USC - Viterbi School of Engineering

Feb
27

5th Annual EGSA Banquet - TICKET SALE!!!
Tue, Feb 27, 2007
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Receptions & Special Events

When : March 4, 2007, 6:00 p.m. - 12:00 a.m.Where: Radisson Hotel, FigueroaYou are invited to the 5th Annual EGSA Banquet!It's the biggest event of the year with unlimited food, live music, performances, cash bar, live DJ, dancing, and amazing prizes!!! Menu items include Chicken Cacciatore, Roasted Leg of Lamb, Vegetarian Fried Rice, Fresh Pasta, Salad(s), Chocolate Cake, Cheese Cake and much more...Tickets are just $15! But hurry, as tickets are sold on a first come first serve basis, and space is limited. Please contact your EGSA department senator or egsa@usc.edu for tickets.They will also be sold on Wednesday, February 21, from 12-1 pm on the RTH Patio and at our E-week events. Please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/egsa for the most updated information.***Event is open to everyone (including your family and friends). Limit 3 tickets per person. Please bring your student ID to the ticket sale to reserve your ticket. Tickets are non-refundable.Supported by: GPSS & VSoE Office of Master's & Professional Programs
Audiences: Graduate

Contact: MEGA
Feb
27

Rate Control Protocol (RCP): Congestion Control to Make Flows Complete Quickly
Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

"Rate Control Protocol (RCP): Congestion Control to
Make Flows Complete Quickly"Nandita DukkipatiStanford UniversityAbstract:Users typically want their flows to complete as quickly as possible. This makes Flow Completion Time (FCT) an important - arguably the most important - performance metric for the user. Yet research on congestion control focuses entirely on maximizing link throughput, utilization and fairness, which matter more to the operator than the user. This talk is about a new congestion control algorithm - Rate Control Protocol (RCP) - designed for fast download times (i.e. aka user response times, or flow-completion times). Whereas other modifications/replacements to TCP (e.g. STCP, Fast TCP, XCP) are designed to work for specialized applications that use long-lived flows (scientific applications and supercomputer centers), RCP is designed for the typical flows of typical users in the Internet today.I will show that with typical Internet flow sizes, existing (TCP Sack) and newly proposed (XCP) congestion control algorithms make flows last much longer than necessary - often by one or two orders of magnitude. In contrast, RCP makes flows finish close to the minimum possible, leading to a perceptible improvement for web users, distributed computing, and distributed file-systems. I will also talk about a few of the many addressed issues under RCP - stability of a RCP network, coping with sudden network changes such as flash-crowds (the main weakness under RCP), RCP's router buffer-size requirements, proportional bandwidth-sharing with RCP and implementation of RCP in routers and end-hosts.Speaker Bio:Nandita Dukkipati received her Bachelor's degree from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, and her Master's degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She is expecting a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in June 2007. Her research focus is on the design and analysis of various building blocks of network infrastructure, including congestion control, routing, protocol design, router/switch architectures for wired as well as wireless networks. She is particularly interested in building practical networking systems while making use of theoretical tools where applicable.Hosted by: Prof. Bhaskar Krishnamachari, bkrishna@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Rosine Sarafian
Feb
27

Fulbright Student Grants for Study/Research Abroad
Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Student Activity

Fulbright Student Grants for Study/Research Abroad Fulbright Grants support study and research in over 140 countries around the world. Student must have completed a minimum of a bachelor's degree at the time of starting a Fulbright Grant, so the earliest students can apply is the Fall of their senior year. Graduate students and recent alumni may also apply for Fulbright Grants. This session will provide detailed information about the application process (including USC-specific procedures) and ideas for competitive Fulbright study proposals.For more information on all of these fellowships, including profiles of previous winners from USC, visit: www.usc.edu/arp/fellowships Note: Most fellowships described here require applicants to hold US citizenship at the time of application.
USC Office of Academic Recognition Programs
Student Union 202, 213-740-9116, arpstaff@usc.edu

Location: Topping Student Center 205
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Julie Phaneuf
Feb
27

The Canterbury, New Zealand, Network and CUSP Strong Motion Seismographics
Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker:
John B Berrill,
University of Canterbury, and
Canterbury Seismic Instruments Ltd.,
Christchurch, New Zealand
(www.csi.net.nz)Seminar Abstract:Motivated by an expected ~M8 rupture on the Alpine Fault, New Zealand, the engineering seismology group at Canterbury University sought to install a strong-motion network of about 80 instruments in the region. The Canterbury Network (CanNet), now part of the NZ national network, GeoNet, has three main components:
1. A dense array of 15 to 20 instruments to capture details of the rupture mechanism.
2. A network of 40 instruments distributed across the central South Island to record regional attenuation.
3. A local network to study the response of the highly variable 20–25 m layer of post-glacial soil beneath the city of Christchurch.
In order to deploy such a number of instruments at affordable cost, the group collaborated with the Electrical Engineering Department of the University to design a low-cost digital accelerograph. The original 12-bit CUSP-3A (CUSP: Canterbury University Seismograph Project) accelerograph, designed to put more points on the map for a fixed budget and low maintenance costs, has been evolved to the 13-bit CUSP-3B and the 17-bit CUSP-3C instrument. Both instruments are web-based for ease of monitoring and down loading of data and, where possible, use off-the-shelf components such as industrial single-board computers and MEMs accelerometers. At this time (February 2007), about half the CanNet instruments have been installed.For the past 15 months, a central-recording system, CUSP-M, developed for monitoring structural response, has been undergoing trials in a building on campus, and will be installed in several structures throughout NZ. It uses the web-based communications of the 3B/C instruments, simple Ethernet wiring to connect up to 32 three-component sensors to the central unit and features digitization at the sensor and synchronized sampling. A hardened version will be employed for the dense, rupure-mechanism array.The speaker is conscious of the isolation of his group on their South Seas islands, and invites your feedback on this program and the instruments.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Feb
27

Narrative Generation and Interactive Storytelling
Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Dr. Mark RiedlResearch ScientistUSC Institute for Creative TechnologiesAbstract:Storytelling is a pervasive part of the human experience; it is a common element in entertainment including modern computer games, it commonly occurs in human-to-human communication, and it is an element found in education and training. Some psychologists believe the pervasiveness of narrative is due to the possibility that the same cognitive processes used to process and generate narrative descriptions are the same as those used in every-day sense-making activities. In this talk, I will describe research into two applications of artificial intelligence to narrative: narrative generation, and interactive narrative. Narrative generation is the problem of computationally creating a narrative from minimal user input. I will describe research efforts into an AI planning-based algorithm for generating narrative sequences. Stories are complicated constructs; the narrative generator I will present reasons about two important criteria for stories: plot coherence - the notion that events in a narrative form causal chains that are relevant to an outcome - and character intentionality - the notion that characters actions in a narrative appear to be intentional and believably motivated. Interactive narrative is a form of interactive entertainment in which a computer system attempts to tell a story in which an interactive user is able to influence the direction and/or outcome of the narrative. I will present a generative approach to interactive narrative that uses automated narrative generation to dynamically adapt the expected narrative structure to accommodate the user's actions without abandoning the goal of delivering a coherent narrative experience. The generative drama management has been applied to entertainment contexts and training and education contexts.Biography:Mark Riedl is a research scientist at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). Mark received a bachelor's degree and MS in Computer Science from North Carolina State University with a minor in Psychology. In 2004, he receive a Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University for his work in artificial intelligence techniques for generating stories with recognizable plot structures and character fidelity. Mark joined the ICT in 2004, applying his work in narrative generation to create interactive narrative experiences for leadership training. In addition to his work on interactive narrative, Mark is also working on projects for intelligent, adaptive opponents in training simulations, automated scenario authoring, and intelligent virtual camera control for Machinima generation. Mark has numerous academic publications on narrative generation, interactive narrative, and other computer game AI related topics. In 2006, he received best paper awards at the 15th Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation and the 3rd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment.Host: Rajiv MaheswaranSnacks will be provided.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien
Feb
27

JPL Information Session
Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions

Join representatives of this company as they share general company information and available opportunities.

Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 106
Audiences: Current Engineering Undergraduate/Graduate Students

Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
Feb
27

Clark Construction Information Session
Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 05:30 PM - 06:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions

Join representatives of this company as they share general company information and available opportunities.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Current Engineering Undergraduate/Graduate Students

Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
Feb
27

Race, Rap and Redemption
Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 07:30 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Race, Rap and Redemption will take rap music seriously as a source of penetrating commentary on the nature of blame and punishment, guilt and innocence and, ultimately, of spiritual transcendence. Where can we look for change, and which things always remain the same? What is redeemable, and what lies beyond redemption? How do we bring ourselves to brotherhood and sisterhood with one another? This event will bring together contemporary recording artists, USC students and faculty to explore the way that rap artists--functioning as griots, poets, prophets and pundits--engage these questions and the debates surrounding them. At evening's end, each of us will have joined in the questioning and debating, and lifted our voices in and through the music.For more information, please visit:http://www.usc.edu/webapps/events_calendar/custom/113/index.php?category=Item&item=0.861438&active_category=Upcoming
Location: Bovard Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski

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