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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for February 20, 2020
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Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (WIE)
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 09:00 AM - 02:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Receptions & Special Events
Students will come to campus and participate in fun, interactive science engineering activities facilitated by USC students.
Location: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Undergraduate Programs
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Limits of the quantitative approach, or why parallel and distributed system energy management needs to move on
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 10:15 AM - 11:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kirk W. Cameron, Virginia Tech
Talk Title: Limits of the quantitative approach, or why parallel and distributed system energy management needs to move on
Abstract: In this talk, we begin with the progression of parallel computer system power management over the last two decades. In particular, we focus on the evolution of quantitative design approaches and the emergence of effective parallel and distributed system runtime power management. We observe that the growing complexity of today's machines limits the effectiveness of traditional quantitative approaches. The Compute-Overlap-Stall (COS) model of parallel computation is proposed to accurately capture the effects of emergent orchestrated power management of processor, memory, and thread throttling. The implication of our findings is that as power management techniques pervade, new machine-learning performance evaluation and prediction approaches will be essential to future computer system designs.
Biography: Professor Kirk W. Cameron directs the stack@cs Center for Computer Systems at Virginia Tech. He pioneered Green HPC (PowerPack, Green500, SPECPower, grano.la) and his software has been downloaded by more than 500,000 people in 160+ countries. His accolades include both NSF and DOE Career Awards, IBM and AMD Faculty Awards, best papers (e.g., HPDC 2017) and the LLNL Science/Technology Excellence Award. His internationally acclaimed SeeMore cluster has been visited by tens of thousands and was named the second best RPi project of all time by MagPi Magazine. In 2017 he was named an ACM Distinguished Scientist and in 2018-2019 he held a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering.
Host: Xuehai Qian, xuehai.qian@usc.edu
More Information: 200220_Kirk Cameron_CENG.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Brienne Moore
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CS Colloquium: Jiapeng Zhang (Harvard) - Sunflowers and Their Applications in Computer Science and Mathematics
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jiapeng Zhang, Harvard University
Talk Title: Sunflowers and Their Applications in Computer Science and Mathematics
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: The sunflower is a simple notion in combinatorics, originally invented and studied by Erdos and Rado in 1960. Surprisingly, it has deep connections to fundamental problems in computer science, such as matrix multiplication, efficient data structures, computational complexity and cryptography. In my talk, I will explain our new results on sunflowers, how ideas emerging from computer science were critical in the proof, and how our new techniques can help shed light on some central problems in computer science and mathematics.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Jiapeng Zhang is a postdoc at Harvard with Prof. Salil Vadhan. He did his PhD at UC San Diego with Prof. Shachar Lovett. His research focuses on boolean function analysis, computational complexity, learning theory and cryptography.
Host: Shaddin Dughmi
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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IEEE Xplore Tabling
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 12:30 PM - 02:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Receptions & Special Events
IEEE Client Services Manager, Craig Griffith will be at USC providing IEEE swag and brochures, and informing students about the IEEE Xplore database.
Location: Robert Glen Rapp Engineering Research Building (RRB) - Courtyard
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Undergraduate Programs
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ECE Seminar: Ad-Mageddon: The Next Frontier in Online Privacy
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Zubair Shafiq, University of Iowa
Talk Title: Ad-Mageddon: The Next Frontier in Online Privacy
Abstract: While online advertising supports the "free" web, it relies on a complex and opaque tracking ecosystem that surveils users across the web. Hundreds of millions of users rely on ad-blocking and anti-tracking tools to counter the negative externalities of online advertising and tracking. Perhaps unsurprisingly, advertisers are increasingly retaliating against the users of such tools -- prompting an arms race.
In this talk, I will first discuss the pain points of the state-of-the-art ad-blocking and anti-tracking tools. I will then describe our recent work on building effective and robust countermeasures against online advertising and tracking using machine learning techniques. I will highlight the unique challenges and opportunities in deploying ad-blocking and anti-tracking tools in web browsers as well as mobile and IoT systems. I will conclude with a discussion of my future research vision for a privacy-respecting web.
Biography: Zubair Shafiq is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Iowa. Prior to this, he received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 2014. His research focuses on building privacy-enhancing tools to counter online tracking and surveillance. More broadly, his work takes a data-driven approach to addressing emerging online privacy and security threats. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2018), Andreas Pfitzmann PETS Best Student Paper Award (2018), ACM IMC Best Paper Award (2017), NSF CRII Award (2015), Fitch-Beach Outstanding Graduate Research Award (2013), IEEE ICNP Best Paper Award (2012), and the Dean's Plaque of Excellence for undergraduate research (2007, 2008). More information at https://cs.uiowa.edu/~mshafiq
Host: Professor Konstantinos Psounis, kpsounis@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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MASCLE Machine Learning Seminar: Rose Yu (Northeastern University) - Physics Guided AI for Learning Spatiotemporal Dynamics
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 04:00 PM - 05:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rose Yu, Northeastern University
Talk Title: Physics Guided AI for Learning Spatiotemporal Dynamics
Series: Machine Learning Seminar Series hosted by USC Machine Learning Center
Abstract: Applications such as sports, climate science, and aerospace engineering require learning complex dynamics from large-scale spatiotemporal data. Such data is often non-linear, non-Euclidean, high-dimensional, and demonstrates complicated dependencies. Existing machine learning frameworks are still insufficient to learn spatiotemporal dynamics as they often fail to exploit the underlying physics principles. I will demonstrate how to inject physical knowledge in AI to deal with challenges such as non-linear dynamics, non-Euclidean geometry, and multi-resolution structure. I will showcase the application of these methods to problems such as accelerating turbulence simulations, imitating basketball gameplay and combating ground effect in quadcopter landing.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
Biography: Dr. Yu is an Assistant Professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech Computing and Mathematical Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Sciences at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on advancing machine learning techniques for large-scale spatiotemporal data, with a particular emphasis on physics-guided AI. Among her awards, she has won Google Faculty Research Award, the NSF CRII award, best dissertation award in USC, best paper award at the NeurIPS time series workshop, and was nominated as one of the 'MIT Rising Stars in EECS'.
Host: Yan Liu
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Computer Science Department
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Subhayan De , Postdoctoral Associate, Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder
Talk Title: Design Optimization under Uncertainty using a Stochastic Gradient Approach
Abstract: Design optimization of complex engineering systems requires understanding and modeling the underlying physical phenomena and their interactions. In addition, uncertainties and their influences on both the design objective and the design constraints must be considered to achieve a robust design. Such uncertainties are typically due to intrinsic variabilities in the system or manufacturing processes, as well as the lack of knowledge in precisely describing the governing physics in terms of mathematical/computational models. However, accounting for uncertainty in the optimization process requires, for example, computing the statistical moments of the objective, which may lead to high computational costs. For example, a Monte Carlo approach based on random sampling in such cases requires many forward and adjoint solves, thus requiring significant computational resources. To alleviate this computational burden, in this talk, a stochastic gradient-based approach will be discussed. In this approach, stochastic approximations of the gradients, using only a handful of random samples of the uncertainty, are constructed at every design optimization iteration. Popular variants of stochastic gradient descent algorithms (e.g., AdaGrad and Adam) are used with this approach. In practical engineering settings, often models with different levels of fidelity are employed to describe the problem at hand. Lower-fidelity models (e.g., using coarser grid discretizations) can be simulated cheaply but may lead to inaccurate solutions relative to high-fidelity models (e.g., using fine grid discretizations) that are often expensive to simulate. To reduce the design optimization cost further, these low-fidelity models are incorporated in the optimization process to propose bi-fidelity versions of stochastic gradient descent algorithms with a linear rate of convergence. The stochastic gradient approach for design optimization is illustrated using numerical examples from shape and topology optimizations. These examples show that the use of stochastic gradients along with bi-fidelity approaches can reduce the computational cost of design optimization under uncertainty significantly. In the presence of uncertainty in the microscale properties of the structure, homogenization methods like FE2 require solving boundary value problems to quantify the effect of microscopic heterogeneity at the macroscale for all random samples in a Monte Carlo approach. Instead, the stochastic gradient-based approach is applied to this multiscale optimization problem to reduce the computational effort of design under microstructural uncertainty. The design of a fiber composite beam with uncertain microstructural properties is used to illustrate the proposed stochastic gradient approach. Ongoing work will introduce the application of this approach to 3D structural components with microstructural uncertainty and the limitations applying it to large-scale realistic aerospace structures, such as solid rocket fuel design.
Biography: Bio: Dr. Subhayan De is a postdoctoral associate in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder). His research at CU focuses on design optimization under uncertainty and physics-based machine learning. Subhayan received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Southern California in 2018, where he was supported by a Viterbi Ph.D. Fellowship, a Gammel Scholarship and several NSF grants. At USC, he worked on probabilistic model validation, machine learning, uncertainty quantification, and structural control design. Subhayan also holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from USC and an MEng in Structural Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He received his B.Eng. in Civil Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
Host: Dr. Erik Johnson
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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ASTE Seminar Announcement
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Astronautical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Aloissia Russo and David Bernachia, Masters Candidates
Talk Title: LEAPFROG: USC's FLlight Testbed re-thinking Planetary Landers for Next Generation Exploration
Abstract: The SERCS LEAPFROG project will be presented and key technologies being developed to re-architecture how a lunar lander is used on the moons surface.
Host: Astronautical Engineering Department
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 222
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Dell Cuason
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SMASH Tournament
Thu, Feb 20, 2020 @ 06:30 PM - 11:59 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Receptions & Special Events
Join the first official E-week Smash Tournament for food, competition, and prizes. Free entry for all USC students with $500 in gifts given away to the victors. Sign up with the link
USC E-Week Smash TournamentLocation: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Undergraduate Programs
