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Events for March 25, 2015
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Meet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, & Engineering TalkWed, Mar 25, 2015
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Receptions & Special Events
This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process, a student led walking tour of campus, and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. During the engineering session we will discuss the curriculum, research opportunities, hands-on projects, entrepreneurial support programs, and other aspects of the engineering school. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process, and financial aid.
Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 8:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m. Please make sure to check availability and register online for the session you wish to attend. Also, remember to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - USC Admission Office
Audiences: Prospective Undergrads and Families
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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Electrical engineering seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Laurent Lessard, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Automating the analysis and design of large-scale optimization algorithms
Abstract: The next generation of complex engineered systems will see an unprecedented integration of electromechanical components, communication, and embedded computation. Imminent examples include self-driving vehicles, smart buildings, and UAVs for automated delivery of goods. It is critical that these new technologies be safe and efficient, as their failure would be socially and economically catastrophic.
This talk will focus on the challenge of integrating data-driven optimization algorithms into safety-critical control systems. The problem of selecting a suitable algorithm for use in large-scale optimization is currently more of an art than a science; a great deal of expertise is required to know which algorithms to apply and how to properly tune them. Moreover, there are seldom performance or robustness guarantees.
Our key observation is that iterative optimization algorithms may be viewed as discrete-time controllers, and the problem of algorithm selection/tuning may be viewed as a robust control problem. This viewpoint allows us to treat both electromechanical and algorithmic components in a unified manner. By solving simple semidefinite programs, we can derive robust bounds on convergence rates for popular algorithms such as the gradient method, proximal methods, fast/accelerated methods, and operator-splitting methods such as ADMM. Finally, our framework can be used to search for algorithms that meet desired performance guarantees, thus establishing a new and principled methodology for algorithm design. As an illustrative example, we synthesize a new family of first-order algorithms that explore the trade-off between performance and robustness to noise.
Biography: Laurent Lessard was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He received the B.A.Sc. degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Berkeley Center for Control and Identification at the University of California, Berkeley. Before that, he was an LCCC postdoc in the Department of Automatic Control at Lund University in Sweden. His research interests include decentralized control, robust control, and large-scale optimization. Dr. Lessard received the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award at the American Control Conference in 2013.
Host: Prof. Rahul Jain
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Computer Science Faculty Meeting
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Workshops & Infosessions
Event details will be emailed to invited attendees.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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VSi2 Startup Office Hours
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 01:30 PM - 04:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Working on a startup idea? Want to get feedback/guidance/support?
Schedule a 30 min appt with VSi2 Staff to get guidance and help.
You can schedule an appointment hereLocation: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 330D
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Student Innovation Institute
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Young-Han Kim, UC San Diego
Talk Title: Point-to-point codes for interference channels: A journey toward high performance at low complexity
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: For high data rates and massive connectivity, the next-generation cellular networks are expected to deploy many small base stations. While such dense deployment provides the benefit of bringing radio closer to end users, it also increases the amount of interference from neighboring cells. Consequently, smart management of interference would become one of the key enabling technologies for high-spectral-efficiency, low-power, broad-coverage wireless communication.
In this talk, we discuss recent developments in channel coding techniques for interference channels, primarily focusing on the sliding-window superposition coding scheme. This coding scheme achieves the performance of simultaneous decoding with point-to-point channel codes and low-complexity decoding. Simulation results demonstrate that sliding-window superposition coding can sometimes double the performance of the conventional method of treating interference as noise, still using the standard LTE turbo codes.
Joint work with Bernd Bandemer, Chiao-Yi Chen, Abbas El Gamal, Hosung Park, Eren Sasoglu, and Lele Wang.
Biography: Young-Han Kim received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1996 and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering (M.S. degrees in Statistics and in Electrical Engineering) from Stanford University in 2006. Since then, he has been a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Kim is a recipient of the 2008 NSF CAREER Award and the 2012 IEEE Information Theory Paper Award. He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society during 2012 and 13.
Host: Prof. Salman Avestimehr and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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EE-Electrophysics Seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Meisam Honarvar, California Institute of Technology
Talk Title: From Tera-Scale Communication to Lab-in-the-Body: Challenges and Opportunities for CMOS Technology
Abstract: Combining the high level of integration offered by CMOS and micro/nanofabrication technology enables complex and compact sensing systems. During the first part of the presentation, the opportunities for integrated microsystems for implantable health monitors will be explored. The combination of power and data telemetry and physiological sensors within small chips enables us to contemplate new microsystems for healthcare monitoring that serve as closed loop therapy systems and allow for the remote management of patients. Such systems could be implanted as continuous glucose monitors (CGM), neural prosthetics and other metabolic and physiological measurement tools and will enable a new class of continuous digital health monitors that leads to preventative healthcare at lower cost. As an example of such systems, I will present my research on implantable CGM microsystems.
Over the past couple of decades we have witnessed a tremendous growth in computational capability owing to the rapid advances in CMOS technology. Additionally smart devices and their social apps, as well as cloud storage and computation have resulted in a tremendous growth in big data infrastructures. With this increase in the computation, a corresponding scaling in data communication bandwidth is inevitable. The bandwidth of the current physical channels not only limits the communication between chips, it also imposes serious problem for on-chip interconnection. In the second part of my talk, I will go over new low-power circuit techniques that enable massively parallel electrical and optical communication to address the bandwidth requirement of the future networks.
Biography: Meisam Nazari received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena in 2009 and 2013, respectively. He is currently a staff scientist in the department of electrical engineering at California Institute of Technology. His research interests include high-performance mixed-signal integrated circuits, with the focus on biomedical and medical circuits and systems as well as high-speed and low-power optical and electrical interconnects. He is the recipient of 2008 Brian L. Barge Award for excellence in microsystems integration, 2010 AMD/CICC Student Scholarship Award, the 2012 Solid-State Circuits Society Pre-doctoral Achievement Award, and the 2012 Circuits and Systems Society Pre-doctoral Scholarship.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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Ming Hsieh Institute Distinguished Visitor Seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Georgios B. Giannakis , University of Minnesota
Talk Title: Seminar I: Learning Tools for Big Data Analytics
Series: MHI Distinguished Visitor Seminar Series
Abstract: We live in an era of data deluge. Pervasive sensors collect massive amounts of information on every bit of our lives, churning out enormous streams of raw data in various formats. Mining information from unprecedented volumes of data promises to limit the spread of epidemics and diseases, identify trends in financial markets, learn the dynamics of emergent social-computational systems, and also protect critical infrastructure including the smart grid and the Internetâs backbone network. While Big Data can be definitely perceived as a big blessing, big challenges also arise with large-scale datasets. The sheer volume of data makes it often impossible to run analytics using a central processor and storage, and distributed processing with parallelized multi-processors is preferred while the data themselves are stored in the cloud. As many sources continuously generate data in real time, analytics must often be performed âon-the-flyâ and without an opportunity to revisit past entries. Due to their disparate origins, massive datasets are noisy, incomplete, prone to outliers, and vulnerable to cyber-attacks. These effects are amplified if the acquisition and transportation cost per datum is driven to a minimum. Overall, Big Data present challenges in which resources such as time, space, and energy, are intertwined in complex ways with data resources. Given these challenges, ample signal processing opportunities arise. This tutorial lecture outlines ongoing research in novel models applicable to a wide range of Big Data analytics problems, as well as algorithms to handle the practical challenges, while revealing fundamental limits and insights on the mathematical trade-offs involved.
Biography: (Fellowâ97) received his Diploma in Electrical Engr. from the Ntl. Tech. Univ. of Athens, Greece, 1981. From 1982 to 1986 he was with the Univ. of Southern California (USC), where he received his MSc. in Electrical Engineering, 1983, MSc. in Mathematics, 1986, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engr., 1986. Since 1999 he has been a professor with the Univ. of Minnesota, where he now holds an ADC Chair in Wireless Telecommunications in the ECE Department, and serves as director of the Digital Technology Center. His general interests span the areas of communications, networking and statistical signal processing subjects on which he has published more than 375 journal papers, 625 conference papers, 20 book chapters, two edited books and two research monographs (h-index 112). Current research focuses on big data analytics, wireless cognitive radios, network science with applications to social, brain, and power networks with renewables. He is the co-iinventor of 22 patents issued, and the co-recipient of 8 best paper awards from the IEEE Signal Processing (SP) and Communications Societies, including the G. Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications. He also received Technical Achievement Awards from the SP Society (2000), from EURASIP (2005), a Young Faculty Teaching Award, the G. W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Research from the University of Minnesota, and the IEEE Fourier Technical Field Award (2015). He is a Fellow of EURASIP, and has served the IEEE in a number of posts including that of a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE-SP Society.
Host: Professor Richard Leahy
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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Energy informatics distinguished seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Arvind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: BlueDBM: A Multi-access, Distributed Flash Store for Big Data Analytics
Series: Energy Informatics Distinguished Seminar Series
Abstract: Complex analytics of the vast amount of data collected via social media, cell phones, ubiquitous smart sensors, and satellites is likely to be the biggest economic driver for the IT industry over the next decade. For many âBig Dataâ applications, the limiting factor in performance is often the transportation of large amount of data from hard disks to where it can be processed, i.e. DRAM. We will present BlueDBM, an architecture for a scalable distributed flash store which is designed to overcome this limitation in two ways. First, the architecture provides a high-performance, high-capacity, scalable random-access storage. It achieves high-throughput by sharing large numbers of flash chips across a low-latency, chip-to-chip backplane network managed by the flash controllers. Second, it permits some computation near the data via a FPGA-based programmable flash controller. We will present the preliminary results on accelerating complex queries using BlueDBM consisting of 20 nodes and up to 32 TB of flash.
Biography: Arvind is the Johnson Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT. Arvindâs group, in collaboration with Motorola, built the Monsoon dataflow machines and its associated software in the late eighties. In 2000, Arvind started Sandburst which was sold to Broadcom in 2006. In 2003, Arvind co-founded Bluespec Inc., an EDA company to produce a set of tools for high-level synthesis. In 2001, Dr. R. S. Nikhil and Arvind published the book âImplicit parallel programming in pHâ. Arvind's current research focus is on enabling rapid development of embedded systems.
Arvind is a Fellow of IEEE and ACM, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Host: Viktor Prasanna
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Meet the Women of YP
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 05:00 PM - 07:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Come meet members of YP's Women's Initiative and hear about their work at YP. The evening will start off with a panel discussion where they will answer your questions about their experiences at YP and the working world. Then we will have time for you to network with the panelists and talk more in a more informal setting about your questions and career goals. This is a great time to practice all the networking skills you have been learning!
To register, click here https://myviterbi.usc.edu/vasa/?PostingID=1234567966.Location: 211
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: Christine D'Arcy
Event Link: https://myviterbi.usc.edu/vasa/?PostingID=1234567966
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VSi2: Meet a Co-Founder
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 06:30 PM - 09:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
RSVP Here
Do you have a startup idea but no team to make it happen? Or are you an engineer looking for a team to join? We hear you! We've heard a lot of these requests throughout the semester and that's why we are hosting a "Meet a Co-Founder" event at the Viterbi Hacker House. We want to create opportunities for student entrepreneurs to meet, collaborate, and bridge the gap for team formation.
Please select if you're a technical/non-technical founder by choosing a ticket. Tickets are limitted for each ticket category (75 techical / 75 non-technical). All tickets are free. USC students only.
We'll see you there!
The VSi2 TeamLocation: Kerckhoff Hall (KER) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Student Innovation Institute
