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Events for April 18, 2008
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Quantum Information Processing: Spingineering the Future
Fri, Apr 18, 2008 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Andrew J. Landahl, Research Assistant Professor, Information Physics Group, University of New MexicoABSTRACT: The spin of a quantum particle is a natural candidate for storing quantum information. A number of technologies are based on this idea, including quantum dots, optical lattices, and nuclear magnetic resonance. Devising new protocols for acquiring, processing, and transmitting information in these systems is a "spingineering" task that current and future generations of information technology researchers will face.I will present my work on three specific "spingineering" research problems, one each from the areas of communication, computation, and error correction. First I will show how to engineer a spin network to serve as a "quantum communication bus" that, in the absence of noise, allows arbitrary-distance perfect-fidelity quantum communication. Then I will show how to engineer a spin chain to serve as a "programmable universal quantum computer" that can execute an arbitrary program on an arbitrary input, where both the program and the data are encoded in the initial state of the spins. Finally, I will show how to perform "continuous-time quantum error correction" on a spin network by optimizing a feedback loop that uses weak measurements and Hamiltonian controls.These problems demonstrate that "spingineering" requires a broad-based theoretical background to achieve an engineering solution; in this talk the solutions will rely on quantum mechanics, algebraic coding theory, random walk theory, and feedback control theory.BIO: Andrew Landahl is a Research Assistant Professor in the Information Physics Group at the University of New Mexico. He was a Hewlett-Packard/MIT Postdoctoral Fellow from 2002-05 under the supervision of Professor Seth Lloyd. He earned Physics M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Caltech (2000 and 2002) under the supervision of Professor John Preskill and earned Physics and Mathematics B.S. degrees, Summa cum Laude, at Virginia Tech (1996), with an Honors Thesis supervised by Professor Lay-Nam Chang.Professor Landahl's research spans the areas of quantum computing, quantum information, and quantum control. His research accomplishments include the fastest quantum algorithm for searching an ordered list, a spin-chain bus enabling lossless quantum communication, a topologically-protected fault-tolerant quantum memory, a printed quantum circuit architecture, and the theory of continuous-time quantum error correction. His refereed publications average over 40 citations per paper. He has supervised or co-supervised the research of seven students.Professor Landahl is a member of the American Physical Society (APS), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He served as a Grand Awards Judge for the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) and mentored a Siemens-Westinghouse Regional Finalist in 2003-04. He currently serves as Chair of the Local Organizing Committee for QIP 2009, a high-profile annual international conference of over 350 researchers in the field of quantum information to be held in Santa Fe, NM in January 2009.HOST: Prof. Todd Brun, tbrun@usc.edu
Location: Frank R. Seaver Science Center (SSC) - 319
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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Stimulating the indigenous microorganisms to remove heavy metals from marine sediments
Fri, Apr 18, 2008 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Jinjun KanDepartment of Earth Sciences
University of Southern California
Los Angeles CA 90089Microbial activities play critical roles in metal remediation in natural environments. Adding organic or inorganic amendments will stimulate growth of indigenous microorganisms and then the microbes contribute to sorb, degrade, transform or immobilize metals from the environments. In this current study, we evaluated microbial stimulation of adding inorganic (e.g. apatite) and organic (e.g. chitin, acetate) amendments to marine sediments. Significant bacterial biomass and activities were induced by amendments of apatite, chitin and acetate. Molecular fingerprints of bacterial communities by denaturant gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) showed that distinct bacterial populations occurred in different amendments, and the stimulated microorganisms contained three major bacterial groups, Alphaproteobacteria (Roseobacter), Gammaproteobacteria and Bacteroidetes. Alphaproteobacteria (Roseobacter) dominated in water columns while Bacteroidetes were predominant population in the sediments. Most probable number (MPN) analyses showed that sulfate-reducing bacteria were significantly induced in the treatments with chitin, apatite+chitin. Testing N-acetylglucosamine and acetate as potential carbon source has also recovered sulfate-reducing bacteria. Sulfide-producing and metal-reducing bacteria were also recovered by using thiosulfate as an electron-acceptor. The results indicate that amendments stimulate geochemically important bacteria and further investigations on their physiological properties are critical to recognize their actual roles in the metal remediation process.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Visions and Voices
Fri, Apr 18, 2008 @ 02:15 PM - 05:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
University Calendar
BODY WORLDS
Gunther von Hagens's BODY WORLDS is the most highly attended touring exhibition in the world. Take an eye-opening journey through the inner workings of the human body and gain new appreciation for what it means to be human.For more information, please visit: http://web-app.usc.edu/ws/eo2/calendar/113/event/865258 .Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs
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CS Colloq: Efficient, Adaptive Inference for Distributions on Permutations
Fri, Apr 18, 2008 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Title: Efficient, Adaptive Inference for Distributions on PermutationsSpeaker: Prof. Carlos Guestrin (CMU)Abstract:
Permutations are ubiquitous in many real world problems, such as voting, rankings and data association. Representing uncertainty over permutations is challenging, since there are $n!$ possibilities, and typical compact representations, such as graphical models, cannot efficiently capture the mutual exclusivity constraints associated with permutations. In this talk, we use the ``low-frequency'' terms of a Fourier decomposition to represent such distributions compactly. We first describe how the two standard probabilistic inference operations, conditioning and marginalization, can be performed entirely in the Fourier domain in terms of these low frequency components, without ever enumeration $n!$ terms. We also describe a novel approach for adaptively picking the complexity of this representation in order control the resulting approximation error. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on a real camera- based multi-people tracking setting.Biography:
I am an assistant professor in the Machine Learning Department and in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. I co- direct the Sense, Learn, and Act (Select) Lab with Geoff Gordon. In 2003-2004, I spent a year as a senior researcher at the Intel Research Lab in Berkeley. In August 2003, I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, where I was advised by Daphne Koller, in the DAGS research group. I received a Mechatronics Engineer (Mechanical Engineering, with emphasis in Automation and Systems) degree in 1998 from the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo, Brazil.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Engineering Banquet
Fri, Apr 18, 2008 @ 07:00 PM - 11:59 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity
ENGINEERING GRADUATE STUDENT ASSOCIATION
proudly presents"ENGINEERING BANQUET"When- April 18 from 7pm-12am
Where- Town and Gown (near Marshall School of Business)
Cost- $10 refundable* deposit
Dress Code- Formal (no jeans, no T-shirts, no sneakers)Attractions- 3-course dinner (for first 125 RSVPs only)
Live Jazz Band
DJ and Dance Floor
Cash Bar
Raffles
Best Dancer prizesRSVP to http://www.socal-egsa.org/banquet-signup.html
For questions, write to Ramnath Shenoy at rshenoy@usc.edu*Deposit may be used to buy extra raffle tickets or coupons to use at the bar.
*Reservation only confirmed on paying $10 at OHE106 front desk. Timings Monday-Thursday(9:00am-4:30pm)Hurry! Last few spots available!!Location: Tower Hall (TOW) - n and Gown
Audiences: Graduate
Contact: EGSA
