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Events for February 16, 2024
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Global Women in Science Editathon
Fri, Feb 16, 2024 @ 12:00 AM - 02:00 PM
Engineering in Society Program
Student Activity
Join the USC Libraries and the Engineering in Society Program for a worldwide Wikipedia editathon for women in science! USC will be joining the American University of Beirut, Boston University, and the University of Calgary to expand the world's knowledge about the scientific contributions of amazing women!Friday, February 16, 2024 12 noon to 2pm SSL 210 Pizza served New and experienced editors welcome
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 210
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Boston_University/Women_in_Science_Edit-a-thon?enroll=cmgpofsr
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EiS Communications Hub Drop-In HoursFri, Feb 16, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to stop by the EiS Communications Hub for one-on-one instruction for their academic and professional communications tasks. All instruction is provided by Viterbi faculty at the Engineering in Society Program.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home?authuser=0
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EiS Communications Hub Drop-In Hours
Fri, Feb 16, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Engineering in Society Program
Student Activity
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
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Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Fri, Feb 16, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Arnab Mukherjee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering & Biological Engineering University of California, Santa Barbara
Talk Title: Engineering genetic reporters for molecular MRI
Abstract: The study of biological functions in intact organisms requires noninvasive genetic reporters to track cells, image gene expression, and monitor signaling pathways. While fluorescent and bioluminescent proteins are widely used as reporters, their utility in deep tissues is limited due to the scattering and absorption of light, which impede imaging beyond a depth of ~ 1 mm from the tissue surface. To overcome this challenge, my research harnesses unexpected connections between proteins and the physics of magnetic resonance (MRI) to create new biomolecular reporters for deep tissue imaging. In this talk, I will discuss our recent efforts to address three long-standing challenges in the development of viable MRI reporters: sensitivity, specificity, and sensor design. First, I will highlight our recent work in increasing reporter gene sensitivity to detect small numbers of genetically labeled cells, potentially, as few as hundred cells per imaging voxel. I will then describe the creation of chemically erasable reporters, which enable “hotspot” imaging with a low tissue background. Finally, I will discuss a new modular approach for programming MRI sensors based on protease modulation of reporter activity.
Biography: Arnab Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering & Biological Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to arriving at UCSB, Dr. Mukherjee completed a James G. Boswell fellowship in Molecular Engineering at Caltech (working with Prof. Mikhail Shapiro) and obtained his Ph.D. in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The Mukherjee lab works at the intersection of molecular engineering, synthetic biology, and molecular imaging to create new genetic reporters and sensors for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Research in the Mukherjee group has been consistently supported by the NIH, Army, and foundations; and recognized with notable awards, including an Outstanding Young Investigator Award (NIH MIRA), a Discovery Award from the DoD, the NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and a 2022 Scialog Fellows award in Advanced Bioimaging.
Host: Jenny Treweek
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 100 B
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
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Ed Discussion Workshop
Fri, Feb 16, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
DEN@Viterbi
Workshops & Infosessions
Zoom registration link: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wEJJNmp4QhiTIAB25IgKgg
Instructors at USC are using Ed Discussion for class Q&A with great success. Folks have found it saves considerable time for teaching staff, reduces emails, while also increasing student engagement and peer learning.
In this workshop, we'll show you:
How to save time and reduce student emails by leveraging the class Q&A
How to post an icebreaker thread to encourage and engage students from week 1
How to set up course categories and subcategories to keep questions organized and searchable
A quick online search of "Ed Discussion" shows many universities who have adopted Ed on an enterprise scale including
Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UT Austin, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell
Brown, Yale, Penn, Duke, UW, Georgia Tech, NYU, ASU, Imperial College London
Ed Discussion is a quick and easy drop in for class Q&A with superior functionality and usability.
Less direct emails being sent to staff
Fewer duplicate questions being asked
Students often answer each other's questions
Questions can reach and benefit the whole class
Students like the modern user interface and excellent usability
Higher quality questions and less back and forth with thread templates
Easier to express ideas with equations, runnable code, annotations, and more
Zoom registration link: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wEJJNmp4QhiTIAB25IgKgg
About EdStem:
EdStem centers around its interactive discussion boards, enabling students to ask questions, participate in discussions, and collaborate on solutions, thereby nurturing a community-focused learning atmosphere. It also caters to programming and computer science courses with integrated coding environments, where students can directly write, test, and submit code on the platform. Additionally, EdStem provides instructors with real-time feedback and analytics on student engagement and comprehension, facilitating the customization of teaching approaches. These analytics also offer valuable insights into overall class performance and individual student progress, making EdStem a comprehensive tool for both learning and teaching in dynamic academic settings.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jairo Delgado
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wEJJNmp4QhiTIAB25IgKgg
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Seminar
Fri, Feb 16, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ahmad Beirami, Google Research
Talk Title: Language Model Alignment: Theory & Practice
Series: AIF4S Seminar Series
Abstract: Generative language models have advanced to a level where they can effectively solve a variety of open-domain tasks with little task specific supervision. However, the generated content from these models may still not satisfy the preference of a human user. The goal of the alignment process is to remedy this issue by generating content from an aligned model that improves a reward (e.g., make the generation safer) but does not perturb much from the base model. A simple baseline for this task is best-of-N, where N responses are drawn from the base model, ranked based on a reward, and the highest ranking one is selected. More sophisticated techniques generally solve a KL-regularized reinforcement learning (RL) problem with the goal of maximizing expected reward subject to a KL divergence constraint between the aligned model and the base model. An alignment technique is preferred if its reward-KL tradeoff curve dominates other techniques. In this talk, we give an overview of language model alignment and give an understanding of known results in this space through simplified examples. We also present a new modular alignment technique, called controlled decoding, which solves the KL-regularized RL problem while keeping the base model frozen through learning a prefix scorer, offering inference-time configurability. Finally, we also shed light on the remarkable performance of best-of-N in terms of achieving competitive or even better reward-KL tradeoffs when compared to state-of-the-art alignment baselines.
Biography: Ahmad Beirami is a research scientist at Google Research, leading research efforts on building safe, helpful, and scalable generative language models. At Meta AI, he led research to power the next generation of virtual digital assistants with AR/VR capabilities through robust generative language modeling. At Electronic Arts, he led the AI agent research program for automated playtesting of video games and cooperative reinforcement learning. Before moving to industry in 2018, he held a joint postdoctoral fellow position at Harvard & MIT, focused on problems in the intersection of core machine learning and information theory. He is the recipient of the Sigma Xi Best PhD Thesis Award from Georgia Tech.
Host: Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92673154833?pwd=Z1QwYk52RVhWSkRXRmhzTmRhUTU3UT09More Information: 14766.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92673154833?pwd=Z1QwYk52RVhWSkRXRmhzTmRhUTU3UT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gloria Halfacre
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VLP LeetCode Jam Night
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Fri, Feb 16, 2024 @ 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Student Activity
Jam with the Viterbi Learning Program! Join us for a company-specific (MAANG) problems session where we code and discuss. Also - we have pizza.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alex Bronz
Event Link: https://cglink.me/2nB/r395727
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