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Events for September 12, 2024
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Towards Trustworthy Physical AI Generalists
Thu, Sep 12, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ding Zhao , Associate Professor & Dean's Early Career Fellow - Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Towards Trustworthy Physical AI Generalists
Abstract: Large language models like ChatGPT have shown that generalist foundation models can effectively tackle long-horizon tasks by training on extensive text data from the internet. It is anticipated that larger-scale data from the physical world, such as those generated by autonomous vehicles and the healthcare industry, could drive the next wave of AI development. A common challenge in deploying highly intelligent agents at scale in the physical world is ensuring their safety. In this talk, I will present our efforts to establish Trustworthy Physical AI Generalists to support this crucial transformation. I will explore the challenges of ensuring safety and generalization in the development of trustworthy AI, and discuss potential solutions, including rare event analysis, safe reinforcement learning, hierarchical generative models for task identification and transferability, and causal reasoning to improve generalizability. Additionally, I will discuss the advantages and challenges of using LLMs to develop physical AI generalists. I will introduce applications of our work in heart attack detection and acute care, self-driving technology, and robotic autonomy for assisting seniors and conducting safety-critical tasks related to climate change resilience.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
https://usc.zoom.us/j/99488778795?pwd=oXg76V89VYG9b5I0CIEcn2E2Fz7d6z.1
Meeting ID: 994 8877 8795
Passcode: 868727
Biography: Ding Zhao is an Associate Professor and Dean's Early Career Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Safe AI Lab. His research focuses on developing Trustworthy Physical AI Generalists for high-stakes applications at scale. Prof Zhao was invited by Uber ATG to enhance fleet safety following the world’s first fatal autonomous vehicle collision. Zhao collaborates with leading industry partners, including Google, Nvidia, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Ford, Uber, Bosch, Toyota, and Rolls-Royce. He has grants from NSF, DOT, DOE, and DARPA and published over 120 papers in top venues such as ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, AISTATS, CoRL, ICRA, IROS, and Nature Communications. Zhao has mentored 20 Ph.D. students and 7 postdocs, with 7 of them becoming faculty members in academia. Zhao has received numerous awards, including CMU Dean's Early Career Fellow Professorship, Provost's Inclusive Teaching Fellows Award, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, MIT Technology Review 35 Under 35 Award in China, George N. Saridis Best IEEE Transactions Paper Award, George Tallman Ladd Research Award, Struminger Teaching Award, Ford University Collaboration Award, Qualcomm Innovation Award, Carnegie-Bosch Research Award, and various industrial fellowship awards from Google DeepMind, Adobe, Toyota, and Bosch. His work has garnered attention from media outlets such as the New York Times, Forbes, TIME, IEEE Spectrum, Popular Science, Telegraph, and Wired.
Host: Assistant Prof. Yue Wang
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99488778795?pwd=oXg76V89VYG9b5I0CIEcn2E2Fz7d6z.1Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99488778795?pwd=oXg76V89VYG9b5I0CIEcn2E2Fz7d6z.1
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
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Seminar: The USC School of Advanced Computing
Thu, Sep 12, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Gaurav S. Sukhatme, Professor, Computer Science and Electrical Computer Engineering at USC
Talk Title: The USC School of Advanced Computing
Abstract: Dr. Sukhatme will describe plans on the newly announced USC School of Advanced Computing and its place within the wider USC initiative on Frontiers of Computing.
Biography: Gaurav S. Sukhatme is Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) and an Amazon Scholar. He is the Director of the USC School of Advanced Computing and the Executive Vice Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He holds the Donald M. Aldstadt Chair in Advanced Computing at USC. He was the Chairman of the USC Computer Science department from 2012-17. He received his undergraduate education in computer science and engineering at IIT Bombay and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from USC. Sukhatme is the co-director of the USC Robotics Research Laboratory and the USC Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory director. His research interests are in networked robots, learning robots, and field robotics. He has published extensively in these and related areas. Sukhatme has served as PI on numerous NSF, DARPA, and NASA grants. He was a Co-PI on the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), an NSF Science and Technology Center. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, AAAI, and the IEEE, a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Okawa Foundation research award, and an Amazon research award. He is one of the founders of the Robotics: Science and Systems conference. He was the program chair of the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation and the 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Robots and Systems. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Autonomous Robots (Springer Nature) and has served in the past as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and on the editorial board of IEEE Pervasive Computing.
Host: Craig Knoblock
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/5111/Seminar:-The-USC-School-of-Advanced-Computing/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 1135/1137
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tricia Olmedo
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/events/5111/Seminar:-The-USC-School-of-Advanced-Computing/
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Semiconductors & Microelectronics Seminar - Yuanwei Li, Thursday, 9/12 at 2:30pm in EEB 132
Thu, Sep 12, 2024 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yuanwei Li, Stanford University
Talk Title: Towards Designing Functionality: Nano-Architected Materials for Next-Generation Sustainability and Health Monitoring
Series: Semiconductors & Microelectronics Technology
Abstract: A central aim in materials science is the ability to dictate functionality through deliberate design rules, leading to the synthesis and characterization of targeted structures. Inspired by natural materials' assembly and optical properties, my research develops nano-architected materials from nanoscale to macroscale, each tailored with specific chemical and optical properties. This talk will delve into the intersection of chemistry, nanomaterials, and optical physics to innovate materials for enhanced sustainability and health monitoring applications.My research focuses on designing functional colloidal crystals using principles inspired by the geometric intricacies observed in natural systems. Employing DNA-functionalized inorganic nanoparticles as the building blocks, I have developed multicomponent and porous colloidal crystals through programmable assemblies, advancing the complexity achievable in crystalline structures. These crystals are engineered to possess unique functionalities such as negative refraction, broadband absorption, and significant mechanical robustness. Moreover, I address synthetic challenges in creating porous crystals with tunable pore sizes ranging from 10 to 1000 nm, which can be employed in applications from advanced catalysis to optical devices like invisibility cloaks and miniaturized mechanical components.I extend my expertise to designing intricate metamaterials that synergize bottom-up assemblies with top- down lithography for health monitoring by developing optical biosensors. Focusing on the continuous, multiplexed monitoring of key metabolites associated with chronic stress, my approach integrates high-quality- factor dielectric metasurfaces with plasmonic spherical nucleic acids composed of modular DNA aptamer probes. Demonstrating sub-picomolar sensitivity, this optical sensor enables real-time, multiplexed detection across dense arrays of resonators, potentially revolutionizing portable health monitoring systems.
Biography: Yuanwei Li is a postdoctoral fellow in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, as a Stanford Science Fellow under the guidance of Prof. Jennifer Dionne. She focuses on developing new optical nanomaterials for biosensing and photocatalysis. She received her PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University as a Ryan Fellow, working with Prof. Chad Mirkin. Her graduate research focused on the programmable assembly of nanoparticles into colloidal crystals with tailored chemical, optical, and mechanical properties by design. Her work has been published in Nature, Science, Nature Materials, and Science Advances. She received the MRS Graduate Student Award, Outstanding Research Award by the International Institute for Nanotechnology, the SPIE Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship, and has been named a Rising Star in Chemical Engineering by MIT.
Host: Jayakanth Ravichandran, Joshua Yang, Chongwu Zhou, Stephen Cronin, Wei Wu
More Information: Yuanwei Li Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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An Undergraduate and Graduate Research Project
Thu, Sep 12, 2024 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Astronautical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. James Wertz, Adjunct Professor
Talk Title: Creating an International Lunar University and Living and Working on the Moon in the Near Term
Abstract: The NASA RASC-AL (Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage) student competitionhas a topic this year in “Sustained Lunar Evolution” that fits very well with the spring, 2025 ASTE 523course in “Near-Term Lunar Colonies.” The competition is open to a university group with undergraduateand graduate students. Unfortunately, there is no monetary award, but we will use the project as asubstitute for the course final exam. (You don’t have to take the course to join the competition group.) Recent research suggests that we should be able to create a profitable, income-generating lunarsettlement and an international lunar university that would allow graduate students, faculty,entrepreneurs, and tourists to live, work, and vacation on the Moon in the next 5 to 10 years at moderatecost. There is a catch, however. This needs to be a commercial activity – selling products, vacations, realestate, sponsored research, and other commercial elements and activities and making a rather largeprofit. Of course, that profit comes in part from advertising on the Earth for the product or informationthat you are developing on the Moon. Unfortunately, traditional astronautics professionals know zero (orless) about marketing and commercial activity. We’re offering this seminar (and introduction to the spring semester course at USC) for undergraduateand graduate students and faculty in any area (even astronautics) to get your input, ideas, and wisdom onhow to do this and to see if you would be interested in working on USC’s NASA RASC-AL StudentCompetition for Sustained Lunar Colonization. It will take a range of skills to achieve this – marketing, business, legal, science, architecture, engineeringand quite a few more. Come join us to discuss how this could work for your students, your colleagues, oryou. There is literally a new world available to us. Any questions? Send them to jwertz@smad.com.
Biography: Dr. Wertz is an Adjunct Professor at USC and the President of Microcosm. Hisexpertise ranges from topics such as space mission engineering, low-cost spaceand launch systems, autonomous navigation and orbit control, satellite orbit andattitude systems, and low-cost lunar missions.
Host: Dr. James Wertz
Webcast: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/usc.zoom.us/j/95576853605?pwd=kYw0tmdC73IaHlqWz4aaZkk1vfC4rD.1__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!p47bYWU0GvqWj_jVloaECYBw-5nM45NiS3hO97qdHfGQ9P4wLvCtAGxEzlAp6FZdvJwqfU8N-RezPA$More Information: USC Lunar Seminar V4 9-12-24.pdf
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 306
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Shanya Olivares
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WIE Launch
Thu, Sep 12, 2024 @ 06:00 PM - 07:30 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Student Activity
Women in Engineering (WIE) invites you to kick off the new school year with our fun and engaging launch event. Come join us for some delicious food, make new friends, and meet fellow women in engineering. Learn more about WIE, our community, and the exciting opportunities in store for you. We look forward to seeing you there!
Location: Sign into EngageSC to View Location
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Thelma Federico Zaragoza
Event Link: https://engage.usc.edu/WIE/rsvp?id=397251
