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Events for March 09, 2016
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From Communication to Sensing and Learning: An Information Theoretic Perspective
Wed, Mar 09, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Hamed Hassani, Postdoctoral Scholar/ETH Zurich
Talk Title: From Communication to Sensing and Learning: An Information Theoretic Perspective
Abstract: We are witnessing a new era of science -” ushered in by our ability to collect massive amounts of data and by unprecedented ways to learn about the physical world. Beyond the challenges of storage and communication, there are new frontiers in the acquisition, analysis and exploration of data. In this talk, I will view these frontiers through the lens of information theory. I will argue that information theory lies at the center of data science, offering insights beyond its classical applications. As a concrete example, I will consider the problem of optimal data acquisition, a challenge that arises in active learning, optimal sensing and experimental design. Based on information theoretic foundations, and equipped with tools from submodular optimization theory, I will present a rigorous analysis of the widely-used sequential information maximization policy (also known as the information-gain heuristic). Our analysis establishes conditions under which this policy provably works near-optimally and identifies situations where the policy fails. In the latter case, our framework suggests novel, efficient surrogate objectives and algorithms that outperform classical techniques.
Biography: Hamed Hassani is a post-doctoral scholar at the Institute for Machine Learning at ETH Zurich. He received a Ph.D. degree in Computer and Communication Sciences from EPFL, Lausanne. Prior to that, he received a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and a B.Sc. degree in Mathematics from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran. Hamed's fields of interest include machine learning, coding and information theory as well as theory and applications of graphical models. He is the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Information Theory Society Thomas M. Cover Dissertation Award. His co-authored paper at NIPS 2015 was selected for an oral (plenary) presentation, and his co-authored paper at ISIT 2015 received the IEEE Jack Keil Wolf ISIT Student Paper Award.
Host: Professor Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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CS Colloquium: XiaoFeng Wang (Indiana University at Bloomington) - Security Innovations in the Big-Data Era
Wed, Mar 09, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: XiaoFeng Wang, Indiana University at Bloomington
Talk Title: Security Innovations in the Big-Data Era
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
The rapid progress in computing has produced a huge amount of data, which will continue to grow in the years to come. In this big-data era, we envision that tomorrow's security technologies will be data-centric: new defense will become smart and proactive by using the data to understand what the attackers have already done, what they are about to do, what their strategies and infrastructures are; effective protection will be provided for dissemination and analysis of the data involving sensitive information on an unprecedented scale. In this talk, I report our first step toward this future of secure computing. We show that through effective analysis of over a million Android apps, previously unknown malware can be detected within a few seconds, without resorting to conventional Anti-Virus means such as signatures and behavior patterns. Also, by leveraging trillions of web pages indexed by search engines, we can capture tens of thousands of compromised websites (including those of government agencies like NIH, NSF and leading education institutions world-wide) by simply asking Google and Bing right questions and automatically analyzing their answers through Natural Language Processing. Further, we found that an in-depth understanding about the unique features of human genomes and how they are used in biomedical research and healthcare systems can help us find a highly efficient way to protect patient privacy during a large-scale genome analysis. Our findings indicate that by unlocking the great value of data, we can revolutionize the security landscape, making tomorrow security technologies more intelligent and effective.
Biography: Dr. XiaoFeng Wang is a professor in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, Bloomington. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004, and has since been a faculty member at IU. Dr. Wang is a well-recognized researcher on system and network security. His work focuses on cloud and mobile security, and data privacy. He is a recipient of 2011 Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (the PET Award) and the Best Practical Paper Award at the 32nd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. His work frequently receives attention from media, including CNN, MSNBC, Slashdot, CNet, PC World, etc. Examples include his discovery of security-critical vulnerabilities in payment API integrations (http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/13/technology/ecommerce_security_flaw/) and his recent study of the security flaws on the Apple platform (http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/18/technology/apple-keychain-passwords/). His research is supported by the NIH, NSF, Department of Homeland Security, the Air Force and Microsoft Research. He is the director of IU's Center for Security Informatics.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Computational Imaging for Real-Time Gigapixel and 3D Wave-Field Microscopy
Wed, Mar 09, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Lei Tian, Postdoctoral Associate / Dept of EECS, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Computational Imaging for Real-Time Gigapixel and 3D Wave-Field Microscopy
Abstract: Abstract: Computational imaging is a new frontier of imaging technology that overcomes fundamental limitations of conventional systems by jointly designing optics, devices, signal processing, and algorithms. In this talk, I will present recent advancements in computational wave-field imaging that enable Gigapixel and 3D phase microscopy capability, breaking the limit of space-time-bandwidth product in traditional systems. In particular, I will describe a computational microscopy platform that implements coded illumination and nonlinear phase retrieval algorithms to reconstruct wide field-of-view and high-resolution phase images. Further, new illumination multiplexing techniques reduce data requirements by one order of magnitude, and acquisition times from minutes to sub-second. Experiments demonstrate quantitative dynamic imaging of rare biological events across multiple scales in both space and time. Finally, new 3D wave-optical model and reconstruction technique allow Gigavoxel reconstruction of 3D objects, achieving lateral resolution and depth sectioning well beyond the physical limit of traditional systems. Such computational imaging approach creates significant new capabilities by integrating hardware and computation at the system level. It promises wide applications, such as biomedicine, metrology, inspection, security and X-ray.
Biography: Bio: Lei Tian is a postdoctoral associate in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in 2013 and M.S. in 2010, both from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research interests include computational imaging, computational-optical instrumentation, phase retrieval, imaging through 3D complex media, large-scale microscopy, and their applications in biomedicine, security, metrology, inspection, X-ray and EUV.
Dr. Tian is the author of over 30 peer-reviewed articles and is a named inventor on 3 US patent applications. His recent work on coded illumination for Gigapixel imaging was awarded the Best Paper in Optical Society of America (OSA) Imaging Systems and Applications conference (2014). His work on optical coherence recovery using low-rank method was awarded the Emil Wolf Best Student Paper in OSA Frontier in Optics annual meeting (2011). Dr. Tian is currently serving as conference chair and program committee member in multiple conferences of OSA, SPIE, and IEEE.
Host: Dr. Justin Haldar, jhaldar@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Mar 09, 2016 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Receptions & Special Events
Bi-Weekly regular faculty meeting for invited full-time Computer Science faculty only. Event details emailed directly to attendees.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Mar 09, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Na Li, Harvard University
Talk Title: Distributed Energy Management with Limited Communication
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: A major issue in future smart grid is how intelligent devices and independent producers can respectively change their power consumption/production to achieve near maximum efficiency for the power network. Limited communications between devices, producers etc. necessitates an approach where the elements of the network can act in an autonomous manner with limited information/communications yet achieve near optimal performance. In this talk, I will present our recent work on distributed energy management with limited communication. In particular, I will show how we can extract information from physical measurements and recover information from local computation. We will investigate the minimum amount of communication for achieving the optimal energy management and study how limited communication affects the convergence rate of the distributed algorithms.
Biography: Na Li is an assistant professor in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in Harvard University since 2014. She received her PhD degree in Control and Dynamical systems from California Institute of Technology in 2013 and was a postdoctoral associate of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research lies in the design, analysis, optimization and control of distributed network systems, with particular applications to power networks. She received NSF career award (2016) and entered the Best Student Paper Award ï¬nalist in the 2011 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.
Host: Prof. Ashutosh Nayyar
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Candidate Series
Wed, Mar 09, 2016 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Janna Nawroth, Postdoctoral Technology Development Fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Talk Title: Multiscale Fluid Sensing and Transport in Biological and Engineered Systems
Abstract: Deformable substrates mediate fluid transport and sensing in many biological systems (e.g., marine animals, inner organs), as well as in some engineered systems (soft microfluidics, soft robots). The latter, however, employ only a fraction of the multitude of mechanisms found in nature. Partly, this reflects the difficulty of isolating straightforward structure-function relationships in multiscale biological tissues that could be translated to engineered materials. The same difficulty has impeded the development of in vitro assays and diagnostics tools for (fluid-) mechanically mediated diseases, such as polycystic kidney syndrome, hearing loss, osteoporosis, and cardiomyopathy. I approach this challenge by studying native and engineered tissues specialized for a particular transport function, which enables me to isolate, quantify, and reverse-engineer selected structure-function relationships. For this, I combine the powers of flow visualization, microfluidic platforms, tissue engineering, and computational studies. Here, I will present major results and goals of my research including (1), quantifying the structure-function relationships of muscle and cilia in health and disease, with applications in biophysical studies, diagnostics, and drug discovery ("organs-on-chips"); (2), designing and building cell-based microfluidic analyzers and processors; and (3), developing biologically-inspired multiscale surfaces for controlling dynamic fluid-structure interactions, such as biofilm formation.
Biography: Janna C. Nawroth is a postdoctoral Technology Development Fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. She attended Heidelberg University, Germany, where she received her B.S. (2004) and M.S. (2007) in Biotechnology. For her master thesis, Nawroth joined Yale University as a research associate in computational biology with Professor Gordon Shepherd. After Yale, Nawroth attended the California Institute of Technology as a Moore Fellow and obtained her Ph.D. (2012) in Biology. Nawroth's Ph.D. research, with Professor John Dabiri, received Caltech's award for the Best Thesis in Nanotechnology and involved the study and design of muscle-powered pumps to manage microfluidic propulsion and particle transport. After her Ph.D., Nawroth spent a year as a Caltech Postdoctoral Fellow in Aeronautics collaborating with Professors John Dabiri, Eva Kanso (USC), Scott Fraser (USC), and Margaret-McFall-Ngai (U Hawaii) to study transport phenomena in ciliated surfaces. At the Wyss, she develops microfluidic devices and signal processing algorithms for exploring the mechanics and flow physics of dynamic tissues for applications in biomedical engineering, disease modeling, and biophysical research.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 115
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
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In & Out: 30 Minutes to Identify Internships & Jobs Still Available!
Wed, Mar 09, 2016 @ 05:00 PM - 05:03 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Learn about resources on Viterbi Gateway for job opportunities that are still available!
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Viterbi Spotlight Series: Aerospace, Mechanical, and Astronautical Engineering
Wed, Mar 09, 2016 @ 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Students will hear from alumni regarding their academic and professional experiences.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Viterbi Undergraduate Students
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
