and spatial science principles to solve data-intensive, large-scale, and location-based problems. Faculty will be on hand to answer questions. Progressive Degree options are available!

    More Information: SPIF Info Session.pdf

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 105

    Audiences: Undergrad

    Contact: Ryan Rozan

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  • CS Colloquium: Gale Lucas (University of Southern California) - The Best of Both Worlds: Social Agents Leverage Rapport and Social Safety to Increase Trust

    Thu, Jan 18, 2018 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Gale Lucas, University of Southern California

    Talk Title: The Best of Both Worlds: Social Agents Leverage Rapport and Social Safety to Increase Trust

    Series: Computer Science Colloquium

    Abstract: There are risks and benefits to trusting others. For example, when one shares a secret, the discloser can experience benefits (e.g., catharsis, sometimes even health benefits); however, they have to trust the recipient won't use or hold it against them. There are two key factors that increase willingness to engage in such actions that require trust. The first is social safety: the sense that one's identity is protected (i.e., anonymous) and won't be judged. The second is rapport: the harmony, fluidity, synchrony, and flow felt during interaction. These two factors -social safety and rapport- are normally set in opposition to each other. The former is maximized in the absence of another human, while the latter is maximized in intensive face-to-face (i.e., non-anonymous) interactions. Thus, usually, there is a trade-off, where either social safety or rapport has to be chosen, but not both. Social agents (virtual humans or robots), however, offer the best of both worlds. They can engage in rapport-building like their human counterparts, but also foster a sense of social safety (anonymity, lack of judgement). In this talk, I present research showing how social safety and rapport, both together and separately, can be leveraged to increase trust in agents and robots. I discuss effects across various user outcomes related to trust: sharing personal information and honest disclosure, as well as feeling comfortable practicing negotiation with social agents, trusting them to control the physical environment, and taking their advice. Finally, I discuss implications for user design and describe possibilities for future research.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium. Please note, due to limited capacity in OHE 100D, seats will be first come first serve.



    Biography: Gale M. Lucas is a Senior Research Associate at University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). While earning her PhD from Northwestern University, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to test models of emotion, motivation, and social interaction. After completing her doctorate, she spent two years teaching in a liberal arts context. She then went on to complete her post-doctoral work at ICT, where she established a research program in the areas of Affective Computing and Human-Computer Interaction. Now as a Senior Research Associate, she continues her line of work in affective and personality computing that focuses on models predicting mental health, perceptions of trust and emotion in real-world situations. Her work in HCI is centered around understanding how various social factors affect trust in agents and robots.


    Host: Kevin Knight

    Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 100D

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Computer Science Department

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  • CS Colloquium: Joshua Garcia (UC Irvine) - Automated Android Security Assessment: Malware, Vulnerabilities, and Exploits

    Thu, Jan 18, 2018 @ 04:00 PM - 05:20 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Joshua Garcia, UC Irvine

    Talk Title: Automated Android Security Assessment: Malware, Vulnerabilities, and Exploits

    Series: Computer Science Colloquium

    Abstract: Android has become the dominant mobile platform. Millions of Android apps have been produced and disseminated across app markets, spurred by the relative ease of construction using the Android development framework. Unfortunately, this ease of dissemination and construction, and access to millions of users, has attracted malicious app developers and contributed to a growing number of exploitable software vulnerabilities. In this talk, to address these aforementioned challenges, I present two approaches for Android security assessment that I have constructed: LetterBomb, the first approach for automatically generating exploits for Android apps, and RevealDroid, a lightweight, obfuscation-resilient approach for malware detection and family identification that leverages machine learning and static analysis of both conventional and unconventional code (i.e., reflective code and native code).

    In the first part of this talk, I introduce LetterBomb, which relies on a combined path-sensitive symbolic execution-based static analysis, and the use of software instrumentation and test oracles. I ran LetterBomb on 10,000 Android apps from Google Play, where I identified nearly 200 exploits from over 800 vulnerable apps, including popular apps with up to 10 million downloads. Compared to a state-of-the-art detection approach for three ICC-based vulnerabilities, LetterBomb obtains 30%-60% more vulnerabilities at a 7 times faster speed.

    In the second part of this talk, I present RevealDroid, which operates without the need to perform complex program analyses or to extract large sets of features, and examines unconventional code. Specifically, our selected features leverage categorized Android API usage, reflection-based features, and features from native binaries of apps. I assessed RevealDroid on more than 54,000 malicious and benign apps, where it achieved an accuracy of 98% for detection of malware, an accuracy of 95% for determination of their families, and very high obfuscation resiliency. I further demonstrate RevealDroid's superiority against state-of-the-art approaches.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.



    Biography: Joshua Garcia is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Software Research at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and the Software Engineering and Analysis Lab at UCI's Department of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. His current research interests including mobile security, testing, and analysis-”and addressing problems of software architectural drift and erosion. He received three degrees from the University of Southern California: a B.S. in computer engineering and computer science, an M.S. in computer science, and a Ph.D. in computer science. His industrial experience includes software-engineering or research positions at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Southern California Earthquake Center, and Xerox Special Information Systems.


    Host: Chao Wang

    Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Computer Science Department

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  • US Recruitment Process

    Thu, Jan 18, 2018 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Tailored for our international students, learn about the best resources to help you find employment, networking tips, and interviewing techniques.

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211

    Audiences: All Viterbi

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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