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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for March
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BME 533 Seminar Title: Bioengineering Bone
Mon, Mar 01, 2010 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Ronke Olabisi, Ph.D., National Space Biomedical Research Institute Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX:
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate//Department Only
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Nanoelectronics: Technology Assessment and Projection at the Device, Circuit and System level
Mon, Mar 01, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Presented by Lan WeiAbstract:
Nowadays, physical gate length can no longer be effectively scaled down and traditional boosters (e.g., strain, high-k/metal gate) are exhibiting diminishing returns on performance improvement. Continued progress in nanoelectronics necessitates a holistic view across the boundaries of device, circuit and system domains. The best devices are those that are optimized for the circuits and systems of the target application. Device design and engineering must aim at improvements at the circuit and system levels.
In this talk, the design space is explored for future Si CMOS technology and for carbon nanotube field effect transistors, a promising technology in the post-Si era. Compact models for transport properties and capacitive components of different device structures have been developed to facilitate circuit-level analysis and system-level optimization. Possible ways of extending the technology roadmap are proposed. We propose scenarios of selective device structure scaling that will enable Si CMOS technology scaling for several generations beyond the currently perceived limits. Beyond Si CMOS scaling, carbon nanotube field effect transistors (CNFETs) are optimized and projected to achieve 5x chip-level speed up over PDSOI at 11 nm technology node for a high-performance four-core processor with 1.5M logic gates. Biography:
Lan Wei received her B. S. in Microelectronics and Economics from Peking University in 2005 and M. S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2007. She is currently a Ph. D. candidate in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, under the supervision of Prof. H. –S. Philip Wong in the Stanford Nanoelectronics Group. Her Ph.D. research focuses on technology scaling with a holistic view across the traditional boundaries of device, circuit, and system domains, as well as integrated bio-systems and biomedical devices. She worked as a research intern at Intel (2006), IBM Research (2007), STMicroelectronics (2008), and Grenoble Institute of Technology (2008). She has contributed to the PIDS (Process Integration, Devices, and Structures) Chapter of ITRS (International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors) 2009 Edition. Lan Wei was a recipient of a number of awards, including Stanford Graduate Fellowship (2005-2009).
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hazel Xavier
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CS Colloq: Dr. Julia Stoyanovich
Mon, Mar 01, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: BARAC: An Effective Presentation of Ranked Structured Datasets
Speaker: Dr. Julia Stoyanovich, University of Pennsylvania
Host: Prof. Cyrus ShahabiAbstract:
In online applications such as Yahoo! Personals and Yahoo! Real Estate users define structured profiles in order to find potentially interesting matches. Typically, profiles are evaluated against large datasets and produce thousands of matches. In addition to filtering, users also specify ranking in their profile, and matches are returned in the form of a ranked list. Top results in a ranked list are often homogeneous, which hinders data exploration. For example, a user looking for 1- or 2-bedroom apartments sorted by price will see a large number of cheap 1- bedrooms in undesirable neighborhoods before seeing any apartments with different characteristics. An alternative to ranking is to group matches on common attribute values (e.g., cheap 1-bedrooms in good neighborhoods, 2-bedrooms with 2 baths, etc.). However, not all groups will be of interest to the user given his ranking criteria. We argue here that neither single-list ranking norattribute-based grouping is adequate f or effective exploration of ranked datasets. We formalize rank- aware clustering and develop BARAC, a novel clustering algorithm that enables rank-aware data exploration in domains with a large number of heterogeneous attributes. We present results of a large- scale user study that validate the effectiveness of our approach.
We extensively evaluate the performance of our algorithm over large datasets from Yahoo! Personals, a leading online dating site.
Joint work with Sihem Amer-Yahia.Bio:
Julia Stoyanovich is a Postdoctoral Researcher and a Computing Innovations Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Julia holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Columbia University, and a B.S. in Computer Science and in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. After receiving her B.S. Julia went on to work for two start-ups and one real company in New York City, where she interacted with a variety of massive datasets.
Julia's industry experience convinced her that many practical data management challenges remain to be tackled, and that she does not like to wake up early in the morning, prompting her return to academia.
Julia's research focuses on improving search, ranking, and data exploration in semantically rich application domains. She is particularly excited about the challenges that arise in life sciences applications and in social information processing.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 306
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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Molecules and Materials for 21st Century Needs
Tue, Mar 02, 2010 @ 01:15 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Molecules and Materials for 21st Century NeedsDr. Tina SalgueroHRL Laboratories, LLCMalibu, CA Abstract With our perspective at the beginning of a new decade, it seems clear that the 21st century will be an age when custom-tailored molecules and materials will reach an unprecedented level of importance. In this talk, I will describe several examples of custom-tailored molecules and materials that range across the fields of organometallic chemistry and materials science and have applications in catalysis, chemical synthesis, and energy production.
Location: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Towards Integrated Nanoscale Systems
Tue, Mar 02, 2010 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Presented by Jeff WeldonAbstract:
Nanotechnology has been recognized for its tremendous potential to produce smaller, more efficient and more cost-effective systems. The ability to control materials at the atomic and molecular scale has generated opportunities in a variety of disciplines including engineering, computer science, biology, physics and chemistry. However, realizing the potential of nanotechnology for systems-level applications requires a fundamental understanding of both the system requirements and the capabilities of the underlying nanoscale material. One promising nanoscale material is the carbon nanotube, a material with exceptional electrical and mechanical properties.This talk will demonstrate how rethinking the fundamental nature of systems and electronics can lead to dramatically smaller and potentially more capable solutions. The presentation will begin with a discussion of a traditional design approach in which a CMOS integrated circuit was designed to facilitate system-on-a-chip integration. To leverage the benefits of novel nanoscale devices and improve upon current technology, a paradigm shift, away from standard block-level design, will be needed. To facilitate this shift requires a thorough understanding of the new nanoscale materials and devices. As an example, we will discuss how a single carbon nanotube can be designed to function as a complete radio receiver. In addition, we will present a novel nanoelectromechanical oscillator with the potential for significant size reduction and improved performance compared with current solutions. Biography:
Dr. Jeffrey Weldon received a B.S. in Engineering Physics and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation research in the area of RF CMOS integrated circuits has been widely adopted by industry and is frequently cited in journals and conferences. Dr. Weldon received the 2001 ISSCC Lewis Award for best overall paper and was the recipient of the 1998 ISSCC Jack Kilby Best Student Paper Award. He has also served as a consultant in several Silicon Valley companies. Since 2006, Dr. Weldon has been a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Center for Integrated Nanomechanical Systems, a multidisciplinary research center established to study the use of nanoscale materials for electronic and mechanical applications, and the Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research focuses on novel nanoscale electronics with an emphasis on the applications of carbon nanotubes. Dr. Weldon has been investigating carbon nanotube resonant structures and carbon nanotube-based sensors. His work on carbon nanotube radios has gained international media attention and has been featured in Scientific American.
Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 152
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hazel Xavier
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CS DLS: Prof. Daniela Rus
Tue, Mar 02, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Programmable Matter with Self-reconfiguring Robots
Speaker: Prof. Daniela Rus
Hosts: Prof. Gaurav Sukhatme and Prof. Maja MataricAbstract:
We wish to create programmable matter by using robot modules capable of self-reconfiguration: hundreds of small modules autonomously organize and reorganize as geometric structures to best fit the terrain on which the robot has to move, the shape of the object the robot has to manipulate, or the sensing needs of the given task. Self-reconfiguration leads to versatile robots that can support multiple modalities of locomotion, manipulation, and perception.This talk will discuss the challenges of creating programmable matter, ranging from designing hardware capable of self-reconfiguration, to developing distributed controllers and planners for such systems that are scalable, adaptive, and support real-time behavior. We will discuss a spectrum of mechanical and computational capabilities for such systems and detail some recent self-reconfiguring robots.Bio:
Daniela Rus is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where she is associate director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and co-directs the MIT Center for Robotics at CSAIL. Her research interests include distributed robotics and mobile computing and her application focus includes transportation, security, environmental modeling and monitoring, underwater exploration, and agriculture.Rus is notable for spear-heading research in programmable matter by developing the several self-configuring robots. In addition, she worked with her students to has designed, control, and field autonomous underwater robots, agricultural robots that herd cattle, low-cost, early warning sensors for disaster prevention in developing countries, and teams of autonomous aerial vehicles that can monitor adaptively large environments.Rus is the recipient of the NSF Career Award and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow. She is a Class of 2002 MacArthur Fellow and a fellow of AAAI and IEEE. Before receiving her appointment at MIT, Rus was a professor in the Computer Science Department at Dartmouth, where she founded and directed two laboratories in robotics and mobile computing.Rus earned her PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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A new kind of knowledge discovery for societal priorities:
Wed, Mar 03, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Title: Case study on climate extremes, uncertainy, and impactsSpeaker: Auroop R. Ganguly, Senior R&D Staff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)Abstract:
A new kind of knowledge discovery from data (KDD) is needed across multiple science and engineering disciplines to provide actionable predictive insights on urgent societal priorities. The new KDD is motivated from three considerations: (a) availability of massive data from remote or in-situ sensors and models, (b) enhanced understanding of nonlinear and non-stationary processes with feedback and noise, and (c) criticality of risk-informed decisions under uncertainty. The three pillars of the new KDD are (a) interdisciplinary data sciences blending disciplines ranging from statistics and computer science to nonlinear dynamics and information theory, (b) physics-based or process-oriented computational simulations along with their evaluations and combinations, and (c) decision sciences which include uncertainty quantification and reduction, risk assessments, attributions, and optimization. The first part of the presentation describes the new KDD with applications to societal priorities ranging from transportation security, remote sensing, population mapping, infrastructure risks, social theories, and climate change. The second part of the presentation focuses on climate extremes, defined as regional shifts in the statistics of weather patterns or changes in the intensity-duration-frequency of severe events, which in turn may be caused or exacerbated by natural climate cycles or climate change. First, the science of climate extremes is discussed, with an emphasis on how the new kind of KDD can address acknowledged gaps in the science. A comprehensive characterization of uncertainty from greenhouse gas emissions and climate models to regional assessments of hydrology and societal impacts is motivated. New science insights as well as the implications for preparedness decisions and mitigation policies are discussed with specific examples. Bio-Sketch
Auroop R. Ganguly is a Senior R&D Staff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where he has been employed for more than five years. He has published more than fifty peer-reviewed and more than hundred articles in multidisciplinary journals ranging from PNAS and Physical Review E to domain journals in water resources, hydrometeorology, transportation, and operations research, as well as conferences and book chapters. He has published an edited book entitled Knowledge Discovery from Sensor Data by CRC Press, co-organized multiple ACM and IEEE workshops on sensor-based knowledge discovery and climate change, as well as sessions on nonlinear dynamics and climate impacts at AGU and AMS meetings. His research has been funded by US federal agencies like DOE, DHS, DOD / DARPA, besides the private sector. He led the ORNL team which provided science support for a climate change war game reported in the journal Nature as well as climate support for the US DOD's Quadrennial Defense Review. He has received two significant event awards from ORNL for a DARPA-funded project on evaluation of complex models and for the climate change war game. He is a member of the invited reader panel for the journal Nature and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering. He has held visiting and adjunct appointments at the University of South Florida and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville where he taught courses in hydrology as well as applied time series, spatial statistics and knowledge discovery. He has advised PhD students as supervisor and co-supervisor, in addition to post-masters and post-doctoral associates, as well as undergraduate and high-school students. His students have won two best student or runner-up paper awards and one best doctoral poster award. He has received two Outstanding Mentor awards from US DOE and ORNL, as well as two certificates of appreciation for mentorship. He has been invited to multiple NSF panels and workshops as well as DOE and DHS workshops. He has about five years experience at Oracle Corporation and a best-of-breed company eventually acquired by Oracle, where he developed time series and forecasting algorithms besides managing analytical products for demand planning, marketing, and supply chain. He has a PhD from the Civil and Environmental Engineering department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Technology (Honors) in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Control and Suppression of Interfacial Instabilities by Shear
Wed, Mar 03, 2010 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
JOHN LAUFER LECTURE SERIESStephen H. Davis Walter P. Murphy Professor of Engineering Sciences
and Applied MathematicsandMcCormick School (Institute) Professor Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
DepartmentRobert R. McCormick School of Engineering and
Applied ScienceNorthwestern University Evanston, IL 60208ABSTRACT: There has been recent work on the control of instabilities using feedback and control theory to at least delay instability. Here, we shall discuss an alternative in which imposed shear flows can delay or eliminate interfacial instabilities though the shear triggers others that are less 'harmful.' This will be illustrated by the suppression of Van der Waals rupture instability in ultra-thin liquid films. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------BIO:Stephen H. Davis received all his degrees at Rensselaer Polytechnic. He has been Research Mathematician at the RAND Corporation, Lecturer in Mathematics at Imperial College, London, and Assistant, Associate Professor and Full Professor of Mechanics at the Johns Hopkins University. He is Editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. He has authored 200 refereed technical papers in the fields of Fluid Mechanics and Materials Science and the book Theory of Solidification. He has twice been Chairman of the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Physical Society, is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was the 1994 recipient of the Fluid Dynamics Prize of the APS and the 2001 G. I. Taylor Medal of the Society of Engineering Science.
Location: Davidson Conference Center, (DCC) Board Room
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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Munushian Lecture Series: Dr. Ken Gabriel - Deputy Director, DARPA
Thu, Mar 04, 2010 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Munushian Lecture Series
Dr. Ken Gabriel
Deputy Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA)Title of talk: "Breaking Rules, Making Rules"
Location: Mudd Hall Room 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: USC Ming Hsieh Department
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Printed Assembly of Micro/Nanomaterials with Silicon and Gallium Arsenide Based Compound Semiconduct
Thu, Mar 04, 2010 @ 12:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Printed Assembly of Micro/Nanomaterials with Silicon and Gallium Arsenide Based Compound Semiconductors for High Performance Photovoltaics and OptoelectronicsDr. Jongseung Yoon
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
UIUCAbstract
In the first part of my talk, I will present our recent work that explores techniques to exploit silicon for unusual photovoltaic module designs. Silicon, in amorphous or various crystalline forms, is used in >90% of all installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity. The high natural abundance of silicon, with the excellent reliability and good efficiency of solar cells made with it, suggest its continued use, on massive scales, for the foreseeable future. As a result, although there is significant promise for organics, nanocrystals, nanowires and other new materials for photovoltaics, many opportunities continue to exist for research into unconventional means for using silicon in advanced PV systems. We developed new approaches to exploit printed arrays of ultrathin, monocrystalline Si solar microcells for unconventional photovoltaic modules. The resulting devices can offer many useful features, including high degrees of mechanical flexibility, user-definable levels of transparency, ultra-thin form factor micro-optic concentrator designs, together with the potential for high efficiency and low cost.In the second part of my presentation, I will discuss about releasable epitaxial multilayer assemblies of gallium arsenide (GaAs) based compound semiconductors for high performance photovoltaics and optoelectronics. Compound semiconductors such as GaAs provide unmatched performance in photovoltaic and optoelectronic devices. Current methods for growing and fabricating these materials are incompatible with the most important modes of use, particularly in photovoltaics, where large quantities of material must be distributed over large areas on low cost, amorphous foreign substrates. We developed new methods that address many of these challenges, through cost effective production of bulk quantities of high quality functional films of GaAs from thick, epitaxial assemblies formed in a single deposition sequence on a growth wafer. Specialized designs enabled separation, release and assembly of individual active layers in these stacks to create devices on substrates ranging from glass, to silicon and plastic, in quantities and over areas that exceed possibilities with conventional approaches.
Location: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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CS Colloq: David Sontag
Thu, Mar 04, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Approximate Inference in Graphical Models using LP Relaxations
Speaker: David Sontag
Host: Prof. Craig KnoblockAbstract:
Graphical models such as Markov random fields have been successfully applied to a wide variety of fields, from computer vision and natural language processing, to computational biology. Exact probabilistic inference is generally intractable in complex models having many dependencies between the variables.In this talk, I will discuss recent work on using linear programming relaxations to perform approximate inference. By solving the LP relaxations in the dual, we obtain efficient message-passing algorithms that, when the relaxations are tight, can provably find the most likely (MAP) configuration.Our algorithms succeed at finding the MAP configuration in protein side-chain placement, protein design, and stereo vision problems. More broadly, this talk will highlight emerging connections between machine learning, polyhedral combinatorics, and combinatorial optimization.Bio:
David is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at MIT. He received his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. His research focuses on theory and practical algorithms for learning and probabilistic inference in very large statistical models. His work has been awarded with an outstanding student paper award at NIPS in 2007 and a best paper award at UAI in 2008. He currently has the Google Fellowship in Machine Learning.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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CS Colloq: Manish Bhide, IBM Research (India)
Fri, Mar 05, 2010 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title:
Part 1: IBM Research - India Overview
Part 2: Keyword Search over Dynamic Categorized InformationSpeaker: Manish Bhide, IBM Research (India)Abstract:
My talk will be in two parts. In the first part I will give an
overview of IBM Research - India where I will outline the kind of work we do, the job opportunities, internship options, etc. In the second part of the talk I will present one of my research works titled "Keyword Search on Dynamic Categorized Information".
The abstract of the technical talk is given below:
Consider an information repository whose content is categorized. A data item (in the repository) can belong to multiple categories and new data is continuously added to the system. In this talk, I will describe a system, CS*, which takes a keyword query and returns the relevant top-K categories.
In contrast, traditional keyword search returns the top-K documents (i.e., data items) relevant to a user query. The need to dynamically categorize new data and also update the meta-data required for fast responses to user queries poses interesting challenges. The brute force approach of updating the meta-data by comparing each new data item with all the categories is impractical due to (i) the large cost involved in finding the categories associated with a data item and (ii) the high rate of arrival of new data items. We show that a sampling based approach which provides statistical guarantees on the reported results is also impracticable. We hence develop the CS* approach whose effectiveness results from its ability to focus on a strategically chosen subset of categories on the one hand, and a subset of new data on the other. Given a query, CS* finds the top-K categories with high accuracy even in time-constrained situations.Bio:
Manish Bhide is a Research Staff Member at IBM Research - India. He joined IBM Research in 2002 after finishing his masters from IIT Bombay. He is currently pursuing a part time PhD from IIT Bombay (expected completion Dec-2010 ). His research interests are primarily in the area of Information management. At IBM Research he has worked on areas such as XML, policy based data management information management issues in cloud computing, etc.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium; The Oceans in a Warming Climate
Fri, Mar 05, 2010 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Josh Willis, Ph.D., Oceanographer from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will present "The Oceans in a Warming Climate" as part of the W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program.
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: Viterbi Admissions & Student Affairs
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Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Mar 05, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Namsoo Kim, QualcommTopic: SAW-less Receiver Design Techniques for Wireless Communications
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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Embedded Algorithms within an FPGA-based Design ...
Fri, Mar 05, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
...to Classify Types of Nonlinear SDOF SystemsSpeakers: Jonathan D. Jones & Jin-Song Pei, University of OklahomaAbstract:
This study investigates the use of a Field-Programmable Gate Array (an FPGA) as a primary processing core for complex nonlinear system identification within a wireless structural health monitoring system. Compared with traditional microprocessor-based systems, FPGA technology offers a more powerful, efficient, and flexible embedded platform. Depending on the application, a more robust and optimized processing core can be created when an FPGA and a microprocessor are used together. This situation requires careful consideration of the algorithms to be embedded and the environments in which they are implemented to yield optimal systems for wireless structural health monitoring where capable yet low-cost products are often preferred.
A series of efforts are made to embed a pattern classifier for three basic types of single-degree-of-freedom systems, i.e., linear, hardening and softening. The classification is achieved by embedding two algorithms – empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and backbone curve technique – within an FPGA and microprocessor platform. An off-the-shelf high-level abstraction tool along with the MATLAB/Simulink environment is utilized to manage the overall design. Numerous design considerations to embed the EMD and backbone curve technique are presented. In particular, the implementation of cubic spline fitting and the encountered challenges using both FPGA hardware and software environments are discussed. Additionally, the backbone curve technique and its complete realization within the FPGA hardware to extract instantaneous characteristics from the uniformly distributed data sets produced by the EMD algorithm are presented.
Given the limited computational resources within a practical embedded system, we strive for a balance between the maximization of computational efficiency and minimization of resource utilization. The beauty of this study lies far beyond merely programming existing algorithms to hardware and software. Among others, extensive and intensive judgment is exercised involving experiences and insights with these algorithms, which renders processed instantaneous characteristics of the signals that are well-suited for wireless transmission.BIOSKETCHES OF SPEAKERS:Mr. Jonathan D. Jones received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, in 2005 and 2009, respectively. He is employed by the United States Air Force at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Tinker Air Force Base, OK, as a civilian Electronics Engineer. His research interests include field-programmable gate array (FPGA) programming, embedded systems, phased-array radar applications, and nonlinear dynamical systems. Dr. Jin-Song Pei received her B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees in Structural Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University, New York, NY. She is an Associate Professor at the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science and a graduate faculty member at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering both at the University of Oklahoma. She was an assistant engineer at the Real Estate Division of Construction & Development Corporation, Xiaman, China, worked as an engineer at Indeco Consultants, Singapore and also practiced at Weidlinger Associates, Inc., Cambridge, MA before joining the faculty at the University of Oklahoma in 2002. Her main research interests are system identification, simulation and control of nonlinear dynamical systems.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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BME 533 Seminar
Mon, Mar 08, 2010 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Andrea Armani, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, Mork Family Department, USC:"Label-free optical sensors for biomedical applications"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate//Department Only
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Saving the world, one server at a time!
Tue, Mar 09, 2010 @ 10:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Parthasarathy Ranganathan
Hewlett Packard CorporationAbstract:
Power and energy management, and more recently, sustainability are emerging to be critical challenges for future IT systems. While there has been a lot of prior work in this space, a lot more needs to be done. In this talk, I will discuss the challenges and opportunities in rethinking how we study and reason about energy efficiency for future systems. Specifically, I will talk about how confluence of emerging technology and industry trends offer exciting opportunities to systematically rethink the "systems stack" for the next orders of magnitude improvements in energy efficiency.Bio:
Partha Ranganathan is currently a distinguished technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs. His research interests are in systems architecture and manageability, energy-efficiency, and systems modeling and evaluation. He is currently the principal investigator for the exascale datacenter project at HP Labs that seeks to design next-generation servers and datacenters and their management. He was a primary developer of the publicly distributed Rice Simulator for ILP Multiprocessors (RSIM). Partha received his B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Rice University, Houston. Partha's work has been featured in various venues including the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, San Francisco Chronicle, Times of India, slashdot, youtube, and Tom's hardware guide. Partha has also been named one of the world's top young innovators by MIT Technology Review, and is a recipient of Rice University's Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni award.Hosted by Prof. Murali AnnavaramLocation: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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CS Colloq: Eftychios Sifakis
Tue, Mar 09, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Digital doubles and the synergistic role of scientific computing, biomechanics and computer animationSpeaker: Eftychios Sifakis (University of California Los Angeles – Walt Disney Animation Studios)Host: Prof. Gerard MedioniAbstract:
Digital doubles have not only evolved into prevalent elements of motion pictures and games, but are also finding an ever growing application base including medical diagnostics, surgical planning and design of vehicles and crafts. At the same time, current and developing applications demand improved photorealism, enhanced biomechanical accuracy, better subject-specificity and faster simulation algorithms. As these demands often outgrow the evolution of computer hardware, new algorithms for biomechanical modeling and simulation are necessary to ensure that upcoming computational platforms are utilized to the best of their capacity. Additionally, biomechanical simulation has provided a great opportunity for transformative advances in medical practice using virtual models of the human body for disease prevention and treatment. These emerging applications mandate an increased level of attention to the unique demands of subject-specificity and anatomical accuracy for clinical uses of biomechanical modeling and simulation. This talk will outline a number of techniques that were designed to facilitate modeling and simulation of digital doubles with high fidelity and efficiency. Finally, I will discuss the cross-cutting impact of such advances on character animation, scientific computing and virtual surgery. Bio:
Eftychios Sifakis is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California Los Angeles (with a joint appointment in Mathematics and Computer Science). He completed B.Sc. degrees in Computer Science (2000) and Mathematics (2002) from the University of Crete, Greece, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science (2007) from Stanford University. His research focuses on scientific computing, physics based modeling and computer graphics. He is particularly interested in biomechanical modeling for applications such as character animation, medical simulations and virtual surgical environments. Eftychios is a research consultant with Walt Disney Animation Studios, and has previously held consulting positions at Intel Corporation and SimQuest LLC.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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Security in Large Wireless Networks
Wed, Mar 10, 2010 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dennis Goeckel,
Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Massachusetts - AmherstAbstract: Recently, there has been significant interest in providing secure communication in wireless networks. Here we consider the challenge of providing information theoretic secrecy in the presence of eavesdroppers, and, in contrast to prior work, focus in particular on the difficulty that arises due to a lack of knowledge of the eavesdropper location. To combat the resulting "near eavesdropper" problem, we employ cooperative jamming to confuse the eavesdropper and multi-user diversity to find relays that receive the packet in the presence of such jamming. For an environment with a single source and destination, along with N system nodes, we consider the number of eavesdroppers that can be tolerated for both the case when eavesdroppers do potentially have a significant geographical advantage over the receiver, and when they do not. Next, we consider multipair unicast transmission in large networks with n source-destination pairs and demonstrate an achievable tradeoff between the per-session througput of the system and the tolerable intensity of eavesdroppers.Biography: Dennis Goeckel split time between Purdue University and Sundstrand Corporation from 1987-1992, receiving his BSEE from Purdue in 1992. From 1992-1996, he was at the University of Michigan, where he received his MSEE in 1993 and his Ph.D. in 1996, both in Electrical Engineering with a specialty in Communication Systems. In September 1996, he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Massachusetts, where he is currently a Professor. His current research interests are in the areas of communication systems and wireless network theory.Host: Keith Chugg, chugg@usc.edu, EEB 500A, 213-740-7294.Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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CS Colloq: Eng. Research Japan
Wed, Mar 10, 2010 @ 01:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Special Mini Symposium on Osaka University International Programs --Research Experience in Japan from Science to Technology--========================================1:30pm : Free Snacks (Pizza, Beverages)2-3:00pm:Cognitive Developmental Robotics as a bridge between
neuroscience and developmental psychology
Prof. Dr. Minoru ASADA, Eng.Intelligent Robotics at Osaka University
Assoc. Prof.Dr. Yasushi MAE, System Eng. Sci.Biomechanical Modeling in Physiome:Integration of
Multiscale Mechanics from Cell to Organ
Prof. Dr. Shigeo WADA, Mech. Eng. Sci.3-3:15pm: Coffee Break3:15pm-4:15pm:Bio-inspired Network Technologies for New Generation Networks
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Naoki WAKAMIYA, Information Sci.Astrophysics
Prof. Dr. Hideaki TAKABE, Laser Inst.Support for International Students and Scholars
Prof. Dr. J. J. CASTRO, and Ms. K. MATSUMURA, Int'l Student CenterMembrane Stress Biotechnology
Prof. Dr. Ryoichi KUBOI, Eng. Sci.Host: Stefan Schaal (sschaal@usc.edu)
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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Xampling -- Analog-to-digital at Sub-Nyquist rates
Wed, Mar 10, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yonina Eldar,
Electrical Engineering,
Technion, IsraelAbstract: CSignal processing methods have changed substantially over the last several decades. The number of operations that are shifted from analog to digital is constantly increasing. While technology advances enable mass processing of huge data streams, the acquisition capabilities do not scale sufficiently fast so that the conversion to digital has become a serious bottleneck. For some applications, the maximal frequency of the input signals, which dictates the Nyquist rate, already exceeds the possible rates achievable with existing devices.In this talk, we present a new framework for sampling wideband analog signals at rates far below that dictated by the Nyquist rate. We refer to this methodology as Xampling: A combination of compression and sampling, performed simultaneously. Xampling merges results from standard sampling theory with recent developments in the field of compressed sensing in order to directly sample a wide class of analog signals at very low rates using existing hardware devices. This paradigm relies on exploiting structure inherent to many different classes of signals, which can be modeled mathematically as a union of subspaces.We begin by introducing the Xampling methodology and explaining why both sampling and compressed sensing alone are insufficient to address low rate sampling of a wide variety of analog signals. We then consider some specific examples including low rate sampling of multiband signals and recovery of time delays from low rate samples.Biography: Yonina C. Eldar received the B.Sc. degree in Physics in 1995 and the B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1996 both from Tel-Aviv University (TAU), Tel-Aviv, Israel, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2001 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge. From January 2002 to July 2002 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Digital Signal Processing Group at MIT. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. She is also a Research Affiliate with the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Dr. Eldar was in the program for outstanding students at TAU from 1992 to 1996. In 1998, she held the Rosenblith Fellowship for study in Electrical Engineering at MIT, and in 2000, she held an IBM Research Fellowship. From 2002-2005 she was a Horev Fellow of the Leaders in Science and Technology program at the Technion and an Alon Fellow. In 2004, she was awarded the Wolf Foundation Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research, in 2005 the Andre and Bella Meyer Lectureship, in 2007 the Henry Taub Prize for Excellence in Research, in 2008 the Hershel Rich Innovation Award, the Award for Women with Distinguished Contributions, the Muriel & David Jacknow Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Technion Outstanding Lecture Award, and in 2009 the Technion's Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Theory and Methods technical committee and the Bio Imaging Signal Processing technical committee, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, the EURASIP Journal of Signal Processing, the SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, and the SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences, and on the Editorial Board of Foundations and Trends in Signal Processing.Host: Prof. Alex Dimakis, dimakis@usc.eduLocation: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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New Synthesis and Sintering Methods in Materials Research
Wed, Mar 10, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Olivia A. Graeve Associate Professor Kazuo Inamori School of Engineering Alfred University2 Pine Street Alfred, NY 14802 ABSTRACT:This talk will present an overview of leading precipitation processes for the synthesis of nanostructured ceramic and metallic powders, with special emphasis placed on reverse micelle synthesis for the preparation of oxides and combustion synthesis for the preparation of borides. Specific examples will include the preparation of yttria-doped zirconia (Y-ZrO2) and lanthanum hexaboride (LaB6). The talk will also describe advanced sintering techniques for nanostructured materials. For the case of Y-ZrO2, the thermal stability of the synthesized particles will be described. Transmission electron microscopy and Williamson-Hall analysis from x-ray diffraction have shown that the crystallite size ranges from 5-50 nm. A detailed study on the level of agglomeration and the particle size of the nanopowders will be described and corroborated using dynamic light scattering. Reaction parameters such as precursor concentration, aging time, and water-to-surfactant ratio were varied to optimize the synthesis process. Some of the powders were subsequently sintered using spark plasma sintering (SPS). Dense compacts of >98% density were obtained in 20 minutes. The feasibility of preparing nanocrystalline LaB6 powders via a controlled combustion synthesis process will also be presented. These powders are extraordinarily strong electron emitters with applications in micro- and nano-satellite propulsions systems, where they can serve as substitutes for chemical propellants, such that the electrons being emitted by the material are the source of propulsion. The synthesis reaction for the preparation of the powders is described below. During this process, controlled amounts of lanthanum nitrate (oxidizer) and boron were reacted with carbohydrazide (fuel) in a muffle furnace at 320°C. As the reactants were heated, the oxidizer and fuel reacted to form a fine violet powder that contains both nanocrystalline LaB6 and unreacted boron. After synthesis, the unreacted boron was removed from the powders using a controlled acid wash. The resulting phase-pure and faceted LaB6 powders were then characterized using x-ray diffraction for phase purity and crystallite size, and scanning electron microscopy for particle morphology.
Location: Seaver Science Library, SSL Room 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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What Have We Learned Lately about Prospects for Carbon Dioxide Sequestration in Deep Geological Form
Thu, Mar 11, 2010 @ 12:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Lyman Handy Colloquium SeriesPresentsSally BensonStanford UniversityAbstract:In little more than a decade, carbon dioxide (CO2) capture from point source emissions and sequestration in deep geological formations has emerged as one of the most important options for reducing CO2 emissions. Two major challenges stand in the way of realizing this potential: the high cost of capturing CO2 and gaining confidence in the capacity, safety, and permanence of sequestration in deep geological formations. Building on examples from laboratory and field based studies of multiphase flow of CO2 in porous rocks; this talk addresses the current prospects for carbon dioxide sequestration. Which formations can provide safe and secure sequestration? At what scale will this be practical and is this scale sufficient to significantly reduce emissions? What monitoring methods can be used to provide assurance that CO2 remains trapped underground? What can be done if a leak develops? What are the potential impacts to groundwater resources and how can these be avoided? The status of each these questions will be discussed, along with emerging research questions.
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Photonics Seminar: Resonant single sideband modulators
Thu, Mar 11, 2010 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Andrey Matsko, OEwaves Inc.Abstract: Optical modulators up-convert RF signals to the optical domain and are key components in all microwave photonics applications. Modulators that have a very large bandwidth are naturally desired in wideband applications. This is generally obtained at the expense of lower power efficiency. Unlike standard wideband lithium niobate and electro-absorption varieties, modulators in narrowband microwave photonics feature extremely high efficiency. The high efficiency is obtained with resonance coupling to RF electrodes and/or the use of optical resonance devices. This approach leads to filtering, in addition to light modulation, which is desirable in virtually all narrowband applications. Here we present a new class of modulators with the unique feature of providing a narrow modulation bandwidth over a very wide RF frequency range. This feature opens up new and compelling applications such as widely tunable microwave photonic receivers as well as tunable opto-electronic oscillators.Bio: Dr. Andrey Matsko is an internationally recognized expert in theory of whispering gallery mode micro-resonators as well as quantum and nonlinear optics. He has over 100 journal publications in the fields and holds 12 US patents. He is a Principal Engineer at OEwaves Inc., where he is involved in studies of properties and applications of whispering gallery modes in dielectric optical resonators. Previously, being employed as a principal member of technical staff at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), he has initiated, participated, and led theoretical investigations of RF photonic receivers, miniature electro-optical modulators, opto-electronic oscillators, and tunable narrowband filters. He has studied and developed theoretical models based on which novel types of whispering gallery mode resonators with novel functionalities have been produced. He has investigated and developed models for noise and stability parameters of novel oscillators based on linear and nonlinear properties of whispering gallery mode resonators. He received 2005 JPL's Lew Allen Award for Excellence ("For seminal and unique theoretical contributions in quantum optics, in particular, the nonlinear interactions of optical crystalline whispering gallery mode resonators, leading to the establishment of this new area of research at JPL") and a NASA Space Act Award in recognition of contributions to the National Space Program and to the mission of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jing Ma
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Long-Term Context Modeling for Acoustic- Linguistic Emotion Recognition
Thu, Mar 11, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract:
The automatic estimation of human affect from the speech signal is an important step towards making virtual agents more natural and human-like. Thus, we present a novel technique for incremental recognition of the
user's emotional state as it is applied in a Sensitive Artificial Listener (SAL) system, designed for socially competent human-machine communication. Our method is capable of using acoustic, linguistic, as well as long-range contextual information in order to continuously predict the current quadrant in a two-dimensional emotional space spanned by the dimensions valence and activation. The main system components are a hierarchical Dynamic Bayesian Network for detecting linguistic keyword features and Long Short-Term Memory recurrent neural networks which model phoneme context and emotional history to predict the affective state of the user. We evaluate various keyword spotting model architectures for linguistic feature generation as well as different strategies for extracting relevant acoustic features from the speech signal. Conducting experiments on the SAL corpus of non-prototypical real-life emotional speech, we obtain a quadrant prediction accuracy that is comparable to the average inter-labeler consistency.
Bio:
Martin Wöllmer works as a researcher funded by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme project SEMAINE at the Technische Universität München (TUM). He obtained his bachelor degree and his
diploma in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from TUM for his works in the field of multimodal data fusion and robust automatic speech recognition, respectively. His current research and teaching activity includes the subject areas of pattern recognition and speech processing. Thereby his focus lies on robust keyword detection in emotionally colored and noisy speech, emotion recognition, and speech feature enhancement. Publications of his in various journals, books, and conference proceedings cover novel and robust modeling architectures for speech and emotion recognition such as Switching Linear Dynamic Models, Long Short-Term Memory recurrent neural nets, or Graphical Models.Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 320
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mary Francis
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Validation of TES Ozone Satellite Data: ....
Thu, Mar 11, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
...Implications for regional air qualitymodeling and weather forecasting Speaker: Dr. Christopher Boxe, Research Scientist, JPL Pasadena, CA Absract: The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) is one of four science instruments onboard NASA's Aura satellite. Aura is one of a series of satellites in NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS), which supports understanding of the Earth as an integrated system by observing its land surfaces, biosphere, atmosphere and oceans. EOS, in turn, is the principal element of Earth Science Enterprise, an international effort to understand Earth's climate system. TES versions 3 and 4 nadir-stare ozone profiles are compared with ozonesonde profiles from the Arctic Intensive Ozonesonde Network Study (ARCIONS) during the Arctic Research on the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) field mission. The ozonesonde data are from launches timed to match Aura's overpass, where 11 coincidences spanned 44o N to 71o N from April to July, 2008. Using the TES "stare" observation mode, 32 observations are taken in a distance less than ~ 1 km, over each coincident ozonesonde launch. By effectively sampling the same air mass 32 times, comparisons are made between the empiricallycalculated random errors to the expected random errors from measurement noise, temperature, and interfering species, such as water. This study represents the first validation of high latitude (> 60o) TES ozone. We find that the calculated errors are consistent with the actual errors with a similar vertical distribution that varies between 5% and 20%. In general, TES ozone profiles are positively biased (by less than 15%) from the surface to the upper-troposphere (~ 1000 to 100 hPa) and negatively biased (by less than 20%) from the upper-troposphere to the lower-stratosphere (100 to 30 hPa) when compared to the ozone-sonde data. The implications of this study are discussed within the context of modeling and forecasting with the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with coupled chemistry (WRF-Chem).
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209 (Webex is available upon request)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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CS Colloq: Kamalika Chaudhuri
Thu, Mar 11, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Statistical Algorithms for Modern Datasets
Speaker: Kamalika Chaudhuri
Host: Prof. Gaurav SukhatmeAbstract:
In this talk, we address two issues that arise in learning in modern datasets. First, with the increase in electronic record-keeping, many datasets that learning algorithms work with relate to sensitive information about individuals. Thus the problem of privacy-preserving learning -- how to design learning algorithms that operate on the sensitive data of individuals while still guaranteeing the privacy of individuals in the training set -- has achieved great practical importance. In this talk, we address the problem of privacy-preserving classification, and we present an efficient classifier which is private in the differential privacy model of Dwork et al. Our classifier works in the ERM (empirical lossminimization) framework, and includes privacy preserving logistic regression and privacy preserving support vector machines. We show that our classifier is private, provide analytical bounds on the sample requirement of our classifier, and evaluate it on some real data. A second characteristic of modern datasets is that data is often available from multiple domains or views. For example, when clustering a document corpus such as Wikipedia, we have access to the contents of the documents and their link structure. In this talk, we address this problem of Multiview Clustering -- how to use information from multiple views to improve clustering performance. We present an algorithm for multiview clustering, provide analytical bounds on the performance of our algorithm under certain statistical assumptions, and finally evaluate our algorithm on some real data.Based on joint work with Sham Kakade (UPenn), Karen Livescu (TTI Chicago), Claire Monteleoni (CCLS Columbia), Anand Sarwate (ITA UCSD), and Karthik Sridharan (TTI Chicago).Bio:
Kamalika Chaudhuri received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science and Engineering in 2002 from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 2007. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UCSD. Kamalika's research is on the design and analysis of machine-learning algorithms and their applications. In particular, her interests lie in -- clustering, online learning, and privacy-preserving machine-learning, and the applications of machine-learning and algorithms to practical problems in other areas.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium; Parametric Practices - Models for Design Exploration...
Fri, Mar 12, 2010 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Prof. David J. Gerber of the USC School of Architecture will present "Parametric Practices - Models for Design Exploration in Architecture and Urbanism" as part of the W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program.
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: Viterbi Admissions & Student Affairs
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REGENERATION OF USED PETROLEUM-BASED LUBRICANTS AND ....
Fri, Mar 12, 2010 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
...BIOLUBRICANTS BY A NOVEL GREEN AND SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGYBy: Willian Fan, Ph.D. Candidate in Environmental EngineeringCommittee Chair, Professor Massoud PirbazariAbstract:Lubricants, either mineral-based or synthetic made, are the products derived from petroleum and developed through tribological research. Lubricants are also the essential elements for almost all modern industries.However, lubricants require change after long service because the various impurities generated from the operation may degrade the efficiency of lubricants and significantly contaminate lubricants.Many studies have confirmed that used petroleum-based lubricants collected from oil-exchange are slow in degradation and highly toxic to human health, fauna, and flora. However, hydrocarbon compounds in used lubricants can be regenerated into either lubricant base materials or an energy source. The regeneration of used lubricants has enormous benefits, including minimizing hazards, reducing waste, protecting the environment, and conserving enegy resources.The potential of the newly developed binary solvent process in used lubricants regeneration is discussed and reviewed. The binary solvent process has been demonstrated to be a promising green technology capable of removing up to 93% of impurities while recovering up to 99 % of hydrocarbon compounds from various types of used lubricants under atmospheric pressure and at a relatively low temperature. The Cold-Stage Energy Conversion (CSEC) system is built based on the concept of the binary solvent process and capable of regenerating used lubricants in a continuous-flow fashion at relatively low temperature and pressure.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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SPRING BREAK: NO BME 533 SEMINAR
Mon, Mar 15, 2010 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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CS Colloq: Dr. Yaniv Altshuler
Tue, Mar 16, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Collaborative Search of Expanding Grid DomainsSpeaker: Dr. Yaniv AltshulerHost: Prof. Sven KoenigAbstract:In nature, "simple minded" animals such as ants, bees or birds cooperate to achieve common goals and exhibit amazing feats of collaborative work. It seems that these creatures are "programmed" to interact locally in such a way that the desired global behavior is likely to emerge even if some individuals of the colony die or fail to carry out their task for other reasons.
A similar approach may be considered for coordinating a group of agents without a central supervisor, using only local interactions between the agents. Such agents can be either physical (e.g. robots) or virtual. When this decentralized approach is used, much of the communication overhead (typical of centralized systems) is saved, the resources required by the agents can be fairly limited, and better modularity is achieved. A properly designed system should be readily scalable, achieving reliability through redundancy.
In this talk I will discuss a set of analytic results concerning groups of simple and limited agents that are required to collaboratively and efficiently cover dynamic or expanding domainsBio: Dr. Yaniv Altshuler had received his PhD in Computer Science from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. For the past year, Dr. Altshuler has been a post-doc researcher at the Deutsche Telekom Lab in Ben Gurion university, at which he investigated the field of collaborative security.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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Nanostructured Fly Paper for Enrichment of Circulating Tumor Cells
Fri, Mar 19, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Over the past decade, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has become an emerging "biomarker" for detecting early-stage cancer metastasis, predicting patient prognosis, as well as monitoring disease progression and therapeutic outcomes. However, isolation of CTCs has been technically challenging due to the extremely low abundance (a few to hundreds per ml) of CTCs among a high number of hematologic cells (109 per mL) in the blood. Our joint research team at UCLA has developed a new cell capture technology for quantification of CTCs in whole blood samples. Similar to most of the existing approaches, epithelial cell adhesion molecule antibody (anti-EpCAM) was grafted onto the surfaces to distinguish CTCs from the surrounding hematologic cells. The uniqueness of our technology is the use of nanostructured surfaces, which facilitates local topographical interactions between CTCs and substrates at the very first cell/substrate contacting time point. We demonstrated the ability of these nanostructured substrates to capture CTCs in whole blood samples with significantly improved efficiency and selectivity. The successful demonstration of this cell capture technology using brain, breast and prostate cancer cell lines encouraged us to test this approach in clinical setting. We have been able to bond our first validation study with a commercialized technology based on the use of immunomagnetic beads (i.e., CellSearchTM Assay). A group of clinically well-characterized prostate cancer patients at UCLA hospital have been recruited and tested in parallel by these two technologies.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Beeta Benjy
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Nanostructured Fly Paper for Enrichment of Circulating Tumor Cells
Fri, Mar 19, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Over the past decade, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has become an emerging "biomarker" for detecting early-stage cancer metastasis, predicting patient prognosis, as well as monitoring disease progression and therapeutic outcomes. However, isolation of CTCs has been technically challenging due to the extremely low abundance (a few to hundreds per ml) of CTCs among a high number of hematologic cells (109 per mL) in the blood. Our joint research team at UCLA has developed a new cell capture technology for quantification of CTCs in whole blood samples. Similar to most of the existing approaches, epithelial cell adhesion molecule antibody (anti-EpCAM) was grafted onto the surfaces to distinguish CTCs from the surrounding hematologic cells. The uniqueness of our technology is the use of nanostructured surfaces, which facilitates local topographical interactions between CTCs and substrates at the very first cell/substrate contacting time point. We demonstrated the ability of these nanostructured substrates to capture CTCs in whole blood samples with significantly improved efficiency and selectivity. The successful demonstration of this cell capture technology using brain, breast and prostate cancer cell lines encouraged us to test this approach in clinical setting. We have been able to bond our first validation study with a commercialized technology based on the use of immunomagnetic beads (i.e., CellSearchTM Assay). A group of clinically well-characterized prostate cancer patients at UCLA hospital have been recruited and tested in parallel by these two technologies.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Beeta Benjy
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A Process Variation Perspective on 3D Integration
Mon, Mar 22, 2010 @ 10:45 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Siddharth Garg,
Carnegie-Mellon UniversityAbstract:
3D integration is a promising emerging technology that offers increased system integration by vertically integrating multiple planar die. In addition, 3D integration provides lower communication latency and greater bandwidth between system components, potentially addressing the increased on-chip communication costs that accompany technology scaling. However, emerging technologies must also be critically evaluated to identify potential pitfalls. From this perspective, the elevated thermal profile of 3D integrated circuits (ICs) has already been identified as a cause for concern. In this talk, I will demonstrate that the impact of manufacturing process variations on the performance of 3D circuits is another emerging cause for concern and discuss promising solutions to this problem.I will begin by presenting 3D-GCP, a high-level model for the impact of process variations on 3D IC performance. Using this model I will show that, in fact, 3D ICs suffer greater performance degradation under the impact of process variations compared to equivalent 2D implementations.
Furthermore, the performance hit is more severe as the number of layers in the 3D stack is increased, potentially eliminating any of performance benefits of 3D integration. Motivated by these predictions, I will present a novel process variation aware 3D assembly strategy that uses post-fabrication test data to maximize the number of assembled systems that meet a specified performance target. Experimental results on both application-specific and general purpose multi-core platforms demonstrate that significant performance yield improvements are achieved using the proposed techniques.Biography:
Siddharth Garg is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Carnegie-Mellon University. He received in a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering also from CMU, a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT) Madras. In the summer of 2007, he interned at the AMD micro-architecture power and performance modeling group.
His research interests include design methodologies and tools for reliability and energy-aware multi-processor architectures and 3D integration technology. He has won a best paper at the ISQED
2009 and the SRC TECHCON 2009, and a best paper award nomination at DATE 2009.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Challenge to Seeing Atomic Structures of Nano-materials with Electron Microscopy
Mon, Mar 22, 2010 @ 11:00 AM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Challenge to Seeing Atomic Structures of Nano-materials with Electron MicroscopyProfessor Sumio Iijima
Meijo University
Nagoya, Japan Abstract
Nanoscience deals with nano-scale structures of materials and therefore controlling the structures is crucial. A typical example of nanostructures is carbon nanotubes and their many unique properties have been investigated theoretically and experimentally, and brought a new concept of materials into condensed matter physics. More importantly, nanoscience is closely related to nanotechnology and thus to industrial applications as we see in many fields of carbon nanotube research. An important issue for nanoscience is characterization of materials. In the case of carbon nanotubes their exact atomic structures are determined by means of electron microscopy, Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopy, etc., where sometimes commercially available instruments are not sufficient and need substantial modification for each particular purpose, where “do it yourselfâ€Â becomes important. We demonstrate some latest results on structural characterization of carbon nanotubes, graphene, and boron nitride thin films, including “monatomic carbon strings that have been successfully observed in our laboratory. BiographySumio Iijima is a Professor at Meijo University, a Director of the Nano-tube Research Center at AIST and a Senior Research Fellow at NEC, in Japan. After graduating from Tohoku University, he joined Arizona State University where he developed high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) (1970-1982). In 1982 he returned to Japan and joined the NEC Research Laboratories in 1987. In 1991 he discovered carbon nanotubes that have initiated nano-material science and nanotechnology. Professor Iijima has received numerous honors and awards from Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. He is a foreign associate of the National Academy of Science (USA).Time and Location
Monday, March 22, 2010Seminar at 11:00 a.m.
Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) Auditorium
A reception will follow in the HEDCO Foundation Building (HED) lobby.Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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BME 533 Seminar
Mon, Mar 22, 2010 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Reza Motaghian, Ph.D., Research Faculty/Senior Research Fellow, California Institute of Technology: "Clinical applications of swept laser source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT)"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate//Department Only
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Annual Research Review
Tue, Mar 23, 2010 @ 08:00 AM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
http://www.cs.usc.edu/researchreview2010/The review is an all-day event that showcases current research in the Computer Science department at USC. It will feature short research talks and posters by USC Computer Science faculty, postdocs, and PhD students.
Location: Davidson Conference Center (DCC)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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Electrospray and Its Applications
Wed, Mar 24, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Daren Chen Associate Professor Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO 63130 ABSTRACT:Electrospray technique (i.e., electrohydrodynamic atomization), has been proposed for many modern applications. Examples of the applications include the surface coating, agricultural treatments, emulsion, fuel spraying, micro-or nano- encapsulation, ink-jet printers, colloid micro-thrusters, electrospray mass spectrometry (ES MS) for macromolecular detection in biochemical applications, monodisperse super micro-and nono- particle generation, enhancement of droplet mixing, targeted drug delivery by inhalation, power production, and electrospray gene transfection. Among all the operational modes involved in electrospray process the cone-jet mode has been investigated and applied for the majority of above-described applications. It is because of its capability to produce un-agglomerated, monodisperse particles in the sub-micrometer and nanometer diameter ranges. Among different setups, single-capillary electrospray systems were often used in various applications. However, limitation of single-capillary electrospray is encountered in modern electrospray applications, especially in the biomedical and pharmaceutical areas. Dual-capillary electrospray (ES) technique was thus proposed to overcome the limit of a single-capillary electrospray system, thereby broadening the applications of electrospray technique. In this presentation we will first review the electrospray history and its fundamental principles, then present its modern applications in biomedical and pharmaceutical areas.
Location: Seaver Science Library SSL, Room 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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Taming the Scale and Costs of (Really) Large Distributed Systems
Wed, Mar 24, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Taming the Scale and Costs of (Really) Large Distributed SystemsSpeaker: Dr. Harsha V. MadhyasthaHost: Prof. Ramesh GovindanAbstract: Over the last decade, the penetration of broadband Internet access and the commoditization of server hardware have dramatically increased. These trends have resulted in planetary-scale distributed applications that span millions of end-hosts and data centers that house hundreds of thousands of servers. Such large scales make it hard to build and deploy applications. In this talk, I will present simple models of these complex environments that help significantly improve the performance and cost-effectiveness of application deployments.First, I will present iPlane, an information plane designed to serve as the source of path information for all applications on the Internet. iPlane continually measures the Internet from several hundred geographically distributed vantage points to maintain an up-to-date map of the Internet's structure. By applying a structural model of the Internet on the data it gathers, iPlane can accurately predict properties such as latency, loss rate, and bandwidth along the path between arbitrary end-hosts in the Internet thus eliminating the need for measurement by any application. Over 3.5 years of deployment, iPlane has been used at more than 40 institutions, including to improve Google's content distribution network.Second, I will talk about BICMIC, a model that automates the process of determining the cluster configuration best suited to any particular data center application. BICMIC combines abstract representations of the application being deployed and the resources that can be used to construct the cluster to identify how various cluster configuration decisions should be combined to make the deployment cost-effective. Examples of configuration decisions include under-utilization of storage devices, caching of data in SSDs or DRAM, use of low-power CPUs, and separation of storage and compute into separate server farms. Bio: Harsha V. Madhyastha is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California San Diego. He previously received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from theUniversity of Washington and his B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, all in Computer Science and Engineering. He has been a
recipient of the Best Paper Award at the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference. His research interests span all aspects of distributed and networked systems.
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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Engineering Protein Fitness Using Cellular Quality Control Mechanisms
Thu, Mar 25, 2010
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Distinguished Lecture SeriesPresentsMatthew DeLisaUniversity of CornellAbstract:TBA
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Architectural Inference and the Pursuit of Efficiency
Thu, Mar 25, 2010 @ 09:45 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Benjamin Lee,
Stanford UniversityAbstract:
Energy efficiency is a defining challenge in modern computing. Limits in technology scaling pose challenges in power density while limits in software parallelism raise questions about future multi-core integration. Without process and parallelism to drive efficiency, we must rely on specialization and design coordination across the hardware/software interface. However, specialization is prohibitively expensive, incurring high non-recurring engineering costs that arise from an intractable number of degrees of freedom. I present the case for architectural inference to provide tractability for complex design questions in computer architecture. Inference enables comprehensive solutions to long-standing and previously intractable design priorities in heterogeneous specialization, application/architecture co-design, and architecture/circuit co-design. I also describe strategies for leveraging efficient components in cloud computing systems. In particular, I discuss experiences from deploying the Microsoft Bing search engine on mobile processors for energy efficiency. I also note the price of efficiency, which is exacted from application robustness and flexibility, and the implications for future system design. Biography:
Benjamin Lee is an NSF Computing Innovation Fellow in Electrical Engineering and a member of the VLSI Research Group at Stanford University. His research focuses on scalable technologies, power-efficient architectures, and high-performance applications. He is also interested in economics and policy for sustainable IT infrastructure. Dr. Lee has co-authored more than twenty papers in these areas, earning six nominations/awards such as the Harvard nomination for the ACM doctoral dissertation award, an IEEE Micro Top Pick, and a Communications of the ACM highlight. He has held visiting positions at Microsoft Research, Intel Labs, and Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Dr. Lee received his B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley and his S.M., Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Photonics Seminar (Student Talk)
Thu, Mar 25, 2010 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Large tuning of birefringence in two strip silicon waveguidesvia optomechanical motion Jing Ma An optomechanical method is presented to tune phase birefringence in parallel silicon strip waveguides. We first calculate the deformation of suspended, parallel strip waveguides due to optical forces. We optimize the frequency and polarization of the pump light to obtain a 9nm deformation for an optical power of 20mW. Widely tunable phase birefringence can be achieved by varying the pump power, with maximum values of 0.026. The giant phase birefringence allows linear to circular polarization conversion within 30µm for a pump power of 67mW. In-Plane Thermally Tuned Silicon-on-Insulator Wavelength Selective ReflectorLawrence StewartThe transparency of silicon at communications wavelengths makes it an ideal choice for low loss optical devices; however, silicon suffers from few and comparatively weak tuning methods. Free carrier injection or depletion are widely used and are suitable for high speed modulators, but these devices are ultimately limited by free carrier induced absorption effects. While a much slower process, thermal tuning allows for large refractive index changes with minimal changes in optical absorption. A thermally tunable silicon-on-insulator wavelength selective reflector is proposed for an application as a mirror in an integrated tunable laser. Simulations and recent experimental results of thermally tuned microring devices will be presented.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jing Ma
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CS Colloq: Bryan Parno
Thu, Mar 25, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Secure Code Execution on General-Purpose Computers
Speaker: Bryan Parno
Host: Prof. Ramesh GovindanAbstract:
As businesses and individuals entrust more and more sensitive tasks (e.g., paying bills, shopping online, or accessing medical records) to computers, it becomes increasingly important to ensure this trust is warranted. However, users are understandably reluctant to abandon the low cost, high performance, and flexibility of today's general-purpose computers. Thus, one of the fundamental questions I consider is: How can secure code execution coexist with the untrustworthy mountain of buggy yet feature-rich software that is common on modern computers?
For example, how can we keep a user's keystrokes private if the operating system, the most privileged software on the computer, cannot be trusted to be free of vulnerabilities? This is made all the more difficult by the need to preserve the system's existing functionality and performance.In this talk, I will present two techniques I have developed to address the need for features and security. With the Flicker architecture, I showed that that these conflicting needs can both be satisfied by constructing an on-demand secure execution environment, using a combination of software techniques and recent commodity CPU enhancements. This provides a solid foundation for constructing secure systems that must coexist with standard software; the developer of a security-sensitive code module need only trust her own code, plus as few as 250 lines of Flicker code, for the secrecy and integrity of her code's execution.Flicker assumes that a small portion of the computer's hardware can be trusted, but an increasing number of computing tasks are outsourced to the "cloud", where the user has no such guarantees. To formalize this setting, I introduced the notion of verifiable computing and designed a protocol to provably and efficiently provide computational integrity for work done by an untrusted party. The protocol also provides provable secrecy for the inputs and outputs of the computation. In addition, my protocol provides asymptotically optimal performance (amortized over multiple inputs). This result shows that we can outsource arbitrary computations to untrusted workers, preserve the secrecy of the data, and efficiently verify that the computations were done correctly.Bio:
Bryan Parno is a PhD candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering
(ECE) at Carnegie Mellon University. He earned his Masters in ECE at Carnegie Mellon University, and his Bachelors in Computer Science at Harvard University. His current work focuses on the foundations of trust on modern computers. His research interests include computer security, systems, networks, and applied cryptography. In his spare time, he enjoys photography and volunteering as an Emergency Medical technician.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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Low Power Compact Servers
Thu, Mar 25, 2010 @ 04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Distinguished Lecturer SeriesDr. Trevor Mudge,
University of MichiganABSTRACT
Trevor Mudge received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois.
Since then he has been at the University of Michigan. He was named the Bredt Professor of Engineering after a ten year term as Director of the Advanced Computer Architecture Laboratory -- a group of a dozen faculty and 80 graduate students. He is author of numerous papers on computer architecture, programming languages, VLSI design, and computer vision. He has also chaired 42 theses in these areas. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the ACM, the IET, and the British Computer Society.BIOGRAPHY
With power and cooling becoming an increasingly costly part of the operating cost of a server, the old trend of striving for higher performance with little regard for power is over. Emerging semiconductor process technologies, multicore architectures, and new interconnect technology provide an avenue for future servers to become low power, compact, and possibly mobile. In our talk we examine three techniques for achieving low power: 1) Near threshold operation; 2) 3D die stacking; and 3) replacing DRAM with Flash memory.Lecture 4:00PM
Reception to follow at 5:00PM in SAL LobbyLocation: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium; Being an Engineer in the Private Industry
Fri, Mar 26, 2010 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Neil Siegel, Sector Vice-President and Chief Engineer of Information Systems Business at Northrop Grumman, will present "Being an Engineer in the Private Industry" as part of the W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program.
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: Viterbi Admissions & Student Affairs
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Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Mar 26, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Babak Daneshrad, UCLATopic: Research Stemming from the Development of a MIMO OFDM Testbed
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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Ph.D. Dissertation Defense
Fri, Mar 26, 2010 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Title: SUPEROXIDE RADICAL AND UV IRRADIATION IN ULTRASOUND ASSISTED OXIDATIVE DESULFURIZATION (UAOD):
A POTENTIAL ALTERNATIVE FOR GREENER FUELSBy: Ngo Yeung Chan, Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Engineering, USC ABSTRACT
This study is aimed at improving the current ultrasound assisted oxidative desulfurization (UAOD) process, developed in University of Southern California by Professor Yen's research group, by utilizing superoxide radical as oxidant. Research was also conducted to investigate the feasibility of ultraviolet (UV) irradiation-assisted desulfurization. These modifications can enhance the process with the following achievements: • Meet the upcoming sulfur standards on various fuels including diesel fuel oils and residual oils
• More efficient oxidant with significantly lower consumption in accordance with stoichiometry
• Energy saving by 90%
• Greater selectivity in petroleum compositionThe new system demonstrated over 98% desulfurization efficiency on diesel oils and more than 75% on residual oils with significantly less oxidant and energy consumption. The new process development has been supported by Eco Energy Solutions Inc., Reno, Nevada and Intelligent Energy Inc., Long Beach, California. The feasible applications of superoxide and UV irradiation in the UAOD process could provide deep-desulfurization on various fuels with practical cost.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Information-Power Tradeoffs for Biosensor Design
Fri, Mar 26, 2010 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Nicole Nelson, University of MarylandAbstract: Biosensors for lab on a chip and portable applications typically detect weak signals while having limited power resources. These sensors must therefore be carefully designed while accounting for the noise performance. I will show a methodology, based on the classical Shannon capacity, of formulating the tradeoffs in energy and power resources, intrinsic noise and signal power. In particular I model analog circuits as communication channels corrupted by noise and will show the model thus far for operational transconductance amplifiers as well as an active pixel sensor. In addition I will show results of a bioamplifier which measures weak extra- cellular signals of electrogenic cells as well as a handheld fluorometer that can be used for a variety of biological applications.Biography: Nicole Nelson received her Bachelor's and Master's degree from Howard University in 2001 and 2003 respectively and is currently completing her PhD at the University of Maryland,College Park. In 2007 she was the recipient of an outstanding TA award and future faculty fellowship from the engineering school. Her research interests include studying information and power efficiency tradeoffs in circuit design and development and testing of biosensor devices.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kim Reid
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Math Colloq: Prof. Van Vu
Mon, Mar 29, 2010
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Van Vu (Rutgers University)Host: Center for Applied Mathematical Sciences ( http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/CAMS/Colloquia/3-29-2010.html )Talk Title:
Inverse Littlewood-Offord theory, Smooth Analysis and the Circular LawAbstract:
A corner stone of the theory of random matrices is Wigner's semi-circle law, obtained in the 1950s, which asserts that (after a proper normalization) the limiting distribution of the spectra of a random hermitian matrix with iid (upper diagonal) entries follows the semi-circle law. The non-hermitian case is the famous Circular Law Conjecture, which asserts that (after a proper
normalization) the limiting distribution of the spectra of a random matrix with iid entries is uniform in the unit circle.Despite several partial results (Ginibre-Mehta, Girko, Bai, Edelman, Gotze-Tykhomirov, Pan-Zhu etc) the conjecture remained open for more than 50 years. In 2008, T. Tao and I confirmed the conjecture in full generality. I am going to give an overview of this proof, which relies on rather surprising connections between various fields: combinatorics, probability and, particularly, theoretical computer science.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 414
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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BME 533 Seminar
Mon, Mar 29, 2010 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Jason Kutch, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Associate, Biomedical Engineering Dept., USC: "May the best muscles win: new insights into how the nervous system controls multiple muscles"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate//Department Only
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Optical Interference for Nanoscale Biological Imaging and Detection
Mon, Mar 29, 2010 @ 01:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Photonics Seminar SeriesPresents
“Optical Interference for Nanoscale Biological Imaging and Detectionâ€Â
Professor M. Selim ÜnlüDepartment of Electrical and Computer EngineeringBoston University
We have utilized basic principles of optical interference and resonance in biological applicationsdemonstrating nanometer scale measurement capability in fluorescence microscopy and label-freesensing of protein binding and viruses in a high-throughput micro-array format.
We have developed a technique â€" spectral self-interference fluorescent microscopy (SSFM) â€" thattransforms the variation in emission intensity for different path lengths used in fluorescenceinterferometry to a variation in the intensity for different wavelengths in emission, encoding the high-resolution information in the emission spectrum. Using SSFM, we have estimated the shape of coiledsingle-stranded DNA, the average tilt of double-stranded DNA of different lengths, and the amount ofhybridization. The determination of DNA conformations on surfaces and hybridization behavior provideinformation required to move DNA interfacial applications forward and thus impact emerging clinical andbiotechnological fields. Recently, we have also applied SSFM to study the conformational changes ofpolymers and DNA-protein complexes. [1]
Direct monitoring of primary molecular binding interactions without the need for secondary reactantswould markedly simplify and expand applications of high-throughput label-free detection methods. We developed a simple interferometric technique â€" Spectral Reflectance Imaging Biosensor (SRIB) â€" that monitors the optical phase difference resulting from accumulated biomolecular mass. Dynamic measurements were made at ~10pg/mm2 sensitivity. We have also demonstrated simultaneous detection of antigens and antibodies in solution using corresponding probes on the SRIBsurface as well as label-free measurements of DNA hybridization kinetics. [2] [1] P. S. Spuhler, J. Knezevic, A. Yalcin, Q. Bao, E. Pringsheim, P. Dröge, U. Rant, and M. S. Ãœnlü, "Platform for in situ real-time measurement of protein-induced conformational changes of DNA ," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, January 2010.
[2] I. E. Ozkumur J.W. Needham, D. A. Bergstein, R. Gonzalez, M. Cabodi, J. M. Gershoni, B. B.Goldberg, and M. S. Ãœnlü, “ “Label-free and dynamic detection of biomolecular interactions for high-throughput microarray applications,â€Â PNAS, Vol. 105, pp. 7988â€"7992(2008)Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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CS Colloq: Alexandra Kolla
Tue, Mar 30, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: New Techniques for Using and Approximating Graph SpectraSpeaker: Dr. Alexandra Kolla Host: Prof. David KempeAbstract:
In this talk, we present novel techniques, based on spectral graph theory, and how they are used to design efficient algorithms for both practical and theoretical problems.
In the first part of the talk, we present new techniques for approximating a large graph with a smaller one. Namely, we show how, given a large graph G and a subgraph H of it, we can choose a very small number of edges H' out of H such that replacing H with H' does not change the spectrum of G by much.
We discuss significant implications of our techniques in two interesting practical problems: creating cost-efficient, well-connected networks and speeding up linear system solvers.
In the second part of the talk we present how spectral techniques can be useful for investigating the validity of Khot's Unique Games conjecture (UGC). UGC is one of the most central open problems in computational complexity theory. It asserts that for a certain constraint satisfaction problem, it is NP-hard to decide whether there is a labeling that satisfies almost all the constraints or, for every labeling, the fraction of the constraints satisfied is very small.
Since its origin, the UGC has been applied with remarkable success to prove tight hardness of approximation results for several important NP-hard problems such as Vertex Cover, MaxCut.
We discuss a novel spectral algorithm for deciding satisfiability of Unique Games. We show that our spectral approach works well on instances that previous techniques -which were solely based on linear and semidefinite
programming- provably fail.Bio:
I got my PhD at U.C Berkeley. My advisor was Umesh Vazirani. I am a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. My main area of interest is Theory of Computer Science and in particular spectral graph theory, convex programming and their implications to efficient algorithmic design. I am also interested in quantum computing and cryptography.
Bio: TBA
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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System of Systems:What They Are and How to Engineer Them
Wed, Mar 31, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Jo Ann Lane, Research Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, USCAbstract:
To quickly respond to changing business and mission needs, many organizations are integrating new and existing systems with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products into network-centric, knowledge-based, interoperable, software-intensive systems of systems (SoS). Regional Area Crisis Response System – Sample SoSWith this approach, system development processes to define the new architecture, identify sources to either supply or develop the required components, and eventually integrate and test these high level components are evolving and are being referred to as SoS Engineering (SoSE). This presentation describes the results of SoS and SoSE investigations that explore the characteristics of SoSs, the corresponding SoSE challenges, and how engineering teams are addressing these challenges. In particular, it discusses:• Types of SoS• Incremental commitment and evolution• Application of lean principles• Engineering cost estimation• Engineering and management artifacts• SoS models to support SoSE• SoS test and evaluation approachesBio:
Dr. Jo Ann Lane recently completed her PhD in the USC ISE department under the guidance of Professors Barry Boehm and Stan Settles in the area of system of systems (SoS) engineering and cost modeling. As a PhD candidate, she was awarded the 2007 International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Foundation/Stevens Doctoral Award for promising research in Systems Engineering and Integration. She is currently a principal at the DoD-Stevens-USC Systems Engineering Research Center, conducting research in the area of systems engineering and system of systems engineering. In this capacity, she is working on SoS engineering cost models, SoS engineering process models, SoS test and evaluation, and innovation in systems engineering. She has published over 20 papers in the systems of systems area, several of which are widely referenced in the systems of systems literature. She is currently a member of the INCOSE and IEEE professional organizations. Prior to her current work, she was a key technical member of Science Applications International Corporation's Software and Systems Integration Group for over 20 years, responsible for the development and integration of software-intensive systems and systems of systems.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209 (Webex information is available upon request).
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Morphing Surfaces for Flow Control
Wed, Mar 31, 2010 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Beverley McKeon Assistant Professor of Aeronautics California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA ABSTRACT:In this talk I will discuss opportunities for performance enhancement of aeronautical configurations using on-demand changes to surface morphology. It is well known that surface roughness can degrade the performance of aerodynamic bodies, for example by triggering early transition of laminar boundary layers or increasing skin friction drag in turbulent ones, but can we use this knowledge to our advantage? I will describe our work interrogating the response of different receptive flow configurations to this type of actuation, through experiments and computations, and demonstrating novel ways of reconfiguring modern materials to generate "morphing surfaces", or thin skins capable of undergoing dynamic changes in surface roughness in response to low power inputs. Can we actively optimize the dimples on a golf ball for maximum range or directional correction? Not yet. ... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Beverley McKeon has been an Assistant Professor of Aeronautics in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at Caltech (GALCIT) since 2006. Her research interests include interdisciplinary approaches to manipulation of boundary layer flows using morphing surfaces and fundamental investigations of wall turbulence at high Reynolds number. She was the recipient of a Presidential Early Career award (PECASE) in 2009 and an NSF CAREER award in 2008. Prior to joining GALCIT, she was a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow and postdoc in the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College London, after receiving a B.A. and M.Eng. from the University of Cambridge (1996) and Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University (2003) under the guidance of Lex Smits.
Location: Seaver Science Library, SSL Rm 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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Embracing the Power of Digital Logic for Future Mixed-Signal ICs
Wed, Mar 31, 2010 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Mike Shuo-Wei ChenAbstract:
Over the years, the main stream CMOS technology has been scaling in favor of digital circuits at an explosive speed. It imposes increasing design constraints for analog circuits, such as lower supply voltages, lower gain, leakage currents, and noise, etc. On the other hand, the future radios will demand higher complexity and tighter circuit specifications. Driven by these trends, a new design philosophy is proposed to redefine analog circuit topologies that involve an architectural rethinking, utilizing almost free digital circuits and faster device speed. In this talk, we will examine such opportunities specifically in the mixed-signal IC area. We will use phase locked loop (PLL) and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) as case studies, which are critical components to enable future complex system-on-chip (SOC) and mostly-digital system architectures. In both cases, the performance and cost are substantially improved by adopting the new design philosophy.Biography:
Mike Shuo-Wei Chen received the B.S. degree from National Taiwan University in 1998, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002 and 2006, all in Electrical Engineering. Since 2006, he has been working on mixed-signal and RF circuits for WLAN radios in Atheros communications. His current research interests include analog and mixed-signal ICs, communication system designs, and signal processing techniques for circuits and systems. Dr. Chen achieved an honourable mention in Asian Pacific Mathematics Olympiad, 1994. He was the recipient of UC Regents' Fellowship at UC Berkeley in 2000 and Analog Devices Outstanding Student Award in 2006.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kim Reid
