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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for April 25, 2014
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Game Theory and Human Behavior [GTHB] Annual Symposium 2014
Fri, Apr 25, 2014
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Workshops & Infosessions
Speakers will include:
Meredith Gore, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University
Michael Macy, Department of Sociology, Cornell
Jason Hartline, Computer Science, Northwestern
Gilberto Montibeller, Dept. of Management, London School of Economics
Elisabeth Pate-Cornell, Management Science and Engineering, Stanford
Paul Slovic, Psychology, University of Oregon
Peter Stone, Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin
For more details please contact Jie Zheng at jiezheng@usc.edu Or check out see gthb.usc.eduEvents/2014.htmLocation: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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NL Seminar-Partitioning Networks with Node Attributes by Compressing Information Flow
Fri, Apr 25, 2014 @ 03:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Linhong Zhu, USC/ISI
Talk Title: Partitioning Networks with Node Attributes by Compressing Information Flow
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: Real-world networks are often organized as modules or communities of similar nodes that serve as functional units. These networks are also rich in content, with nodes having distinguishing features or attributes. In order to discover a network's modular structure, it is necessary to take into account not only its links but also node attributes. We describe an information-theoretic method that identifies modules by compressing descriptions of information flow on a network. Our formulation introduces node content into the description of information flow, which we then minimize to discover groups of nodes with similar attributes that also tend to trap the flow of information. The method has several advantages: it is conceptually simple and does not require ad-hoc parameters to specify the number of modules or to control the relative contribution of links and node attributes to network structure. We apply the proposed method to partition real-world networks with known community structure. We demonstrate that adding node attributes helps recover the underlying community structure in content-rich networks more effectively than using links alone. In addition, we show that our method is faster and more accurate than alternative state-of-the-art algorithms.
Biography: Linhong Zhu is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, under the supervision of Dr. Kristina Lerman and Dr. Aram Galstyan. Before that, she worked as a scientist-I at Institute for Infocomm Research Singapore from Oct 2010 to Jan 2013. She got her B Eng. Degree in Computer Science from University of Science and Technology of China in 2006 (2002-2006) and received her Ph.D. Degree in Computer Engineering from Nanyang Technological University (2006-2011). Her research interests focus on large-scale social network analysis and sentiment analysis.
Home Page:http://www.isi.edu/people/linhong/research
Host: Kevin Knight & Yang Gao
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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ACL2014 Practice Talk: Kneser- Ney Smoothing on Expected Counts
Fri, Apr 25, 2014 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hui Zhang, USC/ISI
Talk Title: Kneser- Ney Smoothing on Expected Counts
Abstract: Widely used in speech and language processing, Kneser-Ney (KN) smoothing has consistently been shown to be one of the best-performing smoothing methods. However, KN smoothing assumes integer counts, limiting its potential usesâ⬔for example, inside Expectation-Maximization. In this paper, we propose a generaliza- tion of KN smoothing that operates on fractional counts, or, more precisely, on distributions over counts. We rederive all the steps of KN smoothing to operate on count distributions instead of integral counts, and apply it to two tasks where KN smoothing was not applicable before: one in language model adaptation, and the other in word alignment. In both cases, our method improves performance significantly.
Biography: Hui Zhang is a fourth year PhD student working with Professor David Chiang at the USC Information Sciences Institute. His main research interests are in statistical machine translation and machine learning.
He has focused on domain adaptation and smoothing techniques.
Home Page:
https://sites.google.com/site/zhangh1982/
Host: Yang Gao
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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The W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquim
Fri, Apr 25, 2014 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Eric M.V. Hoek, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, UCLA
Talk Title: Water Technology Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship to Address Global Challenge
Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Christine Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs
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CS RASC Seminar: Mac Schwager (Boston University) - Controlling Groups of Robots with Unreliable Relative Sensing
Fri, Apr 25, 2014 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mac Schwager, Boston University
Talk Title: Controlling Groups of Robots with Unreliable Relative Sensing
Series: RASC Seminar Series
Abstract: Groups of robots working collaboratively have the potential to change the way we sense and interact with our environment at large scales. However, in order to be useful in the real world, multi-robot systems must perform without global information, and they must adapt to faulty sensors. This talk will describe our recent work in controlling groups of robots with unreliable relative sensing measurements. We will treat two basic multi-robot problems: formation control and coverage control. In the first problem, we would like the robots to converge to a desired formation without a shared global reference frame, using only relative distance and bearing measurements. We propose a novel nonlinear control architecture that ensures asymptotic convergence to the desired formation. We also implement this controller on a network of quadrotor aerial robots. The robots use onboard vision, computing relative pose estimates from shared features in their images, in order to execute the formation controller without any global pose information. In the second problem we consider deploying a group of sensing robots to cover an environment with their sensors, however some (a priori unknown) robots have faulty sensors. We propose a decentralized adaptive control approach by which the robots collaboratively determine which robots have faulty sensors, and reposition themselves in order to compensate for the sensor faults. Convergence to a locally optimal sensing configuration is proven using a Lyapunov analysis.
Biography: Mac Schwager is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Division of Systems Engineering at Boston University. He obtained his BS degree in 2000 from Stanford University, his MS degree from MIT in 2005, and his PhD degree from MIT in 2009. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the GRASP lab at the University of Pennsylvania from 2010 to 2012. His research interests are in distributed algorithms for control, perception, and learning in groups of robots and animals. He received the NSF CAREER award in 2014.
Host: Nora Ayanian
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Energy Informatics Seminar
Fri, Apr 25, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Krishna Palem, Rice University
Talk Title: Sensoptimized Systems for “Good enough” Computing: Ultra-efficient Cortical Processors through Melding Neuroscience with Inexact Architectures
Series: Energy Informatics Distinguished Seminar Series
Abstract: Increasingly, information systems such as cellphones, iPods and glassesâmore broadly, embedded systemsâare delivering information to be consumed by our senses. Such information, in the form of speech, graphics, or video, is subject to varying levels of processing by our nervous systems, followed by our higher cognitive functions in the brain. Yet, system designs today do not often take advantage of the compensatory processing done neuro-cognitively by our brain. Rather, the current hardware, software, and industrial design methodologies aim to deliver the best possible quality to maximize the user’s experience. The resulting computing platforms are over-engineered and expensiveâin terms of monetary cost, and the amount of energy (or battery) consumed. For several years now, we have been developing a philosophy and a design methodology to counter this trend aimed at the innovation of digital computing systems which, when interacting with our senses, are optimized to be just “good enough” and thus not over-engineered This is achieved by factoring in the compensatory neuro-cognitive processing done by our sensory pathways, and by trading away the accuracy of the system in return for disproportionately high savings or gains. The resulting sensoptimied systems are meant to be significantly more efficient than those designed conventionally. At their core, our sensoptimized systems are realized using inexact integrated circuits (ICs) and computing architectures, sometimes dubbed probabilistic CMOS (PCMOS)âa technology and design methodology which our group has been developing for over a decade. Looking into the future, inexact circuits and sensoptimization could be the basis for realizing families of cortical processors which meld principles of neuroscience with the design of good-enough computing platforms. Here, the opportunities are many and we will conclude the technical portion of our talk with an overview of a sensoptimized cortical processor we are currently developing for supporting computer-vision at the embedded scale.
Biography: Krishna V. Palem is the Ken and Audrey Kennedy Professor at Rice University with appointments in CS, in ECE, and Statistics, and is a scholar in the Baker Institute for Public Policy. He founded and directed the NTU-Rice Institute on Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics. He was a Moore Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Caltech, and a Schonbrunn Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was recognized for excellence in teaching. His advisee Suren Talla was awarded the Janet Fabri Prize for outstanding dissertation, and his related work on the foundations of architecture assembly for designing reconfigurable embedded SoC architectures, developed at Proceler Inc. which he co-founded as a CTO, was a nominee for the Analysts choice awards as one of the four outstanding technologies. A decade ago, he pioneered a novel technology dubbed Probabilistic CMOS (PCMOS) which resulted in inexact or approximate computing. PCMOS has been recognized by three best-paper awards, as one of the ten technologies 'likely to change the way we live' by MIT's Technology Review, and as one of the seven 'emerging world changing technologies' by IEEE as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, the ACM and the IEEE. In 2012, Forbes (India) ranked him second on the list of eighteen scientists who are “..some of the finest minds of Indian origin.” He is the recipient of the 2008 W. Wallace McDowell Award, IEEE Computer Society's highest technical award and one of computing's most prestigious individual honors.
Host: Viktor Prasanna
More Info: http://cei.usc.edu/news
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
Event Link: http://cei.usc.edu/news
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Integrated Systems Seminar Series - Spring 2014
Fri, Apr 25, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Waleed Khalil, Ohio State University
Talk Title: Towards the Design of Robust Wide Tuning Range and Low Phase Noise mm-Wave VCOs: Challenges, Solutions and Recent Advances
Series: Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Abstract: Over the past few years, there has a been a growing demand for mm-wave circuits with emerging applications such as Gigabit WLAN and Short Range Radars. More recently, mm-wave technology has been touted for future 5G cellular systems, eclipsing a long era where low GHz systems dominated the field of wireless systems. Moving forward, we expect the mass market adaptation of these technologies to force the shift towards low-cost Si-based processes. However, in to order to succeed in this space, we need to push the Si performance closer to the well-entrenched incumbent III-V technologies. In the VCO domain, major challenges still remain in meeting the tuning range and phase noise specifications while maintaining high yield. In light of these challenges, this seminar will present our current and future research work to build mm-wave VCOs circuits with record benchmarks. Different topologies in both CMOS and SiGe technologies will be covered. Also, a new analytical model that facilitates an efficient optimization of the VCO turning range and phase noise is presented. The model is exploited to analyze the impact of technology scaling on the achievable performance bounds.
Biography: Dr. Khalil received his B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E degrees from the University of Minnesota in 1992 and 1993, respectively. In 2008, he received his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University. He is currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the ECE department and the ElectroScience Lab, The Ohio State University. He conducts research in SDRs, digital intensive RF and mm-wave circuits and systems, high performance clocking circuits and GHz A/D and D/A circuits. Prior to joining OSU, Prof. Khalil spent 16 years at Intel Corporation where he held various technical and leadership positions in wireless and wireline communication groups. While at Intel, he was appointed the lead engineer at the advanced wireless communications group, where he played an instrumental role in the development of the industry’s first Analog Front-end IC for third generation radios (3G). He later co-founded a startup group to develop Intel’s first RF front-end IC, as a principle leader of the radio transmitter chain. During his work at Intel, he received the prestigious Intel Quality Award in 2005. Dr. Khalil’s research group has received several paper awards, among them TSMC’s outstanding research award in 2010 and the best paper award in the Wireless Innovation Forum and Phase Array Symposium in 2013. He authored 10 issued and several other pending patents, over 50 journal and conference papers and three books/book chapters. He is a senior member of IEEE and serves in the steering committee for the RFIC Symposium and as a guest faculty at the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Host: Hossien Hashemi, Mike Chen, Mahta Moghaddam, Sushil Subramanian
More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/activities/integrated-systems/
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Sushil Subramanian
Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/activities/integrated-systems/
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Astani CEE Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Apr 25, 2014 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Judy Zhu , Ph.D. Candidate
Talk Title: Soil Structure Interaction with Vertically Incident Plane P-waves: Rigid Foundation
Abstract: An analytic solution of the interaction of building with the soil for vertical incident plane p-waves is presented. The soil half-space is assumed to be homogeneous, isotropic and elastic; foundation is hemispherical and rigid; and the building is cylindrical with the same radius and center-to-center to the foundation. It is shown that the result is dependent on densities of building, foundation and soil, the ratio of building radius and height, and wave numbers of building and the soil.
Host: Astani CEE Department
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Single Wing Turquoise Bird
Fri, Apr 25, 2014 @ 07:30 PM - 09:30 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
RSVP TO: http://web-app.usc.edu/ws/eo2/calendar/113/event/903811
Single Wing Turquoise Bird was among the most sophisticated of the 1960s and ââ¬â¢70s psychedelic light shows. Formed in 1968 in Los Angeles, ââ¬Åthe Birdââ¬Â accompanied legendary bands including Cream, the Velvet Underground, Sly and the Family Stone, Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. Later, they performed to music by Steve Reich, Terry Riley and other avant-garde composers. With a core group of seven artists improvising collectively in real-time, the group used overhead projectors, slide projectors and high-intensity 16mm film projectors to create swirling visual compositions made from multicolored immiscible liquids. Anaïs Nin described their shows as ââ¬Ålike a thousand modern paintings flowing and sparkling.ââ¬Â The Bird reformed several years ago, adding new members and incorporating digital technologies. The group will present two performances accompanied by Serbian guitarist Miroslav Tadic. Each performance will be unique, as the images and music are improvised, reflecting the interplay between the members of the Single Wing Turquoise Bird and guest musicians.
A three-day workshop will teach students about projected-light equipment, improvisation and collaboration in multimedia performance. The workshop is open to USC students only. For information about the workshop, please contact Christine Panushka at panushka@usc.edu.
Organized by Christine Panushka (Animation and Digital Art) and David E. James (Critical Studies).
Photo: Andy Romanoff
For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.eduLocation: Cinema Television Center Complex (CTC) - School of Cinematic Arts Complex, Stage 4
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Visions and Voices
