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Events for April 20, 2017

  • CS Colloquium: Satish Chandra (Facebook) - Formula-Based Software Debugging

    Thu, Apr 20, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Satish Chandra , Facebook

    Talk Title: Formula-Based Software Debugging

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.

    Software often ships with known defects because fixing bugs requires expensive developer time. With the availability of virtually unlimited compute power, an interesting question is whether the burden of fixing bugs can be shifted, at least in part, from the human to the machine. This question has, of late, attracted significant activity in the software engineering and programming language communities. In this talk, I will discuss recent techniques that have been proposed towards this goal. My main focus will be on techniques that draw on the power of SMT (satisfiability modulo theories) solvers, i.e. engines that crunch first-order logic formulae.

    Time permitting, I will also talk about my experiences with tech transfer at industrial research labs.

    Biography: Satish Chandra obtained a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997, and a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur in 1991, both in computer science. From 1997 to 2002, he was a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories, where his research focused on program analysis, domain-specific languages, and data-communication protocols. From 2002 to 2013, he was a research staff member at IBM Research, where his research focused on bug finding and verification, software synthesis, and test automation.
    From 2013 to 2016, he worked at Samsung Research America, where he led the advanced programming tools research team. In 2016, he started working at Facebook. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist.

    Host: CS Department

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • PhD Defense- Hongyi Xu

    Thu, Apr 20, 2017 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    University Calendar


    PhD Candidate: Hongyi Xu

    Title: Interactive Material and Damping Design.

    Date: 04/20/17
    Time: 12-2pm
    Location: SAL 213

    Committee:

    Jernej Barbic (Chair)
    Hao Li
    Yong Chen (Outside)

    Abstract:

    Finite Element Method (FEM) has been widely used for simulations of three-dimensional deformable objects. To produce compelling and artist-controllable FEM dynamics, the choices of material elasticity and damping properties are critically important. This thesis presents an intuitive and interactive design method to explore the high-dimensional space of material and damping for use in FEM simulations in computer graphics, animation and related fields.

    This thesis first demonstrates how to intuitively explore the space of isotropic and anisotropic nonlinear materials, for design of FEM animations. Previous applications of nonlinear solid elasticity employed materials from a few standard families such as linear corotational, nonlinear St.Venant-Kirchhoff and Neo-Hookean material. However, the spaces of all nonlinear isotropic and anisotropic materials are infinite-dimensional and much broader than these standard materials. We simplify this infinite-dimensional material space with the Valansis-Landel hypothesis and demonstrate how to easily design arbitrary isotropic and anisotropic nonlinear elasticity with local control, using a spline interface. Our materials accelerate simulation design and enable visual effects that are difficult or impossible to achieve with standard nonlinear materials.

    Material properties may vary across the volume of the object, producing heterogeneous deformable behaviors. My thesis presents an interactive inverse method to design heterogeneous material distributions, which conform to prescribed displacements and internal elastic forces at a few selected positions. However, this optimization problem is high-dimensional and solving it in the full space is not practical for interactive design. We demonstrate scalability to complex examples using a novel model reduction of the material space, which accelerates the optimization by two orders of magnitude and makes the convergence much more robust.

    FEM dynamics is largely affected also by the damping properties, in addition to elasticity. This thesis gives a damping design method and interface whereby the user can set the damping properties so that motion aligned with each of a few chosen example deformations is damped by an independent user-prescribed amount, achieving anisotropic damping effects. Similar to our spline-based elasticity, we also achieve nonlinear damping that depends on the example deformation magnitudes, by editing a single spline curve for each example. The nonlinear damping curves can also be automatically inferred from high-level user inputs, such as the amount of amplitude loss in one oscillation cycle. Our method enables an artist-directable and intuitive approach to controlling nonlinear and anisotropic damping, which can generate effects not possible with previous methods and better capture real-world damping dynamics


    Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 213

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Lizsl De Leon

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  • IISE Spring Banquet

    Thu, Apr 20, 2017 @ 05:00 PM - 08:00 PM

    Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

    Receptions & Special Events


    The Industrial and Systems Engineering Annual Banquet will take place on Thursday, April 20th from 5-8pm.

    The banquet will feature keynote speaker Dr. Carol Peden, a professor of Anesthesiology and Executive Director of the USC Center for Health System Innovation. Dr. Peden has led numerous quality improvement projects internationally and continues to show commitment to augmenting efficiency in healthcare systems.

    To RSVP and submit $20 for admission, please contact Grace Owh in GER 240 by Friday, April 14th.

    More Information: ISE Banquet 2017 flyer.pdf

    Location: Town & Gown (TGF) -

    Audiences: By RSVP

    Contact: Grace Owh

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