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Events for March 31, 2016
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Seminar-Algorithms for detecting atypical language use in autism spectrum disorders
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 11:20 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jan van Santen, Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Institute on Development and Disability, Oregon Health & Science University
Talk Title: Algorithms for detecting atypical language use in autism spectrum disorders
Abstract: The DSM-5 lists repetitiveness and impaired reciprocal social interaction as core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but does not list language impairment. Yet, language use is often atypical in ASD, being a natural modality for core symptoms to manifest. Standard language measures are not optimal for capturing these characteristics because they are too structured: Analysis of natural language samples is needed. However, such analysis is time consuming and inexact when conducted manually. Computational methods are needed.
We developed and applied algorithms to transcripts of Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) sessions with children ages 4-8 with high-functioning ASD, Specific Language Impairment (SLI), or Typical Development (TD). The ASD group was divided into children with SLI (ALI) and without (ALN). Results showed ASD-specific atypicalities in verbatim and topical repetitiveness, discourse marker use, type of disfluencies, and other features of language use. These results attest to the feasibility of computing ASD-specific characteristics from natural language samples, tapping into multiple aspects of core ASD symptoms. Their usefulness is demonstrated by the intricate pattern of differences and similarities between the ASD and SLI groups and the ALI and ALN groups.
Biography: Jan van Santen obtained his PhD in Mathematical Psychology at the University of Michigan in 1979. He worked initially on visual perception and image processing at New York University and Bell Labs, and then switched to speech technology in 1985. He developed the prosody generation components of the Bell Labs text-to-speech system. In 2000 he became the Director of the Center for Spoken Language Understanding, now part of the Oregon Health & Science University. Here, he became one of the pioneers of a growing new field: the application of Natural Language Processing algorithms to neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders for diagnostics, remediation, and assistive communication, with special emphasis on autism spectrum disorders. In his spare time, he runs a startup, BioSpeech, that works on algorithms for processing biological sounds, including not only speech but also snoring and rodent calls.
He has written over 100 peer-reviewed papers, was an editor of Speech Communication and of the Journal of Mathematical Psychology, was the editor of a book, Progress in Speech Synthesis, and has seven patents.
Host: Shrikanth Narayanan & Daniel Bone
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-Systems
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Cyber-Physical System Design Using Contracts
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Pierluigi Nuzzo, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Cyber-Physical System Design Using Contracts
Abstract: The realization of complex cyber-physical systems is creating design and verification challenges that will soon become insurmountable with today's engineering practices. While model-based design tools are already facilitating several design tasks, harnessing the complexity of the Internet-of-Things scenario is only deemed possible within a unifying methodology. This methodology should help interconnect different tools, possibly operating on different system representations, to enable scalable design space exploration and early detection of requirement inconsistencies.
In this talk, I show how a contract-based approach provides a formal foundation for a compositional and hierarchical methodology for cyber-physical system design, which can address the above challenges, and encompass both horizontal and vertical integration steps. I use assume guarantee contracts and their algebra (e.g. composition, conjunction, and refinement) to support the entire design process and enable concurrent development of system architectures and control algorithms. In the methodology, the design is carried out as a sequence of refinement steps from a high-level specification to an implementation built out of a library of components at the lower level. Top-level system requirements are represented as contracts, by leveraging a set of formal languages, including mixed integer-linear constraints and temporal logic. Contracts are then refined by combining synthesis and optimization-based methods. I propose a set of optimization-based algorithms for efficient selection of cost-effective architectures under safety, reliability, and performance constraints over a large, mixed discrete-continuous design space. I demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach on industrial design examples, including aircraft electric power distribution and environmental control systems, showing, for instance, that optimal selection of industrial-scale power system architectures can be performed in a few minutes. Finally, I conclude by presenting future research directions towards a full-fledged integrated framework for system design.
Biography: Pierluigi Nuzzo is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences of the University of California, Berkeley. He received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley in 2015. He also holds the Laurea (M.Sc.) degree in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) from the University of Pisa and the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy. Before joining U.C. Berkeley, he was a Researcher at IMEC, Leuven, Belgium, and the University of Pisa, working on the design of energy-efficient A/D converters, frequency synthesizers for reconfigurable radio, and design methodologies for mixed-signal integrated circuits. His research interests include: methodologies and tools for cyber-physical system and mixed-signal system design; contracts, interfaces, and compositional methods for embedded system design; energy-efficient analog and mixed-signal circuit design. Pierluigi received First Place in the operational category and Best Overall Submission in the 2006 DAC/ISSCC Design Competition, a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Union in 2006, the University of California at Berkeley EECS departmental fellowship in 2008, the U.C. Berkeley Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award in 2013, and the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship in 2012 and 2014.
Host: Dr. Massoud Pedram
Location: 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Suzanne Wong
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CS Colloquium: Baris Kasikci (EPFL) - Stamping Out Concurrency Bugs
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Baris Kasikci, EPFL
Talk Title: Stamping Out Concurrency Bugs
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
The shift to multi-core architectures in the past ten years pushed developers to write concurrent software to leverage hardware parallelism. The transition to multi-core hardware happened at a more rapid pace than the evolution of associated programming techniques and tools, which made it difficult to write concurrent programs that are both efficient and correct. Failures due to concurrency bugs are often hard to reproduce and fix, and can cause significant losses.
In this talk, I will first give an overview of the techniques we developed for the detection, root cause diagnosis, and classification of concurrency bugs. Then, I will discuss how the techniques we developed have been adopted at Microsoft and Intel. I will then discuss in detail Gist, a technique for the root cause diagnosis of failures. Gist uses hybrid static-dynamic program analysis and gathers information from real user executions to isolate root causes of failures. Gist is highly accurate and efficient, even for failures that rarely occur in production. Finally, I will close by describing future work I plan to do toward solving the challenges posed to software systems by emerging technology trends.
Biography: Baris Kasikci completed his Ph.D. in the Dependable Systems Laboratory (DSLAB) at EPFL, advised by George Candea. His research is centered around developing techniques, tools, and environments that help developers build more reliable and secure software. He is interested in finding solutions that allow programmers to better reason about their code, and that efficiently detect bugs, classify them, and diagnose their root cause. He especially focuses on bugs that manifest in production, because they are hard and time-consuming. He is also interested in efficient runtime instrumentation, hardware and runtime support for enhancing system security, and program analysis under various memory models.
Baris is one of the four recipients of the VMware 2014-2015 Graduate Fellowship. During his Ph.D., he interned at Microsoft Research, VMware, and Intel. Before starting his Ph.D., he worked as a software engineer for four years, mainly developing real-time embedded systems software. Before joining EPFL, he was working for Siemens Corporate Technology. More details can be found at http://www.bariskasikci.org/.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering Annual Pie and Burger Day
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 11:30 AM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Receptions & Special Events
Electrical Engineering Students, Staff, and Faculty join us for our annual Pie and Burger Day! Must have the EE Sticker on your ID to attend. Inquire at EEB 102.
More Information: 20161 Student Event (Pie 'n Burger) flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - Courtyard
Audiences: EE Students, Faculty, & Staff
Contact: Gloria Halfacre
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MFD - Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Distinguished Lecture: Nathan Price
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Nathan Price, Univ. of California, San Diego
Talk Title: Harnessing big data for biological and medical discovery
Series: MFD Distinguished Lecture
Host: Prof. Nicholas Graham
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jason Ordonez
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CS Colloquium: Konrad Kording (Northwestern University) - Neural Cryptography
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Konrad Kording, Northwestern University
Talk Title: Neural Cryptography
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Neuroscience is slowly transitioning into a data rich discipline and large data sets allow new approaches. Brain decoders use neural recordings to infer what someone is thinking, viewing, or their intended movement. The problem has always been phrased as a supervised learning problem. Here we introduce a new method for brain decoding that does not require supervised data, i.e. the knowledge of the intended movement while the neural activity is recorded. Our approach is inspired by code breaking techniques used in cryptography where it is asked which mapping from from encrypted to decrypted text leads to text that most resembles the known structure of language. Analogously, we find a transformation of neural data (decoder) that aligns the distribution of the decoder output with the distribution of the user's intended movement. On a standard primate center-out reaching task, we demonstrate that we can obtain similar performance with that of a decoder with access to supervised data. However, current datasets are still too small to ask many relevant questions about neural computation and I am collaborating with neuroengineers to change that.
Host: CS Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/942986114
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/942986114
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CS Colloquium: Cynthia Sung (MIT CSAIL) - Computational Tools for Robot Design: A Composition Approach
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Cynthia Sung, MIT CSAIL
Talk Title: Computational Tools for Robot Design: A Composition Approach
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
As robots become more prevalent in society, they must develop an ability to deal with more diverse situations. This ability entails customizability of not only software intelligence, but also of hardware. However, designing a functional robot remains challenging and often involves many iterations of design and testing even for skilled designers. My goal is to create computational tools for making functional machines, allowing future designers to quickly improvise new hardware.
In this talk, I will discuss one possible approach to automated design using composition. I will describe our origami-inspired print-and-fold process that allows entire robots to be fabricated within a few hours, and I will demonstrate how foldable modules can be composed together to create foldable mechanisms and robots. The modules are represented parametrically, enabling a small set of modules to describe a wide range of geometries and also allowing geometries to be optimized in a straightforward manner. I will also introduce a tool that we have developed that combines this composition approach with simulations to help human designers of all skill levels to design and fabricate custom functional robots.
Biography: Cynthia Sung is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University in 2011 and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2013. Her research interests include computational design, folding theory, and rapid fabrication, and her current work focuses on algorithms for synthesis and analysis of engineering designs.
Host: CS Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/727861390
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/727861390
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ISE Graduate School Information Session
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 05:30 PM - 06:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Workshops & Infosessions
Considering majoring in Industrial and Systems Engineering for graduate school? Want to learn more about more about what it would entail? The USC student chapter of the Institute of Industrial Engineers will be hosting a panel of professors and students from the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, who will tell you why one should consider ISE for graduate school, details about specific ISE programs, graduation outcomes, and more! The event currently will be held Thursday March 31, 5:30-6:30PM in LVL 17. Please RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/hvzafku if you're interested in coming!
Location: Thomas & Dorothy Leavey Library (LVL) - 17
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: USC Institute of Industrial Engineers
