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Events for March 13, 2013
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Meet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, & Engineering TalkWed, Mar 13, 2013
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Receptions & Special Events
This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process; a student led walking tour of campus and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process and financial aid. Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 8:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m. Please visit https://esdweb.esd.usc.edu/unresrsvp/MeetUSC.aspx to check availability and make an appointment. Be sure to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!
Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - USC Admission Office
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement
Wed, Mar 13, 2013 @ 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Larry Aft, Viterbi School of Engineering
Talk Title: Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement
Abstract: Learn how to integrate principles of business, statistics and engineering to achieve tangible results. Master the use of Six Sigma to quantify the critical quality issues in your company. Once the issues have been quantified, statistics can be applied to provide probabilities of success and failure. Six Sigma methods increase productivity and enhance quality. As a Six Sigma green belt, you will be equipped to support and champion a Six Sigma implementation in your organization. To earn the Six Sigma Green Belt Certificate, you will be required to pass the Institute of Industrial Engineer's green belt exam (administered on the final day of the course).
During this course you will have the opportunity to apply what you have learned to an actual issue you face in your organization. Prior seminar participants have reported significant savings from implementing their projects.
*A financial services organization saw $128,000 in cost savings per quarter when they reduced transaction processing rework
*A state agency reduced project cost over-runs by 28 percent
*A transportation company saved more than $875,000 per year in turnover costs by improving the employee communications process
*Reduced errors in a painting operation led to increased first pass acceptance and more than $197,000 in annual savings
*A Web developer increased annual profits by 10 percent by cutting cycle time
*A wave solder operation saw defects reduced by half and costs reduced by $60,000 per year
Host: Corporate and Professional Programs
More Info: http://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial%2526systems/six-sigma-green-belt-process-improvement
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) -
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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Computer Science Full Faculty Meeting
Wed, Mar 13, 2013 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Workshops & Infosessions
Details
Agenda (http://myviterbi.usc.edu/) & RSVP
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Dennis Shasha (Courant Institute - NYU)
Wed, Mar 13, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dennis Shasha , NYU
Talk Title: Storing Clocked Programs Inside DNA: A Simplifying Framework for Nanocomputing
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: In the history of modern computation, large mechanical calculators preceded computers. A person would sit there punching keys according to a procedure and a number would eventually appear. Once calculators became fast enough, it became obvious that the critical path was the punching rather than the calculation itself. That is what made the stored program concept vital to further progress. Once the instructions were stored in the machine, the entire computation could run at the speed of the machine.
This work shows how to do the same thing for DNA computing.
Rather than asking a robot or a person to pour in specific strands at different times in order to cause a DNA computation to occur (by analogy to a person punching numbers and operations into a mechanical calculator), the DNA instructions are stored within the solution and guide the entire computation. We show how to store straight line programs, conditionals, loops, and a rudimentary form of subroutines. We propose a novel machine motif which constitutes an instruction stack, allowing for the clocked release of an arbitrary sequence of DNA instruction or data strands. The clock mechanism is built of special strands of DNA called "tick" and "tock." Each time a "tick" and "tock" enter a DNA solution, a strand is released from an instruction stack (by analogy to the way in which as a clock cycle in an electronic computer causes a new instruction to enter a processing unit). As long as there remain strands on the stack, the next cycle will release a new instruction strand. Regardless of the actual strand or component to be released at any particular clock step, the "tick" and "tock" fuel strands remain the same, thus shifting the burden of work away from the end user of a machine and easing operation. Pre-loaded stacks enable the concept of a stored program to be realized as a physical DNA mechanism.
We demonstrate by a series of experiments conducted in Ned Seeman's lab that it is possible to "initialize" a clocked stored program DNA machine. We end with a discussion of the design features of a programming language for clocked DNA programming. There is a lot left to do.
Biography: Dennis Shasha is a professor of computer science at the Courant Institute of New York University where he works with biologists on pattern discovery for network inference; with computational chemists on algorithms for protein design; with physicists and financial people on algorithms for time series; on clocked computation for DNA computing; and on computational reproducibility. Other areas of interest include database tuning as well as tree and graph matching. Because he likes to type, he has written six books of puzzles about a mathematical detective named Dr. Ecco, a biography about great computer scientists, and a book about the future of computing. He has also written five technical books about database tuning, biological pattern recognition, time series, DNA computing, statistics, and causal inference in molecular networks. He has written the puzzle column for various publications including Scientific American.
Host: Shahram Ghandeharizadeh
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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AME - Department Seminar
Wed, Mar 13, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Néstor O. Pérez-Arancibia, Post-doctoral Fellow at Harvard University
Talk Title: Design, Fabrication, and Control of Flapping-Wing Flying Artificial Insects
Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss the theoretical and experimental challenges that arise in the design, fabrication, and control of biologically inspired at-scale flapping-wing flying robotic insects. In the course of the research presented in this talk, analytical and experimental tools were developed for extracting the relevant dynamics of flapping-wing mechanisms from a systems-and-control perspective. Then, the estimated dynamics were used for developing new robotic designs and fabrication methods in order to obtain better flying prototypes, and for devising flight control strategies in one degree of freedom(altitude). Finally, the proposed approach was extended to other degrees of freedom and to the multiple-inputâ⬓multiple-output case with the purpose of creating the flying prototypes and control strategies that allowed us to achieve the first unconstrained controlled flight of a flapping-wing artificial insect of this size (< 100 mg).
Biography: Néstor O. Pérez-Arancibia is a postdoctoral fellow with the Microrobotics Laboratory and with the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. His current research focuses on the design and development of control systems for biologically inspired at-scale flying robotic insects. Since April of 2010, he has been part of the team working on the design, fabrication, and control of flapping-wing microrobots, toward the goal of creating a completely autonomous sub-gram flapping-wing flying robot by 2014, as part of the NSF Expeditions in Computing RoboBees project. Dr. Pérez-Arancibia received his Ph.D. from the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2007. From October 2007 to March 2010 he was a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Laser Beam Control Laboratory and also with the Mechatronics and Controls Laboratory at UCLA.
Host: Professor Spedding
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - Room 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kristi Villegas
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ASBME Members Appreciation Day!
Wed, Mar 13, 2013 @ 07:15 PM - 08:15 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
University Calendar
Stressed about midterms? Stop by TCC 227 to mingle with the ASBME eboard and pick up a FREE goody bag of midterm survival supplies including blue books, snacks and energy drinks! We've had a great semester of activities and want to say thank you to our paid ASBME members for your continued support and participation!
Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - 227
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering
