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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for September 26, 2011
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Meet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, & Engineering Talk
Mon, Sep 26, 2011
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Receptions & Special Events
This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process; a student led walking tour of campus and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process and financial aid. Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 8:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m. Please visit https://esdweb.esd.usc.edu/unresrsvp/MeetUSC.aspx to check availability and make an appointment. Be sure to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!
Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - USC Admission Office
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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On Campus Freshmen Admission Interviews continue...Mon, Sep 26, 2011
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Receptions & Special Events
Personal Admission Interviews are available to freshmen applicants throughout the Fall practically every weekday until December 9, 2011. Freshman applicant interviews are not required as part of the admission process, however we would like to meet as many of our applicants as possible. All interview appointments are scheduled online. http://viterbi.usc.edu/admission/freshman/interviews/
Audiences: Freshmen Applicants for Fall 2012
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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Human Factors in Aviation Safety (HFH)
Mon, Sep 26, 2011 @ 08:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
This course presents human factors information in a manner that can be readily understood and applied by aviation practitioners. Emphasis is placed on identifying the causes of human error, predicting how human error can affect performance, and applying countermeasures to reduce or eliminate its effects.
Location: Aviation Safety & Security Campus
Audiences: Aviation Professionals
Contact: Harrison Wolf
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Annenberg Research Seminar
Mon, Sep 26, 2011 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, Information Sciences Institute, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kristina Lerman, Information Sciences Institute
Talk Title: The Dynamics of Information Spread on Networks
Abstract: "The recent proliferation of data about human behavior on social media sites offers a natural laboratory for studying social dynamics, specifically how the structure of social networks affects the flow of information and influence. I will present recent results of the study of information spread on the social news aggregator Digg. By carrying out quantitative analysis of information cascades on the Digg follower graph, we have observed cascades that spread fast enough for one initial seed to âinfectâ hundreds of people, yet end up affecting only 0.1% of the entire network. This conflicts with our understanding of the spread of epidemics on networks, which suggests the existence of an epidemic threshold below which epidemics die out and above which they spread to a significant fraction of the network. I demonstrate that while the highly clustered structure of the Digg network somewhat slows the overall growth of cascades, the far more dramatic effect is created by the contagion mechanism, which deviates from standard social contagion models.â
In the second part of the talk, âI argue that many dynamic processes on social networks, such as the spread of information or disease, cannot be modeled as a random walk. I classify dynamic processes as conservative and non-conservative, based on whether they conserve some diffusing quantity, and show how these differences impact the choice of metrics used for network analysis. I show that Alpha-Centrality, which mathematically describes non-conservative epidemic spread, leads to better, empirically verifiable insights into the structure and behavior of online social networks than conservative metrics, such as PageRank.â
Biography: Kristina Lerman is a Project Leader at the Information Sciences Institute and holds a joint appointment as a Research Assistant Professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Computer Science Department. Her research focuses on applying network- and machine learning-based methods to problems in social computing.
She also was principal organizer of the 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Social Information Processing Symposium.
Host: Annenberg Networks Network
More Info: http://annenberg.usc.edu/Events/2011/110926ARSKristinaLerman.aspxLocation: Annenberg School For Communication (ASC) - 207 (Geoffrey Cowan Forum)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Eric Mankin
Event Link: http://annenberg.usc.edu/Events/2011/110926ARSKristinaLerman.aspx
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Sep 26, 2011 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: Vasilis Marmarelis, "Model-based Clinical Diagnosis for the 21st Century"; Andrew Mackay, "Genetically-engineered Drug Carriers"; Jean-Michel Maarek, title pending
Host: BME Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Astani CEE Department Seminar: The problem of dynamic fracture in brittle materials and its peridynamic solution
Mon, Sep 26, 2011 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Florin Bobaru, Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract: Dynamic fracture in nominally brittle materials (in which plastic work is minimal) has significant technological relevance in, for example, designing material systems resistant to impact damage and penetration, cracking of pavement and infrastructure under shock loadings, hydraulic fracturing for enhanced extraction of oil and gas, mining operations, safety of long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel through vitrification, etc. Experiments on dynamic brittle fracture in amorphous materials exhibit a large variety of complex phenomena, including: crack branching, crack-path instabilities, successive branching events, secondary cracking. Modeling and simulation of dynamic fracture in brittle materials has been one of the most challenging problems in computational mechanics. In spite of significant efforts dedicated to this phenomenon over the past several decades (using cohesive-zone models, molecular dynamics methods, etc) fundamental issues and discrepancies between simulation results and experimental observations have remained unsolved.
In this talk I will present peridynamic (nonlocal) models for dynamic brittle fracture. I will show that peridynamics correctly reproduces many of important features of dynamic crack propagation. In particular, the crack propagation speed and the crack path obtained with peridynamics approach experimental values. We use the peridynamic model to also investigate the influence of the stress waves on the crack branching angle and the velocity profile of a propagating crack in a branching event. We observe that crack branching in peridynamics evolves as described by the phenomenology deduced from the experimental evidence: when a crack reaches a critical stage it splits into two or more branches, each propagating with the same speed as the parent crack, but with a much reduced process zone. The results confirm the recent belief that dynamic fracture in brittle materials happens through an evolution of micro-damage and micro-cracking, and is controlled by the âinner problemâ taking place in the process zone rather than by the âouter problemâ that classical fracture mechanics solves.
Biography: Education and employment history:
⢠B.S. (1995) Mathematics and Mechanics, University of Bucharest, Romania
⢠M.S. (1995) Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids, University of Bucharest, Romania
⢠Ph.D. (2001) Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Associate Professor, Mechanical and Materials Engineering at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (since 2007). Assistant Professor of Engineering Mechanics, UNL (2001-2007). Visiting positions: Summer Research Fellow (2002 â 2004, 2005) at Sandia National Laboratories; Visiting Scholar (Sept.-Dec. 2008), The Fracture Group, Cavendish Lab, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K.; Visiting Scholar (Jan.-Mar. 2009), Multiscale Dynamic Material Modeling Department, Sandia National Laboratories; Visiting Associate Professor (Apr.-Aug. 2011), Mechanical and Civil Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.
Host: Dr. Jean-Pierre Bardet
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209 Conference Room
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Adaptation by Evolutionary Algorithms in Unfalsified Control
Mon, Sep 26, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Tanet Wonghong, University of Bangkok
Talk Title: Adaptation by Evolutionary Algorithms in Unfalsified Control
Abstract: Unfalsified control theory is a variant of adaptive control techniques. The main attractive point
of this approach is that no plant model is required to design an adaptive controller. Following
this concept, an adaptive controller is implemented by means of switching among many
candidate controllers in a predefined set. The plant input signal and the plant output signal are
observed while one candidate controller is active in the feedback loop, and they are used for the
unfalsification algorithm to decide on which candidate controller in the set should be switched on
as the next active controller. In the original work of Safonov et al, the adaptation of controllers
can only be performed using the switching of an active controller in a predefined set of
controllers. This is a major limitation to apply this approach to a nonlinear system. Usually, a
fixed set of controllers that performs well for one operating point cannot guarantee to achieve a
good performance under other operating conditions.
To solve the above problem, when a new operating condition occurs, a new set of controllers is
computed using a modified cost function via a new fictitious error signal and an evolutionary
algorithm is used in order to search for an optimal controller over a space of arbitrary candidate
controllers. A combination of the switching of controllers in the current set and the adaptation of
the set of controllers leads to an automatic controller tuning method for a controller structure,
e.g. PI and PID, in order to handle changes of set-points occurring in a highly nonlinear chemical
process, e.g. a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR). Such a combination is the so-called a new
unfalsified adaptive control algorithm.
Biography: Tanet Wonghong received the Dr.-Ing. degree from TU Dortmund, Germany (2010). He is a
lecturer of Electrical Engineering at Bangkok University. His research area are Adaptive Control,
Unfalsified Control, Nonlinear Control, Robustness, Optimization Theory, Artificial Intelligence
(EA), Automatic (PI & PID) Controller Tuning.
Host: Michael Safonov
More Information: TenetWonghong.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Shane Goodoff
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Information Session with Northrup Grumman Corporation
Mon, Sep 26, 2011 @ 06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity
When: Monday, September 26th, at 6:00pm
Where: GFS 106
What: An IEEE-sponsored information session with Northrup Grumman
Have you ever considered the world real applications behind the courses that we take in school? Have you ever pondered how these formulas can be implemented in such technologies as UAVs and cyber security? Come to the Tech Show hosted by the experts at Communications Systems, Northrup Grumman Corporation (NGC). Do not miss an opportunity to meet the technologists of NGC one week before the Viterbi Engineering Career Expo. Good news: NGC representatives will answer all your questions regarding the technology and NGC recruitment while you would be enjoying FREE FOOD! So come on by, and remember to bring your resume, because NGC is actively recruiting for internship and full time positions!Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
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Northrop Grumman
Mon, Sep 26, 2011 @ 06:15 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Come meet representatives from Northrop Grumman to discuss potential opportunities and simply learn more about the company.
Their team draws strength from our collective vision and
principles, collaborating across business sectors to achieve
our goals. Join them and youâll help maintain over 5,000
ground vehicles, solve geospatial orientation challenges, develop
advanced sensors, or build powerful aircraft. Youâll be supported
by training, employee resource groups, and a shared vision of
global security.
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
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Accenture: Engineers in the Consulting World
Mon, Sep 26, 2011 @ 07:00 PM - 08:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Workshops & Infosessions
Collaborative workshop with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), Society of Women Engineers (SWE), National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), and Minority Engineering Graduate Association (MEGA) aimed to teach engineers about the field of consulting. All majors welcome!
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers
