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Events for September 22, 2017
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Transfer Day
Fri, Sep 22, 2017
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Receptions & Special Events
TRANSFER DAY FEATURES: A presentation from Viterbi Admission, Campus Tours, Academic Department Visits, and more!
If you have questions about engineering and the transfer process then Transfer Day is for you. Transfer Day is a half-day comprehensive program designed to give you the most in-depth look at the transfer process and academic life at USC. Specifically, the program includes presentations on the admission process, transfer credit policy, academics, financial aid. You will also have the opportunity to visit an academic department or take a campus tour. Reservations are required.
RSVPLocation: USC Admission Office
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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A Model-Based Iterative Reconstruction Approach to Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Tomograph
Fri, Sep 22, 2017 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Zeeshan Nadir, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University
Talk Title: A Model-Based Iterative Reconstruction Approach to Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Tomography
Abstract: Many imaging and sensing problems in the fields of medical imaging, computer vision, machine learning, communications and signal processing etc. can be posed as inverse problems. Broadly, an inverse problem consists of recovering some underlying signal of interest that leads to a directly observable measurement dataset where the measurement dataset may be corrupted by noise. In the presence of sufficient quantity of good quality measurement dataset, the inversion problem can often be solved by direct methods often involving closed form inverse formulas like filtered back projection. However, when the measurement data contains noise or is extremely sparse, then such conventional techniques do not work. Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Tomography (TDLAT) is such an ill-posed nonlinear inverse problem where 2D concentration and temperature images are required to be reconstructed from a handful of projection measurements.
Bayesian methods are a probabilistic approach to reconstruct signals by incorporating prior information about the signals in the form of a prior probability distribution. Typical 2D prior models like Markov Random Field enforce local smoothness on the images by penalizing differences between neighboring pixels. However, the major limitation of such prior models is that they cannot express non-homogeneous and non-Gaussian characteristics of the images and therefore cannot model the long-range correlations between image pixels. In this presentation, I shall present a Gaussian Mixture Model as a prior distribution which can be trained with a few training examples. In order to show the utility of this approach, I shall apply it to Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Tomography problem. I shall formulate the reconstruction problem as a Maximum-aposteriori estimation problem. I shall present an efficient multigrid algorithm to perform the resulting optimization. The results using simulated datasets show that the proposed approach can reduce reconstruction error while also resulting in a computationally efficient algorithm.
Biography: Zeeshan Nadir is a Ph.D. candidate in the school of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. In Summer 2016, he was an intern at MathWorks, Inc., Natick, MA, where he worked on MATLAB coder package. He developed a new functionality in MATLAB Coder which has been incorporated in MATLAB R2017a release. His research interests include statistical signal processing, inverse problems, computational imaging, machine learning and computer vision.
Host: Hosted by Prof. Richard Leahy
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
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Department of Biomedical Engineering Systems Cellular-Molecular Bioengineering Distinguished Speaker Series
Fri, Sep 22, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ravi Iyengar, Professor, Pharmacological Sciences Director, Institute for Systems Biomedicine Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Talk Title: Information from cell shape controls cellular responses
Series: Department of Biomedical Engineering Systems Cellular-Molecular Bioengineering Distinguished Speaker Series
Biography: Dr. Iyengar is a Dorothy H. and Lewis Rosenstiel Professor in the Department of Pharmacologyand Systems Therapeutics. He is the Director and Principal Investigator of the NIGMS funded SystemsBiology Center New York. Dr. Iyengar completed his undergraduate and masters degrees at Bombay University in India. He then moved to the University of Houston and completed his Ph.D. training in Biophysical Sciences. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Baylor College of Medicine before starting an academic career at Mt. Sinai in 1980.
The Iyengar lab is interested in understanding cellular regulatory networks at a systems level and in using this understanding to develop therapeutic strategies and phenotypic signatures for complex diseases. Dr. Iyengar is especially interested in the role of cell shape and its relationship to extracellular spaces within tissue in information processing, and he uses a combination of experimental, theoretical and computational approaches to study these questions. Dr. Iyengar has authored more than 120 research papers, written 112 invited review articles, and edited six books. He received the NIH New Investigator Award in 1980, received the Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Host: Stacey Finley, PhD
More Information: Iyengar Ravi_flyer_September 22.pdf
Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - 145
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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W.V.T. RUSCH ENGINEERING HONORS COLLOQUIUM
Fri, Sep 22, 2017 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Doug Heckmann, Investment Manager at LH Ventures
Talk Title: Entrepreneurial Ventures
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Su Stevens
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VIRTUAL Workshop: Navigating the Internship & Job Search (Viterbi Career Gateway)
Fri, Sep 22, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Discover tips to help you find an engineering internship/co-op opportunity or full-time employment using the Viterbi Career Gateway portal.
To access this virtual workshop, go to https://bluejeans.com/989656911 and log in with your netID and password.Location: ONLINE
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Sep 22, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ali Kazemian and Mohammad Motie Share , Astani CEE Graduate Students
Talk Title: A Performance-based Framework for Laboratory Testing of Cementitious Materials for Construction-Scale 3D Printing and A Vacation Queue Approach to Queue Size Computation for a Signalized Traffic Intersection
Abstract: During recent decades,construction industry has been criticized for limited use of innovative methods and slow adoption of cutting edge technologies. However,it seems that a transformation is about to happen and construction industry is getting ready for some revolutionary changes. Employing and scaling up additive manufacturing techniques for automated construction of whole buildings is a novel idea which has been topic of discussion for several years. A review of related projects and research works reveals that Portland cement concrete is the most viable option as the material to be used in automated construction processes in near future. However,the performance requirements for a cementitious printing mixture have not been clearly defined.
In this presentation,a framework for performance based laboratory testing of cementitious mixtures for construction scale 3D printing in fresh state will be discussed,in which workability of a fresh printing mixture is described in terms of print quality, shape stability, and printability window. In order to elaborate on the proposed framework and suggested test methods, an experimental program was carried out using four different mixtures. The results of several conventional test methods, as well as proposed tests, will also be presented and performance of different mixtures will be compared. Finally, ongoing research related to real-time quality monitoring of cementitious materials during the concrete 3D printing process will be discussed.
Abstract by Mohammad Motie Share
Analyzing queues of vehicles at signalized intersections reveals useful insight about the performance of arterial networks. Typically, the average evolution of these queues is studied under deterministic conditions, fixed time policies, and simplifying assumptions. We propose an approach to probabilistically characterize the dynamics of these queues by incorporating the uncertain and dynamic nature of traffic streams and intersection management policy. We consider a vacation queue model for a signalized traffic intersection to elucidate intra-cycle queue size variations. In particular, we study two one-way single-lane streets interacting at a signalized intersection. Vehicles arrive at the intersection according to two independent Poisson processes with different intensities. We approximate queues of vehicles on each intersection leg by simple queuing systems that their server becomes unavailable during red phases. Motivated by vacation queues, an embedded Markov chain corresponding to queue sizes at the end of cycles is considered, whose transition probabilities are computed from analytical transient solutions of vacation queues.
Location: Waite Phillips Hall Of Education (WPH) - B27
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Probability and Statistics Seminar: Ilya Mironov (Google Brain) - Differential Privacy: From Principled Foundations to Your Browser
Fri, Sep 22, 2017 @ 03:20 PM - 04:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ilya Mironov, Google Brain
Talk Title: Differential Privacy: From Principled Foundations to Your Browser
Series: Probability and Statistics Seminar
Abstract: We survey progress in understanding of privacy in statistical databases over the last 10+ years, starting with early negative results followed by emergence of the notion of differential privacy and its variants. In the second half of the talk we cover uses of differential privacy in the Chrome browser, and its recent applications in machine learning tasks such as text and image recognition.
Biography: Ilya Mironov is a Staff Research Scientist in Google Brain. After completing his PhD at Stanford in 2003, he joined Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, where he worked on cryptography, cryptanalysis, and privacy until 2014.
Host: Stanislav Minsker
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 414
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Computer Science Department
