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Events for September
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PhD Thesis Proposal - Tiantian Feng
Wed, Sep 07, 2022 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
PhD Candidate: Tiantian Feng
Title: Towards designing trustworthy human-centered machine intelligence: A privacy-enhancing perspective
Committee:
Shrikanth Narayanan, Professor Laurent Itti, Professor Aiichiro Nakano, Professor Kristina Lerman, and Professor Morteza Dehghani (external)
Human-centered machine intelligence has revolutionized many leading domains ranging from transportation and healthcare to education and defense, profoundly changing how people live, work, and interact with each other. Human-centered ML systems often require acquiring and processing multimodal data from people in sensitive environments and contexts, such as homes, workplaces, hospitals, and schools. These systems also utilize state-of-art machine learning (ML) algorithms to achieve a deeper understanding of human conditions, such as state, trait, and interactions, which provide possibilities to create technologies that increasingly support and enhance human experiences. Despite the promises human-centric ML systems can deliver, they have drawn substantial concerns in recent years on their potential adverse impact on society, forcing researchers to design trustworthy ML systems to address fairness, accountability, privacy, and related topics before an ML system can be deployed widely. In particular, these systems create critical risks in potentially leaking sensitive information that people might want to keep private. The sensitive information can be individual attributes (e.g., age, gender), states (e.g., health, emotions), or biometric fingerprints. In this thesis proposal, I focus on exploring privacy risks and privacy-enhancing computation in modern human-centered ML systems. I will start the thesis proposal by introducing recent efforts that utilizes human-centered machine intelligence to capture meaningful human behavioral patterns. Then I introduce a series of my recent works on privacy attacks, such as attribute inference attacks and label inference attacks, which motivate us to develop mitigation strategies. I will then present a proposal that aims to extend our privacy-enhancing computation to other privacy attacks, like membership inference attacks and data reconstruction attacks. I also propose to study the impact of privacy-enhancing computing on other aspects of trustworthy computing, like fairness. The proposal will demonstrate the importance of privacy-enhancing computation, especially in designing trustworthy human-centered machine intelligence.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 320
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98609209991
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Lizsl De Leon
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Student Registration Wed, Sep 07, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Wed, Sep 07, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Thu, Sep 08, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Thu, Sep 08, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Fri, Sep 09, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Fri, Sep 09, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Sat, Sep 10, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Sat, Sep 10, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Sun, Sep 11, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Sun, Sep 11, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Mon, Sep 12, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Mon, Sep 12, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Tue, Sep 13, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Tue, Sep 13, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Wed, Sep 14, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Wed, Sep 14, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Thu, Sep 15, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Thu, Sep 15, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Fri, Sep 16, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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Student Registration
Fri, Sep 16, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Student Registration for Great Minds in Stem Conference. Use Discount Code GMiSCon2022 through 9/16 for a $99 registration.
More Information: Conference Office Hours.pdf
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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PhD Thesis Proposal - Heramb Nemlekar
Tue, Sep 20, 2022 @ 01:30 PM - 03:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
PhD Candidate: Heramb Nemlekar
Title: Efficiently Learning Human Preferences for Proactive Robot Assistance in Assembly Tasks
Date: 09/20/22 (Tuesday)
Time: 1:30 pm
Hybrid Presentation
Location: SAL 322
Zoom URL: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92429044874?pwd=ZExXK2dRamtWK1V0MUswOVVUdnJzZz09
Committee:
Gaurav Sukhatme
Heather Culbertson
Jyotirmoy Deshmukh
Satyandra K. Gupta
Stefanos Nikolaidis
Abstract:
I focus on enabling robots to proactively assist assembly workers by anticipating their future actions. Since each worker can have their own preferred way of performing an assembly, assistive robots must learn the individual preferences of their users to anticipate their actions accurately. Previous work in this field learns human preferences in the form of a policy or a reward function from user demonstrations in the given task. However, obtaining demonstrations can be tedious and time-consuming in actual assemblies. While recent approaches try to efficiently learn user preferences through actively generated queries instead of demonstrations, they do not leverage any prior knowledge of the users' preferences. In this work, I propose exploiting (1) similarities between preferences of different users in a given task and (2) similarities between different tasks performed by a given user to learn the user's preference efficiently. Based on our insight that different users can be grouped into a small set of dominant preferences, I present a novel approach for efficiently inferring the preferences of new users by matching their actions to a dominant preference cluster. For leveraging similarities between tasks, I propose learning user preferences as a function of task-agnostic features (like the mental and physical effort of actions) such that we can transfer their preferences from a canonical to an actual assembly task. I evaluate these approaches in user studies of real-world assembly tasks and show how each prior source of user preference can improve the accuracy of anticipating user actions. I also present a human-robot assembly study that shows how proactively assisting users by anticipating their actions can reduce human-idle time and improve user experience. Finally, I discuss our proposal for jointly leveraging similarities between users and tasks to accurately anticipate user actions.
Location: 322
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92429044874?pwd=ZExXK2dRamtWK1V0MUswOVVUdnJzZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Lizsl De Leon
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Min Family Challenge Sustainable Development Goals
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Mon, Sep 26, 2022 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Come and hear from Susan Angus, director of Commission on Voluntary Service & Action on UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's)real world solutions having societal impact. You will also get to hear from Min Family Challenge faculty, Trina Gregory on the application process.
RSVP
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 109
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Johannah Murray/ Viterbi Office of Technology Innovation and Entrepenuership
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Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition Info Session
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Thu, Sep 29, 2022 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
The Masseh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition (MEPC) will teach you how to develop a business model and launch your startup through connections to seed funding, legal prizes, mentorship from seasoned business executives and access to the investment community.
The grand prize winner will receive $50K to help launch their company!
RSVP
More Information: MEPC flyer General.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Johannah Murray/ Viterbi Office of Technology Innovation and Entrepenuership
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PhD Thesis Proposal - Basileal Imana
Fri, Sep 30, 2022 @ 09:00 AM - 10:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Candidate: Basileal Imana
Title: Platform-supported and Privacy-preserving Auditing of Social Media Algorithms for Public Interest
Committee: Aleksandra Korolova, John Heidemann, Bistra Dilkina, Kristina Lerman, Phebe Vayanos
Abstract:
Social media platforms are at an inflection point due to increasing pressure from society to scrutinize their algorithms and practices. Auditing these platforms for public interest has become a pressing area of academic research, policy-making and legislation. One area of concern is platform-induced bias in the delivery of ads that shape access to life opportunities such as employment, housing and education. The primary risk comes from platforms' use of relevance estimator algorithms to personalize delivery of ads. In response to the risks, policies are being proposed to mandate platforms to provide external researchers privileged access to perform audits while protecting the platforms' privacy-sensitive data. But, until now, no actionable proposal has been made on how to achieve this policy goal practically and at scale. In this work, we propose a new platform-supported auditing framework enables a privacy-preserving and generalizable method for evaluating the fairness of relevance estimators used in delivery of opportunity ads.
We prove the above statement through three studies. In the first study, we perform a black-box audit to show that Facebook's relevance estimator can result in discriminatory job ad delivery by gender. In our second ongoing study, we show our method from the first study generalizes by transforming it into a template we can apply to audit for discrimination in other areas that have not been studied well. We will use the template to audit racial bias in delivery of housing and education ads. The black-box audits in the first two studies will demonstrate how relevance estimators can result in discriminatory outcomes for opportunity ads. Finally, in our third ongoing study, we propose a platform-supported auditing framework for auditing relevance estimators that addresses the limitations of black-box methods. Our proposal is fundamentally different from prior methods in that it suggests a way for auditors to have query access to the core and proprietary algorithms of social media while preserving privacy interests of users and platforms. Taken together, the three studies will show a platform-supported method to audit relevance estimators is the key to increasing social-media transparency.
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94162038836?pwd=R1Z6QXVyZG54OHRvMUJFSENETklzZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Lizsl De Leon
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Viterbi Fall Concert
Fri, Sep 30, 2022 @ 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Masters Programs
University Calendar
All PhD, MS as well as Undergraduate students are invited to be a part of this Fall Concert.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Juli Legat
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