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• Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars (40)
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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for September

• Sep

  03

  Task-Based Optimization for Medical Imaging

  Tue, Sep 03, 2013 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Prof. Angel Pineda, Cal-State Fullerton
  
  Talk Title: Task-Based Optimization for Medical Imaging
  
  Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
  
  Abstract: Medical images are typically obtained with a clinical task in mind. These tasks can often be modeled as signal detection or parameter estimation. In this talk, we will define the information content of medical images based on the performance of mathematical models for clinical tasks using those images. To quantify this type of information content we need to define the task (the intended use of the images), the statistics (the sources of variability in the data), and the observer (how we intend to obtain the information from the images). This “task-based” optimization can be used in a wide variety of settings. Examples will include choosing which data to acquire in optical diffusion tomography, optimizing a tomosynthesis system for lung nodule detection and deciding whether or not to accelerate the reconstruction of x-ray CT by binning the projection data. At the end of the talk we will discuss how this type of optimization could be used in MRI
  
  Biography: Dr. Angel Pineda is an associate professor of mathematics at California State University, Fullerton. For the 2013-14 academic year he is a visiting scholar at the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Laboratory at University of Southern California. He received his BS in chemical engineering from Lafayette College in 1995 and his PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Arizona in 2002. His postdoctoral fellowship was in the radiology department of Stanford University from 2002 to 2006. His research on statistical inverse problems in medical imaging focuses on optimization using mathematical models of clinical tasks. He is also active in mentoring undergraduate students in research and using mathematics education as a tool for international development.
  
  Host: Professor Krishna Nayak
  
  

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Talyia Veal

  

• Sep

  03

  PhD Program Seminar Series: What is a PhD?

  Tue, Sep 03, 2013 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Andrea Armani, USC
  
  Talk Title: What is a PhD?
  
  Abstract: This seminar will review what are the requirements to get into a PhD program, what you can do to improve your chance, and what exactly goes on during a PhD. I will also have a couple of my first year PhD students talk about their experiences during the admission process.
  
  Additional seminar dates and topics:
  
  GRE Preparation: 9/10
  Choosing a School/Advisor: 9/17
  Writing a Personal Statement/Preparing a CV: 9/24
  Fellowship Applications: 10/1
  
  Host: Andrea Armani
  
  

  Location: Vivian Hall of Engineering (VHE) - 702

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Andrea Armani

  

• Sep

  05

  CS Colloquium Series: Dr Pradeep Varakantham: Multi-Agent Systems for improving Quality of Life in Urban Environments

  Thu, Sep 05, 2013 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr Pradeep Varakantham, Singapore Management University
  
  Talk Title: Multi-Agent Systems for improving Quality of Life in Urban Environments
  
  Series: CS Colloquium
  
  Abstract: In this talk, I will present our research on large scale multi-agent systems for improving quality of life in urban cities of today. Technically, we focus on problems of allocating resources to multiple agents in cooperative, selfish or adversarial settings, while considering different objectives, e.g., maximizing revenue or utility, minimizing energy consumption or wait times, etc. We have provided generic solutions to these problems that are at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (Planning and Scheduling), Game Theory, Behavioral Economics and Optimization. Finally, we have demonstrated the utility of our techniques in the context of applications in:
  
  (a) Transportation: By developing extensions to the well known Congestion Games model to account for involuntary movements of taxi drivers (dictated by customer movement) and providing scalable mechanisms for solving the new representation, we optimized taxi fleet operations of a major taxi company (more than 8000 taxis) with respect to revenue of taxi drivers and availability of taxis.
  
  (b) Leisure/Entertainment: By exploiting network structure and limited impact of each individual patron's movement, our work builds on reward sharing games and orienteering problems to minimize wait times for individual patrons at large theme parks. This was demonstrated on a well known theme park in Singapore.
  
  (c) Energy: In conserving energy at office buildings, we proposed new approaches for scheduling meetings that are based on exploiting flexibility of individual participants. By analyzing 32k meeting requests, studying user behaviors w.r.t providing flexibility in meeting requests and exploiting the flexibility, we predicted a potential benefit of 17k$ annually at one of the buildings in University of Southern California with our approach.
  
  (d) Security: Based on using Stackelberg Games, we have developed approaches to compute randomized patrolling strategies for protecting the rail networks in many large cities of today. This was demonstrated on Singapore rail network that consists of more than 100 stations spread over 7 lines.
  
  Biography: Pradeep Varakantham received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California and he was a post doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. Currently, he serves as assistant professor at Singapore Management University, where he teaches advanced topics in intelligent decision support, which includes techniques on distributed problem solving; planning/scheduling; and game-theoretic approaches. He is author or co-author of more than 40 international publications and has served as co-chair of the International Workshop on Multiagent Sequential Decision Making under Uncertainty in 2007 and 2008, and also the AAAI Symposium on Multi-Agent Coordination under Uncertainty in 2011. He has also served on the program committee of most major conferences (AAMAS, AAAI, ICAPS, IJCAI) and reviewers at most major journals (JAIR, AIJ, JAAMAS) in Artficial Intelligence . He was nominated for best senior program committee member at AAMAS'13 and one of his papers was nominated for best student paper at AAMAS'09.
  
  Host: Milind Tambe
  
  

  Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Assistant to CS chair

  

• Sep

  06

  AI Seminar

  Fri, Sep 06, 2013 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

  Information Sciences Institute

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Liang Huang, City University of New York (CUNY)
  
  Talk Title: Scalable Training for Machine Translation Made Successful for the First Time
  
  Abstract: While large-scale discriminative training has triumphed in many NLP problems, its definite success on machine translation has been largely elusive. Most recent efforts along this line are not scalable: they only train on the small dev set with an impoverished set of rather “dense” features. We instead present a very simple yet theoretically motivated approach by extending my recent framework of “violation-fixing perceptron” to the latent variable setting, and use forced decoding to compute the target derivations. Our method allows structured learning to scale, for the first time, to a large portion of the training data, which enables a rich set of sparse, lexicalized, and non-local features. Extensive experiments show very significant gains in BLEU (by at least +2.0) over MERT and PRO baselines with the help of over 20M sparse features.
  
  Biography: Liang Huang is currently an Assistant Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY). He graduated in 2008 from Penn and has worked as a Research Scientist at Google and a Research Assistant Professor at USC/ISI. His work is mainly on the theoretical aspects (algorithms and formalisms) of computational linguistics, and related theoretical problems in machine learning. He has received a Best Paper Award at ACL 2008, several best paper nominations (ACL 2007, EMNLP 2008, and ACL 2010), two Google Faculty Research Awards (2010 and 2013), and a University Graduate Teaching Prize at Penn (2005).
  
  Host: David Chiang
  
  

  Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 6th floor conference room

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Kary LAU

  

• Sep

  06

  W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium

  Fri, Sep 06, 2013 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Peter MacLaggan, Project manager for the Carlsbad Desalination Project, Poseidon Water
  
  Talk Title: The Carlsbad Desalination Project
  
  Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program
  
  

  Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Christine Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs

  

• Sep

  06

  CENT Distinguished Speaker Series

  Fri, Sep 06, 2013 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Jerry M. Woodall, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis
  
  Talk Title: High Impact Alternative R&D at a University
  
  Abstract: This presentation is about game changing alternative energy R&D at a university. This is not an easy career path, because if you have a great idea that will likely be a game changer, but not on some agency’s roadmap, you most likely won’t get funded. This is why most tenure track and mid-career professors chose to chase the money in-stead. This situation is particularly onerous for those working in the alternative energy fields such as photovoltaics (PVs), energy storage, and energy conversion. And because agencies fund “roadmaps” rather than fund track record and great practical ideas that could lead to “products” and not just mostly unread Ph.D theses, the US will not be among those nations who reap the economic benefits of the alternative energy industries. In spite of this situation I have chosen to work on high impact alternative energy projects. My presentation will cover the highlights of my self-defined alternative energy programs, which, if successful, will lead to new alternative energy products. These include a solar power conversion project and a project that uses bulk aluminum rich alloys for large scale and safe energy storage, which splits water to make hydrogen on-demand. My presentation will include a discussion of why, in my opinion, the government funding agencies are not supporting the academic community in performing high risk but high impact R&D so desperately needed by the US technology based economy.
  
  Biography: Jerry M. Woodall, a National Medal of Technology Laureate, and Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Davis, received a B.S. in metallurgy in 1960 from MIT. In 1982, he was awarded a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. He pioneered and patented the development of GaAs high efficiency IR LEDs, used in remote control and data link applications such as TV sets and IR LAN. This was followed by the invention and seminal work on gallium aluminum arsenide (GaAlAs) and GaAlAs/GaAs heterojunctions used in super-bright red LEDs and lasers found in, for example, CD players and short link optical fiber communications. He also pioneered and patented the GaAlAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor used in, for example, cellular phones. Also, using GaAs/InGaAs strained, non-lattice-matched heterostructures, he pioneered the “pseudomorphic” high electron mobility transistor (HEMT), a state-of-the-art high speed device widely used in cellular phones. He is cur-rently developing a high speed, high power HBT fabricated with merged III-V and III-N materials, small scale photo thermal solar energy converters, and developing a new company to market ultra high purity hydrogen and UHP alumina by splitting water with aluminum-gallium alloys.
  
  Host: Center for Energy Nanoscience and Technology
  
  

  More Information: Woodall.pdf

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Eliza Aceves

  

• Sep

  06

  NL Seminar-Jeon-Hyung Kang:"LA-CTR: A Limited Attention Collaborative Topic Regression for Social Media"

  Fri, Sep 06, 2013 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

  Information Sciences Institute

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Jeon-Hyung Kang, USC/ISI
  
  Talk Title: "LA-CTR: A Limited Attention Collaborative Topic Regression for Social Media"
  
  Series: Natural Language Seminar
  
  Abstract: Abstract: Probabilistic models can learn users’ preferences from the history of their item adoptions on a social media site, and in turn, recommend new items to users based on learned preferences. However, current models ignore psychological factors that play an important role in shaping online social behavior. One such factor is attention, the mechanism that integrates perceptual and cognitive features to select the items the user will consciously process and may eventually adopt. Recent research has shown that people have finite attention, which constrains their online interactions, and that they divide their limited attention non-uniformly over other people. We propose a collaborative topic regression model that incorporates limited, non-uniformly divided attention. We show that the proposed model is able to learn more accurate user preferences than state-of-art models, which do not take human cognitive factors into account. Specifically we analyze voting on news items on the social news aggregator and show that our model is better able to predict held out votes than alternate models. Our study demonstrates that psycho-socially motivated models are better able to describe and predict observed behavior than models which only consider latent social structure and content.
  
  Biography: Home Page:http://isi.edu/integration/people/kang/
  
  Host: Yang Gao
  
  More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
  
  

  Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 689, Marina Del Rey

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Peter Zamar

  Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/

  

• Sep

  06

  Integrated Systems Seminar Series

  Fri, Sep 06, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr. Ken Cooper, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  
  Talk Title: Terahertz Imaging Radar for Personal Screening Applications
  
  Abstract: A summary of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s 675 GHz imaging radar will be presented, with an emphasis on several key design aspects that enable fast, reliable through-clothes imaging of person-borne concealed objects for standoff ranges out to 40 m. These include a frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar technique with a 30 GHz bandwidth to achieve sub-centimeter range resolution, software to compensate for signal distortion and generate clear imagery, a low-noise microwave chirp generator, and a high-performance 675 GHz transceiver. The radar’s optical design will also be described, which enables fast beam scanning for real-time frame rates of 4 Hz, as well as agile re-focusing over a large fractional range swath. Still faster speeds are on the horizon as multi-beam THz transceivers are developed.
  
  Biography: Ken Cooper received an A.B. degree in physics from Harvard College in 1997, and a Ph.D. degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2003. Following postdoctoral research in superconducting microwave devices, he joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an RF Engineer in 2006. At JPL he has led an effort to develop terahertz imaging radars and transceiver arrays for national security applications. His research interests include submillimeter-wave radar, radiometry, spectroscopy, and device physics.
  
  Host: Hossien Hashemi, Mike Chen, Mahta Moghaddam, Kunal Datta
  
  More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/activities/integrated-systems/
  
  

  More Information: Ken Cooper_Flyer.pdf

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Danielle Hamra

  Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/activities/integrated-systems/

  

• Sep

  06

  CEE Seminar

  Fri, Sep 06, 2013 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Drs. Amy Childress and George Ban-Weiss, VSoE- Civil and Environmental Engineering
  
  Talk Title: TBA
  
  Abstract:
  TBA
  
  

  Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Sep

  09

  Seminars in Biomedical Engineering

  Mon, Sep 09, 2013 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM

  Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Krishna Nayak, PhD; Terry Sanger, MD, PhD; Natasha Lepore, PhD; James Weiland, PhD,
  
  Talk Title: BME Faculty Presentations
  
  Host: Michael Khoo
  
  

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta

  

• Sep

  10

  Non-Gaussian Image Structure, and the Rationale for Tomographic Image Reconstruction

  Tue, Sep 10, 2013 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr. Craig Abbey, UC Santa Barbara
  
  Talk Title: Non-Gaussian Image Structure, and the Rationale for Tomographic Image Reconstruction
  
  Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
  
  Abstract: Gaussian stochastic processes are a common model for medical and scientific images, leading to Gaussian statistical properties characterized by mean, variance, and correlations. However it is clear that real image ensembles have higher-order non-Gaussian structures that are not fully described by these statistics. Furthermore, studies in vision science suggest that he visual system is tuned to these non-Gaussian components.
  
  This seminar will present one way to quantify non-Gaussian statistical structure in images, called Laplacian fractional entropy (LFE). We will then see some ways that LFE is influenced by factors of interest in medical imaging, such as image processing of full-field digital mammograms or different breast imaging technologies. Finally, we will consider the rationale for tomographic reconstruction of projection images, using LFE to address the possibility that the primary benefit of image reconstruction is to repackage the statistical properties of the acquired data.
  
  Biography: Craig K. Abbey received his PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Arizona in 1998. He was a postdoctoral fellow in medical physics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA from 1998 to 2001. From 2001 to 2004 he was a member of the faculty in biomedical engineering at UC Davis, where he retains an adjunct position. His primary affiliation is in the Dept. of Psychological and Brain Science at UC Santa Barbara. His research focuses on how useful information is extracted from images in the presence of noise and other signal distortions. Methods for investigating this topic include theoretical analysis of image statistics as well as visual psychophysics for evaluating human observer performance.
  
  
  Host: Professor Krishna Nayak
  
  More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/medical-imaging-seminar-series/
  
  

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Talyia Veal

  Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/medical-imaging-seminar-series/

  

• Sep

  13

  AI SEMINAR - Miel Vander Sande

  Fri, Sep 13, 2013 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

  Information Sciences Institute

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Miel Vander Sande, Ghent University-iMinds, Belgium
  
  Talk Title: The story behind Everything is Connected: Multimedia narration of automatically discovered paths in Linked Data
  
  Abstract: Everything is Connected (http://everythingisconnected.be) is a Linked Data application for automatically generating a story between two concepts in the Web of Data, based on formally described links. A path between two concepts is obtained by browsing linked open datasets; the path is then enriched with multimedia presentation material for each node in order to obtain a full multimedia presentation of the found path. An efficient technique combining pre-processing and indexing of RDF datasets is used, which is able to find paths in a couple of seconds.
  
  Biography: Miel Vander Sande is a researcher in computer science and engineering at the Multimedia Lab of Ghent University-iMinds, Belgium. In 2010, he graduated as M.Sc. in Industrial Science (specialisation on ICT) from University College of Ghent, Belgium. As from 2011, he was involved in several research projects involving Semantic Web technologies and Open Data. Miel Vander Sande's main interest and expertise are (linked open) data publishing (a.o. in the context of Open Knowledge Foundation), technological support for open data legislation, ontology mapping and data transformation. He is also member of the W3C Linked Data Platform working group. Together with his team, Miel developed the Everything is Connected (http://www.everythingisconnected.be) demo. This demo makes Linked Data tangible by finding paths between concepts using the DBPedia dataset. This resulted in a novel high performance approach for performing graph algorithms on generic datasets. Miel's demo paper was accepted at the International Semantic Web Conference 2012 in Boston, where it won the Best Demo Award. Currently, Miel is active in multiple Flemish government projects for creating read/write Open Data ecosystems. Additionally, he participates in a Flemish innovation project for the digitalization of book publishers and eBooks: Publishers of the future.
  
  Host: Craig Knoblock, USC/ISI
  
  Webcast: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=45b27e6ddec34405a638789183ac85421d

  Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) -

  WebCast Link: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=45b27e6ddec34405a638789183ac85421d

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Alma Nava / Information Sciences Institute

  

• Sep

  13

  The W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium

  Fri, Sep 13, 2013 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Marc E. Brown, McDermott Will & Emery LLP
  
  Talk Title: Intellectual Property Law - What Every Engineer Should Know
  
  Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program
  
  

  Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Christine Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs

  

• Sep

  13

  NL Seminar- Kevin Knight: "Some Potential NLP Thesis Topics & Other Fun Research Projects"

  Fri, Sep 13, 2013 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

  Information Sciences Institute

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Kevin Knight, USC/ISI
  
  Talk Title: "Some Potential NLP Thesis Topics & Other Fun Research Projects"
  
  Series: Natural Language Seminar
  
  Abstract: I'll present a dozen interesting, potentially high-impact NLP research projects. I'd like to make this a very interactive session.
  
  
  
  
  Biography: Home Page:http://www.isi.edu/~knight/
  
  Host: Yang Gao
  
  More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
  
  

  Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Peter Zamar

  Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/

  

• Sep

  13

  CEE Ph.D. Seminar

  Fri, Sep 13, 2013 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Shentong Lu , CE Ph.D. Candidates
  
  Talk Title: Investigation of Harbor Oscillation Induced by Long Wave with Numerical Model
  
  Abstract:
  In this study, we would introduce and validate one Boussinesq model (Mike 21), which was developed by Danish Hydraulic Institute based on the earlier work of Madsen and Sorensen. Six cases of experiment would be used to investigate the reliability and accuracy of the present model. After the verification, we would apply this model into four real harbors and inspect the response caused by an idealized incident wave train (white noise analysis). By comparing the first resonance mode with earlier work and observation, we noticed that the effect of nonlinearity and dispersion did not appear to be significant in harbor oscillation. In addition, the impact of various tidal levels was also studied to determine the reason that caused the increased number of resonance mode in some tsunami scenarios.
  
  This presentation is back-to-back with Ali Bolourchi
  
  

  Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Sep

  13

  CEE Ph.D. Seminar

  Fri, Sep 13, 2013 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Ali Bolourchi, Ph.D. Candidate, Astani Civil and Environmental Engnieering
  
  Talk Title: Studies into computational intelligence approaches for the identification of complex nonlinear systems
  
  Abstract:
  This paper builds on advancements in the field of Computational Intelligence to develop a robust approach that combines stochastic optimization methods utilizing Genetic Programming, together with nonlinear evolutionary optimization methods for optimizing the parameters, and Computer Algebra techniques that involve symbolic manipulation of expressions during the course of evolution, to “discover” a parsimonious differential operator that represents an optimum match to the governing differential equation of the target complex nonlinear system, and subsequently discloses the correct nature of the investigated system. The proposed scheme requires input and output data only, without postulating any model-class in advance. This technique can also discover an accurate single-expression, with direct
  physical interpretation, that represents the governing multiregion (response domain) equations of systems that incorporate certain classes of nonlinear phenomena (such as yielding). Yet, unlike many conventional non-parametric techniques whose approximations result in undesirable oscillations around unsmooth points, automatic incorporation of discontinuous basis functions in this approach eliminates the need of such approximations and their concomitant errors. A variety of highly nonlinear and hysteretic phenomena are considered to assess the capabilities and the generalization extent of the suggested approach. It is shown that the method of this paper provides a robust methodology for developing reduced-order, reduced-complexity, computational models (in the form of governing differential equations) that can be used for obtaining high-fidelity models that reflect the correct
  “physics” of the underlying phenomena.
  
  Presentation is back-to-back with Shentong Lu
  
  

  Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Sep

  16

  CENG Seminar - CANCELED

  Mon, Sep 16, 2013 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Rahul Mangharam, Ph.D. , University of Pennsylvania
  
  Talk Title: “Closing-the-loop with Cyber Physical Systems”
  
  Abstract: Cyber-Physical Systems are the next generation of embedded systems with the tight integration of computing, communication and control of “messy” plants. I will describe our recent efforts in modeling for scheduling and control of closed-loop Cyber-Physical Systems across the domains of medical devices, energy-efficient buildings, wireless control networks and programmable automotive systems.
  
  In medical devices: the design of bug-free and safe software is challenging, especially in complex implantable devices that control and actuate organs whose response is not fully understood. Safety recalls of pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators between 1990 and 2000 affected over 600,000 devices. Of these, 200,000 or 41%, were due to software issues that continue to increase in frequency. There is currently no formal methodology or open experimental platform to test and verify the correct operation of medical device software within the closed-loop context of the patient. I will describe our efforts to develop the foundations of formal modeling, synthesis and development of verified medical device software and systems from verified closed-loop models of the pacemaker and the heart (more details here.)
  
  In buildings: heating, cooling and air quality control systems operate independently of each other and frequently result in temporally correlated energy demand surges. As peak power prices are 200-400 times that of the nominal rate, this uncoordinated activity is both expensive and operationally inefficient. While several approaches for load shifting and model predictive control have been proposed, we present an alternative approach to fine-grained coordination of energy demand by scheduling energy consuming control systems within a constrained peak power while ensuring custom climate environments are facilitated. This project includes scheduling of energy control systems, sensing-based reduced order modeling of buildings and tools for integrated modeling and controls for energy-efficient buildings.
  
  
  Biography: Rahul Mangharam is the Stephen J Angello Chair and Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Electrical & Systems Engineering and Dept. of Computer & Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He directs the Real-Time and Embedded Systems Lab at Penn. His interests are in real-time scheduling algorithms for networked embedded systems with applications in automotive systems, medical devices and industrial control networks.
  
  He received his Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University where he also received his MS and BS in 2007, 2002 and 2000 respectively. In 2002, he was a member of technical staff in the Ultra-Wide Band Wireless Group at Intel Labs. He was an international scholar in the Wireless Systems Group at IMEC, Belgium in 2003. He has worked on ASIC chip design at Marconi Communications (1999) and Gigabit Ethernet at Apple Computer Inc. (2000). Rahul received the 2013 NSF CAREER Award, 2012 Intel Early Faculty Career Award and was selected by the National Academy of Engineering for the 2012 US Frontiers of Engineering.
  
  
  Host: Dr. Paul Bogdan
  
  

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Estela Lopez

  

• Sep

  16

  Seminars in Biomedical Engineering

  Mon, Sep 16, 2013 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM

  Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Megan McCain, PhD; Kwang-Jin Kim, PhD; Stacey Finley, PhD, Arek Gertych, Ph.D.,
  
  Talk Title: BME Faculty Presentations
  
  Host: Michael Khoo
  
  

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta

  

• Sep

  16

  The Slow-down of Moore's Law and the Future of Supercomputing

  

  Mon, Sep 16, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr. Marc Snir, Argonne National Laboratory & University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  
  Talk Title: The Slow-down of Moore's Law and the Future of Supercomputing
  
  Abstract: Supercomputing has had two "easy" decades where most of the increased performance of supercomputers came from the increase in uniprocessor performance. This period has come to an end, due to the stagnation in uniprocessor performance. The slow-down of Moore's Law implies that future performance improvements will require more innovation at the architecture level and the software layers. The talk will discuss the evidence for a slow-down; the implications for supercomputing; and the potential research directions this suggests.
  
  
  Biography: Marc Snir is director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory and Michael Faiman and Saburo Muroga Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received a PhD in mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1979 and spent two years at New York University, where he was involved with the NYU Ultracomputer project.
  
  At IBM Research, during 1990-2000, he led the research team that developed the software for the IBM Scalable Parallel System (IBM SP) product - the first microprocessor-based highly parallel system that was commercialized by IBM. Snir also led the research group responsible for major contributions to the IBM Blue Gene system. During this period, Snir was involved in the standardization efforts on High-Performance Fortran and MPI. Snir served as head of the Dept. of Computer Science at UIUC from 2001 to 2007, and was lead software architect for the Blue Waters system installed at NCSA. Snir has published numerous papers and given many presentations on computational complexity, parallel algorithms, parallel architectures, interconnection networks, parallel programming environments, and parallel languages and libraries.
  
  Snir is a fellow of the AAAS, the ACM, and the IEEE. He has Erd-s number 2 and is a mathematical descendant of Jacques Salomon Hadamard.
  
  
  Host: Viktor Prasanna
  
  

  More Information: Marc Snir Flier.pdf

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Yogesh Simmhan

  

• Sep

  17

  Full Speed MRI

  Tue, Sep 17, 2013 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr. James Pipe, Barrow Neurological Institue, Phoenix, AZ
  
  Talk Title: Full Speed MRI
  
  Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
  
  Abstract: The cost of clinical MR scans worldwide is estimated to be 10's of billions of dollars each year, in part because of the length of MR exams. While the duration of each MR scan varies widely across countries and even within the US, current clinical MRI scans take perhaps 30-45 minutes, of which perhaps 50% is used for actual scanning. Much of this scanning is done using methods which, despite their inefficiencies, are used due to their robustness. Our lab is attempting to create a high-quality neuro exam (same number of scans, same contrast, with high SNR and high resolution) in 5 minutes of total scan time, with a goal of achieving 10 minute exam times.
  
  Biography: > Dr. Pipe received his PhD in bioengineering from the University of Michigan in 1993. After serving on the faculty of the Department of Radiology at Wayne State University, he joined Barrow Neurological Institute in 1999, where he now serves as the Director of Neuroimaging Research. He is a Fellow of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM), and served on the ISMRM Board of Trustees and chaired their 20th Annual meeting in Melbourne, Australia in 2012. He is also currently the vice president-elect for ISMRM.
  >
  > Dr. Pipe's research focuses on developing next-generation methods for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that have a significant, positive impact on patient care. He invented the first commercial method for MRI specifically designed to eliminate the blurring of images caused by patients moving their head during an MRI scan. This method is now sold on almost all commercial scanners. He also works on methods to improve imaging of brain structures, function, and connectivity as well as on methods for measuring blood flow. He continues to help establish the mathematical underpinnings of innovative MRI techniques intended to reduce scan times while increasing the information available to physicians.
  
  Host: Professor Krishna Nayak
  
  More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/medical-imaging-seminar-series/
  
  

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Talyia Veal

  Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/medical-imaging-seminar-series/

  

• Sep

  17

  PhD Program Seminar Series: Choosing a School/Advisor

  Tue, Sep 17, 2013 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Prof. Andrea Armani, USC
  
  Talk Title: Choosing a School/Advisor
  
  Abstract: Unlike choosing a school for undergraduate where the school ranking can be a significant factor, for graduate school, the research topic and advisor should be the primary consideration. This is followed by other factors including school ranking. We will discuss how to determine which areas of research interest you and how to find professors in those areas.
  
  Upcoming lectures in series:
  Writing a Personal Statement /Preparing a CV: 9/24
  Fellowship applications: 10/1
  
  Host: Andrea Armani
  
  

  Location: Vivian Hall of Engineering (VHE) - 702

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Andrea Armani

  

• Sep

  19

  AI SEMINAR

  Thu, Sep 19, 2013 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

  Information Sciences Institute

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr. Jens Lehmann, Head of AKSW/MOLE group, University of Leipzig
  
  Talk Title: The LinkedGeoData and GeoKnow Projects
  
  Series: AISeminar
  
  Abstract: In the talk, Jens Lehmann will give an introduction to Geospatial Linked Data projects at his research group AKSW (http://aksw.org) at the University of Leipzig / Germany. The presentation will cover the GeoKnow (http://geoknow.eu) European Union project, which is a funded project with 7 partner organisations, as well as spatial data extraction in with 7 partner organisations, as well as spatial data extraction in LinkedGeoData (http://linkedgeodata.org), a large RDF knowledge base derived from OpenStreetMap.
  
  
  Biography: Dr. Jens Lehmann (http://www.jens-lehmann.org) is a researcher at the University of Leipzig, at which he is co-leading the Agile Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web Group. His research interests involve Semantic Web, machine learning and knowledge representation. He is founder, leader or contributor of several community research projects, including DL-Learner, DBpedia, LinkedGeoData and ORE. He works/worked in several funded projects, e.g. GeoKnow (EU STREP, coordinator), LOD2 (EU IP, work package lead), LATC (EU STREP, lead for University of Leipzig) and SoftWiki (BmBF). Dr. Jens Lehmann authored more than 40 articles in international journals and conferences cited more than 3000 times according to Google Scholar.
  
  
  Host: Craig Knoblock, USC/ISI
  
  Webcast: will not be webcasted

  Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) -

  WebCast Link: will not be webcasted

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Alma Nava / Information Sciences Institute

  

• Sep

  19

  The iCub project: a common open source platform for robotics research

  Thu, Sep 19, 2013 @ 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr. Giorgio Metta, Italian Institute of Technology
  
  Talk Title: The iCub project: a common open source platform for robotics research
  
  Series: CS Colloquium
  
  Abstract: I will present the iCub humanoid, a robotic platform designed for research in embodied cognition. At 104 cm tall, the iCub has the size of a three and half years old child. It can crawl on all fours and sit up to manipulate objects. Its hands have been designed to support sophisticate manipulation skills. The iCub is distributed as Open Source following the GPL/FDL licenses and can now count on a worldwide community of enthusiastic developers. The entire design is available for download from the project homepage and repository (http://www.iCub.org). About 25 robots have been built so far which are available in laboratories in Europe, US, and soon in Japan. It is one of the few platforms in the world with a sensitive full-body skin to deal with the physical interaction with the environment including possible people.
  
  SPECIAL NOTE: The iCub robot will be available for hands-on experience in RTH 422 from 9am to 3pm.
  
  Biography: The iCub stance on cognition posits that manipulation plays a fundamental role in the development of cognitive capability [1-4]. As many of these basic skills are not ready-made at birth, but developed during ontogenesis [5], we aim at testing and developing this paradigm through the creation of a child-like humanoid robot: i.e. the iCub. This "baby" robot is meant to act in cognitive scenarios, performing tasks useful for learning while interacting with the environment and humans. The small (104cm tall), compact size (approximately 22kg and fitting within the volume of a child) and high number (53) of degrees of freedom combined with the Open Source approach distinguish RobotCub from other humanoid robotics projects developed worldwide.
  
  References:
  [1] L. Fadiga, L. Craighero, and E. Olivier, "Human motor cortex excitability during the perception of others' action," Current Biology, vol. 14 pp. 331-333, 2005.
  [2] L. Fadiga, L. Craighero, G. Buccino, and G. Rizzolatti, "Speech listening specifically modulates the excitability of tongue muscles: a TMS study," European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 15, pp. 399-402, 2002.
  [3] G. Rizzolatti and L. Fadiga, "Grasping objects and grasping action meanings: the dual role of monkey rostroventral premotor cortex (area F5)," in Sensory Guidance of Movement, Novartis Foundation Symposium, G. R. Bock and J. A. Goode, Eds. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 1998, pp. 81-103.
  [4] D. Vernon, G. Metta, and G. Sandini, "A Survey of Cognition and Cognitive Architectures: Implications for the Autonomous Development of Mental Capabilities in Computational Systems," IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, special issue on AMD, vol. 11, 2007.
  [5] C. von Hofsten, "On the development of perception and action," in Handbook of Developmental Psychology, J. Valsiner and K. J. Connolly, Eds. London: Sage, 2003, pp. 114-140.
  
  Host: Stefan Schaal
  
  

  Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 422

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Assistant to CS chair

  

• Sep

  19

  CS George A Bekey Distinguished Lecture: Professor Lydia Kavraki (Rice University)

  Thu, Sep 19, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Lydia Kavraki, Rice University
  
  Talk Title: From Robots to Biomolecules: Computing for the Physical World
  
  Series: CS Keynote Series
  
  Abstract: Over the last decade, the development of fast and reliable motion planning algorithms has deeply influenced many domains in robotics, such as industrial automation and autonomous exploration. Motion planning has also contributed to great advances in an array of unlikely fields, including graphics animation and computational structural biology.
  
  This talk will first describe how sampling-based methods revolutionized motion planning in robotics. The presentation will quickly focus on recent algorithms that are particularly suitable for systems with complex dynamics. The talk will then introduce an integrative framework that allows the synthesis of motion plans from high-level specifications. The framework uses temporal logic and formal methods and establishes a tight link between classical motion planning in robotics and task planning in artificial intelligence. Although research initially began in the realm of robotics, the experience gained has led to algorithmic advances for analyzing the motion and function of proteins, the worker molecules of all cells. This talk will conclude by discussing robotics-inspired methods for computing the flexibility of proteins and large macromolecular complexes with the ultimate goals of deciphering molecular function and aiding the discovery of new therapeutics.
  
  Biography: Lydia E. Kavraki is the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science and Bioengineering at Rice University. She also holds an appointment at the Department of Structural and Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Kavraki received her B.A. in Computer Science from the University of Crete in Greece and her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Her research contributions are in physical algorithms and their applications in robotics (robot motion planning, hybrid systems, formal methods in robotics, assembly planning, micromanipulation, and flexible object manipulation), as well as in computational structural biology, translational bioinformatics, and biomedical informatics (modeling of proteins and biomolecular interactions, large-scale functional annotation of proteins, computer-assisted drug design, and systems biology).
  
  Kavraki has authored more than 180 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications and a co-author of the popular robotics textbook "Principles of Robot Motion" published by MIT Press. She is heavily involved in the development of The Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL), which is used in industry and in academic research in robotics and biomedicine. Kavraki is currently on the editorial board of the International Journal of Robotics Research, the ACM/IEEE Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, the Computer Science Review, and Big Data. She is also a member of the editorial advisory board of the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics. Kavraki is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a Fellow of the World Technology Network (WTN). Kavraki was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies in 2012. She is also a member of the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST) since 2012.
  
  Host: Gaurav Sukhatme
  
  

  More Information: BEKEY_LECTURE_VERTICAL.pdf

  Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Assistant to CS chair

  

• Sep

  20

  The W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium

  Fri, Sep 20, 2013 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Prof. Susan Martonosi, Harvey Mudd College, Department of Mathematics
  
  Talk Title: Models for Preventing and Treating Malaria in Resource-Constrained Regions
  
  Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program
  
  

  Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Christine Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs

  

• Sep

  20

  NL Seminar- Yang Feng: "A Markov Model of Machine Translation using Non-parametric Bayesian Inference (ACL 2013)'

  Fri, Sep 20, 2013 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

  Information Sciences Institute

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Yang Feng, USC/ISI
  
  Talk Title: "A Markov Model of Machine Translation using Non-parametric Bayesian Inference (ACL 2013)"
  
  Series: Natural Language Seminar
  
  Abstract: Most modern machine translation systems use phrase pairs as translation units, allowing for accurate modeling of phrase-internal translation and reordering. However phrase-based approaches are much less able to model sentence level effects between different phrase-pairs. We propose a new model to address this imbalance, based on a word-based Markov model of translation which generates target translations left-to-right. Our model encodes word and phrase level phenomena by conditioning translation decisions on previous decisions and uses a hierarchical Pitman-Yor Process prior to provide dynamic adaptive smoothing. This mechanism implicitly supports not only traditional phrase pairs, but also gapping phrases which are non-consecutive in the source.
  
  
  
  
  Biography: Yang Feng is a posdoc of the natural language group in USC/ISI. She got her ph.D degree from Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her research interests are in all aspects of machine translation and machine learning focusing on graphical models and Bayesian inference.
  
  Home Page:
  http://www.isi.edu/~yangfeng
  
  Host: Yang Gao
  
  More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
  
  

  Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Peter Zamar

  Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/

  

• Sep

  20

  Integrated Systems Seminar Series

  Fri, Sep 20, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Prof. Amir Mortazawi, University of Michigan
  
  Talk Title: Frequency Agile Circuits Based on Thin Film Ferroelectrics
  
  Series: Integrated Systems Seminar Series
  
  Abstract: My talk is on the design of frequency agile circuits based on thin film ferroelectrics. Central to this work is the use of thin film barium strontium titanate (BST), a low loss, high dielectric constant field dependent material. The electric field dependence of BST is used to design tunable RF and microwave devices and components. Other applications such as linearization of power amplifiers will also be discussed. Another important characteristic of BST is its dc electric field induced piezoelectric and electrostrictive effects. These properties can be utilized to design intrinsically switchable film bulk acoustic wave resonators (FBARs) and FBAR filters. Ferroelectric based filter banks can make it possible to reduce size and power consumption of conventional filter banks employed in multi-standard and frequency agile radios. Recent results for intrinsically switchable BST bulk acoustic wave resonators and filters will be presented.
  
  Biography: Amir Mortazawi received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, in 1990.
  He is a currently a Professor of electrical engineering with The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His research interests include millimeter-wave circuits, phased arrays, power amplifiers, ferroelectric thin film based devices and frequency-agile microwave circuits.
  
  Mortazawi was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES from 2006-2010. He is a member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (IEEE MTT-S) Administrative Committee (AdCom). He also served as Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION (1998–2001), IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES (2005). Mortazawi is a Fellow of IEEE.
  
  Host: Hossien Hashemi, Mike Chen, Mahta Moghaddam, Kunal Datta
  
  More Info: https://mhi.usc.edu/activities/integrated-systems/
  
  

  More Information: Amir Mortazawi_Flyer.pdf

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Danielle Hamra

  Event Link: https://mhi.usc.edu/activities/integrated-systems/

  

• Sep

  20

  CEE Ph. D. Seminar

  Fri, Sep 20, 2013 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr. Ram Rajagopal, Stanford University
  
  Talk Title: Demand Management in Smart Grids: Architecture, Data Analytics and Control.
  
  Abstract: Increased penetration of renewable generation in the grid has required the development of novel power management approaches capable of handling the significant increase in uncertainty. A major focus has been demand-side management and control, including investigations of demand response and load scheduling mechanisms. Yet, the performance and scalability of existing methodologies is limited, and little is known about the broader potential of these mechanisms in realistic scenarios. Moreover, in many instances demand side management practice has failed to account appropriately for the additional uncertainty generated by consumer behavior. This talk presents a architecture for demand management that organizes consumers around communities (or clusters). Power management is implemented as a multi-scale hierarchical risk limiting control solution in such communities. Scalable demand-side behavioral analytics for segmenting, targeting, ranking and community design are presented, relying on new observations of consumer behavior from the large amounts of data collected in smart grids. Novel performance metrics for the architecture are estimated from the data to illustrate the potential of the proposed approach. If time permits, some applications to parking management are also presented.
  
  Bio: Ram Rajagopal is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Sustainable Systems Lab (S3L), focused on large scale monitoring, data analytics and stochastic control for infrastructure networks, in particular energy and transportation. His current research interests in power systems are in integration of renewables, smart distribution systems and demand-side data analytics. Prior to his current position he was a DSP Research Engineer at National Instruments and a Visiting Research Scientist at IBM Research. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and an M.A. in Statistics, both from the University of California Berkeley, Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Texas, Austin and Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He is a recipient of the Powell Foundation Fellowship, Berkeley Regents Fellowship and the Makhoul Conjecture Challenge award. He holds more than 30 patents from his work, and has advised or founded various companies in the fields of sensor networks, power systems and data analytics.
  
  Pizza is served following the presentation in KAP 147.
  
  

  Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Sep

  23

  Integer-Forcing for Channels, Sources and ADCs

  Mon, Sep 23, 2013 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Or Ordentlich, Tel Aviv University
  
  Talk Title: Integer-Forcing for Channels, Sources and ADCs
  
  Abstract: Integer-Forcing (IF) is a new framework, based on compute-and-forward, for decoding multiple integer linear combinations from the output of a Gaussian multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) or multiple-access (MAC) channel. Integer-forcing is applicable when all transmitters use nested linear/lattice codes.
  
  Building on the IF framework, we derive new theoretical results and develop new low-complexity coding schemes for several problems.
  
  We begin by studying the capacity region of the Gaussian MAC under the constraint that all users transmit from a chain of nested lattice codes. Interestingly, the obtained rate-region depends on number-theoretic properties of the channel gains. Then, we apply these results in conjunction with lattice interference alignment to approximate the sum capacity of the symmetric K-user Gaussian interference channel.
  
  We next apply the IF approach to arrive at a new low-complexity scheme, IF source coding, for distributed lossy compression of correlated Gaussian sources under an MSE distortion measure. The performance of the proposed scheme closely follows Berger-Tung's inner bound. Moreover, a one-shot version of IF source coding is described and analyzed. We argue that this scheme is simple enough to potentially lead to a new design principle for analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) that can exploit spatial correlations between the sampled signals.
  
  
  Biography: Or Ordentlich received the B.Sc. degree (cum laude) and the M.Sc. degree (summa cum laude) in 2010 and 2011, respectively, in electrical engineering from Tel Aviv University, Israel. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at Tel Aviv University.
  
  Or is the recipient the Adams Fellowship awarded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Advanced Communication Center (ACC) Feder Family award for outstanding research work in the field of communication technologies (2011), and the Weinstein Prize for research in signal processing (2011,2013).
  
  
  Host: Host: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu, EEB 540, x04683
  
  

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos

  

• Sep

  23

  Seminars in Biomedical Engineering

  Mon, Sep 23, 2013 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM

  Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Francisco Valero-Cuevas, PhD, Ellis Meng, PhD; J. Andrew Mackay, PhD; Noah Malmstadt, PhD,
  
  Talk Title: BME Faculty Presentations
  
  Host: Michael Khoo
  
  

  Location: 122

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta

  

• Sep

  24

  Achieving Photoreal Digital Actors in Film and in Real-Time

  

  Tue, Sep 24, 2013 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr. Paul Debevec, USC Institute for Creative Technologies
  
  Talk Title: Achieving Photoreal Digital Actors in Film and in Real-Time
  
  Abstract: Somewhere between "Final Fantasy" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", digital actors crossed the "Uncanny Valley" from looking strangely synthetic to believably real. This talk describes how the Light Stage scanning systems and HDRI lighting techniques developed at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies have helped create digital actors in a range of recent movies and research projects. In particular, the talk describes how high-resolution face scanning, advanced character rigging, and performance-driven facial animation were combined to create 2008's "Digital Emily", a collaboration with Image Metrics (now Faceware) yielding one of the first photoreal digital actors, and 2013's "Digital Ira", a collaboration with Activision Inc., yielding the most realistic real-time digital actor to date. The talk includes recent developments in HDRI lighting, polarization difference imaging, and reflectance measurement, and 3D object scanning, and concludes with advances in autostereoscopic 3D displays to enable 3D teleconferencing and holographic characters.
  
  
  Biography: Paul Debevec is a Research Professor at the University of Southern California and the Associate Director of Graphics Research at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. From his 1996 P.hD. at UC Berkeley, Debevec's publications and animations have focused on techniques for photogrammetry, image-based rendering, high dynamic range imaging, image-based lighting, appearance measurement, facial animation, and 3D displays. Debevec serves as the Vice President of ACM SIGGRAPH and received a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award in 2010 for his work on the Light Stage facial capture systems, used in movies including Spider-Man 2, Superman Returns, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Avatar, Tron: Legacy, The Avengers, and Oblivion. http://www.pauldebevec.com/
  
  
  More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/medical-imaging-seminar-series/
  
  

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Talyia Veal

  Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/medical-imaging-seminar-series/

  

• Sep

  24

  Lyman L. Handy Colloquia: Advances in Membrane and Absorption Processes for Carbon Capture

  

  Tue, Sep 24, 2013 @ 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Jennifer Wilcox,
  
  Talk Title: Advances in Membrane and Absorption Processes for Carbon Capture
  
  Series: Lyman L. Handy Colloquia
  
  Abstract: The scale by which CO2 must be mitigated worldwide dwarfs the existing chemical industry, making utilization of CO2 as a chemical feedstock a minor component of the portfolio of mitigation options. Carbon capture and
  storage is one strategy that could potentially mitigate gigatons of CO2 emissions per year, provided the storage potential exists. Strategies based upon adsorption and catalytic membrane separation processes will be discussed. In particular, carbon-based micro and mesoporous materials for selective CO2 capture and dense metallic membrane materials for selective N2 separation from CO2 will be of focus.
  Modeling and simulation play an important role in the construction of realistic pore structures and also aid in understanding adsorption-desorption mechanisms. Density functional theory calculations have been performed to investigate the electronic properties of graphitic surfaces and charge analyses have been carried out to generate partial charge distributions of graphitic surfaces with surface-embedded functional groups. Grand canonical Monte Carlo is used to simulate the adsorption processes and different potential models for the CO2 molecule are adopted to calculate the interactions between fluid molecules and between fluid molecules and pore walls. The effects of various pore sizes, potential models, temperatures, and surface heterogeneity will be discussed.
  In addition to adsorption investigations, metallic membrane materials for selective N2 separation for carbon capture are also under investigation. This work involves the adsorption, dissociation, and sub-surface diffusion of N2 in Group V- based metals, including vanadium, niobium, and their alloys with ruthenium. The electronic structure of the metal can be tuned based upon alloying, thereby enhancing N2 permeability. Experimental N2 flux measurements are underway to test the theoretical predictions and preliminary results will be presented.
  
  Biography: Jennifer Wilcox has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University since 2008. Her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2004 is from the University of Arizona, and her B.A.
  in Mathematics in 1998 is from Wellesley College. She received the 2007 ARO Young Investigator Award (Membrane Design for Optimal Hydrogen Separation), the 2006 ACS PRF Young Investigator Award (Heterogeneous Kinetics of Mercury in Combustion Flue Gas), and the 2005 NSF CAREER Award (Arsenic and Selenium Speciation in Combustion Flue Gas). Within her research group, she focuses on trace metal and CO2 capture. Her research involves the coupling of theory to experiment to test newly-designed materials for sorbent or catalytic potential. She is the author of the first textbook on Carbon Capture, recently published in March 2012.
  
  Host: Prof. Tsotsis
  
  

  More Information: Wilcox Poster.pdf

  Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - Gerontology Auditorium

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Ryan Choi

  

• Sep

  24

  PhD Program Seminar Series: Writing a Personal Statement /Preparing a CV

  Tue, Sep 24, 2013 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Prof. Andrea Armani, USC
  
  Talk Title: Writing a Personal Statement /Preparing a CV
  
  Abstract: Your personal statement and your CV are your chance to separate your application from simply being a list of numbers. We will review the do’s and don’ts of writing a personal statement, and review the critical points which you need to make sure to address in your statement. Similarly, it is very important to make sure that your CV contains all of your information and accomplishments, but is also easy to read. We will discuss some of the common mistakes, using before/after examples. We will also go over what you should and should not include on your CV.
  
  Upcoming lectures in series:
  Fellowship Applications: 10/1
  
  Host: Andrea Armani
  
  

  Location: Vivian Hall of Engineering (VHE) - 702

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Andrea Armani

  

• Sep

  24

  Premkumar Natarajan: Some Recent Advances in Offline Handwriting Recognition

  Tue, Sep 24, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Premkumar Natarajan, USC Information Sciences Institute
  
  Talk Title: Some Recent Advances in Offline Handwriting Recognition
  
  Abstract: For the past three decades, the task of automatically transcribing the text content of handwritten hardcopy documents (usually referred to as offline handwriting recognition) has remained a thorny challenge. Until a few years ago, research efforts in offline recognition have focused exclusively on script-dependent recognition approaches that are developed for a specific target language or script. Progress was spotty and recognition accuracies poor on real-world data. Starting in 2007, with sponsorship from the DARPA MADCAT program, we started developing a script-independent methodology for offline handwriting recognition which has since yielded revolutionary improvements in offline handwriting recognition performance. The research results have had significant impact at the recent NIST OpenHART 2013 (Open Handwriting Evaluation) workshop, all the participants employed our script-independent methodology in their submissions. In this talk, I will present some recent advances we have accomplished in handwriting recognition and also provide a (very) brief overview of salient historical context. In the latter part of the talk, I will discuss current trends and some open research tasks that might be of interest to some in the audience. I will end the presentation with a discursive discussion of some salient research directions at ISI.
  
  Biography: Premkumar (Prem) Natarajan is the Executive Director of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California and a Vice Dean of Engineering in the Viterbi School of Engineering. In his current role, Prem sets the technical vision and operational strategy for ISI. Previously, he served as an Executive Vice President and Principal Scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies where he oversaw technical and business operations in Speech, Language and Multimedia Technologies at BBN.
  
  Prem�s technical contributions span a wide range of multimedia processing and pattern recognition areas, including optical character recognition (OCR, speech recognition, speech-to-speech translation, video analysis and content extraction, topic classification, and speech triage). He has served as Principal Investigator or Senior Advisor on numerous Department of Defense (DOD) and Intelligence Community sponsored research and deployment projects, including important DARPA-sponsored research efforts such as the TRANSTAC, MADCAT, and DEFT programs; IARPA-sponsored research efforts such as VACE and ALADDIN; and other significant USG-sponsored efforts such as the Army MFLTS Program of Record. He is an active member of the professional communities in document and speech processing, and serves on academic advisory boards.
  
  Host: Gaurav Sukhatme
  
  

  Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Assistant to CS chair

  

• Sep

  26

  Distinguished Lectures: Atmospheric Impacts of Expanded Natural Gas Use

  

  Thu, Sep 26, 2013 @ 12:45 PM - 01:50 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: David Allen,
  
  Talk Title: Atmospheric Impacts of Expanded Natural Gas Use
  
  Series: Distinguished Lectures
  
  Host: Prof. Nutt
  
  

  Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Ryan Choi

  

• Sep

  26

  CS Colloquium: Ashwin Rao

  Thu, Sep 26, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Ashwin Rao, Founder, ZLemma.com
  
  Talk Title: CS Colloquium: Ashwin Rao
  
  Series: CS Colloquium
  
  Abstract: This talk is for all levels (Undergraduate, Masters and Ph.D.) of students in Computer Science, with the purpose of helping them make sound decisions within the wide array of available job choices, and eventually pick the job/career that is most suited for them. We will particularly focus on jobs for Computer Scientists in the Tech industry (large companies as well as startups) and in the Finance industry (Wall Street as well as hedge funds). We will discuss the different requirements of various jobs, and understand how this work relates to one's academic interests. We will discuss some recent trends in the industry covering Big Data, Functional Programming, Quantitative Modeling, Machine Learning, and Domain-Specific Languages. We will also discuss non-technical aspects of different jobs contrasting between Tech and Finance, between large and small companies, and between 'depth' versus 'breadth' roles. Finally, we will discuss how to prepare a suitable resume and how to prepare for interviews.
  
  Biography: Dr. Ashwin Rao is an entrepreneur based in Palo Alto, California and is the founder of a technology startup - ZLemma.com - that helps students and young professionals identify careers most suited to their talents. Prior to entrepreneurship, Ashwin was a quantitative modeler and trading strategist at Goldman Sachs for ten years in New York, and was subsequently a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley. Ashwin's focus had been on interest rates and mortgage derivatives products. Ashwin holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from IIT-Bombay and a Ph.D. in Algorithmic Algebra from University of Southern California. In his personal life, Ashwin is deeply involved in mentoring students at various universities.
  
  Host: Bharath Sankaran
  
  

  Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Assistant to CS chair

  

• Sep

  27

  USC Physical Sciences in Oncology Center Monthly Seminar Series

  

  Fri, Sep 27, 2013 @ 11:45 AM - 01:00 PM

  Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Christina Curtis, PhD, University of Southern California
  
  Talk Title: Leveraging integrative genomics and tumor evolutionary dynamics to infer mechanisms of disease progression
  
  Abstract: Although the direct observation of human tumor progression is impractical, the ancestral relationships between cancer cells are recorded in the form of mutations acquired during somatic cell division. As such, the dynamics of tumor growth can be inferred from genomic signatures found in the present day tumor. We have developed an experimental and computational framework that leverages these principles to delineate mechanisms of disease progression. For example, by employing a multiple sampling scheme and computational genomic inference framework in colorectal cancer, we find that tumors grow predominantly as a single expansion from the initial transformed cell into a large number of heterogeneous subclones in a Big Bang fashion. In this model, rapid expansion determines that most observable intra-tumor heterogeneity originates well before the neoplasm is detectable, irrespective of microenvironmental effects or subclone fitness changes. Hence, patterns of intra-tumor heterogeneity provide a looking glass into the primordial tumor, revealing early events that influence genomic and phenotypic outputs. In related work, we have demonstrated that it is possible to measure clinically relevant patient-specific parameters, including the cancer stem cell fraction, (a) symmetric cell division rate, mutation rate, and tumor age from genomic data. We are applying these approaches to clinically annotated colorectal cancer cohorts in order to discriminate between alternate models of metastatic dissemination. Similarly, we are developing tools to model therapeutic resistance to anti-HER2 agents in breast cancer. Our findings suggest that a quantitative understanding of tumor evolutionary dynamics will have significant implications for cancer diagnosis and prognosis, and ultimately for preventing resistance.
  
  
  Biography: USC was selected to establish a $16 million cancer research center as part of a new strategy against the disease by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and its National Cancer Institute. The new center is one of 12 in the nation to receive the designation. During the five-year initiative, the Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers will take new, nontraditional approaches to cancer research by studying the physical laws and principles of cancer; evolution and the evolutionary theory of cancer; information coding, decoding, transfer and translation in cancer; and ways to de-convolute cancer's complexity. As part of the outreach component of this grant, the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine is hosting a monthly seminar series
  
  Host: USC PSOC
  
  

  More Information: USC-PSOC_MonthlySeminar.pdf

  Location: Clinical Science Center (CSC) - Harkness Auditorium #240

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Kristina Gerber

  

• Sep

  27

  NL Seminar- Andrew S. Gordon: "Heider-Simmel Interactive Theater "

  Fri, Sep 27, 2013 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

  Information Sciences Institute

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Andrew S. Gordon, USC/ ICT
  
  Talk Title: "Heider-Simmel Interactive Theater "
  
  Series: Natural Language Seminar
  
  Abstract: In a famous 1944 paper, psychologist Fritz Heider and his student Marianne Simmel described an experiment where undergraduates were shown a short animated film depicting the movement of geometric shapes. Asked to describe what happened in the film, these students produced narratives that described the behavior of these shapes in anthropomorphic terms, ascribing to them plans, goals, emotions, and social roles that accounted for their behavior. Fritz Heider later wrote his seminal book, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, which articulated the role of Commonsense Psychology in the interpretation of the behavior of other people. In this talk I'll discuss our recent efforts to model the reasoning of the students in Heider and Simmel's original experiment. I'll describe our vision of a "Heider-Simmel Interactive Theater," a software application where people can create their own short movies involving geometric shapes in the style of Heider and Simmel's original film, which are then interpreted by the computer to generate a textual narrative of the author's creation. Then I'll lay out the technical plan, which involves the integration of probabilistic graphical models, weighted abduction, data-driven text generation, logical formalizations of commonsense psychology, and game-based data collection from the public at large. Before coming to the talk, please sign up and play "Triangle Charades" at the following website: http://charades.ict.usc.edu
  
  Biography: http://people.ict.usc.edu/~gordon/
  
  Host: Yang Gao
  
  More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
  
  

  Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Peter Zamar

  Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/

  

• Sep

  27

  Integrated Systems Seminar Series

  Fri, Sep 27, 2013 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Dr. Oren Eliezer, CTO, Xtendwave
  
  Talk Title: Designing RF Transceivers to be Manufacturable at Low Cost & The New Enhanced "Atomic Clock" WWVB Broadcast and Fully-Digital Multi-Mode Receivers for it.
  
  Series: Integrated Systems Seminar Series
  
  Abstract: Mobile devices are based on highly integrated transceiver system-on-chip (SoC) ICs, where the RF circuitry, additional analog functions, and a considerable amount of digital logic (including a processor and memory), all share the same CMOS die. Furthermore, they often include more than one radio, such as GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth and FM, thereby further increasing the potential for self-interference and necessitating careful design practices to allow satisfactory coexistence of all functions on the SoC. This seminar presents approaches for design-for-manufacturability (DfM) that lead to timely and profitable results in the design of consumer-market transceiver SoCs in advanced CMOS processes.
  
  The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has been broadcasting the date and time from their accurate atomic source for many decades using a simple amplitude/pulse-width modulation scheme. In October 2012 an enhanced broadcasting system, designed by Xtendwave under a government grant, was introduced at the station, demonstrating several orders of magnitude of improvement in link margin. This seminar presents many interesting challenges associated with this modernized digital communications system, as well as novel radio architecture and antenna ideas that are being developed for it at Xtendwave. The seminar will include a real-time reception demonstration of the receiver CMOS IC designed by Xtendwave, which exhibits a 140dB dynamic range, the widest in consumer-market receiver ICs.
  
  Biography: Dr. Oren Eliezer received his BSEE and MSEE degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Tel-Aviv University in Israel in 1988 and 1996 respectively, and his PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) in 2008. He served in The Israel Defense Forces from 1988 to 1994, where he specialized in wireless communications. After his military service he cofounded Butterfly Communications in Israel and served as the company’s chief engineer. Following Butterfly’s acquisition by Texas Instruments (TI) in 1999, he was relocated to Dallas in 2002, where he took part in the development of TI’s Digital RF Processor (DRPTM) technology and was elected Senior Member of the Technical Staff. Since 2009 he is the Chief Technology Officer of Xtendwave in Dallas, and participates in the research at the Texas Analog Center of Excellence at UTD. His areas of expertise are in communications, digital transceivers, interference mitigation, and low-cost productization of transceiver SoCs. He has authored and coauthored over 50 conference and journal papers and over 45 issued and pending patents.
  
  
  Host: Hossien Hashemi, Mike Chen, Mahta Moghaddam, Kunal Datta
  
  More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/activities/integrated-systems/
  
  

  More Information: Oren Eliezer_Flyer.pdf

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

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Danielle Hamra

  Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/activities/integrated-systems/

  

• Sep

  30

  Seminars in Biomedical Engineering

  Mon, Sep 30, 2013 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM

  Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker: Gerald Loeb, MD; Rex Moats, PhD; John Wood, MD, PhD, J. Andrew Mackay,
  
  Talk Title: BME Faculty Presentations
  
  Host: Michael Khoo
  
  

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta