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Events for February 20, 2025
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ECE Seminar - John Hennessy, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Thursday, February 20th at 10am in EEB 248
Thu, Feb 20, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: John Hennessy, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Talk Title: Atomic layer processing to optimize the performance of ultraviolet coatings and sensors
Series: ECE Seminar
Abstract: The talk will describe the development of atomic layer deposition (ALD) and atomic layer etching (ALE) processes that utilize hydrogen fluoride as a co-reactant. At JPL this work has been motivated by the development of sensors and coatings operating in the far ultraviolet (λ = 90-200 nm) with an eye towards the emerging requirements of the Habitable Worlds Observatory, NASA's next astrophysics flagship mission of the 2030's. This talk will discuss the integration of these ALD/ALE coatings into two technologies at JPL: detector-integrated UV bandpass filters on silicon imaging sensors to enable solar- or visible-blind operation, and the demonstration of reflective aluminum mirror coatings protected by ALD fluorides. In both cases additional performance enhancement can also be obtained using novel atomic layer etching (ALE) processes to remove residual oxide contamination. Other applications of these processes in selective-area deposition, superconducting detectors, and lithium-ion batteries will be discussed.
Biography: John Hennessy is a microdevices engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Advanced Detectors and Nanomaterials Group. His current research interests include the development of atomic layer deposition processes for optical and electrical applications related to UV detector-integrated filters, UV reflective coatings, and semiconductor surface passivation. He is currently the JPL institutional PI of the Caltech-led UVEX astrophysics mission, and the chair of the IEEE Metro LA Photonics Chapter. He received his BE and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from The Cooper Union in 2002, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010. He is a recipient of the SPIE Rising Researcher Award in 2017 and a NASA Early Career Public Achievement Medal in 2020.
Host: Richard Leahy
More Information: John Hennessy Seminar Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
PhD Thesis Proposal - Curtis Bechtel
Thu, Feb 20, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Title: Incentivizing Efficient Delegation without Payments
Date and Time: Thursday, Feb 20, 2025 at 12:00pm
Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) 502C
Committee: Shaddin Dughmi (Chair), David Kempe, Shanghua Teng, Vatsal Sharan, Ruolin Li (external)
Abstract: In delegation problems, a principal wants to search through a stochastic space of feasible solutions for one maximizing their utility, but they lack the ability to conduct this search on their own. Instead, they must delegate this search problem to one or more untrusted agents with distinct utility functions. The principal is then faced with the problem of designing a mechanism that incentivizes agents to find and propose a solution maximizing their utility. Importantly, the principal's power is limited to announcing which feasible solutions they would accept or reject, so we don't allow the principal to offer direct transfers of value, either positive or negative, for any outcome. Despite this limitation, there often exist mechanisms under which the principal is guaranteed a constant-factor approximation of their first-best utility. In this work, we propose three broad approaches to modeling delegation problems that address different aspects of the problem: combinatorial search and solution constraints, additive costs for searching, and delegating to multiple agents. We then show how the principal can achieve competitive approximations for several variants of each of these approaches.Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 502C
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Curtis Bechtel
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
