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Events for May 06, 2025
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Technology for Business LeadersTue, May 06, 2025
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Talk Title: Technology for Business Leaders
Abstract: Technology for Business Leaders provides a comprehensive exploration of digital transformation and its impact on contemporary business landscapes. Through a series of structured modules, participants will delve into the core concepts of digital technologies, Industry 4.0, innovation, and organizational change management. By analyzing case studies and leveraging practical frameworks, learners will develop the necessary insights and skills to drive successful digital transitions within their organizations.
This course is designed for current and aspiring business leaders seeking to navigate the complexities of digital transformation and drive organizational change effectively. The course consists of five modules, each containing multiple lessons, and is designed to be completed as an asynchronous course, offering flexibility for busy professionals. Upon successful completion of the program, participants receive a University of Southern California Continuing Education Certificate.
Host: USC Viterbi Corporate and Professional Programs
More Info: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/technology-for-business-leaders/
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: VASE Executive Education
Event Link: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/technology-for-business-leaders/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
PhD Dissertation Defense - Sasha Volokh
Tue, May 06, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Dissertation Title: Using Program Analysis to Determine Actions for Video Game Testing
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 6th, 10:00am-12:00pm
Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 402C - 4th Floor
Committee: William G.J. Halfond (chair), Nenad Medvidovic, Chao Wang, Mukund Raghothaman, Andrew Nealen
Abstract: In the competitive video game market, the quality of games released to consumers is crucial to their success. However, modern games often release with significant bugs, causing consumer dissatisfaction and a loss of business and reputation for the companies involved. Testing is a key mechanism by which such issues can be caught and addressed during the development process. Many testing approaches require a model of the game rules, which is not available by default for games built with typical game development practices. This poses a barrier to the adoption of more advanced testing techniques, requiring either an expert to model the game or a reliance upon imprecise generic models. At a minimum, knowledge of the possible player actions is crucial for thorough manual and automated testing, but determining a precise and complete model of the game actions is challenging for games built with typical game development practices. In my dissertation, I address these challenges through novel program analysis techniques capable of determining precise and complete models of the game actions. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques, I adapted them to specify the action spaces of automated game testing agents, as well as to generate instructions for assisting human testers. The results show that the action models determined via program analysis enable effective automated testing agent performance and are also capable of improving the exploratory testing performance of human testers.Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 402C
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Sasha Volokh
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ECE Seminar: Dipankar Dasgupta
Tue, May 06, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dipankar Dasgupta, William Hill Professor in Cybersecurity | Director, Center for Information Assurance (CflA) | University of Memphis
Talk Title: Generic LLMs in Cybersecurity
Abstract: Generic Large Language Models (GLLMs) are continuously being released with increased size and capabilities, promoting the abilities of these tools as universal problem solvers. While the reliability of GLLMs' responses is questionable in many situations, these are augmented/ retrofitted with external resources for different applications including cybersecurity.
The talk will discuss major security concerns of these pre-trained models: first GLLMs are prone to adversarial manipulation such as model poisoning, reverse engineering and side-channel cyberattacks. Second, the security issues related to LLM-generated codes using open-source libraries/codelets for software development can involve software supply chain attacks. These may result in information disclosure, access to restricted resources, privilege escalation, and complete system takeover.
This talk will also cover the benefits and risks of using GLLMs in cybersecurity, particularly, in malware detection, log analysis, intrusion detection, etc. I will highlight the need for diverse AI approaches (non-LLM-based smaller models) trained with application-specific curated data, fine-tuned for well-tested security functionalities in identifying and mitigating emerging cyber threats including zero-day attacks.
Biography: Dr. Dipankar Dasgupta is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Memphis since January 1997. He has extensively worked on the applications of bio-inspired and machine learning approaches to cyber defense. His groundbreaking works, including digital immunity, negative authentication, cloud insurance model, and auth-spectrum, have earned recognition in Computer World Magazine and other media outlets. He received research funding from different federal agencies including NSF, DARPA, IARPA, NSA, NAVY, ONR, DoD and DHS/FEMA. At the National Cyber Leap Year Summit in 2009, Dr. Dasgupta served as a Co-Chair for the Health-Inspired Network Defense working group (see the report, section 6, starting page 46), the results of which have led to a new research program within the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology. With over 300 publications (including 4 patents), 22000+ citations, and an h-index of 68, Dr. Dasgupta's multidisciplinary research is highly acclaimed. He has received numerous awards, including the 2012 Willard R. Sparks Eminent Faculty Award and the 2014 ACM SIGEVO Impact Award. He also received five best paper awards in different international conferences and has organized Symposia on Computational Intelligence in Cyber Security at IEEE SSCI during 2007-2023. Dr. Dasgupta is an IEEE Fellow, AIIA Fellow and NAI Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Speaker (2015-2020), an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (2022-2024) and 2024 NSF-Fulbright Distinguished Scholar. He regularly serves as a panelist and keynote speaker and offers tutorials in leading computer science conferences and has given more than 350 invited talks in different universities and industries.
Host: Viktor Prasanna, prasanna@usc.edu
More Information: 2025.05.06 ECE Seminar - Dipankar Dasgupta.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Miki Arlen
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
PhD Dissertation Defense - Jesse Zhang
Tue, May 06, 2025 @ 05:00 PM - 06:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Title: Scaling Robot Adaptation with Large Model Guidance
Date: Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm Location: RTH (Ronald Tutor Hall), room 306
Defense Committee Members: Erdem Biyik (Chair), Jesse Thomason, Joseph J. Lim, Feifei Qian, Gaurav Sukhatme
Abstract: General-purpose robots deployed in the real world must respond to dynamic environments and continuously learn new tasks. However, existing methods struggle to support such adaptation at scale—that is, without substantial human supervision. In this talk, I present an approach to scalable robot adaptation by leveraging the general knowledge encoded in Large Pre-trained Models (LPTMs). I show how integrating LPTMs with robot learning frameworks can: (1) enhance robot pre-training to better prepare for unfamiliar tasks and settings, (2) adapt to new tasks and environments with human feedback, and (3) ultimately enable autonomous adaptation with minimal human input. Together, these contributions outline a path toward generalizable algorithms that empower robots to learn novel tasks in real-world, unstructured environments.Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 306
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ellecia Williams
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
