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Events for September 08, 2016

  • Repeating EventSix Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement

    Thu, Sep 08, 2016 @ 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM

    Executive Education

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: TBD, TBD

    Talk Title: Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement

    Host: Professional Programs

    More Info: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-green-belt-process-improvement

    Audiences: Registered Attendees

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    Contact: Erin Tanaka

    Event Link: https://gapp.usc.edu/professional-programs/short-courses/industrial-systems/six-sigma-green-belt-process-improvement

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  • Communicating Your Research to the Media

    Communicating Your Research to the Media

    Thu, Sep 08, 2016 @ 09:00 AM - 10:30 AM

    Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Carl Marziali, Veteran Science Communicator; Former Director of Research Communications and Assistant Vice President for Media Relations at USC

    Talk Title: Communicating Your Research to the Media

    Series: Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC Distinguished Speakers Series

    Abstract: Learn about the importance of media and public relations, using effective communication with the media during an interview. Tips on preparation, delivery and the raising of your research profile.

    Host: Office of Research

    More Info: https://calendar.usc.edu/event/communicating_your_research_to_the_media?utm_campaign=widget&utm_medium=widget&utm_source=USC+Event+Calendar#.V8dqkLX8vW4

    Location: Harlyne J. Norris Research Tower (NRT) - LG 503/4

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Cristy Lytal/USC Stem Cell

    Event Link: https://calendar.usc.edu/event/communicating_your_research_to_the_media?utm_campaign=widget&utm_medium=widget&utm_source=USC+Event+Calendar#.V8dqkLX8vW4

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  • Repeating EventBiotechnology Lecture Series

    Thu, Sep 08, 2016 @ 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

    Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Various, Amgen

    Talk Title: R&D Insights from Lab Bench to Patient Bedside

    Abstract: USC researchers have the opportunity to gain research and development insights with a new biotechnology lecture series sponsored by Amgen and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC.

    The weekly lecture series, "R&D Insights from Lab Bench to Patient Bedside" takes place Thursdays at 10:30AM-12:00PM at USC's Health Sciences Campus from September 1, 2016 through November 10, 2016.

    The talks will feature Amgen scientists speaking about:

    Identifying a possible therapeutic target and its role in disease
    Increasing therapeutic efficacy and safety
    Process development, devices and manufacturing
    Case studies from bench to clinic

    Lectures will take place at the BCC First Floor Seminar Room or ZNI Herklotz Seminar Room.

    RSVP at http://www.usc.edu/esvp (use code: amgenlecture). Space is limited. Preference will be given to SCRM master's students, PhDs, and postdocs, and attending all lectures is mandatory.

    Please contact qliumich@usc.edu or karenw03@amgen.com for further details.

    Host: USC Stem Cell/Amgen

    More Info: https://calendar.usc.edu/event/biotechnology_lecture_series_rd_insights_from_lab_bench_to_patient_bedside?utm_campaign=widget&utm_medium=widget&utm_source=USC+Event+Calendar#.V8dKNLX8vW4

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

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    Contact: Cristy Lytal/USC Stem Cell

    Event Link: https://calendar.usc.edu/event/biotechnology_lecture_series_rd_insights_from_lab_bench_to_patient_bedside?utm_campaign=widget&utm_medium=widget&utm_source=USC+Event+Calendar#.V8dKNLX8vW4

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  • PhD Defense - Tobias Flach

    Thu, Sep 08, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 01:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    University Calendar


    Title: Detecting and Mitigating Root Causes for Slow Web Transfers
    Time: Sept 8 (Thursday), 11am - 1pm
    Location: EEB 248

    PhD Candidate: Tobias Flach

    Committee:

    Ramesh Govindan
    Ethan Katz-Bassett
    John Heidemann
    Konstantinos Psounis

    Abstract:

    One of the key goals for Web service providers is the quick delivery of their content to customers.
    Minimizing the latency between a user's service request and the delivery of the corresponding content is of paramount importance for Web services like search, shopping, or video streaming. This is motivated by the fact that users have a low tolerance for delays. Past studies verified a link between increasing latency for content delivery and corresponding reductions in user engagement and provider revenue. As a result content providers go to great lengths to minimize latency by improving their infrastructure, communication protocols, and proximity to the users. However, end-to-end latency can still suffer from other network limitations, some of which have their root causes outside of a content provider's control domain.

    In this thesis we strive to get a better understanding of the performance-limiting factors that affect Web transfers. In addition we explore techniques to mitigate these factors. For this we conducted multiple measurement studies dissecting Web transfers from different angles to find and analyze the root causes for poor performance.

    First, we present two measurement studies investigating how the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) can introduce delays that adversely affect Web transfers. We use large-scale measurements that we obtained at Google frontends across the globe as well as through the widely distributed M-Lab measurement platform for this task. We start by evaluating how packet loss affects Google's content delivery and show that especially short-lived connections suffer from packet loss in the network. We then discuss the design, deployment, and evaluation of algorithms tailored reduce the frequency and impact of the costly losses.
    As a follow-up we present a methodology to break down the delay incurred by a packet into components attributable to propagation delay and cross-traffic, loss recovery, and queuing. Moreover we investigate the degree to which queuing delays slow TCP's loss recovery. We find that many of the flows see packet delivery times of one second or more, with large regional differences, and with queuing being a key cause of delay.

    Second, we take a look at structural limitations affecting Web latency. Specifically we analyze the impact of path inflation in mobile carriers where traffic between content providers and mobile customers is taking geographically circuitous routes. We attribute these pathologies to root causes like a lack of ingress points between a carrier's network and the wider Internet as well as limited peering arrangements with content providers. Based on longitudinal data we show that performance in some carriers improved over time with other regions continuing to suffer from path inflation.

    Third, we look at a particular type of third-party interference as a contributor to delay. We analyze the prevalence and impact of traffic policing, a traffic management technique used to enforce pre-configured throughput limits on connections by dropping excess packets. Based on global-scale measurements taken at Google frontends we show that a substantial number of connections with packet loss are affected by policing. Moreover we demonstrate that policing negatively impacts user quality of experience. We conclude by designing and testing solutions for content providers and the policing ISPs to mitigate the negative effects of policers.

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Lizsl De Leon

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  • Viterbi Open House

    Thu, Sep 08, 2016 @ 01:00 PM - 03:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Receptions & Special Events


    Students will learn about student organizations and departmental resources within Viterbi.

    To register, click here https://myviterbi.usc.edu/vasa/?PostingID=1234567995.

    Location: lobby

    Audiences: Undergrad

    Contact: Diane Yoon

    Event Link: https://myviterbi.usc.edu/vasa/?PostingID=1234567995

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  • Invariant Inference for Program Specification and Verification

    Thu, Sep 08, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Todd Millstein, University of California, Los Angeles

    Talk Title: Invariant Inference for Program Specification and Verification

    Series: EE 598 Computer Engineering Seminar Series

    Abstract: Why isn't software verification technology in common use today? One reason is that, despite decades of foundational and practical advances, verification is still too costly in terms of human time and effort. I'll describe my recent research with colleagues to address two of the most onerous parts of the software verification process: creating a high-quality specification, and identifying the inductive program invariants that form the key lemmas in a proof of software correctness. Our research supports both tasks through a new form of automatic invariant inference that is both more expressive and less burdensome than prior techniques.

    We extend the data-driven approach to invariant inference, whereby program invariants are learned from a set of test executions. This approach is appealingly general, as it naturally handles arbitrarily complex code and specifications. However, prior data-driven techniques have required the user to provide a fixed set of "features" as input, which are atomic predicates that define the search space of possible invariants. If these features are insufficient, invariant inference will either fail or produce an incorrect result. In contrast, we introduce a technique for on-demand feature learning, which automatically expands the search space of candidate invariants in a targeted manner on demand. Our approach eliminates the problem of feature selection and guarantees that inferred invariants are consistent with the given tests. We have used our technique both to infer rich specifications for black-box code and to infer provably correct loop invariants as part of an automatic program verifier.

    Joint work with Saswat Padhi (UCLA) and Rahul Sharma (Stanford).




    Biography: Todd Millstein is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests are broadly in programming languages and software verification. Todd received his Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of Washington and his A.B. from Brown University, all in Computer Science. Todd received an NSF CAREER award in 2006, an IBM Faculty Award in 2008, an ACM SIGPLAN Most Influential PLDI Paper Award in 2011, an IEEE Micro Top Picks selection in 2012, the Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award from UCLA Engineering in 2016, and a Microsoft Research Outstanding Collaborator Award in 2016.


    Host: Xuehai Qian, x04459, xuehai.qian@usc.edu

    Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 100D

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos

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  • EE 598 Computer Engineering Seminar

    Thu, Sep 08, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Todd Millstein, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

    Talk Title: Invariant Inference for Program Specification and Verification

    Abstract: Why isn't software verification technology in common use today? One reason is that, despite decades of foundational and practical advances, verification is still too costly in terms of human time and effort. I'll describe my recent research with colleagues to address two of the most onerous parts of the software verification process: creating a high-quality specification, and identifying the inductive program invariants that form the key lemmas in a proof of software correctness. Our research supports both tasks through a new form of automatic invariant inference that is both more expressive and less burdensome than prior techniques.

    We extend the data-driven approach to invariant inference, whereby program invariants are learned from a set of test executions. This approach is appealingly general, as it naturally handles arbitrarily complex code and specifications. However, prior data-driven techniques have required the user to provide a fixed set of "features" as input, which are atomic predicates that define the search space of possible invariants. If these features are insufficient, invariant inference will either fail or produce an incorrect result. In contrast, we introduce a technique for on-demand feature learning, which automatically expands the search space of candidate invariants in a targeted manner on demand. Our approach eliminates the problem of feature selection and guarantees that inferred invariants are consistent with the given tests. We have used our technique both to infer rich specifications for black-box code and to infer provably correct loop invariants as part of an automatic program verifier.


    Biography: Todd Millstein is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests are broadly in programming languages and software verification. Todd received his Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of Washington and his A.B. from Brown University, all in Computer Science. Todd received an NSF CAREER award in 2006, an IBM Faculty Award in 2008, an ACM SIGPLAN Most Influential PLDI Paper Award in 2011, an IEEE Micro Top Picks selection in 2012, the Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award from UCLA Engineering in 2016, and a Microsoft Research Outstanding Collaborator Award in 2016.

    Host: Xuehai Qian

    Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - OHE 100D

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Estela Lopez

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  • Writing Effective Resumes

    Thu, Sep 08, 2016 @ 04:30 PM - 05:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Does your resume highlight the skills that will land an interview? Learn how to create a resume that will serve as the marketing tool that will get your foot inside industry's door!

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

    Audiences: All Viterbi

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • ASBME BIOMED: Research Symposium

    Thu, Sep 08, 2016 @ 05:30 PM - 08:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    University Calendar


    BIOMED is a beginning-of-the-year dinner meant to introduce incoming and current students of any background to medical issues that face our world today. This semi-formal event invites faculty and PhD students in the USC Department of Biomedical Engineering who will discuss their experiences in the field to students and also provide an opportunity for students to become better acquainted with their peers, faculty, and staff at USC. BIOMED will be taking place Thursday, September 8th in TCC 227. Dr. Ellis Meng will be the keynote speaker. Deposits of $10 are due to the front desk of DRB Wednesday, September 7th.

    Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - 227

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering

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