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Events for February 28, 2008
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CS Colloq: Internet Equilibrium Analysis Through Separation of User and Network Behavior
Thu, Feb 28, 2008 @ 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Title: Internet Equilibrium Analysis Through Separation of User and Network
BehaviorSpeaker: Prof. Y.C. Tay (National University of Singapore)ABSTRACT:
Internet complexity makes reasoning about traffic equilibrium difficult, partly
because users react to congestion. This difficulty calls for an analytic
technique that is simple, yet have enough details to capture user behavior and
flexibly address a broad range of
issues.This talk presents such a technique. It treats traffic equilibrium as a balance
between an inflow controlled by user demand, and an outflow provided by network
supply (link capacity, congestion avoidance, etc.). This decomposition is
demonstrated with a surfing session model, and validated with a traffic trace
and NS2 simulations.The technique's accessibility and breadth are illustrated through an analysis
of several issues concerning the location, stability, robustness and dynamics
of traffic equilibrium.(Joint work with D. Nguyen Tran, Eric Y. Liu, Wei Tsang Ooi and Robert Morris)BIO:
Y.C. Tay received his B.Sc. degree from the University of Singapore and Ph.D.
degree from Harvard University. He is a professor in the Departments of
Mathematics and Computer Science at the National University of Singapore
(http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~tayyc). His main research interest is performance
modeling.Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Industrial Engineering in Health Care
Thu, Feb 28, 2008 @ 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
University Calendar
DANIEL J. EPSTEIN DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING - ISE 650 SEMINARTitle: Industrial Engineering in Health CarePresenter: David Belson, Adjunct Professor, USC Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems EngineeringDate and Time: Thursday, February 28, 2008, 12:00-1:20 PMRoom Number: GER 309Abstract: This talk will present what USC IEs have been doing in hospitals to improve productivity. In the last 4 years we have conducted 12 projects in 9 hospitals. By using IE methods from many different courses (simulation, 6-sigma, Lean, queuing, operations research, statistics, human factors, etc) it is possible to have a significant impact. Moreover, the need for health care improvement has created a strong job market for such work and is a reason for the new MS degree being offered by the ISE department.Health Care has become the largest segment of the US economy and is a prominent issue for government policy makers and politicians. There is much concern over why the USA has among the highest health care costs and poorest health among developed countries. Improving productivity in health care provides part of the solution. Engineering methods used by Toyota, for example, to revolutionize automobile production can be used to improve health care, such as reducing the delays experienced by patients in receiving care.Brief Bio: David Belson is an Adjunct Professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California. He has also held management positions at IBM, Ernst & Young, Universal Studios and other organizations working in the area of Industrial Engineering and technology. He has conducted management engineering projects in a wide variety of hospitals. Recent projects have involved applying industrial engineering in radiology and surgery. He is currently managing surgery process improvement projects for the California HealthCare Foundation in three large California hospitals. Dr. Belson teaches the USC graduate course "Improving Health Care Operations". He is a Fulbright Scholar and has taught at several foreign Universities. He holds a B.S. from the University of Washington, M.S. from UCLA and Ph.D. degree from USC, all in engineering.
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 309
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Menagerie of Viruses: Diverse Chemical Sequences or Simple Electrostatics
Thu, Feb 28, 2008 @ 12:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Distinguished Lecture SerieswithProfessor M. Muthukumar
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
muthu@polysci.umass.edu AbstractThe genome packing in hundreds of viruses is investigated by analyzing the chemical sequences of the genomes and the corresponding capsid proteins, in combination with experimental facts on the structures of the packaged genomes. Based on statistical mechanics arguments and computer simulations, we have derived a universal model, based simply on non-specific electrostatic interactions. Our model is able to predict the essential aspects of genome packing in diversely different viruses, such as the genome size and its density distribution. Our result is in contrast to the long-held view that specific interactions between the sequenced amino acid residues and the nucleotides of the genome control the genome packing. Implications of this finding in the evolution and biotechnology will be discussed. Additionally, we will present mechanisms of how DNA worms through protein channels and synthetic pores.Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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EFFICIENT INTEGRATION OF NONLINEAR SITE RESPONSE
Thu, Feb 28, 2008 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dominic Assimaki-Professor
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering - Georgia TechABSTRACT:
While the quantification of site effects is of great significance in seismic hazard mitigation, there currently exists a large degree of uncertainty concerning the mathematical model to be employed for the efficient evaluation of these effects, and the site investigation program for evaluation of the associated input parameters. Towards the development of a comprehensive framework for credible and efficient integration of site response predictions in rupture scenaria simulations that addresses these issues, we here combine downhole observations and broadband ground motion synthetics for characteristic profiles in the Los Angeles Basin, and investigate the variability in ground motion introduced by the site response assessment methodology and uncertainty in nonlinear model parameter description. Regional velocity and attenuation structures are initially compiled using geotechnical data and the crustal velocity structure at three sites in Southern California. Broadband ground motion simulations are next conducted for scenaria of weak, medium and large magnitude events, and three component seismograms are computed on a surface station grid at distances 1km-75km from the surface projection of the fault. Elastic, equivalent linear and nonlinear site response simulations at multiple levels of complexity are then evaluated, and the coefficient of variation (COV) of site amplification factors is evaluated, defined as the ratio of the predicted peak ground acceleration (PGA) and spectral acceleration (SA) at short and long periods to the corresponding ground motion intensity measure on rock-outcrop. A frequency index is developed to identify the site conditions and ground motion characteristics where the high COV of free-field response implies that incremental nonlinear analyses should be employed in lieu of approximate methodologies. Next, the parametric uncertainty of nonlinear models is assessed by defining fixed- and free-parameters for each model and systematically randomizing the latter. Results show that site nonlinearity susceptibility and optimal nonlinear model complexity may be quantified by the proposed intensity-frequency index pair representation of site conditions and ground motion characteristics, while development of the target generalized computational framework for site response analyses is conditioned on the collection a statistically significant number of ground motion observations and synthetics at a wide spectrum of site conditions.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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From Edison to Viterbi
Thu, Feb 28, 2008 @ 03:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
About Jack Keil Wolf:
Jack Keil Wolf received the B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and the M.S.E., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. He has been teaching for more than 40 years. He is currently the Stephen O. Rice Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a member of the Center for Magnetic Recording Research at the University of California-San Diego, La Jolla. He also holds a part-time appointment at Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego. Dr. Wolf is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received several IEEE awards including: the 1990 E. H. Armstrong Achievement Award, the 1993 Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper Award (co recipient), the 1975 IEEE Information Theory Group Prize Paper Award (co recipient), the 1998 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award, the 2001 Claude E. Shannon Award, the 2004 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, and the 2007 Aaron D. Wyner Distinguished Service Award. He held an NSF Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.About Andrew J. Viterbi:
Andrew J. Viterbi is a co-founder and retired vice chairman and chief technical officer of QUALCOMM Incorporated. He spent equal portions of his career both in industry, having previously co-founded Linkabit Corporation, and in academia as professor in the Schools of Engineering and Applied Science, first at UCLA and then at UCSD, where he is now professor emeritus. He is currently president of the Viterbi Group, a technical advisory and investment company. His principal research contribution, the Viterbi Algorithm, is used in most digital cellular phones and digital satellite receivers, as well as in such diverse fields as magnetic recording, voice recognition and DNA sequence analysis. More recently, he concentrated his efforts on establishing CDMA as the multiple access technology of choice for cellular telephony and wireless data communication. Viterbi has received numerous honors both in the U.S. and internationally. Among these are four honorary doctorates from the Universities of Waterloo, Rome, Technion and Notre Dame, as well as memberships in the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received the Marconi International Fellowship Award, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell and Claude Shannon Awards, the NEC C&C Award, the Eduard Rhein Foundation Award and the Christopher Columbus Medal.About the Viterbi Lecture
The Viterbi Lecture was created as the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s premier academic distinction in information technology and digital communications, an area of research in which the school of Engineering is a national leader. Each year, an awardee who has made fundamental contributions of profound impact in communication will present the Viterbi Lecture.Location: Andrus Gerontology Center: Reception 3:00 to 4:00PM & Lecture 4:00 to 5:00PM
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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CS Colloq: Fitting Polynomials to Noisy Data
Thu, Feb 28, 2008 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Title: Fitting Polynomials to Noisy DataSpeaker: Dr. Parikshit Gopalan (Washington)ABSTRACT:
The problem of finding the polynomial that best fits a noisy data-set (or
polynomial reconstruction) has a long history, dating back to curve-fitting
problems studied in the 1800s. In the last two decades, there has been
tremendous progress on this problem in computer science, driven by the
discovery of powerful new algorithms. These results have spurred exciting new
developments in Coding theory, Computational learning, Cryptography and
Hardness of Approximation. In this talk, we will explore this problem from the
perspectives of Coding theory and Computational learning.We begin with an algorithm for decoding a well-studied family of binary
error-correcting codes called Reed-Muller codes, which are obtained from
low-degree polynomials. The salient feature of this algorithm is that it works
even when the number of errors far exceeds the so-called Johnson bound.I will present an algorithm for agnostically learning decision trees under the
uniform distribution. This is the first polynomial time algorithm for learning
decision trees in a harsh noise model. This algorithm solves the
reconstruction problem for real polynomials using tools from convex
optimization.I will also discuss settings where the reconstruction problem seems
intractable. We will see evidence that the notorious Noisy Parity problem is
hard under the uniform distribution. We will see hardness results suggesting
that learning simple concepts with noise is impossible for arbitrary
distributions.BIO:
Parikshit Gopalan grew up in India in the city of Bombay (now called Mumbai).
He graduated with an undergraduate degree from IIT-Bombay (whose name,
thankfully, has not changed). He received his Ph.D from Georgia Tech in August
2006, under the guidance of Dick Lipton. Following this, he did a short stint
as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. He is
currently a postdoc at the University of Washington, visiting Princeton
University.His research focuses on theoretical computer science, especially on algebraic
problems arising from algorithms and complexity. He also likes to dabble in
other areas such as Data-stream algorithms and Communication complexity.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Kiewit Pacific Information Session
Thu, Feb 28, 2008 @ 05:00 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: Grace Ford Salvatori (GFS) 106
Audiences: All Viterbi Students
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
