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Events for March 03, 2022
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ECE Seminar: Foundations of Trusted AI for Molecular Inference: the Role of Sparsity
Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Amirali Aghazadeh, Postdoctoral Researcher, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Foundations of Trusted AI for Molecular Inference: the Role of Sparsity
Abstract: Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled accurate prediction of protein structures from their sequences and have opened up new avenues for the engineering of proteins, drugs, and molecules with advanced and novel functional properties. However, despite their high predictive power, AI models do not provide a mechanistic understanding of interactions that give rise to many functional properties. Moreover, their generalization power has remained limited for novel and rapidly evolving molecules for which sufficient sequence data is not available.
In this talk, I will describe how I developed a foundation for trusted AI in molecular inference. Key to my approach is the observation that the combinatorial landscapes of molecular properties reside in low dimensional subspaces characterized by sparse high order non-linear interactions. I will show how we can leverage this sparsity prior and develop new algorithms rooted in signal processing, coding and graph theory to efficiently explain, regularize, and build molecular AI models. My algorithms have resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of sequences required to infer functional properties in proteins and an improved understanding of high order interactions in the DNA repair process. I will conclude by describing how my works set the computational and statistical foundation for engineering programmable molecular machines.
Biography: Amirali Aghazadeh is a postdoctoral researcher in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at the University of California, Berkeley, working with Kannan Ramchandran. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University with David Tse after receiving his PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University with Richard Baraniuk. His research interest is at the interface of large-scale machine learning, signal processing, and molecular engineering. He is the recipient of the Hershel M. Rich Invention Award for his thesis on universal molecular diagnostics as well as the Texas Instruments Fellowship. He received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology.
Host: Dr. Sandeep Gupta, sandeep@usc.edu
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98808075733?pwd=MktQYUc0Z2lhZ3NZd09uTURYUFBzUT09Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98808075733?pwd=MktQYUc0Z2lhZ3NZd09uTURYUFBzUT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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CS Colloquium: Saining Xie (Facebook AI Research (FAIR)) - Towards Scalable Representation Learning for Visual Recognition
Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Saining Xie, Facebook AI Research (FAIR)
Talk Title: Towards Scalable Representation Learning for Visual Recognition
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: A powerful biological and cognitive representation is essential for humans' remarkable visual recognition abilities. Deep learning has achieved unprecedented success in a variety of domains over the last decade. One major driving force is representation learning, which is concerned with learning efficient, accurate, and robust representations from raw data that are useful for a downstream classifier or predictor. A modern deep learning system is composed of two core and often intertwined components: 1) neural network architectures and 2) representation learning algorithms. In this talk, we will present several studies in both directions. On the neural network modeling side, we will examine modern network design principles and how they affect the scaling behavior of ConvNets and recent Vision Transformers. Additionally, we will demonstrate how we can acquire a better understanding of neural network connectivity patterns through the lens of random graphs. In terms of representation learning algorithms, we will discuss our recent efforts to move beyond the traditional supervised learning paradigm and demonstrate how self-supervised visual representation learning, which does not require human annotated labels, can outperform its supervised learning counterpart across a variety of visual recognition tasks. The talk will encompass a variety of vision application domains and modalities (e.g. 2D images and 3D scenes). The goal is to show existing connections between the techniques specialized for different input modalities and provide some insights about diverse challenges that each modality presents. Finally, we will discuss several pressing challenges and opportunities that the "big model era" raises for computer vision research.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Saining Xie is a research scientist at Facebook AI Research (FAIR). He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in computer science from the University of California San Diego, advised by Zhuowen Tu. Prior to that, he received his Bachelor's degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has broad research interests in deep learning and computer vision, with a focus on developing deep representation learning techniques to push the boundaries of core visual recognition. He is a recipient of the Marr Prize Honorable Mention at ICCV 2015.
Host: Ramakant Nevatia
Audiences: By invitation only.
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Lars Lindemann (University of Pennsylvania) - Safe AI-Enabled Autonomy
Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Lars Lindemann, University of Pennsylvania
Talk Title: Safe AI-Enabled Autonomy
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: AI-enabled autonomous systems show great promise to enable many future technologies such as autonomous driving, intelligent transportation, and robotics. Over the past years, there has been tremendous success in the development of autonomous systems, which was especially accelerated by the computational advances in machine learning and AI. At the same time, however, new fundamental questions were raised regarding the safety and reliability of these increasingly complex systems that often operate in uncertain and dynamic environments. In this seminar, I will provide new insights and exciting opportunities to address these challenges.
In the first part of the seminar, I will present a data-driven optimization framework to learn safe control laws for dynamical systems. For most safety-critical systems such as self-driving cars, safe expert demonstrations in the form of system trajectories that show safe system behavior are readily available or can easily be collected. At the same time, accurate models of these systems can be identified from data or obtained from first order modeling principles. To learn safe control laws, I present a constrained optimization problem with constraints on the expert demonstrations and the system model. Safety guarantees are provided in terms of the density of the data and the smoothness of the system model. Two case studies on a self-driving car and a bipedal walking robot illustrate the presented method. In the past years, it was shown that neural networks are fragile and that their use in AI-enabled systems has resulted in systems taking excessive risk. The second part of the seminar is motivated by this fact and presents a data-driven verification framework to quantify and assess the risk of AI-enabled systems. I particularly show how risk measures, classically used in finance, can be used to quantify the risk of not being robust to failure, and how we can estimate this risk from data. We will compare and verify four different neural network controllers in terms of their risk for a self-driving car. I will conclude by sharing exciting research directions in this area.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Lars Lindemann is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his B.Sc. degrees in Electrical and Information Engineering and his B.Sc. degree in Engineering Management in 2014 from the Christian-Albrechts-University (CAU), Kiel, Germany. He received his M.Sc. degree in Systems, Control and Robotics in 2016 and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2020, both from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. His current research interests include systems and control theory, formal methods, data-driven control, and autonomous systems. Lars received the Outstanding Student Paper Award at the 58th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and was a Best Student Paper Award Finalist at the 2018 American Control Conference. He also received the Student Best Paper Award as a co-author at the 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.
Host: Jyo Deshmukh
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: By invitation only.
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CommonSpirit Health Event Series (Virtual)
Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 12:00 PM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
We would like to share an exciting opportunity for your Masters of Cyber Security, Legal Studies, Healthcare Compliance, or Privacy students. CommonSpirit Health is excited to sponsor a 12-week Corporate Responsibility summer internship, fostering training in an integrated health system. We would like to invite your students to apply for the 2022 Corporate Responsibility Summer Internship at CommonSpirit Health. The goal is for our interns to acquire marketable technical and leadership skills within Corporate Responsibility, develop a comprehensive understanding of a large integrated healthcare system, and foster organizational relationships to guide professional growth.
CommonSpirit Health will be hosting 2 Corporate Responsibility Interns remotely this summer. We invite all interested candidates to join us for a virtual information session this winter:
Thursday March 3rd 12pm PT. Register HERE.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/commonspirit.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcudO2hqDIpGdN7OPV-OCFQflmVfq0gNTmX__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!5o8U2danY-mqqEHzD14ilYlKTxBhzfmfWcPk8Ho3A_xkqHjOF0Y_cUrgmV0ODUA$
Applications are available on our CommonSpirit Health Careers Portal here. All application materials will be due by March 14th.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/careers-commonspirit.icims.com/jobs/221843/corporate-responsibility-graduate-intern/job?mode=view&mobile=false&width=2537&height=500&bga=true&needsRedirect=false&jan1offset=-480&jun1offset=-420__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!5o8U2danY-mqqEHzD14ilYlKTxBhzfmfWcPk8Ho3A_xkqHjOF0Y_cUrg2QPuy5Q$
CommonSpirit Health was established in 2019, when two of the largest health systems in the United States, Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health joined forces. Today, CommonSpirit Health is the largest nonprofit mission driven health system in the country and has a presence of 142 hospitals across 21 states. Our vision is a healthier future for all- inspired by faith, driven by innovation, and powered by our humanity. Our organization is founded upon the values of compassion, inclusion, integrity, excellence and collaboration.
External employer-hosted events and activities are not affiliated with the USC Career Center. They are posted on Viterbi Career Connections because they may be of interest to members of the Viterbi community. Inclusion of any activity does not indicate USC sponsorship or endorsement of that activity or event. It is the participant's responsibility to apply due diligence, exercise caution when participating, and report concerns to vcareers@usc.eduLocation: Virtual, RSVP on Viterbi Career Gateway
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Joshua Jack, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Princeton University
Talk Title: Engineering a New Circular Economy: Waste CO2 valorization and resource recovery towards an improved water-energy-climate nexus
Abstract: Understanding and advancing the water-energy-climate nexus is key to mitigating the immense threats of climate change and solving many of the related environmental issues we face today. Due to the rapid decrease in the cost of renewable energy, it is now practical to design devices that use renewable electrons to drive the transformation of CO2 and other waste feedstock (wastewater, food waste, biomass) into high-value products while also recovering important resources such as water, nutrients, and energy. Overall, these new sustainable technologies can help us decarbonize various sectors and enable a new circular economy. This presentation will discuss opportunities to leverage cutting-edge hybrid electrochemical-biological technologies in diverse environmental applications including wastewater reclamation, water reuse, remediation, desalination, and CO2 capture and conversion. Current lab scale experiments have demonstrated excellent production rates, titer,and energy efficiencies. Efforts towards improving scalability, expanding the portfolio of products, and implementing new types of waste streams are on going.
Biography: Joshua Jack is a postdoctoral research scholar in the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment and the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Princeton University. Jack previously earned a bachelor degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and holds a doctoral degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder. During his graduate studies, Jack obtained extensive interdisciplinary research experience at both the DOE-National Renewable Energy Laboratory and NASA Langley Research Center, and has received numerous awards including a NASA Outstanding Research Award and NSF Fellowship. Jack current research focuses on energy and resource recovery as part of a sustainable water-energy-climate nexus with a special focus on process design of bioelectrochemical technologies toward scalable CO2 valorization and water treatment. Jack collaborates with many researchers from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering as well as various DOE laboratories and private companies such as Shell Energy. Jack has recently published in many highly cited journals including Applied Energy and Green Chemistry and plans to begin a tenure-track academic position in the near future.
Host: D. Amy Childress
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91873923659 Meeting ID: 918 7392 3659 Passcode: 975701Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91873923659 Meeting ID: 918 7392 3659 Passcode: 975701
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Evaluating & Negotiating Job Offers Workshop (ON-CAMPUS)
Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 04:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
THIS EVENT WILL BE HOSTED IN-PERSON, ON-CAMPUS
Consider best practices on evaluating and negotiating job or internship offers by attending this professional development Q&A moderated by Viterbi Career Connections staff or Viterbi employer partners.
For more information about workshops, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.
Attendance is limited to room capacity
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Nike X Ready Player One - INSIDIOUS Hackathon (Virtual)
Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 04:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
INSIDIOUS is a hackathon training event brought to you by Nike's Corporate Information Security team.
You will compete in a safe, sandboxed environment where you will seek out and take advantage of vulnerabilities in a real application.
Please note: Students MUST RSVP through the external registration form in order to participate.
https://nike.recsolu.com/app/collect/event/__QzR_-rdu5ni0xFGqKEVA
The course includes instructor-led training to review how the code should be written securely, followed by an awards ceremony with prizes to celebrate the top hackers.
This event will offer you the opportunity to show your growing skillset off to some of Nike's choice recruiting members.
The event will be virtual and hosted on Zoom, and we have 4 sessions you can select from:
March 3rd, 2022
Afternoon session: 4:00-8:00 PM EST
March 10th, 2022
Afternoon session: 4:00-8:00 PM EST
Access to a computer is required.
External employer-hosted events and activities are not affiliated with the USC Viterbi Career Connections Office. They are posted on Viterbi Career Connections because they may be of interest to members of the Viterbi community. Inclusion of any activity does not indicate USC sponsorship or endorsement of that activity or event. It is the participant's responsibility to apply due diligence, exercise caution when participating, and report concerns to vcareers@usc.eduLocation: Virtual. RSVP Link in the event description.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Boeing Freshman Design Challenge Information Session
Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Thursday, March 3 5-6 pm
Location: Virtual: RSVP here: https://usc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMucOurqz4sHdB7zRcYBg0R_vkFl4a4K8so
Attend this information session to learn about the Boeing Freshman Design Challenge! During the Info Session: Learn about the Challenge, the agenda, and teams, and receive a signup link to Create or join a team. The freshman Design Challenge will take place virtually Wednesday, March 9th
About the freshman Design Challenge: During this unique, resume-building experience, students will also have the opportunity to network with Boeing engineers and executives, who will be available to act as mentors and judges. Also, Representatives from Boeing's campus team will share upcoming recruitment opportunities
Location: Virtual
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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iRobot: Permission to Fail Panel
Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
The panel is an open and honest discussion of the STEM journey. Engineers will share their own path, including the failures, imposter syndrome and other obstacles in their way. They offer their own tips and tricks for academic and mental health.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Undergraduate Programs
