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Events for February 15, 2023

  • MHI Nano Science & Technology Seminar - Xiaodong Xu, Wednesday, February 15th at 11am in EEB 132

    Wed, Feb 15, 2023 @ 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Xiaodong Xu, University of Washington

    Talk Title: Elasto van der Waals Magnet

    Series: Nano Science & Technology

    Abstract: Van der Waals magnets have emerged as a powerful platform for exploring fundamental spin physics and potential applications in electrical and optical-driven spin-based devices. The ease of control of magnetic properties via external control knobs makes them particularly useful. In this talk, I will highlight our recent progress in tuning the magnetic properties of the newly discovered magnetic semiconductor CrSBr through uniaxial strain. This includes the coupling of exciton and interlayer magnetism, the reversible switching of antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic phase transitions, and the strain-tuning of coherent spin waves (magnons) through optical spectroscopy of excitons. Lastly, I will discuss a strain-controlled van der Waals magnetic tunnel junction with programmable magnetic memory and probabilistic bit functionality, which holds potential for new memory and computing technologies.

    Biography: Xiaodong Xu is a Boeing Distinguished Professor at the Department of Physics, and Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He got his BS and PhD degree in physics from University of Science and Technology of China (2002) and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2008), respectively. He joined the University of Washington in 2010 after his postdoc at Cornell University.

    Host: J Yang, H Wang, C Zhou, S Cronin, W Wu

    More Information: Xiaodong_0215 Flyer.pdf

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Marilyn Poplawski

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  • Ampere Computing Information Session

    Wed, Feb 15, 2023 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Meet Ampere Computing

    Date: Wednesday, February 15th
    Time: 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
    Location: Zoom RSVP HERE HERE


    Introduce Ampere Computing to interested engineering students and provide insight into what type of internship positions and entry level positions we are hiring for.

    What majors and class levels are you interested in connecting with? CE, ECE, CS, EE. Master students preferred but will consider undergrad as well.
    Are you recruiting for internships, full time, or both? Both
    Can you offer Visa sponsorship? Are you able to hire a student on CPT or OPT? Yes

    Location: Zoom, please see below for details on how to RSVP

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Interview Success Workshop

    Wed, Feb 15, 2023 @ 01:00 PM - 01:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions



    THIS EVENT WILL BE HOSTED HYBRID: IN-PERSON & ONLINE SIMULTANEOUSLY

    Increase your preparedness for interviews by attending this professional development Q&A moderated by Viterbi Career Connections staff or Viterbi employer partners.

    To access more information on this workshop, log into Viterbi Career Gateway>> Events>>Workshops: https://shibboleth-viterbi-usc-csm.symplicity.com/sso/

    For more information about all workshops, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.

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

    Audiences: All Viterbi

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Center of Autonomy and AI, Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things, and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series

    Center of Autonomy and AI, Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things, and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series

    Wed, Feb 15, 2023 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Anirudha Majumdar, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University

    Talk Title: Safety and Generalization for Learning-Based Robot Control

    Series: Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things

    Abstract: The ability of machine learning techniques to process rich sensory inputs such as vision makes them highly appealing for use in robotic systems (e.g., micro aerial vehicles and robotic manipulators). However, the increasing adoption of learning-based components in the robotics perception and control pipeline poses an important challenge: how can we guarantee the safety and performance of such systems? As an example, consider a micro aerial vehicle that learns to navigate using a thousand different obstacle environments or a robotic manipulator that learns to grasp using a million objects in a dataset. How likely are these systems to remain safe and perform well on a novel (i.e., previously unseen) environment or object? How can we learn control policies for robotic systems that provably generalize to environments that our robot has not previously encountered? Unfortunately, existing approaches either do not provide such guarantees or do so only under very restrictive assumptions.

    In this talk, I will present our group's work on developing a principled theoretical and algorithmic framework for learning control policies for robotic systems with formal guarantees on generalization to novel environments. The key technical insight is to leverage and extend powerful techniques from generalization theory in theoretical machine learning. We apply our techniques on problems including vision-based navigation and grasping in order to demonstrate the ability to provide strong generalization guarantees on robotic systems with complicated (e.g., nonlinear/hybrid) dynamics, rich sensory inputs (e.g., RGB-D), and neural network-based control policies.

    Biography: Anirudha Majumdar is an Assistant Professor at Princeton University in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) department and Associated Faculty in the Computer Science department. He also holds a part-time position as a Visiting Research Scientist at the Google AI Lab in Princeton. His group works on controlling highly agile robotic systems in a manner that allows us to make formal guarantees on their safety and performance.

    Majumdar received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2016, and a B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University from 2016 to 2017 at the Autonomous Systems Lab in the Aeronautics and Astronautics department. He is a recipient of the ONR YIP award, the NSF CAREER award, the Google Faculty Research Award (twice), the Amazon Research Award (twice), the Young Faculty Researcher Award from the Toyota Research Institute, the Best Conference Paper Award at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the Paper of the Year Award from the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), the Alfred Rheinstein Faculty Award (Princeton University), and the Excellence in Teaching Teaching Award from Princeton's School of Engineering and Applied Science.


    Host: Somil Bansal, somilban@usc.edu

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92742577270?pwd=bEpXaWJudjZWRksyNk5lL1owUUdBQT09

    Location: Online

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92742577270?pwd=bEpXaWJudjZWRksyNk5lL1owUUdBQT09

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Talyia White

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  • Bridging Ethical Algorithms, Law, and Practice: Hiring and Beyond

    Bridging Ethical Algorithms, Law, and Practice: Hiring and Beyond

    Wed, Feb 15, 2023 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Swati Gupta, Assistant Professor, Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech

    Talk Title: Bridging Ethical Algorithms, Law, and Practice: Hiring and Beyond

    Abstract: Optimization and statistical models based on historical and socio-economic data that do not incorporate fairness desiderata can lead to unfair, discriminatory, or biased outcomes. New ideas are needed to ensure that the developed systems are accountable under uncertainty and reduce a deeper propagation of biases in multi-level decisions. In this talk, I will first discuss methods for ensuring ethical hiring. Recent run-ins of Microsoft and Wells Fargo with the Labor Department's OFCCP highlight a paradox: failing to address workforce imbalance can result in legal sanctions and scrutiny, but proactive measures to address these issues might result in the same legal conflict. Dr. Gupta will propose that partially-ordered sets, "posets", can be used to transparently account for known uncertainties and biases in evaluation data, giving rise to an interesting class of optimization problems. We will showcase how to ensure a "competitive" online selection of candidates with this model. Keeping in mind the requirements of U.S. anti-discrimination law, however, certain methods can be construed as illegal (e.g., imposing quotas). I will discuss the tensions with the law and ways to argue the legal feasibility of our proposed approach. This is based on joint work with Deven Desai and Jad Salem. I will also briefly discuss ethical decision-making in the context of other applications such as admissions, detection of critical diseases like sepsis, facility location, and gerrymandering.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.

    Biography: Dr. Swati Gupta is a Fouts Family Early Career Professor and Assistant Professor in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. She serves as the lead of Ethical AI in the NSF AI Institute on Advances in Optimization. She received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from MIT. Her research interests include optimization, machine learning, and algorithmic fairness, spanning various domains such as e-commerce, quantum optimization, and energy. She received the Class of 1934: Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching in 2021 and 2022 at Georgia Tech, the JP Morgan Early Career Faculty Award in 2021, and the NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative Award in 2019, and the Google Women in Engineering Award (India) in 2011. She was also awarded the prestigious Simons-Berkeley Research Fellowship in 2017-2018, where she was selected as the Microsoft Research Fellow in 2018. Her research and students have received recognition at various venues like INFORMS Doing Good with OR 2022 (finalist), MIP Poster 2022 (honorable mention), INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research 2018 (honorable mention), INFORMS Computing Society 2016 (special recognition), and INFORMS Service Science Student Paper 2016 (finalist). Dr. Gupta's research is partially funded by the NSF and DARPA.

    Host: USC Center for AI in Society

    Location: Location: Register for the Zoom webinar here: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kmziSvzGT0OBw-

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Asiroh Cham

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  • AME Seminar

    Wed, Feb 15, 2023 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

    Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Michelle C. Yuen , Harvard University

    Talk Title: Soft robots enabled by functional materials

    Abstract: Soft robots have the potential to extend the capabilities currently demonstrated within the field of robotics. By utilizing primarily soft materials in their construction, soft robots are inherently safe to operate around humans, can handle delicate tasks without advanced controls, and are robust to shocks and impacts during deployment. While proof-of-concept devices have been demonstrated, there remains a need for widely applicable, reliable soft robotic components.

    In this talk, I will present my work on enabling technologies for soft robotic systems and, more broadly, deformable electromechanical systems. Specifically, I will discuss 1) high-deformation strain sensors for state reconstruction and closed-loop control of soft robots, 2) stretchable electronics fabricated using room-temperature liquid metals, and 3) responsive structures enabled by variable-stiffness materials that can switch reversibly from flexible to stiff. These devices rely upon functional materials -“ materials that have a useful, intrinsic property (e.g., conductivity, thermal-responsiveness) -“ that can be leveraged for robotic needs. Throughout this talk, I will be highlighting the need for co-developed design, materials selection, and manufacturing processes to produce reliable devices that can be fabricated at scale.

    The work presented in this talk illustrates a path toward building deformable electromechanical systems that are adaptable and versatile by leveraging soft, functional multi-material systems.

    Biography: Michelle C. Yuen is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in 2018, following a B.S. in Biological Systems Engineering from University of California, Davis in 2013. During her Ph.D. studies, she worked on the design, materials, and manufacturing methods for soft robotic components and systems. She was then awarded a Research Associateship from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine to work on next-generation stretchable electronic devices at the Air Force Research Laboratory. Currently, her work leverages her expertise in soft materials manipulation to building deployable inflated structures, soft actuators, and adhesion strategies for marine mammal tagging.

    Host: AME Department

    More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95805178776?pwd=aEtTRnQ2MmJ6UWE4dk9UMG9GdENLQT09

    Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95805178776?pwd=aEtTRnQ2MmJ6UWE4dk9UMG9GdENLQT09

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Tessa Yao

    Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/

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  • NVDIA Recruiting Coffee Chat (External, Virtual)

    Wed, Feb 15, 2023 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Date: Wednesday, February 15th
    Time: 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
    Location: RSVP HERE

    Interested in early career opportunities at NVIDIA? Sign up to learn about recruiting opportunities, learn more about NVIDIA and meet your Campus Manager! Participants will also get a chance to win a NVIDIA swag! Open to Bachelors, Masters, and PhD students.

    External employer-hosted events and activities are not affiliated with the USC Viterbi Career Connections Office. They are posted on Viterbi Career Connections because they may be of interest to members of the Viterbi community. Inclusion of any activity does not indicate USC sponsorship or endorsement of that activity or event. It is the participants responsibility to apply due diligence, exercise caution when participating, and report concerns to vcareers@usc.edu

    Location: Please see below for more details

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • SpaceX Trojan Talk

    Wed, Feb 15, 2023 @ 06:00 PM - 08:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    This is an opportunity to learn about careers and internships at SpaceX. Hiring managers from a variety of disciplines will be in attendance accepting resumes for consideration across engineering roles.
    Majors recruited? Aerospace Engineering, Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering
    What class levels are you interested in connecting with? Juniors, seniors, and graduate students
    Can you offer Visa sponsorship? Are you able to hire a student on CPT or OPT? Decline to state

    Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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