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Events for March 26, 2009

  • Third Annual George Bekey Keynote Lecture - Tom Mitchell

    Thu, Mar 26, 2009 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    **Third Annual George Bekey Keynote Lecture**Title: Brains, Meaning and Corpus StatisticsSpeaker: Prof. Tom Mitchell, CMUHost: Prof. Ellis Horowitz, Prof. Craig KnoblockLight Refreshments: 3:30 PM Abstract:
    How does the human brain represent meanings of words and pictures in terms of the underlying neural activity? This talk will present our research using machine learning methods together with fMRI brain imaging to study this question. One line of our research has involved training classifiers that identify which word a person is thinking about, based on their neural activity observed using fMRI. A more recent line involves developing a computational model that predicts the neural activity associated with arbitrary English words, including words for which we do not yet have brain image data. This computational model is trained using a combination of fMRI data associated with several dozen concrete nouns, together with statistics gathered from a trillion-word text corpus. Once trained, the model predicts fMRI activation for any other concrete noun appearing in the text corpus, with highly significant accuracies over the 60 nouns for which we currently have fMRI data.Biography:
    Tom M. Mitchell is the E. Fredkin Professor and head of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Mitchell is a past President of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and a Fellow of the AAAS and of the AAAI. His general research interests lie in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cognitive neuroscience. Mitchell believes the field of machine learning will be the fastest growing branch of computer science during the 21st century.

    Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - entology Auditorium (GER)

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: CS Front Desk

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  • Hotter Than a Volcano – the Explosive Growth of a Startup into a Red Hot IPO

    Thu, Mar 26, 2009 @ 07:30 PM - 09:00 PM

    Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

    University Calendar


    WHAT: The USC Health Care Business Club presents an evening with USC undergraduate alumnus R. Scott Huennekens, the President and CEO of Volcano Corporation. Huennekens will discuss the process of taking a company public as well as the place medical devices and medical device companies have in saving lives.Volcano develops and manufactures products for minimally invasive treatment of atherosclerosis in the coronary and peripheral arteries. The market potential for products Volcano is selling and developing is over $2 billion.Huennekens started as the company's 11th employee, and has led Volcano from a pre-revenue start-up to its IPO in June 2006, which included raising more than $200 million of private and public equity. The company now has more than 1,000 employees and over 800 million in market capitalization. Volcano's stock was the No. 1 performing Med Tech IPO of 2006 and is up approximately 100% since its IPO. Volcano's current revenue run rate is over $200 million and has been growing at a rate in excess of 30% per year. The company's revenues are global in nature with about 50% in the U.S. and 50% outside the U.S.WHO: Scott Huennekens has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Volcano Corporation and Chairman of the Board of Directors since April 2002. Before joining Volcano, Huennekens served as the President and CEO of Digirad Corporation, a medical imaging company. Huennekens holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California and an M.B.A. from Harvard University. WHEN: Thursday, March 26, at 7:30 pmWHERE: Hoffman Hall, Room 1 on the University Park campus.RSVP: Please RSVP to uschcbc@gmail.com or the USC Health Care Business Club Facebook Event group http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=49220402324 if you would like to attend.MORE: Light refreshments will be served.

    Location: H. Leslie Hoffman Hall Of Business Administration (HOH) - Room 1

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Georgia Lum

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