Select a calendar:
Filter February Events by Event Type:
SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
-
Online Dynamic Robust PCA
Mon, Feb 01, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Namrata Vaswani, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University
Talk Title: Online Dynamic Robust PCA
Abstract: We introduce a novel and provably correct solution approach, called ReProCS, to the online dynamic robust principal components' analysis (PCA) problem. Robust PCA (RPCA) can be understood as a problem of separating a low-rank matrix of the true data, L, and a sparse matrix of outliers, S, from their sum, Y = L + S. Application domains include computer vision and data analytics, among others. For example, the problem of separating sparse foregrounds (e.g., moving objects) from slowly changing backgrounds in video sequences can be posed as an instance of RPCA. This is a key first step in simplifying many computer vision tasks, e.g., video surveillance, low-bandwidth mobile video chats and video conferencing, low-light imaging ("seeing moving objects in the dark") and video denoising. RPCA solutions are also very useful in solving product recommender systems' design problems, such as the Netflix problem, when the user data may contain outliers (e.g., due to lazy or malicious users). While there has been a large amount of recent work on provably correct batch RPCA solutions, the online and dynamic RPCA problem is largely open. Online dynamic RPCA is the problem of solving RPCA on-the-fly, with the extra assumptions that the initial subspace is accurately known and that the subspace from which the true data is generated is either fixed or changes slowly over time. For most of the applications discussed above, an online solution is clearly preferable and it can be argued that these extra assumptions hold. We demonstrate the power of our proposed ReProCS based online dynamic RPCA solution for many of the above applications. Moreover, under mild assumptions, we show that, with high probability, ReProCS recovers the support of the outliers exactly at all times; the subspace in which the true data lies is tracked accurately; and the error in the estimates of both is small at all times.
Host: Professor Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
Location: 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
-
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Mon, Feb 01, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Achilleas Anastasopoulos, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Talk Title: A systematic process for evaluating structured equilibria in dynamic games with asymmetric information
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: We consider problems involving multiple agents making decisions dynamically in the presence of asymmetric information.
When agents have a common objective (dynamic decentralized teams) recent results have established a systematic framework for obtaining the optimal decision strategy that is akin to the well-known backward induction in partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs).
However, when agents are strategic (dynamic games with asymmetric information) there is no known systematic process for evaluating the appropriate equilibria in a sufficiently general setting. The well-known backward induction process for finding sub-game perfect equilibria is useless in these problems and we are stuck with an indecomposable fixed-point equation in the space of strategies and beliefs.
In this talk we will discuss a class of perfect Bayesian equilibria (PBE) that are the counterparts of Markov perfect equilibria (MPE) for asymmetric information games. The corresponding "state" is a belief based on the common information among agents.
We will then propose a two-step backward-forward inductive algorithm to find these structured PBE. The backward inductive part of this algorithm defines an equilibrium generating function. Each period in the backward induction involves solving a "small" fixed point equation. Using this generating function, equilibrium strategies and beliefs are defined through a forward recursion.
Biography: Achilleas Anastasopoulos received the Diploma in EE from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 1993, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in EE from the University of Southern California in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor of EECS at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research interests lie in 1) the general area of communication and information theory, with emphasis in channel coding and multi-user channels; 2) control theory with emphasis in decentralized stochastic control and its connections to communications and information-theoretic problems; 3) analysis of dynamic games and mechanism design for resource allocation in networked systems.
Host: Dr. Ashutosh Nayyar
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
-
Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Feb 01, 2016 @ 12:30 PM - 01:49 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dion Kai Dickman, PhD, Assistant Professor in Neurobiology, USC Dornsife
Talk Title: Homeostatic control of sleep and synaptic plasticity
Abstract: Homeostatic Control of Sleep and Synaptic Plasticity
Summary
Synapses have the remarkable ability to adaptively modulate synaptic strength in response to perturbations that would otherwise destabilize neurotransmission, referred to as homeostatic synaptic plasticity. Homeostatic signaling systems have emerged as robust and potent regulators of neural activity, enabling stable synaptic function while permitting the flexibility necessary for learning and memory, yet the molecules and mechanisms involved remain poorly understood. We have pioneered forward genetic approaches in Drosophila to identify genes required for homeostatic synaptic plasticity. We will first discuss an enigmatic protein complex that has emerged from this screen, which is associated with schizophrenia, and the role of this complex in synaptic function and homeostatic plasticity. We will then present data about how an individual synapse adapts to conflicting homeostatic perturbations to stable synaptic function. Finally, we are developing new tools, including translational profiling and light sheet microscopy, to reveal homeostatic adaptations to synaptic function, which may be linked to sleep, and ancient, essential, and fundamental homeostatic signaling system shared by all animal life.
Biography: Bio
Dion Dickman was born in Hawaii and did his undergraduate work at Washington University in St. Louis, studying synaptogenesis at the mouse neuromuscular junction in the lab of Joshua Sanes. He went to Harvard for graduate work and UCSF for his postdoctoral studies, performing electrophysiology-based, forward genetic screens in Drosophila, identifying new genes involved in synaptic development, function, and plasticity. He has recently started his own laboratory at the University of Southern California, where his group investigates how synaptic transmission is kept within stable physiological ranges in the nervous system, while still permitting the flexibility necessary for learning and memory. Using Drosophila as our model system, we are interested in the genes and molecular mechanisms that achieve and maintain the homeostatic control of synaptic strength, and how dysfunction in this process may contribute to neuropsychiatric disease. We are using a combination of genetic, electrophysiological, imaging, and behavioral approaches to gain insight into this complex and fundamental form of neural plasticity.
http://dornsife.usc.edu/labs/dickmanlab
Host: K. Kirk Shung, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
-
Faculty Candidate Seminar
Mon, Feb 01, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Private, Private
Talk Title: Modeling Disease for Effective Control - Tuberculosis in India
Host: Epstein Department of ISE
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
-
USC Stem Cell Seminar: Joanna Wysocka, Stanford University
Tue, Feb 02, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Joanna Wysocka, Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology, and Development Biology/Stanford Univeristy
Talk Title: On peculiarities of being a human: Transcriptional regulation in human development and evolution
Series: Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC Distinguished Speakers Series
Abstract: While studies in model organisms have led to great progress in unveiling the conserved mechanisms of gene regulation, many aspects of development that are unique to humans and other primates remain unexplored, as are regulatory principles underlying emergence of human-specific traits. I will discuss some of our recent progress in understanding transcriptional mechanisms governing human development and evolution, such as those involving the activity of transposable elements in early embryogenesis or our recent quantitative analyses of cis-regulatory divergence in the human and chimpanzee neural crest, an embryonic cell population that is most relevant for evolution of human craniofacial form.
Host: Gage Crump
More Info: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events/details/?event_id=916788
Webcast: http://keckmedia.usc.edu/stem-cell-seminarWebCast Link: http://keckmedia.usc.edu/stem-cell-seminar
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Cristy Lytal/USC Stem Cell
Event Link: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events/details/?event_id=916788
-
How Do Large Networks of Neurons Make Decisions?
Tue, Feb 02, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bijan Pesaran, New York University
Talk Title: How Do Large Networks of Neurons Make Decisions?
Abstract: Abstract: Selecting and planning actions recruits neurons across many areas of the brain but how ensembles of neurons work together to make decisions is unknown. Temporally-coherentneural activity may provide a mechanism by which neurons coordinate their activity in order to make decisions. If so, neurons that are part of coherent ensembles may predict movement choices before other ensembles of neurons. We have been studying activity within the posterior parietal cortex while monkeys make choices about where to look and reach, by decoding the activity to predict the choices. We find that ensembles of neurons that display coherent patterns of spiking activity extending across the parietal cortex, ''dual coherent'' ensembles, predict movement choices substantially earlier than other neuronal ensembles. We propose that dual-coherent spike timing reflects interactions between groups of neurons that play an important role in how we make decisions. I will discuss this result in the context of models of larger scale brain circuits that make decisions. I will finish by presenting our latest efforts to develop new technologies and perform brain-scale investigations of the primate brain.
Biography: Bijan Pesaran is Associate Professor of Neural Science at the Center for Neural Science at New York University. He is also member of NYUs Center for Neuroeconomics. Pesaran is an expert in neuronal dynamics and decision making and has pioneered the study of spike-field coherence in the non-human primate brain. His lab has developed large-scale neurophysiological circuit mapping capabilities to understand how behavior emerges from neuronal activity across interacting brain circuits. He has developed transformative multimodal technology to simultaneously record from single neurons, local potentials and micro-ECoG signals across the cortical layers directly below ECoG recording sites.
Host: Maryam Shanechi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gloria Halfacre
-
Albert Dorman Lecture Series
Tue, Feb 02, 2016 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Lt. General Hank Hatch, Senior Advisor to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Talk Title: "Engineering a Sustainable Future"
Host: Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
More Information: ADLS Hank Hatch.pdf
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kaela Berry
-
Epstein Institute Seminar - ISE 651
Tue, Feb 02, 2016 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Chaithanya Bandi, Kellogg School of Management
Talk Title: Resource Allocation under Ambiguous Risk Preferences
Host: Phebe Vayanos & Paat Rusmevichientong (Marshall)
More Information: February 2, 2016.pdf
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
-
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Wed, Feb 03, 2016 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bala Ambati, Professor & Director of Corneal Research at the Moran Eye Center University of Utahrneal Research Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah
Talk Title: Rays vs. Shadows: Fighting Global Blindness through Ophthalmic Genetics & Bioengineering
Series: Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Abstract: Over 30 million people are blind in both eyes, with another 200 million patients with significant loss of vision in one or both eyes. This is an unnecessary tragedy - 80% of this vision loss is preventable or treatable. Dr. Ambati share his journey in vision research and global health by showing how ocular biology and drug delivery can be married and employed to combat the principal challenges of our time in the world of vision - cataract, corneal scarring, macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy. He will his discuss his laboratory's innovations in drop-free cataract surgery, targeted intraceptor nanoparticles for macular degeneration and corneal transplant rejection, and neurovascular restoration in the diabetic retina. He will also lay out the landscape and opportunities in eye research and global blindness.
Biography: Bala Ambati is a cornea specialist with a research focus in angiogenesis. Dr. Ambati's team is presently focused on the role of sFlt-1 in maintaining ocular vascular demarcations, work which was awarded the 2012 ARVO/Genentech Award for Research in Macular Degeneration, the 2013 Troutman-Veronneau Prize & the 2014 Ludwig von Sallmann Clinician-Scientist Award. Clinically, Dr. Ambati was the first to describe use of bevacizumab (Avastin) to treat corneal transplant rejection. He has developed key surgical innovations and is developing transformational ocular drug delivery implants which will serve as a versatile platform for treating macular degeneration, glaucoma, and other diseases by sustained release of multiple drugs from within the lens capsule. Dr. Ambati has been recognized for his teaching excellence by a University of Utah Resident Research Mentor Award, the Gold Humanism Award, and by serving as an Instructor at the Harvard Cataract Course for 2009 and 2010.
Host: Dr. Anita Penkova
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
-
Additive Manufacturing of Metals: Building Unreliable Microstructures 20 Microns at a Time
Thu, Feb 04, 2016 @ 12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Professor Lyle Levine, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Talk Title: Additive Manufacturing of Metals: Building Unreliable Microstructures 20 Microns at a Time
Series: Graduate Seminar
Abstract: Additive manufacturing of metals could revolutionize the design and production of complex, high value metal parts. However, the extreme processing conditions of, essentially, welding millions of microscopic bits of metal together, create deleterious microstructures with high stresses, extreme compositional gradients, non-equilibrium phases, and a variety of potentially disastrous build flaws. How can the processing and post processing treatments be optimized to produce useable and consistent microstructures and mechanical properties? We are developing a comprehensive methodology to answer three questions: what is there?, why is it there?, and how can
we fix what is there? To optimize the build and post build processing steps, we are developing and using a combination of multicomponent computational thermodynamic and kinetic microstructural evolution simulations, finite element models, and worldleading stress and microstructure characterization methods using synchrotron X-rays, neutrons, and lab based measurements. I will describe our progress in our first target
systems, Ni-based super alloys and steels.
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Martin Olekszyk
-
Faculty Candidate Seminar
Thu, Feb 04, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Private, Private
Talk Title: Control of Contagin Processes on Networks
Host: Epstein Department of ISE
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
-
An Information Theoretic Perspective of Cloud Radio Access Networks
Fri, Feb 05, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Shlomo Shamai, Technion Israel Institute of Technology
Talk Title: An Information Theoretic Perspective of Cloud Radio Access Networks
Abstract: On Cloud Radio Access Networks: Information Theoretic Considerations Cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) emerge as appealing architectures for next-generation wireless/cellular systems whereby the processing/decoding is migrated from the local base-stations/radio units (RU) to a control/central units (CU) in the "cloud". This is facilitated by fronthaul links connecting the RUs to the managing CUs. We focus on oblivious processing at the RU, and hence the fronthaul links carry digital information about the baseband signals, in the uplink from the RUs to the CU and vice versa in the downlink. The high data rate service demands in C-RANs, imply that even with fast (optical) fronthauls, let alone for heterogeneous fronhauls, efficient compression of the basedand signals is essential. In this talk we focus on advanced robust signal processing solutions, emerging by network information theoretic concept and review also the basic approaches to this cloud network. Multi-hop fronthaul topologies are also discussed. Analysis and numerical results illustrate the considerable performance gains to be expected for different cellular models. Some interesting theoretical directions conclude the presentation.
Joint work with S.-H. Park (Chonbuk National University), O. Simeone (NJIT), and O. Sahin (InterDigital)
Biography: Shlomo Shamai (Shitz) received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Technion---Israel Institute of Technology, in 1975, 1981 and 1986 respectively.
During 1975-1985 he was with the Communications Research Labs, in the capacity of a Senior Research Engineer. Since 1986 he is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion---Israel Institute of Technology, where he is now a Technion Distinguished Professor, and holds the William Fondiller Chair of Telecommunications. His research interests encompasses a wide spectrum of topics in information theory and statistical communications.
Dr. Shamai (Shitz) is an IEEE Fellow, a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He is the recipient of the 2011 Claude E. Shannon Award and the 2014 Rothschild Prize in Mathematics/Computer Sciences and Engineering.
He has been awarded the 1999 van der Pol Gold Medal of the Union Radio Scientifique Internationale (URSI), and is a co-recipient of the 2000 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award, the 2003, and the 2004 joint IT/COM societies paper award, the 2007 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award, the 2009 and 2015 European Commission FP7, Network of Excellence in Wireless COMmunications (NEWCOM++, NEWCOM#) Best Paper Awards, the 2010 Thomson Reuters Award for International Excellence in Scientific Research, the 2014 EURASIP Best Paper Award (for the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking), and the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award. He is also the recipient of 1985 Alon Grant for distinguished young scientists and the 2000 Technion Henry Taub Prize for Excellence in Research. He has served as Associate Editor for the Shannon Theory of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and has also served twice on the Board of Governors of the Information Theory Society. He has served on the Executive Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
Host: Guiseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
-
EE-EP Faculty Candidate - Owen Miller, Friday, February 5th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Fri, Feb 05, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Owen Miller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Design at the Nanoscale: Reaching the Limits of Wave-Matter Interactions
Abstract: Nanoscale devices are emerging for an increasing variety of technological applications. Photonics will play a critical role, and within three areas - photovoltaics, nanoparticle scattering, and radiative heat transfer - I will show how large-scale computational optimization and rigorous analytical frameworks enable rapid search through large design spaces, and spur discovery of fundamental limits to interactions between light and matter.
In photovoltaics, the famous ray-optical 4n^2 limit to absorption enhancement has for decades served as a critical design goal, and it motivated the use of quasi-random textures in commercial solar cells. I will show that at subwavelength scales, non-intuitive, computationally designed textures outperform random ones, and can closely approach the 4n^2 limit. Pivoting to metallic structures, where there has not been an analogous "4n^2" limit, I will show how energy-conservation principles lead to fundamental limits to the optical response of metals, answering a long-standing question about the tradeoff between resonant enhancement and material loss. The limits were stimulated by a computational discovery in nanoparticle optimization, where I will present theoretical designs and experimental measurements (by a collaborator) approaching the upper bounds of absorption and scattering. The energy-conservation principles can be extended to the emerging field of radiative heat transfer, where they generalize the ray-optical concept of a "blackbody" to the nanoscale.
Biography: Dr. Owen Miller is a postdoctoral research associate in MIT Applied Math, working with Steven Johnson. He received his PhD in 2012 from UC Berkeley, where he was advised by Eli Yablonovitch and selected as an NSF Graduate Fellow. He received bachelor's degrees in EE and physics from the Univ. of Virginia in 2007. His research interests center around leveraging large-scale computational optimization and theoretical analysis for nanoscale devices, especially for emerging energy applications.
Host: EE-EP
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
-
NL Seminar-Deciphering Dark Web through k-partite Graph Summarization
Fri, Feb 05, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Linhong Zhu, USC/ISI
Talk Title: Deciphering Dark Web through k-partite Graph Summarization
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: Facts and their relations extracted from web are commonly modeled as graphs with different types of vertices. In this work, we focus on the problem of revealing latent entities from a $k$-partite graph, by co-clustering $k$ types of different vertices. We propose a CoSum approach, which creates a summary graph, where each super node (a cluster of original vertices) represents a hidden entity and the weighted edges encode important relations among extracted entities. The resulted summary graph also allows for investigation and interpretation of hidden entities. Evaluation verifies that CoSum outperforms several baselines in terms of entity coherence, query supporting and recovering hidden victims in the applied human trafficking domain.
Biography: Linhong Zhu is currently a computer scientist at Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, where she also received training as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Before that, she worked as a Scientist-I in data analytics department at Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2011. Her research interests are large-scale graph analytics with applications to social network analysis, social media analysis, and predictive modeling. She has been awarded with University of Southern California Postdoctoral travel and training award in 2014 and her paper has been selected as two of the best papers in SIGMOD 2010.
Host: Xing Shi and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 6th Flr Conf Rm # 689, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
-
CS Colloquium: Heng Yin (Syracuse University) - A Semantics-Centric Approach to Fight Android Malware
Mon, Feb 08, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Heng Yin, Syracuse University
Talk Title: A Semantics-Centric Approach to Fight Android Malware
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
The number of new Android malware instances has grown exponentially in recent years. McAfee reports that 2.47 million new mobile malware samples were collected in 2013, which represents a 197% increase over 2012. Greater and greater amounts of manual effort are required to analyze the increasing number of new malware instances. This has led to a strong interest in developing methods to automate the malware analysis process. In this talk, I will present a series of semantics-centric techniques to fight Android malware. First of all, we need a powerful analysis framework to quickly understand the inner-working of a given malware sample. To this end, we developed a virtualization-based analysis framework called DroidScope, which can seamlessly reconstruct both OS and Java level semantic views to provide a holistic view of a malware attack. Moreover, we need to automatically classify malware samples by their functionalities and behaviors and discover zero-day malware. We proposed a new semantics-based technique for malware classification, by capturing the semantics-level behavior of an app in form of ``Weighted Contextual API Dependency Graphs". Then by computing the similarity between these graphs, we can accurately and reliably detect malware variants and zero-day malware. Furthermore, we believe that malware detection can be more effective by getting end users into the loop. In particular, we developed a new technique that can automatically generate human-readable descriptions of a given app, such that any unexpected descriptions will cause suspicions and flagged by end users. To encourage wide adoption and follow-up research, these research products are available in form of source code release and/or web services.
Biography: Heng Yin is an Associate Professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University. His research interests mainly lie in computer security. In particular, he is interested in applying program analysis techniques and virtualization techniques to improve software and system security and defeat malware attacks. He earned his PhD degree in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary in July 2009. He was a main contributor in BitBlaze team at UC Berkeley before joining Syracuse University. In 2011, he received NSF Career award.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Feb 08, 2016 @ 12:30 PM - 01:49 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jin Ho Chang, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Sogang University, Korea
Talk Title: Hybrid ultrasound imaging and therapeutic techniques for clinical applications,
Host: K. Kirk Shung, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
-
Faculty Candidate Seminar
Mon, Feb 08, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Private, Private
Talk Title: Structure-Enhancing Algorithms for Statistical Learning Problems
Host: Epstein Department of ISE
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
-
EE-EP Seminar - Peng Zhang, Monday, February 8th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Mon, Feb 08, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Peng Zhang, University of Michigan
Talk Title: Ultrafast and Nanoscale Interfacial Charge Transport and It's Interaction with Electomagnetic Waves
Abstract: Interfacial charge and energy transport is of fundamental importance to nanoscience and devices. It is critical to the development of quantum plasmonic junctions, ultrafast photoelectron sources, and compact electromagnetic radiation sources (millimeter wave to THz to x-ray), which have applications in imaging, communication, energy, and security. The rapid development in nanotechnology and ultrafast laser optics has opened up great opportunities to control interfacial transport at ultrashort spatiotemporal scales and offers unprecedented scientific advances. However, the understanding of the underlying physics is limited and scaling laws are largely unexplored.
In this talk, I will present recent advances on the modeling of electron transport at contact interfaces and ultrafast electron emission from metal surfaces. Scaling laws for electrical contact resistance between dissimilar materials are constructed for a large range of material properties and geometrical aspect ratios. Spreading resistance and current crowding effects are quantified from the exact solutions constructed. Validated against numerical codes, they are recently applied to electrically pumped nanolasers. A general theory is developed for the quantum tunneling current in a nanoscale metal-insulator-metal junction, covering the direct tunneling, field emission, and space-charge-limited regimes. I will also show our recent theory for laser-induced electron emission, by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation exactly, for arbitrary combination of dc bias and laser intensity. Other modeling efforts on geometric diodes, electromagnetic power absorption, and THz Smith-Purcell radiation will be highlighted. Future research prospects on these topics will be discussed.
Biography: Peng Zhang is an Assistant Research Scientist in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan (UM) at Ann Arbor, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 2012. He was a recipient of the UM Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding Ph.D. Research, the UM Rackham Presidential Fellowship Award, and the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Graduate Scholarship Award. He has authored journal publications on electrical contacts, classical, ballistic, and quantum diodes, electron emission, electromagnetic heating phenomenology on rough surfaces, surface flashover and discharge, high power microwave sources, pulsed power systems, z-pinches, quantum electrodynamic laser-plasma interaction, and Smith-Purcell radiation. His current research interests mainly focus on theoretical and computational nanoscience and devices, including quantum plasmonic junctions, ultrafast photoemission, and novel compact electromagnetic radiation sources.
Host: EE-EP
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
-
USC Stem Cell Seminar: Raymond Stevens, USC
Tue, Feb 09, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Raymond Stevens, Provost Professor of Biological Sciences and Chemistry and Director of The Bridge@USC
Talk Title: Structure and drug discovery of the G-protein coupled receptor superfamily
Series: Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC Distinguished Speakers Series
Abstract: G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) constitute one of the largest protein families in the human genome and play essential roles in normal cell signaling processes. We have determined structures of more than 20 different GPCRs and made progress in understanding their structure and function. The use of the technology platform for drug discovery is now being established through an industry-academia open source GPCR Consortium, and the companies Receptos and RuiYi.
Host: Andy McMahon
More Info: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events/details/?event_id=916789
Webcast: http://keckmedia.usc.edu/stem-cell-seminarWebCast Link: http://keckmedia.usc.edu/stem-cell-seminar
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Cristy Lytal/USC Stem Cell
Event Link: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events/details/?event_id=916789
-
CS Colloquium: Joseph Bonneau (Stanford) - Cryptographic transparency
Tue, Feb 09, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Joseph Bonneau, Stanford
Talk Title: Cryptographic transparency
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Traditionally, cryptography aims to eliminate trusted authorities and reduce security to computational assumptions: the system is secure as long as attackers can't guess a random key or solve a hard mathematical problem. This talk will discuss an alternate approach: retain centralized authorities but use cryptography to provide transparency that they are behaving correctly. I'll present two examples: ensuring a public key server is serving keys consistently and ensuring a Bitcoin exchange controls enough funds to be solvent. Reasoning about the security of these systems require a more holistic approach, modeling user actions and economic incentives.
Biography: Joseph Bonneau is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Stanford University and a Technology Fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His research focuses on cryptography and security protocols, particularly how they interact with human and organizational behavior and economic incentives. Recently he has focused on Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies and secure messaging tools. He is also known for his work on passwords and web authentication. He received a PhD from the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Ross Anderson and an BS/MS from Stanford under the supervision of Dan Boneh. Last year he was as a Postdoctoral Fellow at CITP, Princeton and he has previously worked at Google, Yahoo, and Cryptography Research Inc.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Feb 10, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Reinhard Heckel, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Super-resolution radar
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: In this talk, we study the identification of a time-varying linear system whose response is a weighted superposition of time and frequency shifted versions of the input signal. This problem arises in a multitude of applications such as wireless communications and radar imaging. Due to practical constraints, the input signal has finite bandwidth B, and the received signal is observed over a finite time interval of length T only. This gives rise to a time and frequency resolution of 1/B and 1/T. We show that this resolution limit can be overcome, i.e., we can recover the exact (continuous) time-frequency shifts and the corresponding attenuation factors, by solving a convex optimization problem. This result holds provided that the distance between the time-frequency shifts is at least 2.37/B and 2.37/T, in time and frequency. Furthermore, this result allows the total number of time-frequency shifts to be linear (up to a log-factor) in BT, the dimensionality of the response of the system. More generally, we show that we can estimate the time-frequency components of a signal that is S-sparse in the continuous dictionary of time-frequency shifts of a random (window) function, from a number of measurements, that is linear (up to a log-factor) in S. We also discuss extensions of this theory to the localization of targets in MIMO radar.
Biography: Reinhard Heckel is a Postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Before that, he spent a year in the Cognitive Computing & Computational Sciences Department at IBM Research, Zurich. He completed his Ph.D. in August 2014 at ETH Zurich, Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, advised by Helmut Bölcskei. In Fall 2013, he was a visiting Ph.D. student in the Statistics Department of Stanford University. Reinhard Heckel is interested in various topics in machine learning, mathematical signal processing, sparse signal recovery, and computational biology.
Host: Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
-
CS Colloquium: George Varghese (Microsoft Research) -From EDA to NDA: Treating Networks like Hardware Circuits
Thu, Feb 11, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: George Varghese, Microsoft Research
Talk Title: From EDA to NDA: Treating Networks like Hardware Circuits
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Surveys reveal that network outages are prevalent, and outages take hours to resolve, resulting in significant lost revenue. We suggest fresh approaches based on verification and synthesis.
First, I show how to exploit physical symmetry to scale network verification for large data centers. While Emerson and Sistla showed how to exploit symmetry for model checking in 1996, they exploited symmetry on the logical Kripke structure. We factor the symmetries into symmetries on headers and symmetries on the physical topology.
I will then describe work we have done in synthesis. I will set the stage by describing a reconfigurable router architecture called RMT and an emerging language for programming routers called P4 (that promises to extend the boundaries of Software Designed Networks). I will then describe two synthesis efforts for flexible routers, one akin to register allocation (table layout) and one akin to code generation (packet transactions). I will focus especially on code generation and show that the all-or-nothing compilation required for wire-speed forwarding requires adapting standard compiler techniques.
These results suggest that concepts from Electronic Design Automation (EDA) can be leveraged to create what might be termed Network Design Automation (NDA). I end by briefly exploring this vision. This is joint work with collaborators at Edinburgh, MSR, MIT, Stanford, and University of Washington.
Biography: George Varghese received his Ph.D. in 1992 from MIT. From 1993-1999, he was a professor at Washington University, and at UCSD from 1999 to 2013. He was the Distinguished Visitor in the computer science department at Stanford University from 2010-2011. He joined Microsoft Research in 2012. His book "Network Algorithmics" was published in December 2004 by Morgan-Kaufman. In May 2004, he co-founded NetSift, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2005. With colleagues, he has won best paper awards at SIGCOMM (2014), ANCS (2013), OSDI (2008), PODC (1996), and the IETF Applied Networking Prize (2013). He has won lifetime awards in networking from the EE (Kobayashi Award) and CS communities (SIGCOMM) in 2014.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Band-Engineered Complex Oxide Interfaces: New Insights and Opportunities
Thu, Feb 11, 2016 @ 12:45 PM - 01:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Professor Bharat Jalan, University of Minnesota
Talk Title: Band-Engineered Complex Oxide Interfaces: New Insights and Opportunities
Series: Graduate Seminar
Abstract: Complex oxide heterostructures can show strong correlation effects, novel magnetism, high breakdown voltage, and high 2D electron density (of the order of 1014 cm-2), unattainable in traditional semiconductor heterostructures. High 2D electron densities are of particular interest for studying low-dimensional physics in narrow d-band materials, in addition to fabricating novel plasmonic field-effect devices (FETs). Recent advances in thin film growth approaches have enabled the growth of this material class in thin film and heterostructure forms with pristine structural quality (similar to that of the conventional semiconductors). However the grand challenge in the field is to obtain these materials with the high level of stoichiometric and defect control. In this talk, I will present my groups effort to address these challenges and to utilize intrinsic defects as a new degree of freedom to control materials electronic and magnetic property using the hybrid molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) approach. In particular, I will discuss the role of intrinsic defects in realizing and tailoring the 2D electron gas at perovskite oxide heterojunctions.
I will then present a novel approach for creating high-density 2DEGs at perovskite heterojunction using internal charge transfer. 2D carrier density much higher density than expected based on resolution of the polar discontinuity at perovskite oxide heterojunctions can be achieved via internal charge transfer using band-engineered interfaces. Combining DFT modeling and experiments using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy and electronic transport measurements, I will discuss the origin of these carriers, dimensionality and transport mechanisms. Finally, I will discuss how electron and hole doping via band-engineered approaches can be achieved, which may provide an exceptional route to revisit the electronic phase diagrams of transition metal oxides in the clean doping limit.
This work is supported through the University of Minnesota MRSEC under awards DMR-1420013.
Host: Professor Jayakanth Ravichandran
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Martin Olekszyk
-
Faculty Candidate Seminar
Thu, Feb 11, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Private, Private
Talk Title: Ambiguous Joint Chance Constraints Under Mean and Dispersion Information
Host: Epstein Department of ISE
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
-
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Thu, Feb 11, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Michael Friedlander, UC Davis
Talk Title: Level-set methods for convex optimization
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Convex optimization problems in a variety of applications have favorable objectives but complicating constraints, and first-order methods are not immediately applicable. We propose an approach that exchanges the roles of the objective and constraint functions, and instead approximately solves a sequence of parametric problems. We describe the theoretical and practical properties of this approach for a broad range of problems, including low-rank semidefinite optimization problems.
Joint work with A. Aravkin, J. Burke, D. Drusvyatskiy, S. Roy.
Biography: Michael P. Friedlander is a Professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis. He received his PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University in 2002, and his BA in Physics from Cornell University in 1993. From 2002 to 2004 he was the Wilkinson Fellow in Scientific Computing at Argonne National Laboratory. He has held visiting positions at UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (2010), and at Berkeley's Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (2013). He serves on the editorial boards of SIAM J. on Optimization, SIAM J. on Matrix Analysis and Applications, SIAM J. on Scientific Computing, and Mathematical Programming Computation. His research is primarily in developing numerical methods for large-scale optimization, their software implementation, and applying these to problems in signal processing and machine learning.
Host: Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
-
Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. Seminar
Thu, Feb 11, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Shiho Kawashima, Columbia University
Talk Title: Thixotropy of Fresh Cement-Based Systems
Abstract: Over its lifetime, cement-based materials transition from behaving as a near-Newtonian fluid to a viscoelastic fluid-solid to eventually a rock-like solid. And although the first two phases are fleeting compared to the third phase, this earlier life period is intimately tied to materials processing.
Therefore the corresponding properties are critical in determining the efficiency of the placement process during construction, as well as the eventual performance of the structure in place. This requires that the rheological properties of the material be well characterized and controlled. During placement the material undergoes a wide range of deformations -“ very large during processes such as pouring and pumping, but then diminishingly small after placement when it is essentially at rest. This talk will cover studies that investigate the specific rheological aspect of thixotropy in cement paste and mortar systems that incorporate highly-purified attapulgite clay through static shear and dynamic rheological protocols that span wide timescales and magnitudes of deformations and rates.
Biography:
Shiho Kawashima is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University. Her work is in experimental cement and concrete research, which aims to tie nano-microstructural behavior to macroscale structural response. She specializes in cement rheology, particularly in the development of innovative measurement techniques to further the understanding of the structural and temporal evolution of the fresh-state microstructure of cementitious systems. She is also interested in the design of nanocomposites and sustainable infrastructural materials. She received her B.S. in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Northwestern University.
Host: Dr. Erik Johnson
Location: Biegler Hall of Engineering (BHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
-
Multi-scale integration and modularity in complex dynamical systems
Fri, Feb 12, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Artemy Kolchinsky, Santa Fe Institute
Talk Title: AI Seminar-Multi-scale integration and modularity in complex dynamical systems
Series: Artificial Intelligence Seminar
Abstract: I will discuss two novel approaches to studying distributed organization in complex dynamical systems. In the first [1], we define an information-theoretic measure of the strength of integration at multiple scales, where scale is defined according to an underlying distance metric. We show that our method generalizes several existing complexity measures and is tractable to compute. As demonstrated on human resting state fMRI time-series data, it also captures important aspects of integration in network- and spatially-embedded systems.
In the second approach [2], we address modularity, a pattern of organization in which a system is composed of weakly-coupled subsystems. We develop a technique to decompose dynamical systems based on the idea that modules constrain the spread of perturbations. The method captures variation of modular organization across different system states, time scales, and in response to different kinds of perturbations. It also offers a principled alternative to community detection applied to statistical-dependency networks (e.g. correlation matrices or "functional networks").
[1] A Kolchinsky, MP van den Heuvel, A Griffa, P Hagmann, LM Rocha, O Sporns and J Goñi, Multi-scale Integration and Predictability in Resting State Brain Activity, Frontiers Neuroinformatics, 2014. http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fninf.2014.00066/abstract
[2] A Kolchinsky, AJ Gates, and LM Rocha, Modularity and the spread of perturbations in complex dynamical systems, PRE, 2015. http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.04386
Biography: Artemy Kolchinsky received his PhD from the Center for Complex Systems and Networks, Dept of Informatics, Indiana University Bloomington in 2015. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, collaborating on projects involving optimal compression of dynamical systems as well as thermodynamic constraints on computation. He is broadly interested in novel methods for understanding multivariate dynamics in application to computational neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and other complex systems.
Host: Greg Ver Steeg
Webcast: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=f413ecae075e40eaa3f6b51123178b791dLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
WebCast Link: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=f413ecae075e40eaa3f6b51123178b791d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
-
Facebook's Datacenter and Backbone Networks
Fri, Feb 12, 2016 @ 12:00 PM - 01:20 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Rishi Sinha, Facebook
Talk Title: Facebook's Datacenter and Backbone Networks
Abstract: This talk will cover the design, operational, performance and capacity issues in global networking for large online services, using Facebook as a case study. We will describe Facebook's datacenter and backbone network architecture, explain the characteristics and unique demands of traffic generated in serving a billion daily users, detail the motivations for Facebook's decisions to adopt a next-generation fabric network architecture and to design its own network switches and accompanying operating system, and provide insights into the protocol and software engineering work that is applied to solving performance and capacity challenges in Facebook's network. Finally, we will point to open areas for research and commercialization.
Biography: Dr. Sinha is a performance capacity engineer at Facebook and leads several projects on server capacity planning, network capacity planning, efficiency, and data center logistics. Prior to joining Facebook at 2012, he worked at Brocade where he developed analysis tools for flow control bottlenecks in storage networks, and at Akamai where he worked on reliability of real-time streaming. He has extensive experience in packet flow analysis, experimentation and implementation of internet-scale systems and has four patents on networking related technologies. Dr. Sinha is a Trojan and completed his PhD at USC in 2006.
Host: Alefiya Hussain
Location: Mark Taper Hall Of Humanities (THH) - 210
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alefiya Hussain
-
Systems Cellular-Molecular Bioengineering Distinguished Speaker Series
Fri, Feb 12, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Elliot Botvinick, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, UC Irvine
Talk Title: Feeling Pericellular Mechanical Heterogeneities
Abstract: While there is strong evidence for roles of bulk stromal stiffness in cell regulation, roles for the pericellular mechanical microenvironment are less clear, in large part due to the difficulty of measurement. My group implements automated Active Microrheology (aAMR), an optical tweezers technology, to probe extracellular stiffness and map it in the volume surrounding cells. Our aAMR applies sinusoidal optical forces onto microbeads embedded within natural extracellular matrices (ECMs), including those comprised of fibrin and type 1 collagen. As in the case of passive microrheology, aAMR reports the complex material response function of the ECM just surrounding each microbead. Different from passive methods, aAMR is valid for systems not in thermal equilibrium, as is typical for regions of the ECM near to contractile cells. Our aAMR microscope can probe many beads surrounding each cell to map the mechanical landscape, allowing us to seek correlations between local stiffness distributions and cell properties such as contractility, signaling, and differentiation. I will present specific examples for which the distribution of pericellular stiffness correlates with cell phenotype/state including: MT1-MMP deficient mesenchymal stem cells, human aortic smooth muscle cells with compromised contractility and fibrosarcoma cells cultured in type 1 collagen gels.
Biography: My research program has two areas of focus: mechanobiology and medical device development. My research group uses photonic tools to investigate roles for mechanical forces and physical properties in the regulation of tissues. We have expertise in the areas of photonics, laser ablation, imaging, tissue engineering and mechanobiology. Specifically, we develop instrumentation and devices for quantitative biophysical measurements towards the study of single molecule biophysics and cell-tissue physical interactions. In particular, we use optical tweezers to measure single receptor-ligand interactions and have discovered strong evidence for the role of ligand-endocytic forces in the activation of the Notch receptor. We also use optical tweezers/scissors to measure local continuum viscoelastic parameters in order to seek correlations between microenvironment mechanics and cell function. We have applied these tools to test mechanical hypotheses in the areas of cancer biology, microvascular morphogenesis, tissue engineering, stem cell biology and the transition of ductal carcinoma in situ into an invasive phenotype.
Host: Megan McCain
More Information: botvinick_flyer.pdf
Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - 146
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Megan McCain
-
Munushian Seminar - Rahul Sarpeshkar, Friday, February 12th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Fri, Feb 12, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rahul Sarpeshkar, Dartmouth College
Talk Title: Analog and Stochastic Computation in Living Cells and Supercomputing Chips
Abstract: Despite more than 15 years of research, synthetic circuits in living cells have been largely limited to a handful of digital logic gates and have not scaled. We show that one important reason for this failure to scale is an overemphasis on digital abstractions rather than on recognizing the true noisy, analog, and probabilistic nature of biological circuits. We show that synthetic and natural DNA, RNA, and protein circuits in cells must use analog, collective analog, probabilistic, and hybrid analog-digital computational approaches to function; otherwise, even relatively simple computations in cells will exceed energy, molecular-count, and cellular-resource budgets.
Analog circuits in electronics and molecular circuits in cell biology are also deeply connected: There are astounding similarities between the equations that describe noisy electronic flow in subthreshold transistors and the equations that describe noisy molecular flow in chemical reactions, both of which obey the laws of exponential thermodynamics. Based on these similarities, it is possible to take a principled approach to design circuits in living cells. For example, we have engineered logarithmic analog computation in living cells with less than three transcription factors, almost two orders of magnitude more efficient than prior digital approaches to create a "bio-molecular slide rule". In addition, highly computationally intensive noisy DNA-protein and protein-protein networks can be rapidly simulated in mixed-signal supercomputing chips that naturally capture their noisiness, dynamics, and non-modular interactions at lightning-fast speeds. Such an approach may enable large-scale design, analysis, simulation, and measurement of cells to be more precise and robust than it is today. To realize the promise of synthetic biology and systems biology for medicine, biotechnology, agriculture, and energy, we will need to go back to the future of computation and design and implement circuits via a collective analog approach like Nature does. We must also exploit and develop existing analog and mixed-signal electronic design tools for enabling biological design to scale.
Biography: Rahul Sarpeshkar is the Thomas E. Kurtz Professor and a Professor in the departments of Engineering, Microbiology & Immunology, Physics, and Physiology & Neurobiology at Dartmouth College. His research creates novel wet DNA-protein circuits in living cells and also advanced dry nanoelectronic circuits on silicon chips. His longstanding work on analog and biological computation and his most recent work have helped pioneer the field of analog synthetic biology. His work on a glucose fuel cell for medical implants was featured by Scientific American among 2012's 10 World Changing Ideas.
He holds over 36 awarded patents and has authored more than 127 publication, including one that was featured on the cover of Nature. His recent book, Ultra Low Power Bioelectronics: Fundamentals, Biomedical Applications, and Bio-inspired Systems revealed the deep connections between analog transistor circuits and biochemical circuits. His work has led to several first or best records in analog, bio-inspired, synthetic biology, medical device, ultra low power, and energy harvesting systems. His work has applications in implantable medical devices for the deaf, blind, and paralyzed and in biotechnology and medical applications that benefit from cellular engineering. He has received several awards including the NSF Career Award, the ONR Young Investigator Award, and the Packard Fellows Award. He received Bachelor's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics at MIT and PhD at CalTech. Before he joined Dartmouth's faculty, he was a tenured professor at MIT where he led the Analog Circuits and Biological Systems Group. Before he joined MIT, he was a member of the technical staff of Bell Labs' division of biological computation.
Host: EE-EP
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
-
NL Seminar-Recent Advances in Neural Machine Translation
Fri, Feb 12, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Thang Luong, Stanford University
Talk Title: Recent Advances in Neural Machine Translation
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is a simple new architecture for getting machines to learn to translate. At its core, NMT is a single big recurrent neural network that is trained end-to-end with several advantages such as simplicity and generalization. Despite being relatively new, NMT has already been showing promising results in various translation tasks. In this talk, I will give an overview of NMT and highlight my recent work on (a) how to address the rare word problem in NMT, (b) how to improve the attention (alignment) mechanism, and (c) how to leverage data from other modalities to improve translation.
Biography: Thang Luong is currently a 5th-year PhD student in the Stanford NLP group under Prof. Chris Manning. In the past, he has published papers on various different NLP-related areas such as digital library, machine translation, speech recognition, parsing, psycholinguistics, and word embedding learning. Recently, his main interest shifts towards the area of deep learning using sequence to sequence models to tackle various NLP problems, especially neural machine translation. He has built state-of-the-art (academically) neural machine translation systems both at Google and at Stanford.
Host: Xing Shi and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 6th Flr Conf Rm # 689, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
-
Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Feb 15, 2016 @ 12:30 PM - 01:49 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: NO CLASS, HOLIDAY, NO CLASS, HOLIDAY
Talk Title: NO CLASS, HOLIDAY
Host: K. Kirk Shung, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
-
MHI Distinguished Visitor Talk
Tue, Feb 16, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Petros Maragos, School of E.C.E., National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Talk Title: Action and Gesture Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction
Abstract: In this talk we will present some advances from our research in the EU project MOBOT which generally aims at the development of an intelligent active mobility assistance robot. We will focus on one of its main goals: to provide multimodal sensory processing capabilities for human action recognition. Specifically, a reliable multimodal information processing and action recognition system needs to be developed, that will detect, analyze and recognize the human user actions based on the captured multimodal sensory signals and with a reasonable level of accuracy and detail for intelligent assistive robotics. One of the main thrusts in the above effort is the development of robust and effective computer vision techniques to achieve the visual processing goals based on multiple cues such as spatiotemporal RGB appearance data as well as depth data from Kinect sensors. Another major challenge is the integration of recognizing specific verbal and gestural commands in the considered human-robot interaction context. In this presentation we summarize advancements in three tasks of the above multimodal processing system for human-robot interaction (HRI): action recognition, gesture recognition and spoken command recognition. More information, related papers and current results can be found in http://cvsp.cs.ntua.gr and http://robotics.ntua.gr.
Biography: Petros Maragos received the Diploma in E.E. from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 1980 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Georgia Tech, Atlanta, in 1982 and 1985. In 1985, he joined the faculty of the Division of Applied Sciences at Harvard University, where he worked for eight years as professor of electrical engineering affiliated with the Harvard Robotics Lab. In 1993, he joined the faculty of the School of ECE at Georgia Tech. During periods of 1996-98 he had a joint appointment as director of research at the Institute of Language and Speech Processing in Athens. Since 1998, he has been working as a professor at the NTUA School of ECE. He has held a visiting scientist position at MIT LIDS in fall 2012. He is currently the Director of the NTUA Division of Signals, Control and Robotics, and the Director of the Intelligent Robotics and Automation Lab. His research and teaching interests include signal processing, systems theory, pattern recognition, image processing and computer vision, audio and speech/language processing, cognitive systems, and robotics. In the above areas he has published numerous papers, book chapters, and has also co-edited three Springer research books, one on multimodal processing and interaction and two on shape analysis. He has served as: Associate Editor for the IEEE Trans. on ASSP, IEEE Trans. on PAMI, and editorial board member and guest editor for several journals on signal processing, image analysis and vision; co-organizer of several conferences and workshops, including VCIP 1992 (GC), ISMM 1996 (GC), VLBV 2001 (GC), MMSP 2007 (GC), ECCV 2010 (PC), ECCV 2010 Workshop on Sign, Gesture and Activity, EUSIPCO 2012 (TC), 2011 & 2014 Dagstuhl Symposia on Shape, 2015 IROS Workshop on Cognitive Mobility Assistance Robots; member of the IEEE committees on DSP, IMDSP and MMSP. He is currently organizing EUSIPCO 2017 (GC).
His is the recipient or co-recipient of several awards for his academic work, including a 1983 Sigma Xi best thesis award, a 1987-1992 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, a 1988 IEEE SPS Young Author Best Paper Award, a 1994 IEEE SPS Senior Best Paper Award, the 1995 IEEE W.R.G. Baker Prize Award, the 1996 Pattern Recognition Society's Honorable Mention Award, the EURASIP 2007 Technical Achievement Award for contributions to nonlinear signal, image and speech processing, and the Best Paper Award of the IEEE CVPR-2011 Gesture Recognition Workshop. He was elected a Fellow of IEEE in 1995 and a Fellow of EURASIP in 2010 for his research contributions.
Host: Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan, Theodora Chaspari, and Zisis Skordilis
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-Systems
-
CS Colloquium: Haipeng Luo (Princeton) -Optimal and Adaptive Online Learning
Tue, Feb 16, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Haipeng Luo , Princeton
Talk Title: Optimal and Adaptive Online Learning
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Online learning is one of the most important and well-established learning models in machine learning. Generally speaking, the goal of online learning is to make a sequence of accurate predictions "on the fly" when interacting with the environment. Online learning has been extensively studied in recent years, and has also become of great interest to practitioners due to its applicability to large scale applications such as advertisement placement and recommendation systems.
In this talk, I will present novel, optimal and adaptive online learning algorithms for three problems. The first problem is online boosting, a theory of boosting the accuracy of any existing online learning algorithms; the second problem is on combining expert advice more efficiently and adaptively when making online predictions; the last part of the talk is about using data sketching techniques to obtain efficient online learning algorithms that make use of second order information and have robust performance against ill-conditioned data.
Biography: Haipeng Luo is currently a fifth year graduate student working with Prof. Rob Schapire at Princeton. His main research interest is in theoretical and applied machine learning, with a focus on adaptive and robust online learning and its connections to boosting, optimization, stochastic learning and game theory. He won the Wu Prize for Excellence and two best paper awards (ICML and NIPS) in 2015.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Faculty Candidate Seminar
Tue, Feb 16, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Private, Private
Talk Title: Machine Learning Tools for Finding Decision-Oriented Patterns in Data
Host: Epstein Department of ISE
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
-
CS Colloquium: Baris Akgun (Georgia Institute of Technology) - Robots Interactively Learning and Exploring with People
Tue, Feb 16, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Baris Akgun, Georgia Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Robots Interactively Learning and Exploring with People
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Robots are destined to move beyond the "caged" factory floors towards domains where they will be interacting closely with humans. They will encounter highly varied environments, scenarios and user demands. As a result, end-users
programming robots after deployment will be an important requirement.
In this talk, I will present results of studies with non-expert people teaching robots by demonstration and algorithms developed based on the lessons learned. My main observation is these users concentrate on achieving the goal of the demonstrated skills rather than providing good quality demonstrations. I will describe a learning from demonstration approach that leverages this goal directed behavior of users and is able to continue self-improvement on these learned models after the end-user leaves, an important step toward life-long learning. I will then talk about results of an experiment with non-expert teachers on an interactive approach that incorporates all the methods and algorithms I have introduced thus far. The work presented represents one example in a larger agenda of human-centered learning from demonstration, I conclude with a discussion of grand challenges ahead.
the lecture will be available to stream HERE. Please open link in new tab for best results.
Biography: Baris Akgun is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in Robotics from Georgia Institute of Technology under Assoc. Prof. Dr. Andrea Thomaz where he worked on developing algorithms and interactions that enable robots to learn from non-expert teachers and to use their learned information to autonomously get better over time. He received his M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering in 2010 from METU working on affordance learning and mirror neuron inspired learning from demonstration under Assoc. Prof. Dr. Erol Sahin. .He received his B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering with an extracurricular minor in Mechatronics in 2007. His research interests lie at the intersection of human-robot interaction and machine learning for robotics. He is currently working on deploying his developed methodologies in a household setting with non-expert teachers. His research was funded by the NSF and the ONR. He was a recipient of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) scholarship for his M.Sc and the Fulbright Scholarship for his Ph.D.
Host: CS Department
More Info: URL:https://bluejeans.com/213720883
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: URL:https://bluejeans.com/213720883
-
CS Colloquium: Arjun Radhakrishna (U. Pennsylvania) - Performance-aware Repair for Concurrent Programs
Wed, Feb 17, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Arjun Radhakrishnan, U. Pennsylvania
Talk Title: Performance-aware Repair for Concurrent Programs
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
We present a recent line of work on automated synthesis of synchronization constructs for concurrent programs. Our techniques are inspired by a study of the most common types of concurrency bugs and bugs-fixes in Linux device-drivers. As opposed to classical techniques which tend to use expensive synchronization constructs, our technique attempts to use inexpensive program transformations, such as reordering independent statements, to improve the performance of generated fixes.
Our techniques are based on the observation that a large fraction of concurrency bugs are data-independent. This observations allow us to characterize and fix concurrency bugs based only on the order of execution of the statements involved. We evaluated our techniques on several real concurrency bugs that occurred in Linux device drivers, and showed that our synthesis procedure is able to produce more efficient and "programmer-like" bug-fixes.
We finish by talk with a brief note on the general theme of soft specifications, such as performance and energy consumption, in program synthesis. Specifically, we will discuss the use of quantitative specifications and their applications to resource management in embedded and cyber-physical systems.
Biography: Arjun Radhakrishna is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, he completed his PhD at the Institute of Science and Technology, Austria advised by Prof. Thomas A. Henzinger. His research focuses primarily on using programming language techniques, specifically, automated program synthesis, for rigorous systems engineering. His current research interests include the use of alternative specification mechanisms to capture subtle soft requirements on computing systems, such as program performance, energy consumption, or a program's robustness to errors. He is also interested in verification and synthesis of concurrent programs, in particular, device drivers.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
MHI Distinguished Visitor Talk
Wed, Feb 17, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Petros Maragos, School of E.C.E., National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Talk Title: Signal Processing and Dynamical Systems on Weighted Lattices
Abstract: In this talk we will present a new unifying theoretical framework of nonlinear signal processing operators and dynamical systems that obey a superposition of a weighted max-min type and evolve on nonlinear spaces which we call complete weighted lattices. Special cases of such systems have found applications in morphological image analysis and vision scale-spaces, in control of discrete-event dynamical systems with minimax algebra, in speech recognition as weighted finite-state transducers, and in belief propagation on graphical models. Our theoretical approach establishes their representation in state and input-output spaces using monotone lattice operators, finds analytically their state and output responses using nonlinear convolutions of a weighted max-min type, studies their stability and reachability, and provides optimal solutions to solving max-min matrix equations. The talk will emphasize the main concepts and theoretical results in this broad field using weighted lattice algebra and will outline some application areas.
Biography: Petros Maragos received the Diploma in E.E. from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 1980 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Georgia Tech, Atlanta, in 1982 and 1985. In 1985, he joined the faculty of the Division of Applied Sciences at Harvard University, where he worked for eight years as professor of electrical engineering affiliated with the Harvard Robotics Lab. In 1993, he joined the faculty of the School of ECE at Georgia Tech. During periods of 1996-98 he had a joint appointment as director of research at the Institute of Language and Speech Processing in Athens. Since 1998, he has been working as a professor at the NTUA School of ECE. He has held a visiting scientist position at MIT LIDS in fall 2012. He is currently the Director of the NTUA Division of Signals, Control and Robotics, and the Director of the Intelligent Robotics and Automation Lab. His research and teaching interests include signal processing, systems theory, pattern recognition, image processing and computer vision, audio and speech/language processing, cognitive systems, and robotics. In the above areas he has published numerous papers, book chapters, and has also co-edited three Springer research books, one on multimodal processing and interaction and two on shape analysis. He has served as: Associate Editor for the IEEE Trans. on ASSP, IEEE Trans. on PAMI, and editorial board member and guest editor for several journals on signal processing, image analysis and vision; co-organizer of several conferences and workshops, including VCIP 1992 (GC), ISMM 1996 (GC), VLBV 2001 (GC), MMSP 2007 (GC), ECCV 2010 (PC), ECCV 2010 Workshop on Sign, Gesture and Activity, EUSIPCO 2012 (TC), 2011 & 2014 Dagstuhl Symposia on Shape, 2015 IROS Workshop on Cognitive Mobility Assistance Robots; member of the IEEE committees on DSP, IMDSP and MMSP. He is currently organizing EUSIPCO 2017 (GC).
His is the recipient or co-recipient of several awards for his academic work, including a 1983 Sigma Xi best thesis award, a 1987-1992 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, a 1988 IEEE SPS Young Author Best Paper Award, a 1994 IEEE SPS Senior Best Paper Award, the 1995 IEEE W.R.G. Baker Prize Award, the 1996 Pattern Recognition Society's Honorable Mention Award, the EURASIP 2007 Technical Achievement Award for contributions to nonlinear signal, image and speech processing, and the Best Paper Award of the IEEE CVPR-2011 Gesture Recognition Workshop. He was elected a Fellow of IEEE in 1995 and a Fellow of EURASIP in 2010 for his research contributions.
Host: Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan, Theodora Chaspari, and Zisis Skordilis
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-Systems
-
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Feb 17, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hao Yu, USC
Talk Title: A fast drift method for convex programs
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: This talk considers convex programs with a general (possibly non-differentiable) convex objective function and Lipschitz continuous convex inequality constraint functions. A simple algorithm is developed and achieves an $O(1/t)$ convergence rate. Similar to the classical dual subgradient algorithm and the ADMM algorithm, the new algorithm has a parallel implementation when the objective and constraint functions are decomposable. However, the new algorithm has faster $O(1/t)$ convergence rate compared with the best known $O(1/\sqrt{t})$ convergence rate for the dual subgradient algorithm with averaged primals. Further, it can solve convex programs with nonlinear constraints, which cannot be handled by the ADMM algorithm. The new algorithm is applied to a multipath network utility maximization problem and yields a decentralized flow control algorithm with fast $O(1/t)$ convergence rate.
Biography: Hao Yu is currently a PhD student in EE department at University of Southern California, advised by Prof. Michael J. Neely. He received the B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, and the Mphil. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong. His research interests are in the areas of design and analysis of optimization algorithms, network optimization and network coding.
Host: Prof. Rahul Jain
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
-
CS Colloquium: Alec Jacobson (Columbia University) - Breaking Barriers between Humans and Geometry
Thu, Feb 18, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Alec Jacobson, Columbia University
Talk Title: Breaking Barriers between Humans and Geometry
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
In the field of geometry processing, I work to make sense of existing geometric data and provide interfaces to put that data to further use. Today, we find many sources of geometric data and increasingly find useful applications effecting our daily lives. Climate analysis, self-driving cars, 3d-printed prosthetics, virtual dressing rooms and video games all share the essential tasks of collecting, processing and utilizing geometric data.
Unfortunately, barriers stand between geometric data and the people who want to analyze and understand that data. Potential consumers and content creators cannot access or edit geometry because of poor human-computer interfaces. Meanwhile, some data never reaches its intended users because processing breaks down due to lack of robustness to noise.
My long-term research goal is to dismantle the barriers between humans and geometry. In this talk, I will show how I attack this problem on both fronts. I bring ideas from differential geometry and finite-element analysis to model geometric problems more intuitively and more robustly. Meanwhile, I pursue better user interfaces to reduce human effort and increase creative or scientific exploration of geometric data. I will present my work in robust geometry processing, higher-order PDEs, real-time shape articulation, and fabricating user interfaces. Each parallel branch of investigation, while self-motivating, complements the others, and together they invite exciting new directions for future research.
Biography: Alec Jacobson is a post-doctoral researcher at Columbia University working with Prof. Eitan Grinspun. He received a PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zurich, and an MA and BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. His thesis on real-time deformation techniques for 2D and 3D shapes was awarded the ETH Medal and the Eurographics Best PhD award. Leveraging ideas from differential geometry and finite-element analysis, his work in geometry processing improves exposure of geometric quantities, while his novel user interfaces reduce human effort and increase exploration. He has published several papers in the proceedings of SIGGRAPH. He leads development of the geometry processing library, libigl, winner of the 2015 SGP software award.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Faculty Candidate Seminar
Thu, Feb 18, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:30 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Pro, Private
Talk Title: The Power of Nonconvex Paradigms for High-Dimensional Estimation
Host: Epstein Department of ISE
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
-
MHI Distinguished Visitor Talk
Thu, Feb 18, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Petros Maragos, School of E.C.E., National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Talk Title: Audio-Visual Attention, Computational Saliency and Movie Summarization
Abstract: In this talk we will present an overview of ideas, methods and research results in multimodal sensory processing with emphasis on audio-visual signal fusion as applied to problems of attention and multimodal event detection for information summarization. We shall begin with a brief synopsis of important findings from audio-visual perception. Then we shall outline efficient signal processing front-ends and improved computational saliency models for audio and visual salient event detection, followed by fusion schemes for multimodal saliency estimation. This will lead to movie video summarization based on audio, visual, and text modalities. For objective evaluations we have developed a movie database, which includes sensory and semantic saliency annotation as well as cross-media relations. The above research has been conducted in the framework of the Greek basic research project COGNIMUSE.
More information, related papers and current results can be found in http://cvsp.cs.ntua.gr and http://cognimuse.cs.ntua.gr.
Biography: Petros Maragos received the Diploma in E.E. from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 1980 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Georgia Tech, Atlanta, in 1982 and 1985. In 1985, he joined the faculty of the Division of Applied Sciences at Harvard University, where he worked for eight years as professor of electrical engineering affiliated with the Harvard Robotics Lab. In 1993, he joined the faculty of the School of ECE at Georgia Tech. During periods of 1996-98 he had a joint appointment as director of research at the Institute of Language and Speech Processing in Athens. Since 1998, he has been working as a professor at the NTUA School of ECE. He has held a visiting scientist position at MIT LIDS in fall 2012. He is currently the Director of the NTUA Division of Signals, Control and Robotics, and the Director of the Intelligent Robotics and Automation Lab. His research and teaching interests include signal processing, systems theory, pattern recognition, image processing and computer vision, audio and speech/language processing, cognitive systems, and robotics. In the above areas he has published numerous papers, book chapters, and has also co-edited three Springer research books, one on multimodal processing and interaction and two on shape analysis. He has served as: Associate Editor for the IEEE Trans. on ASSP, IEEE Trans. on PAMI, and editorial board member and guest editor for several journals on signal processing, image analysis and vision; co-organizer of several conferences and workshops, including VCIP 1992 (GC), ISMM 1996 (GC), VLBV 2001 (GC), MMSP 2007 (GC), ECCV 2010 (PC), ECCV 2010 Workshop on Sign, Gesture and Activity, EUSIPCO 2012 (TC), 2011 & 2014 Dagstuhl Symposia on Shape, 2015 IROS Workshop on Cognitive Mobility Assistance Robots; member of the IEEE committees on DSP, IMDSP and MMSP. He is currently organizing EUSIPCO 2017 (GC).
His is the recipient or co-recipient of several awards for his academic work, including a 1983 Sigma Xi best thesis award, a 1987-1992 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, a 1988 IEEE SPS Young Author Best Paper Award, a 1994 IEEE SPS Senior Best Paper Award, the 1995 IEEE W.R.G. Baker Prize Award, the 1996 Pattern Recognition Society's Honorable Mention Award, the EURASIP 2007 Technical Achievement Award for contributions to nonlinear signal, image and speech processing, and the Best Paper Award of the IEEE CVPR-2011 Gesture Recognition Workshop. He was elected a Fellow of IEEE in 1995 and a Fellow of EURASIP in 2010 for his research contributions.
Host: Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan, Theodora Chaspari, and Zisis Skordilis
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-Systems
-
CS Colloquium: Animashree Anandkumar (UC Irvine) - Guaranteed Non-convex Algorithms for Modern Machine Learning through Tensor Factorization
Thu, Feb 18, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Animashree Anandkumar, UC Irvine
Talk Title: Guaranteed Non-convex Algorithms for Modern Machine Learning through Tensor Factorization
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Modern machine learning involves processing massive datasets of diverse varieties such as text, images, videos, biological data, and so on. Designing efficient algorithms which are guaranteed to learn in a fast and a scalable manner is one of grand challenges. Most machine learning tasks can be cast as optimization problems, but unfortunately a majority of them are NP-hard non-convex problems. I will provide broad guidelines for overcoming this hardness barrier by: (i) focusing on conditions which make learning tractable, (ii) replacing the given optimization objective with better behaved ones, and (iii) exploiting non-obvious connections that abound in learning problems.
I will demonstrate the above guidelines using concrete examples: (i) unsupervised learning of latent variable models and (ii) training multi-layer neural networks, through a new framework involving spectral decomposition of moment matrices and tensors. Tensors are rich structures that can encode higher order relationships in data. Despite being non-convex, tensor decomposition can be solved optimally using simple iterative algorithms under mild conditions. These positive results demonstrate that previous theory on computational hardness of learning is overly pessimistic, and that we need new theoretical tools to explain the recent empirical success of non-convex learning algorithms.
This meeting will be available to stream HERE. Please right-click, open in new tab for best results.
Biography: Anima Anandkumar is a faculty at the EECS Dept. at U.C.Irvine since August 2010. Her research interests are in the areas of large-scale machine learning, non-convex optimization and high-dimensional statistics. In particular, she has been spearheading the development and analysis of tensor algorithms for a variety of learning problems. She is the recipient of several awards such as the Alfred. P. Sloan Fellowship, Microsoft Faculty Fellowship, Google research award, ARO and AFOSR Young Investigator Awards, NSF CAREER Award, Early Career Excellence in Research Award at UCI, Best Thesis Award from the ACM SIGMETRICS society, IBM Fran Allen PhD fellowship, and best paper awards from the ACM SIGMETRICS and IEEE Signal Processing societies. She received her B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras in 2004 and her PhD from Cornell University in 2009. She was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT from 2009 to 2010, and a visiting faculty at Microsoft Research New England in 2012 and 2014.
Host: CS Department
Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/267704433Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/267704433
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Better and Faster Images of the Thinking Brain
Fri, Feb 19, 2016 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Douglas C. Noll, Ph.D., University of Michigan
Talk Title: Better and Faster Images of the Thinking Brain
Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
Abstract: Functional brain imaging using MRI (functional MRI or fMRI) has been available for about 20 years, and yet the technology of fMRI has continued to evolve quite rapidly. In this presentation, I will present that basic physiology and methods for fMRI and then discuss several advances to acquisition and image reconstruction for fMRI. I will explore a new approach for fMRI that reuses the MRI signal, thus potentially improving the signal strength and signal-to-noise ratio of fMRI studies. The technology of MRI excitation required to implement this approach will be discussed. I will also discuss and demonstrate a method to acquire multiple simultaneous slices using a non-Cartesian acquisition method. Lastly, I will discuss a new image acquisition and reconstruction approach that makes use of mathematical concepts in sparse sampling and low-rank signal representations. This approach has the potential to speed substantially the fMRI acquisition to allow the separation of undesired physiological signals and the imaging of dynamic network processes in the human brain.
Host: Prof. Krishna Nayak
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
-
Teamcore Seminar: Akshat Kumar (Singapore Management University) - Automated Planning and Decision Making Using Probabilistic Inference
Fri, Feb 19, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Akshat Kumar, Singapore Management University
Talk Title: Automated Planning and Decision Making Using Probabilistic Inference
Series: Teamcore Seminar
Abstract: Automated planning and decision making is a key building block of artificial intelligence. Traditionally, approaches for decision making and planning have evolved somewhat separately from that of machine learning. In this talk, I will highlight the duality between planning and learning. I will show that several decision making problems in probabilistic graphical models (such as the problem of maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation) with applications in multiagent systems, bioinformatics, and computer vision can be viewed from a machine learning (ML) perspective using the framework of maximum likelihood estimation. Similarly, I will show how classical planning problems such as finding the shortest path in a graph can also be viewed from an ML perspective. As a result of this connection between planning and learning, I will show how probabilistic inference approaches can be used for planning, and their benefits. I will conclude by highlighting how such planning-as-inference perspective has recently helped address challenging sequential decision making problems in multiagent systems.
Host: Teamcore Group
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
EE-EP Seminar - Kejie Fang, Friday, February 19th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Fri, Feb 19, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kejie Fang, California Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Integrated Hybrid Photonics-”Emergent Control and Application for Light and Sound at Nanoscale
Abstract: The bottleneck of bandwidth limitation and power dissipation in today's electronic microchips is conflicting with the exceeding demand for information communication and processing. Light, due to its intrinsic high frequency and environment-insensitivity (owing to its charge neutrality), is expected to bring solutions to this fundamental challenge. By the same token, certain functionalities in optical information processing will require a hybrid architecture interfacing different materials and light-matter interactions. With technical advances in nanofabrication, it is now possible to manipulate light and enhance light-matter interactions in on-chip, nanoscale photonic structures.
In this talk, I will present my research in two integrated hybrid photonic architectures. First is optoelectronic integration, where we achieved novel active control of light through an electric drive which dynamically modulates the refractive index of silicon photonic structures, leading to an effective magnetic field for photons and topological light propagation. These novel interactions are unreachable in static or passive dielectrics and provide a solution for on-chip optical isolation that is essential for stable and energy efficient optical communication. In the second part of my talk, I will present work on another hybrid architecture that interfaces light and sound: optomechanical crystals. This architecture allows for simultaneously engineering of optical and mechanical properties as well as photon-phonon interactions. Combining electron beam lithography and scanning probe microscope tuning, we fabricated cavity-optomechanical circuits on silicon microchips to realize radiation-pressure controlled microwave phonon routing. We applied these devices for microwave-over-optical signal processing with low energy and high efficiency. The nanoscale mechanical vibration is also used to achieve optical non-reciprocity in the optomechanical circuit. These achievements hold promise for hybrid photonic technology for light-based communication and processing in an integrated, chip-scale platform.
Biography: Kejie Fang is a Postdoctoral Scholar in Applied Physics at California Institute of Technology, working with Prof. Oskar Painter. He received his B.S. in physics from Peking University, and his M.S. in electrical engineering, Ph.D. in physics, both from Stanford University under the supervision of Prof. Shanhui Fan. Kejie's research interests include optomechanics, nanophotonics, and spin photonics, with a theme to develop novel chip scale devices and systems for light-based applications including optical information communication and processing. During his Ph.D., he proposed and demonstrated for the first time an effective magnetic field for photons which provides a solution for on-chip optical isolation. At Caltech, he developed integrated cavity-optomechanical circuits for on-chip information processing using nanoscale optical and acoustic excitations. Kejie has published 15 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals including Nature Photonics, Physical Review Letters, and Nature Communications. Kejie was a William R. and Sara Hart Kimball Fellow at Stanford University and also a recipient of OSA Outstanding Reviewer Award in 2014.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
-
NL Seminar Chasing vaccination in social media: Narrative discovery from an unstructured corpus of text
Fri, Feb 19, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh , UCLA
Talk Title: Chasing vaccination in social media: Narrative discovery from an unstructured corpus of text
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: The measles outbreak in California was a serious public health crisis. Health officials attributed the outbreak to the increasing number of children whose parents had secured exemptions from vaccination for various vaccine preventable diseases VPDs. We believe that exemption seeking is part of a broader culture of distrust driven in large part by stories circulating in social media. An under-standing of the dynamics of this broader culture is necessary if we are to develop health policies that do not simply address outcomes but rather the cultural basis for decisions leading to those outcomes. We reveal the dynamics of exemption seeking and the greater culture of distrust endemic to these sites by developing a generative statistical mechanical model where stories are represented as net- works with actants such as parents, medical professionals, and religious institutions as nodes, and their various relationships as edges. We estimate the latent but unknown stories circulating on these sites by modeling the posts as a sampling of the hidden story graph. Working with a data set of 2 million posts crawled from parenting sites over a 5 year period, we uncover a strong, persistent story signal in which parents, driven by a distrust of government and medical institutions, devise strategies to secure exemptions for their children from required vaccinations. In these stories, it is the vaccines and not the VPDs that pose a threat to the children. Our method of analyzing social media conversations and the exchange of stories at scale can provide an alert mechanism to health officials, help lay the groundwork for devising community-specific messaging interventions, and inform policy making.
Biography: Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh is a PhD candidate in the Electrical Engineering Department of UCLA, where he is simultaneously working towards my his degree in Applied Mathematics. Broadly speaking, he is interested in Statistics, Applied probability, and Data Analytics. Before joining UCLA in 2013, he received his MASc degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Waterloo, and BSc degrees in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology.
Host: Xing Shi and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
-
Six Sigma Black Belt Mon, Feb 22, 2016
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract: Course Dates (15 Day Program)
Week 1: February 22-26, 2016
Week 2: April 11-15, 2016
Week 3: May 2-6, 2016
Learn the advanced problem-solving skills you need to implement the principles, practices and techniques of Six Sigma to maximize performance and cost reductions in your organization. During this three-week practitioner course, you will learn how to measure a process, analyze the results, develop process improvements and quantify the resulting savings. You will be required to complete a project demonstrating mastery of appropriate analytical methods and pass an examination to earn Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate.
This practitioner course for Six Sigma implementation provides extensive coverage of the Six Sigma process as well as intensive exposure to the key analytical tools associated with Six Sigma, including project management, team skills, cost analysis, FMEA, basic statistics, inferential statistics, sampling, goodness of fit testing, regression and correlation analysis, reliability, design of experiments, statistical process control, measurement systems analysis and simulation. Computer applications are emphasized.
More Info: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
Event Link: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
-
CS Seminar: Jim Boerkoel (Harvey Mudd) - Temporal Planning for Robust Human-Robot Teamwork
Mon, Feb 22, 2016 @ 12:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jim Boerkoel, Harvey Mudd
Talk Title: Temporal Planning for Robust Human-Robot Teamwork
Series: CS Seminar Series
Abstract: Our work explores what it takes for teams of robots and humans to schedule robust interactions in the messiness of the real world.Temporal planning enables robots to automatically coordinate when the activities in their schedule should occur. In general, we want temporal plans that are adaptable to events that are beyond the direct control of agents; e.g., a robot may experience slippage or sensor failures. To do this, we must answer two questions: (1) how and when do new or unexpected events arise in practice?, and (2) how "good" is the temporal plan at adapting to unexpected events that might otherwise invalidate the plan? We have proposed a new metric called robustness, which assesses the likelihood that a multi-robot plan succeeds. We have shown that robustness is a better measure of multi-robot plan quality and that we can generate plans that optimize for robustness.
We also explore how to plan and schedule robots' interactions with humans on shared activities so that the exchanges are fluid and intuitive. For instance, one of our ongoing projects considers whether an agent can learn about the experiences of its human teammate in order to nudge them towards more optimal behavior. Another considers the roles that trust and cooperation play in human-robot interactions and how these differ from how humans trust and cooperate with each other.
Learn more: https://www.cs.hmc.edu/HEAT/
Host: Sven Koenig
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 322
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
CS Colloquium: Muhammad Naveed (UIUC) - Making the World a Better Place with Cryptography
Mon, Feb 22, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Muhammad Naveed, UIUC
Talk Title: Making the World a Better Place with Cryptography
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that the health records of up to 86% of the U.S. population have been hacked. The Ashley Madison breach revealed the private information of 37 million individuals and led to suicides and shattered families. The Apple iCloud breach led to the public release of nude photos of several celebrities. Data breaches like these abound.
In this talk, I will first describe my research toward understanding the security of existing data breach prevention systems. To thwart data breaches, property-preserving encryption has been adopted in many encrypted database systems such as CryptDB, Microsoft Cipherbase, Google Encrypted BigQuery, SAP SEEED, and the soon-to-be-shipped Microsoft SQL Always Encrypted system. To simultaneously attain practicality and functionality, property-preserving encryption schemes permit the leakage of certain information such as the relative order of encrypted messages. I will explain the practical implications of permitting such leakage, and show in real-world contexts that property-preserving encryption often does not offer strong enough security.
Next, I will describe an application-driven approach to developing practical cryptography to secure sensitive data. The approach involves collaborating with application domain experts to formulate the requirements; investigating whether a practical solution meeting the requirements is possible; and, if not, exploring the reasons behind it to relax the requirements so as to find a useful solution for the application. I will describe how I developed a cryptographic model called Controlled Functional Encryption (CFE), and how we can adopt CFE to address the privacy concerns in emerging applications such as personalized medicine.
Biography: Muhammad Naveed is a PhD candidate at UIUC studying applied cryptography and systems security. In applied cryptography, he develops practical-yet-provably-secure cryptographic systems for real applications. In systems security, he explores the fundamental security flaws in popular systems and builds defense systems. His work has had a significant impact on Android security and has helped companies such as Google, Samsung, Facebook, and Amazon secure their products and services, improving security for millions of Android users. He is the recipient of the Google PhD Fellowship in Security, the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Fellowship, the CS@Illinois C.W. Gear Outstanding Graduate Student Award, and the best paper award at the NYU CSAW Security Research Competition. He was also a finalist in the NYU CSAW Cybersecurity Policy Competition.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Candidate Series
Mon, Feb 22, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Khalid Jawed, Ph.D Candidate, Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Talk Title: Mechanics of Thin Elastic Rods: Computer Graphics Meets Engineering
Abstract: Thin rods are ubiquitous in both nature (e.g. bacterial flagella, human hair) and engineering (ropes, cables), from the micron to the kilometer scale, and often undergo extreme deformation. The geometric nonlinearities that result from the deformation process pose enormous challenges to traditional analytical and numerical tools. Moreover, it is often unfeasible to perform experiments at the original length scale of these systems. We overcome these challenges by combining model experiments and cutting-edge computational tools ported from computer graphics. The prominence of geometry in this class of systems enables the scaling (up or down) of the problem to the desktop scale, which allows for systematic experimental exploration of parameter space. In parallel, we conduct numerical simulations using the Discrete Elastic Rods (DER) method, which was originally developed for the animation industry. For the first time, we port DER into engineering as a predictive computational tool and test ride it against model experiments by studying two a priori unrelated problems, at disparate length scales: (1) coiling of rods on rigid substrate motivated from laying of submarine cables on seabed (kilometer scale), and (2) propulsion and instability in bacterial flagella (micron scale). The excellent agreement found between experiments and simulations illustrates the predictive power of our approach. Scaling (up or down) to the original application then offers unprecedented tools for rationalization and engineering design.
Biography: Khalid Jawed is a PhD candidate in mechanics at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (expected graduation: May 2016). His research focuses on the mechanics of slender rods; e.g. fuel pipelines, knots in ropes, bacterial flagella. He attained his Master's degree from the same institution in 2014. He received his undergraduate degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Physics from the University of Michigan in 2012. His career vision is centered around using computational, experimental, and modeling tools to characterize, enhance, control, and apply the material properties and mechanical instabilities to program the mechanical response of structures. His academic awards include GSNP best speaker award at American Physical Society March Meeting (2014) and outstanding teaching assistant award from MIT Mechanical Engineering (2015).
Location: 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
-
Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Feb 22, 2016 @ 12:30 PM - 01:49 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Rong Lu, Assistant Professor Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Keck School of Medicine
Talk Title: TBA
Biography: Professor Rong Lu's lab studies stem cell coordination, regulation and malfunction from a single cell perspective. They use mouse hematopoietic stem cells as a model system and integrate research strategies from various disciplines including molecular biology, cell biology, systems biology, genetics and bioinformatics. Her research focuses on understanding the differences between individual stem cells and how they coordinate with each other. These studies can provide new insights into the origin of diseases such as leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome as well as identify new therapeutic targets to treat them. http://pibbs.usc.edu/faculty/profile/?fid=457
Host: K. Kirk Shung, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
-
Faculty Candidate Seminar
Mon, Feb 22, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Private, Private
Talk Title: Searching for Many Hidden Objects
Host: Epstein Department of ISE
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
-
CS Colloquium: Robert West (Stanford) - Human Behavior in Networks
Mon, Feb 22, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Robert West, Stanford
Talk Title: Human Behavior in Networks
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Humans as well as information are organized in networks. Interacting with these networks is part of our daily lives: we talk to friends in our social network; we find information by navigating the Web; and we form opinions by listening to others and to the media. Thus, understanding, predicting, and enhancing human behavior in networks poses important research problems for computer and data science with practical applications of high impact. In this talk I will present some of my work in this area, focusing on (1) human navigation of information networks and (2) person-to-person opinions in social networks.
Network navigation constitutes a fundamental human behavior: in order to make use of the information and resources around us, we constantly explore, disentangle, and navigate networks such as the Web. Studying navigation patterns lets us understand better how humans reason about complex networks and lets us build more human-friendly information systems. As an example, I will present an algorithm for improving website hyperlink structure by mining raw web server logs. The resulting system is being deployed on Wikipedia's full server logs at terabyte scale, producing links that are clicked 10 times as frequently as the average link added by human Wikipedia editors.
Communication and coordination through natural language is another prominent human network behavior. Studying the interplay of social network structure and language has the potential to benefit both sociolinguistics and natural language processing. Intriguing opportunities and challenges have arisen recently with the advent of online social media, which produce large amounts of both network and natural language data. As an example, I will discuss my work on person-to-person sentiment analysis in social networks, which combines the sociological theory of structural balance with techniques from natural language processing, resulting in a sentiment prediction model that clearly outperforms both text-only and network-only versions.
I will conclude the talk by sketching interesting future directions for computational approaches to studying and enhancing human behavior in networks.
The lecture will be available to stream HERE. Please Open in New Tab for best results.
Biography: Robert West is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science in the Infolab at Stanford University, advised by Jure Leskovec. His research aims to understand, predict, and enhance human behavior in social and information networks by developing techniques in data science, data mining, network analysis, machine learning, and natural language processing. Previously, he obtained a Master's degree from McGill University in 2010 and a Diplom degree from Technische Universität München in 2007.
Host: CS Department
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Six Sigma Black Belt
Tue, Feb 23, 2016
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract: Course Dates (15 Day Program)
Week 1: February 22-26, 2016
Week 2: April 11-15, 2016
Week 3: May 2-6, 2016
Learn the advanced problem-solving skills you need to implement the principles, practices and techniques of Six Sigma to maximize performance and cost reductions in your organization. During this three-week practitioner course, you will learn how to measure a process, analyze the results, develop process improvements and quantify the resulting savings. You will be required to complete a project demonstrating mastery of appropriate analytical methods and pass an examination to earn Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate.
This practitioner course for Six Sigma implementation provides extensive coverage of the Six Sigma process as well as intensive exposure to the key analytical tools associated with Six Sigma, including project management, team skills, cost analysis, FMEA, basic statistics, inferential statistics, sampling, goodness of fit testing, regression and correlation analysis, reliability, design of experiments, statistical process control, measurement systems analysis and simulation. Computer applications are emphasized.
More Info: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
Event Link: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
-
CS Colloquium: Vincent Liu (U. Washington) - Improving the Cost and Reliability of Data Center Networks
Tue, Feb 23, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Vincent Liu , U. Washington
Talk Title: Improving the Cost and Reliability of Data Center Networks
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
In recent years, data center networks have grown to an unprecedented scale. The largest of these are expected to connect hundreds of thousands of servers and are expected to do so with high reliability and low cost. The current solution to these problems is to use an idea first proposed for telephone networks in the early 1950's: Clos network topologies. These topologies have a number of substantial benefits, but their use in this new domain raises a set of questions.
In this talk, I will present two systems that make small changes to state-of-the-art data center designs to provide large improvements to performance, reliability, and cost. I will first describe F10, a data center architecture that can provide both near-instantaneous reaction to failures and near-optimal handling of long-term load balancing. Central to this architecture is a novel network topology that provides all of the benefits of a traditional Clos topology, but also admits local reaction to and recovery from failures. I will also describe Subways, a network architecture that looks at how to use multiple network interfaces on each server to handle growth and performance issues in today's data centers.
Biography: Vincent Liu is a PhD candidate in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Before that, he completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. His research is in the general area of networked systems across all layers of the networking stack, from hardware concerns to application and workload modeling. He has published in a variety of fields including data center networks, fault-tolerant distributed systems, energy-efficient wireless communication, and systems to preserve security and privacy. His work has won Best Paper Awards at NSDI 2013, ACM SIGCOMM 2013, and NSDI 2015. He was also awarded a Google PhD fellowship and Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
CS Colloquium: Giuseppe Loianno (U. of Pennsylvania) - Flying Robots: Fast Autonomous Navigation and Physical Interaction
Tue, Feb 23, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Giuseppe Loianno, U. of Pennsylvania
Talk Title: Flying Robots: Fast Autonomous Navigation and Physical Interaction
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Flying Robots are starting to play a major role in several tasks such as search and rescue, interaction with the environment, inspection and monitoring.
Unfortunately, their dynamics make them extremely difficult to control and this is particularly true in absence of external positioning systems, such as GPS and motion-capture systems. Additionally, autonomous maneuvers based on onboard sensors are still very slow compared to those attainable with motion capture systems.
It is essential to provide fast autonomous capabilities to Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) to fly in a reliable way in unstructured environments.
This is achieved giving the vehicle, the ability to identify its state, using either absolute and relative asynchronous measurements provided by different sensors. Those have to be fused, exploiting different rates and statistical sensors' properties.
Algorithms that rely on the combination of a camera and IMU, two lightweight and inexpensive sensors, represent a valid solution for autonomous navigation and environment interaction, especially in case of small scale vehicles.
In this talk, I will give an overview of my research activities toward fast autonomous navigation of MAVs, collaboration between multiple aerial vehicles and environment interaction using a camera and IMU as the main sensor modalities, showing how these problems can be even solved by the use of classic consumer electronic devices.
This lecture will be available to stream HERE. Please open in new tab for best results.
Biography: Giuseppe Loianno received B.Sc and M.Sc in Automation Engineering both with honours at University of Naples Federico II in December 2007 and February 2010, respectively. He has been, during the academic year 2008, an exchange student at KTH (Royal Insitute of Technology) in Stockholm.
He developed his master thesis at ETH Zurich at the ASL laboratory focusing on Micro Aerial Vehicles under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Davide Scaramuzza. He received his Ph.D in computer and automatic engineering focusing in Robotics in May 2014 in the PRISMA Lab group, led by Prof. Dr. Bruno Siciliano. From April 2013 he worked as vising Ph.D student for 14 months with the Grasp Lab at University of Pennsylvania, supervised by Prof. Dr. Vijay Kumar and working for 12 months a postdoctoral researcher. He is currently a research scientist. His research interests include visual navigation, sensor fusion and visual servoing for micro aerial vehicles.
Host: CS Department
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
The Business of Oil and Gas
Tue, Feb 23, 2016 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Jonathan Lilien, Health Environment Safety Technical Services Manager Chevron North America Exploration and Production Company
Talk Title: Environmental and Societal Aspects of Oil & Gas Production in California
Series: USC Energy Institute Seminar Series
Host: USC Energy Institute
More Information: USCEI 2016 Seminar Series 022316.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Juli Legat
-
Six Sigma Black Belt
Wed, Feb 24, 2016
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract: Course Dates (15 Day Program)
Week 1: February 22-26, 2016
Week 2: April 11-15, 2016
Week 3: May 2-6, 2016
Learn the advanced problem-solving skills you need to implement the principles, practices and techniques of Six Sigma to maximize performance and cost reductions in your organization. During this three-week practitioner course, you will learn how to measure a process, analyze the results, develop process improvements and quantify the resulting savings. You will be required to complete a project demonstrating mastery of appropriate analytical methods and pass an examination to earn Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate.
This practitioner course for Six Sigma implementation provides extensive coverage of the Six Sigma process as well as intensive exposure to the key analytical tools associated with Six Sigma, including project management, team skills, cost analysis, FMEA, basic statistics, inferential statistics, sampling, goodness of fit testing, regression and correlation analysis, reliability, design of experiments, statistical process control, measurement systems analysis and simulation. Computer applications are emphasized.
More Info: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
Event Link: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
-
Faculty Candidate Seminar
Wed, Feb 24, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Private, Private
Talk Title: Data Science for High Throughput Sequencing
Host: Epstein Department of ISE
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
-
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Feb 24, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Hao Li, USC
Talk Title: Digitizing Humans into VR with a Glimpse into Deep Learning Applications
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: The age of social media and immersive technologies has created a growing need for processing detailed visual representations of ourselves. With recent advancements in graphics, we can now generate highly realistic digital characters for games, movies, and virtual reality. However, creating compelling digital content is still associated with a complex and manual workflow. While cutting-edge computer vision algorithms can detect and recognize humans reliably, obtaining functional digital models and their animations automatically still remains beyond reach. Such models are not only visually pleasing but would also bring semantical structure into the captured data, enabling new possibilities such as intuitive data manipulation and machine perception. With the democratization of 3D sensors, many difficult vision problems can be turned into geometric ones, where effective data-driven solutions exist. My research aims at pushing the boundaries of data-driven digitization of humans and developing frameworks that are accessible to anyone. Such system should be fully unobtrusive and operate in fully unconstrained environments. With these goals in mind, I will showcase several highlights of our current research efforts from dynamic shape reconstruction, human body scanning, facial capture, and the digitization of human hair. By the end of this decade, our homes will be equipped with 3D sensors that digitally monitor our actions, habits, and health. These advances will help machines understand our appearances and movements, revolutionizing the way we interact with computers, and developing new forms of live communication through compelling virtual avatars.
Biography: Hao Li joined USC in 2013 as an assistant professor of Computer Science. Before his faculty appointment he was a research lead at Industrial Light & Magic/Lucasfilm, where he developed the next generation real-time performance capture technologies for virtual production and visual effects. Prior to joining the force, Hao spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia and Princeton Universities. His research lies in geometry processing, 3D reconstruction, performance capture, a human hair digitization. While primarily developed to improve film production, his work on markerless dynamic shape reconstruction has also impacted the field of human shape analysis and biomedicine. His algorithms are widely deployed in the industry, ranging from leading visual effects studios to manufacturers of state-of-the-art radiation therapy systems. He has been named top 35 innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review in 2013 and NextGen 10: Innovators under 40 by CSQ in 2014. He was also awarded the Google Faculty Award in 2015, the SNF Fellowship for prospective researchers in 2011, and best paper award at SCA 2009. He obtained his PhD from ETH Zurich in 2010 and received his MSc degree in Computer Science in 2006 from the University of Karlsruhe (TH). He was a visiting professor at Weta Digital in 2014 and visiting researcher at EPFL in 2010, Industrial Light & Magic (Lucasfilm) in 2009, Stanford University in 2008, National University of Singapore in 2006, and ENSIMAG in 2003.
Host: Dr. Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
-
Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Wed, Feb 24, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Nancy Love, University of Michigan, Civil & Environnental Engineering
Talk Title: A Balancing Act: Assessing the Fate of Emerging Contaminants in Urine-Derived Fertilizers that Reduce Nutrient Loads and Achieve Nutrient Recovery
Abstract:
Source separation of urine provides benefits over traditional wastewater nutrient management including providing urine-derived fertilizer and reducing nutrient loads to wastewater treatment systems. This talk reviews an evaluation of the largest known community-scale and office-scale urine separation programs in the US. Urine is collected from public events and used to fertilize crops (lettuce and carrots). The urine used for this study was well characterized for nutrient, biological, and pharmaceutical constituents. While the study is underway, this presentation will highlight results to date that focus on the effectiveness of different processing methods (storage, pasteurization, and struvite precipitation) on reducing emerging and traditional contaminants that could have an impact on public health. The potential impacts of separating urine at the source and making it a valuable product are discussed.
Biography: Dr. Nancy Love is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University Michigan. She served as chair of the department from January 2008 -“ August 2011. In September 2011, she became Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Initiatives in the Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan. Prior to 2008, Dr. Love was an Assistant, Associate and Full Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an Adjunct Professor of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on environmental biotechnology and water quality with an emphasis on engineered treatment systems. Her specific interests focus on the fate of stressor chemicals in these systems, the use of technologies to sense and remove these chemicals, and on resource recovery from wastewater. Dr. Love has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois, a Ph.D. in Environmental Systems Engineering from Clemson University, and is a licensed professional engineer (P.E.) in the state of Michigan. After completing her M.S. degree, she worked as a process design engineer for approximately 3 years for CH2M Hill, Inc.
Host: Dr. Adam Smith
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
-
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Candidate Series
Wed, Feb 24, 2016 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Reza Avazmohammadi , Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Computational Engineering and Science at The University of Texas at Austin
Talk Title: Constitutive Modeling of Soft Engineering and Biological Materials: The Role of Microstructure
Abstract: The need for a better understanding of structure-function relationships in soft materials is on the rise. This need lies beneath several disciplines including the engineering materials industry and biomechanics. The study of multiscale mechanics of soft engineering materials offers unique opportunities to design multifunctional materials with novel properties. Also, in the field of biomechanics, investigating the mechanistic interplay between the diseased tissue microstructure and the organ-level response helps to develop computational tools that allow clinicians to efficiently predict the progression of diseases.
Biography: Reza Avazmohammadi is a postdoctoral fellow in the area of cardiovascular simulations at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at UT Austin. Reza received his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology (2005), and his M.Sc. in Applied Mechanics from Sharif University of Technology (2007). Reza continued to work as a researcher at Sharif University in the area of mechanics of composite materials (2007-09). Reza received his Ph.D. degree in Applied Mechanics from University of Pennsylvania (2014) in the area of constitutive modeling of soft composite materials. His research interests are in multiscale-multiphysics modeling of soft materials, with an emphasis on understanding and exploiting the mechanistic link between the microstructure of these materials and their overall response.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
-
Six Sigma Black Belt
Thu, Feb 25, 2016
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract: Course Dates (15 Day Program)
Week 1: February 22-26, 2016
Week 2: April 11-15, 2016
Week 3: May 2-6, 2016
Learn the advanced problem-solving skills you need to implement the principles, practices and techniques of Six Sigma to maximize performance and cost reductions in your organization. During this three-week practitioner course, you will learn how to measure a process, analyze the results, develop process improvements and quantify the resulting savings. You will be required to complete a project demonstrating mastery of appropriate analytical methods and pass an examination to earn Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate.
This practitioner course for Six Sigma implementation provides extensive coverage of the Six Sigma process as well as intensive exposure to the key analytical tools associated with Six Sigma, including project management, team skills, cost analysis, FMEA, basic statistics, inferential statistics, sampling, goodness of fit testing, regression and correlation analysis, reliability, design of experiments, statistical process control, measurement systems analysis and simulation. Computer applications are emphasized.
More Info: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
Event Link: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
-
CS Colloquium: Chao Wang (Virginia Tech) - Symbolic Analysis for Detecting and Mitigating Errors in Concurrent Software
Thu, Feb 25, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Chao Wang, Virginia Tech
Talk Title: Symbolic Analysis for Detecting and Mitigating Errors in Concurrent Software
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
The use of multi-core architecture is now pervasive, spanning from embedded systems and smart phones, to commodity PCs, all the way to high-end servers and distributed systems. As such, developers must write concurrent software. However, writing correct and efficient concurrent software is difficult. Although automated analysis to aid in their development would be invaluable, existing methods are either fast but inaccurate, or accurate but slow, due to the inherent difficulty in circumventing the path and interleaving explosion problem. In this talk, I will introduce a series of symbolic predictive analysis methods for analyzing concurrent software. This analysis consists of two steps. First, we derive a predictive model from the execution traces collected at run time as well as the software code. The model captures not only the given executions but also the alterative interleavings of events in these executions. Then, we use symbolic analysis to check if errors exist in these alternative interleavings. This is accomplished by capturing these interleavings and the error conditions using a set of logic formulas and deciding them using a Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) solver. Although our primary focus is to reduce the cost associated with analyzing and verifying concurrent software, the predictive model and related analysis techniques are also useful in addressing issues related to performance and security.
Biography: Chao Wang is an Assistant Professor of the ECE Department and the CS Department (by courtesy) of Virginia Tech. He received the ONR Young Investigator award in 2013 and the NSF CAREER award in 2012. His area of specialization is Software Engineering and Formal Methods, with emphasis on concurrency, formal verification, and program synthesis. He published a book and more than fifty papers in top venues of related field including ICSE, FSE, ASE, ISSTA, CAV, PLDI, and POPL. He received the FMCAD Best Paper award in 2013, the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper award in 2010, the ACM TODAES Best Paper of the Year award in 2008, and the ACM SIGDA Outstanding PhD Dissertation award in 2004. Dr. Wang received his PhD degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2004. From 2004 to 2011, he was a Research Staff Member at NEC Laboratories of America in Princeton, NJ, where he received a Technology Commercialization award in 2006.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
ICT Distinguished Lecture Series
Thu, Feb 25, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: James W. Pennebaker, Social Psychologist and the Centennial Liberal Arts Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin
Talk Title: The synchronous massive online course (SMOC) and new model of online education
Abstract: Growing out of research on social and personality psychology and computerized text analysis, Pennebaker and his colleague Sam Gosling have developed a live online class that relies on daily testing, small online discussion groups, and a TV talk show format. Based on four classes ranging from 800 to 1500 students, significant gains were seen in performance in the class over previous courses. More striking, students taking the SMOC do better in courses in subsequent semesters and achieve large reductions in the achievement gap.
Biography: James Pennebaker is the Regents Centennial Professor of Psychology and Executive Director of Project 2021 at the University of Texas at Austin. Author of over 300 publications and 9 books, his work on physical symptoms, expressive writing, and language psychology is among the most cited in psychology and the social sciences. He has received multiple research and teaching awards.
Light refreshments will be served.
Host: Stefan Scherer, ICT
Location: Institute For Creative Technologies (ICT) - Theater
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Orli Belman/ICT
-
CS Colloquium: Hyun Oh Song (Stanford) -Beyond supervised pattern recognition: Efficient learning with latent combinatorial structure
Thu, Feb 25, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hyun Oh Song, Stanford
Talk Title: Beyond supervised pattern recognition: Efficient learning with latent combinatorial structure
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Supervised pattern recognition with 10^6 training data and 10^9 layered parameters has brought tremendous advances in artificial intelligence. However, there are two main limitations to this approach: 1) The knowledge learned in one area doesn't easily transfer to another and 2) supervising every single task is not only infeasible but also requires huge amounts of human labeled data which is costly and time consuming. In this talk, I will suggest a unifying framework which jointly reasons the prediction variable and the underlying latent combinatorial structure of the problem as a way to address such limitations. To demonstrate the practical benefits of the approach, we explore classification, localization, clustering, and retrieval tasks under settings that go beyond fully supervised pattern recognition.
Biography: Hyun Oh Song is a postdoc in SAIL in the computer science department at Stanford University. He received Ph.D. in Computer Science at UC Berkeley in late 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Trevor Darrell. He is a recipient of five year Ph.D. fellowship from Samsung Lee Kun Hee Scholarship Foundation. His research interest lies at the intersection between machine learning, computer vision, and optimization. He has an academic website at http://ai.stanford.edu/~hsong.
Host: CS Department
Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/501895444Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/501895444
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Six Sigma Black Belt
Fri, Feb 26, 2016
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract: Course Dates (15 Day Program)
Week 1: February 22-26, 2016
Week 2: April 11-15, 2016
Week 3: May 2-6, 2016
Learn the advanced problem-solving skills you need to implement the principles, practices and techniques of Six Sigma to maximize performance and cost reductions in your organization. During this three-week practitioner course, you will learn how to measure a process, analyze the results, develop process improvements and quantify the resulting savings. You will be required to complete a project demonstrating mastery of appropriate analytical methods and pass an examination to earn Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate.
This practitioner course for Six Sigma implementation provides extensive coverage of the Six Sigma process as well as intensive exposure to the key analytical tools associated with Six Sigma, including project management, team skills, cost analysis, FMEA, basic statistics, inferential statistics, sampling, goodness of fit testing, regression and correlation analysis, reliability, design of experiments, statistical process control, measurement systems analysis and simulation. Computer applications are emphasized.
More Info: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
Event Link: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-black-belt
-
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Candidate Series
Fri, Feb 26, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Matthew Zahr, Ph.D Candidate, Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University
Talk Title: Accelerating PDE-Constrained Optimization Problems using Adaptive Reduced-Order Models
Abstract: Optimization problems constrained by partial differential equations are ubiquitous in modern science and engineering. They play a central role in optimal design and control of multiphysics systems, as well as nondestructive evaluation and detection, and inverse problems. Methods to solve these optimization problems rely on, potentially many, numerical solutions of the underlying equations. For complicated physical interactions taking place on complex domains, these solutions will be computationally expensive - in terms of both time and resources -“ to obtain, rendering the optimization procedure difficult or intractable.
I will introduce a globally convergent, non-quadratic trust-region method to accelerate the solution of PDE-constrained optimization problems by adaptively reducing the dimensionality of the underlying computational physics discretization. In this approach, the method of snapshots and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) are used to build a reduced-order model whose fidelity is progressively enriched while converging to the optimal solution. This ensures the reduced-order model is trained exactly along the optimization trajectory and effort is not wasted by training in other regions of the parameter space. A novel minimum-residual framework for computing surrogate sensitivities of the reduced-order model is introduced that equips the trust-region method with desirable properties. The proposed method is shown to solve canonical aerodynamic shape optimization problems several times faster than accepted methods. This work has been extended to address the specific challenges posed by topology optimization, where high-dimensional parameter spaces are inevitable.
Biography: Matthew Zahr is a PhD candidate in Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University, with minors in Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics/Astronautics, under the advisement of Prof Charbel Farhat. He received his BSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering, with a minor in Mathematics, from UC Berkeley in 2011.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 218
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
-
AI SEMINAR
Fri, Feb 26, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jie Xu, Assistant Professor at University of Miami
Talk Title: Real time knowledge discovery and decision making
Series: AI Seminar
Abstract: As the world becomes ever more connected and instrumented, decision makers have ever more rapid access to ever changing and growing streams of data, but this makes the decision makers problems ever more complex as well, because it is impossible to learn everything in the time frame in which decisions must be made. What the decision maker must do, therefore, is to discover in real time what is relevant in the enormous stream of data and use the relevant information to make good decisions. This talk presents a systematic framework and associated algorithms that enable a decision maker to do this, and shows how to use them in real time traffic prediction as an application scenario. One key challenge in traffic prediction is how much to rely on prediction models that are constructed using historical data in real time traffic situations. Our decision framework learns from the current traffic situation in real time and predicts the future traffic by matching the current situation to the most effective prediction model. The algorithms we propose yield strong performance guarantees for both the long run and the short run. The applications are numerous besides traffic prediction, including patient monitoring, surveillance, social networks etc.
Biography: Jie Xu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Miami. His research mainly focuses on game theory and learning theory. His interests lie in both developing the theory in these areas and applying it in real world engineering systems, including communication networks, cyber-security systems, online social platforms and healthcare informatics. Jie received his BS and MS degrees in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in China in 2008 and 2010, respectively, and a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2015. In 2014, he was with IBM T. J. Watson Research Center where he interned in the Clinical Stream Analytics team during the summer. Jie is a recipient of Distinguished PhD Dissertation Award at UCLA.
Webcast will be LIVE Broadcast ONLY (no recording):
http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=f1e4af9691fe4b2882a98b305b02458c1d
Host: Linhong Zhu
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th floor Large CR
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alma Nava / Information Sciences Institute
-
CS Seminar: Jim Hansen (Naval Research Laboratories) - Illicit Trafficking Surveillance and Interdiction: INTEL and METOC-informed Decision Guidance
Fri, Feb 26, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jim Hansen, Naval Research Laboratories
Talk Title: Illicit Trafficking Surveillance and Interdiction: INTEL and METOC-informed Decision Guidance
Series: CS Seminar Series
Abstract: Many Navy problems can be cast as a variant of "I have some assets with various capabilities and constraints that I need to distribute tomorrow in order to best carry out my mission. Which of them should go where and do what?" Factors that influence the decision include available intelligence information, an understanding of the adversary's expected behavior, and the environmental conditions. This talk will describe a general approach that has been applied to the pirate problem, illicit (drug) trafficking, and anti-submarine warfare. It will also include a discussion of challenges associated with working with users and transitioning research projects to operations.
Host: Computer Science Department
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 105
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
EE-EP Seminar - Dina El-Damak, Friday, Feb. 26th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Fri, Feb 26, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dina El-Damak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Empowering the IoT: Energy Scavenging and Ultra-low Power Processing
Abstract: The internet of things (IoT) is driving a new computing era by enabling the wireless connectivity of nearly everything we use. Vehicles, appliances, civil- engineering structures, manufacturing equipment, livestock and even our own bodies will have embedded sensors that report information directly to networked servers, aiding with maintenance and the coordination of tasks. The creativity in this new era of the IoT is boundless, with amazing potential to immensely improve human life. Realizing that vision, however, will require extremely low-power sensing systems that can run for months without battery changes - or, even better, that can extract energy from the environment to recharge. Moreover, the flexibility and the miniaturization of such systems are highly desirable to ease their integration with various structures. Thus, the future growth of the IoT will be contingent upon innovations in ultra- low power circuit design techniques, system architecture, as well as novel material technologies.
In the first part of this talk, I will present the design of a power management IC that can operate efficiently with input power in the range of 10 nW to 1uW with 3.2nW quiescent power consumption for energy harvesting applications. The asynchronous architecture, subthreshold operation, power-gating and dynamic pulse-width control enabled a peak efficiency greater than 80%. In the second part of the talk, I will show the results of an integrated power management IC using on-chip ferroelectric capacitors for dynamic voltage scaling. The integration of ferroelectric materials with silicon CMOS technology allowed the design of highly efficient switched capacitor DC- DC converter with a peak efficiency of 93%. In the last part of the talk, I will focus on circuit design using the flexible Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2 ) - one of the emerging two-dimensional materials. I will touch upon our system design flow - which is validated by the design and testing of various combinational logic and sequential circuits. Measurement results demonstrating fully-functional prototypes will be shown and future application opportunities will be discussed.
Biography: Dina El-Damak received the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engi- neering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2012 and 2015 respectively, and the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. She is currently a postdoctoral associate in the Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group at MIT working under the supervision of Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan. Dr. El-Damak was the recipient of Texas Instruments Graduate Woman's Fellowship for leadership in microelectronics for the academic years 2012-2013 and 2013-2014. Her research interests include energy harvesting, power management circuits and ultra-low power biomedical systems.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
-
NL Seminar-Interactive scene design using natural language
Fri, Feb 26, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Angel Chang , (Stanford University)
Talk Title: Interactive scene design using natural language
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: Designing 3D scenes is currently a creative task that requires significant expertise and effort in using complex 3D design interfaces. This design process starts in contrast to the easiness with which people can use language to describe real and imaginary environments. We present an interactive text to 3D scene generation system that allows a user to design 3D scenes using natural language. A user provides input text from which we extract explicit constraints on the objects that should appear in the scene. Given these explicit constraints, the system then uses a spatial knowledge base learned from an existing database of 3D scenes and 3D object models to infer an arrangement of the objects forming a natural scene matching the input description. Using textual commands the user can then iteratively refine the created scene by adding, removing, replacing, and manipulating objects.
Biography: Angel Chang recently received her PhD after working in the Stanford NLP group where she was advised by Chris Manning. Her research focuses on the intersection of natural language understanding, computer graphics, and AI. She is currently a visiting expert at Tableau Research. More details at http://stanford.edu/~angelx/
Host: Xing Shi and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Webcast: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=735bfbb4ba1a4b749fe591958f837ccb1dLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
WebCast Link: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=735bfbb4ba1a4b749fe591958f837ccb1d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
-
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Candidate Series
Mon, Feb 29, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jenni Sidey, Research Assistant, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge
Talk Title: Experimental and numerical investigations of flames with gas turbine applications at the University of Cambridge
Abstract: With growing concern over anthropogenic climate change and increasingly stringent emission standards, the development of low-emission combustion technologies is a necessity. This seminar is concerned with the motivation, development, and implementation challenges associated with gas turbine and reciprocating engine pollutant reduction and the tools the combustion community is using to meet them. Of particular interest is the investigation of processes in which hot combustion products are used as a diluent for fresh reactants. The underlying physics of these processes will be discussed with results from laminar flame calculations, droplet autoignition simulations, and fundamental turbulent flame investigations with high speed laser diagnostics, while their application potential will be assessed through the investigation of a novel gas turbine combustor concept.
Biography: Jenni Sidey is a research associate at the University of Cambridge. Her postdoctoral position, funded by the European Commission Joint Clean Sky Initiative, focuses on the investigation of non-premixed, premixed, and spray flame extinction and thermoacoustic oscillations in gas turbine combustors. She completed her PhD in the summer of 2015, investigating heavily preheated and diluted flames. While studying Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, she took part in alternative fuel production and microgravity flame propagation experiments.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
-
CS Colloquium: Sameer Singh (University of Washington) - Interactive Machine Learning for Information Extraction
Mon, Feb 29, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sameer Singh, University of Washington
Talk Title: Interactive Machine Learning for Information Extraction
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Most of the world's knowledge, be it factual news, scholarly research, social communication, subjective opinions, or even fictional content, is now easily accessible as digitized text. Unfortunately, due to the unstructured nature of text, much of the useful content in these documents is hidden. The goal of "information extraction" is to address this problem: extracting meaningful, structured knowledge (such as graphs and databases) from text collections. The biggest challenges when using machine learning for information extraction include the high cost of obtaining annotated data and lack of guidance on how to fix mistakes.
In this talk, I propose interpretable representations that allow users and machine learning models to interact with each other: enabling users to inject domain knowledge into machine learning, and providing explanations for why a machine learning model is making a specific prediction. I study these techniques using relation extraction as the application, an important subtask of information extraction where the goal is to identify the types of relations between entities that are expressed in text. I first describe how symbolic domain knowledge, if provided by the user as first-order logic statements, can be injected into relational embeddings to improve the predictions. In the second part of the talk, I present an approach to "explain" any machine learning prediction using a symbolic representation, which the user may annotate directly for more effective supervision. I present experiments that demonstrate that an interactive interface between a user and machine learning is effective in reducing annotation effort and in quickly training accurate extraction systems.
Biography: Sameer Singh is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Washington, working on large-scale and interactive machine learning applied to information extraction and natural language processing. He received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, during which he also interned at Microsoft Research, Google Research, and Yahoo! Labs on massive-scale machine learning. He was recently selected as a DARPA Riser, won the grand prize in the Yelp dataset challenge, has been awarded the Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges and the UMass Graduate School fellowships, and was a finalist for the Facebook PhD fellowship.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
-
Spatial Light Interference Microscopy (SLIM) for Quantitative Biomedicine
Mon, Feb 29, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Gabriel Popescu, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Spatial Light Interference Microscopy (SLIM) for Quantitative Biomedicine
Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
Abstract: Most living cells do not absorb or scatter light significantly, i.e. they are essentially transparent, or phase objects. Phase contrast microscopy proposed by Zernike in the 1930s represents a major advance in intrinsic contrast imaging, as it reveals inner details of transparent structures without staining or tagging. While phase contrast is sensitive to minute optical path-length changes in the cell, down to the nanoscale, the information retrieved is only qualitative. Quantifying cell-induced shifts in the optical path-lengths permits nanometer scale measurements of structures and motions in a non-contact, non-invasive manner. Thus, quantitative phase imaging (QPI) has recently become an active field of study and various experimental approaches have been proposed.
Recently, we have developed Spatial Light Interference microscopy (SLIM) as a highly sensitive QPI method. Due to its nanometer pathlength sensitivity, SLIM enables interesting structure and dynamics studies over broad spatial (nanometers-centimeters) and temporal (milliseconds-weeks) scales. I will review our recent results on applying SLIM to basic cell studies, such as intracellular transport, cell growth, and single cell tomography. Recently, we have demonstrated that SLIM is a valuable tool for cancer diagnosis and prognosis in unlabeled biopsies. This capability is particularly valuable in prostate pathology.
Biography: Gabriel Popescu is an Associate Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received the B.S. and M.S. in Physics from University of Bucharest, in 1995 and 1996, respectively, obtained his M.S. in Optics in 1999 and the Ph.D. in Optics in 2002 from the School of Optics/ CREOL (now the College of Optics and Photonics), University of Central Florida. Dr. Popescu continued his training with the G. R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory at M.I.T., working as a postdoctoral associate. He joined Illinois in August 2007 where he directs the Quantitative Light Imaging Laboratory (QLI Lab) at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Dr. Popescu is an Associate Editor of Optics Express and Biomedical Optics Express, and Editorial Board Member for Journal of Biomedical Optics and Scientific Reports. He authored a book, edited another book, authored 118 journal publications, 175 conference presentations, 32 patents, gave 150 invited talks. Dr. Popescu founded Phi Optics, Inc., a start-up company that commercializes quantitative phase imaging technology. He is OSA Fellow and SPIE Fellow.
Host: Professor Justin Haldar
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
-
Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Feb 29, 2016 @ 12:30 PM - 01:49 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Stuart Ibsen, Postdoctoral fellow, Salk Institute
Talk Title: TBA
Biography: Stuart Ibsen received his undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Hawaii and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego. Stuart has 10 years of experience designing and building scientific instrumentation to use ultrasound to understand bioacoustic echolocation sonar sensory systems in dolphins and to explore biological phenomena in C. elegans and in cancer cell research. Stuart is also designing new drug delivery vehicles for chemotherapy applications
Host: K. Kirk Shung, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
-
EE-EP Seminar - Hui Fang, Monday, February 29th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Mon, Feb 29, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hui Fang, University of Illinois
Talk Title: Advanced Electronic Materials for Next-Generation Biomedical Implants and Bio tools
Abstract: Innovating electronic materials and related process technologies are critical in building next generation large scale, bio-electronic interface for biomedical implants and bio-tools.
In this talk, the influence of materials and process innovation will be discussed in the context of achieving two essential properties at the bio-electronic interface, bio conformality and bio stability. First, to reconcile the mechanic properties mismatch between soft, curvilinear organ surface and conventional rigid, planar electronics, Si nanomembrane enables bio conformal electronics from top down approach and advanced micro/nano fabrication on flexible substrates. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss how to achieve long term bio-stability at the bio-electronic interface through an ultrathin hermetic thermal silicon dioxide layer from a special device fabrication process. A capacitively coupled, bio-conformal sensing electronics with over 1,000 channels demonstrate the robustness of this encapsulation strategy. Together, these results form a realistic pathway towards bio compatible, bio conformal and bio stable electronic implants, with potential for broad utility, such as brain/heart activity mapping, brain-machine interface, and pharmaceutical screening. At the end of my talk, I will show how we can leverage recent advancements in nano electronics into building next generation bio electronics and solve big problems in biology, especially in brain activity mapping.
Biography: Dr. Hui Fang received his B.S. degree (2009) from Tsinghua University, and Ph.D. degree (2014) from the University of California, Berkeley, both in Materials Science and Engineering. At Berkeley he worked under the supervision of Prof. Ali Javey. Currently Dr. Fang is a postdoctoral research associate in Professor John A. Rogers' group at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Dr. Fang's research interests include developing novel materials, devices and related process technologies for bio-integrated electronics and nano electronics, as well as exploring new materials/device physics at the nanoscale. Dr. Fang is a recipient of the 2013 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad. His publication record can be found online at http://publish.illinois.edu/huifangnano/.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
