Logo: University of Southern California

Events Calendar



Select a calendar:



Filter August Events by Event Type:



Events for August 21, 2019

  • Web Communities

    Wed, Aug 21, 2019 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Savvas Zannettou, Cyprus University of Technology

    Talk Title: Web Communities

    Abstract: The Web consists of numerous Web communities, news sources, and services, which are usually exploited by various entities for the dissemination of false information. Yet, we lack tools and techniques to effectively track the propagation of information across the multiple diverse communities and to capture and model the interplay between them. Also, we lack a basic understanding of what the role and impact of some emerging communities and services on the Web information ecosystem is, and more importantly, how such communities are exploited by bad actors (e.g., state- sponsored trolls) that spread false and weaponized information. In this talk, we will present numerous studies where we follow a data-driven cross-platform quantitative approach that analyzes billions of posts from Twitter, Reddit, 4chan Politically Incorrect board (/pol/), and Gab, to shed light into: 1) how news and image-based memes travel from one Web community to another and how we can model and quantify the influence between the various Web communities; 2) what is the role and impact of new emerging Web communities (e.g., Gab); and 3) how popular Web communities are exploited by state-sponsored actors for the sole purpose of spreading disinformation and sowing public discord.

    Biography:
    Savvas Zannettou is a PhD candidate from Cyprus University of Technology, co-advised by Dr. Michael Sirivianos and Dr. Jeremy Blackburn. In 2014 and 2016 he received respectively the BSc and
    MSc degrees in Computer Engineering from Cyprus University of Technology. During 2014, he was a Research Intern at NEC Labs Europe for 6 months where he worked on Software-Defined Networks.
    During 2017 and 2018, he was a Research Intern at Telefonica Research for 12 months. He is primarily interested in applying large-scale cross-platform quantitative analysis to understand emerging socio-technical issues like the spread of disinformation/misinformation and hateful content across the Web.
    During his PhD, he received two first-author best paper awards: one at IMC 2018 and one at Cybersafety workshop (co-located with WWW).

    Host: Shrikanth Narayanan (Viterbi), Emilion Ferrara (ISI)

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-Systems

    OutlookiCal
  • MS - Group Advisement Session

    Wed, Aug 21, 2019 @ 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Workshops & Infosessions


    This group advisement session is for graduate students in the Computer Science / Informatics Master's programs. All incoming Fall 2019 students are encouraged to attend at least one session. One-on-one time with advisors will be available toward the end of the group advisement session. Appointments are not required to attend this session.

    Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Art Perez

    OutlookiCal
  • Seminar

    Wed, Aug 21, 2019 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Peter Hofstee and Johan Peltenburg, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

    Talk Title: The Fletcher Framework, Bringing Apache Arrow to FPGAs

    Abstract: Modern big data systems are highly heterogeneous. Components are implemented in a wide variety of programming languages and frameworks. Due to implementation differences, interfaces between components are burdened by serialization overhead. The Apache Arrow project helps to overcome this burden through a language-agnostic columnar in-memory format for big data applications. It is currently being integrated in many big data analytics frameworks, such as Apache Spark & Parquet, Dask, Pandas, etc...
    The open-source Fletcher framework is an implementation of Arrow for FPGA accelerators. Through a design generation step, Fletcher takes Arrow data structures and generates specialized, high-performance and easy-to-use hardware interfaces that can connect to accelerator kernels. Serialization overhead is prevented, and integration with over 11 high-level languages is made possible and efficient.

    After a brief introduction providing context for shared-memory heterogeneous computing using some of the current POWER systems as examples, we will go over the benefits of Apache Arrow and Fletcher, show a hands-on example, and discuss related projects, such as applying SQL queries to the Arrow datasets in FPGA, reading and decompressing Parquet files on the fly using FPGA, straight into host-system memory.


    Biography: Peter Hofstee is a distinguished research staff member at IBM Austin, USA, and a part-time professor in Big Data Systems at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. He is best known for his contributions to Heterogeneous computing as the chief architect of the Synergistic Processor Elements in the Cell Broadband Engine processor used in the Sony PlayStation 3, and the first supercomputer to reach sustained Petaflop operation. After returning to IBM research in 2011 he has focused on optimizing the system roadmap for big data, analytics, and cloud, including the use of accelerated computation. His early research work on coherently attached reconfigurable acceleration on POWER7 paved the way for the new coherent attach processor interface on POWER8. He holds more than 100 issued patents.

    Johan Peltenburg is a PhD Candidate from the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. His research focuses on heterogeneous computing for big data applications. Johan received his B. Eng in Electrical Engineering at the Rotterdam University of Applied Science, followed by an M.Sc. in Computer Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. After spending some years in industry and as a teacher at the Rotterdam University of Applied science, Johan joined the Quantum & Computer Engineering department of the TU Delft in 2016, where he pursues his Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering. He is currently working on the Fletcher FPGA accelerator framework within the Accelerated Big Data Systems group.




    Host: Murali Annavaram

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Estela Lopez

    OutlookiCal
  • MS - Group Advisement Sessions

    Wed, Aug 21, 2019 @ 02:00 PM - 03:40 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Workshops & Infosessions


    This group advisement session is for graduate students in the Computer Science / Informatics Master's programs. All incoming Fall 2019 students are encouraged to attend at least one session. One-on-one time with advisors will be available toward the end of the group advisement session. Appointments are not required to attend this session.

    Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

    Audiences: Graduate

    Contact: Art Perez

    OutlookiCal