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Events for September 20, 2022

  • Intel Tabling Electrical, Computer Eng. & Computer Science majors (On-Campus)

    Tue, Sep 20, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 03:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Intel Corporation will be hosting a tabling day for all Electrical, Computer Eng. & Computer Science majors. This event is open and outdoors.
    The event is open to all BS, MS, and PHD students.

    Location: EPSTEIN FAMILY PLAZA (On-Campus)

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Computer Science General Faculty Meeting

    Tue, Sep 20, 2022 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Receptions & Special Events


    Bi-Weekly regular faculty meeting for invited full-time Computer Science faculty only. Event details emailed directly to attendees.

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

    Audiences: Invited Faculty Only

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • Why is a Law Firm Hiring Engineers? Holland & Hart Patent Engineer Info Session (Virtual, External)

    Tue, Sep 20, 2022 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Why is a Law Firm Hiring Engineers? Holland & Hart Patent Engineer Info Session (Virtual)

    1 to 2 pm


    Holland & Hart is a multi-practice law firm based in the Mountain West. One major focus of ours is to change the way patents are prepared and prosecuted. Here, we help our clients protect many of the cutting-edge technologies that define how we live, work, and communicate and we are hiring Patent Engineers to continue this rapid and innovative growth.

    During this info session you will learn what a Patent Engineer does and how you can join this amazing team. There will be time for a Q & A session.

    For more information before the info session click this link-https://hhpatentcareers.com/patent-engineers


    External employer-hosted events and activities are not affiliated with the USC Viterbi Career Connections Office. They are posted on Viterbi Career Connections because they may be of interest to members of the Viterbi community. Inclusion of any activity does not indicate USC sponsorship or endorsement of that activity or event. It is the participants responsibility to apply due diligence, exercise caution when participating, and report concerns to vcareers@usc.edu.


    Location: online

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • PhD Thesis Proposal - Heramb Nemlekar

    Tue, Sep 20, 2022 @ 01:30 PM - 03:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    University Calendar


    PhD Candidate: Heramb Nemlekar

    Title: Efficiently Learning Human Preferences for Proactive Robot Assistance in Assembly Tasks

    Date: 09/20/22 (Tuesday)
    Time: 1:30 pm

    Hybrid Presentation

    Location: SAL 322
    Zoom URL: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92429044874?pwd=ZExXK2dRamtWK1V0MUswOVVUdnJzZz09

    Committee:
    Gaurav Sukhatme
    Heather Culbertson
    Jyotirmoy Deshmukh
    Satyandra K. Gupta
    Stefanos Nikolaidis

    Abstract:
    I focus on enabling robots to proactively assist assembly workers by anticipating their future actions. Since each worker can have their own preferred way of performing an assembly, assistive robots must learn the individual preferences of their users to anticipate their actions accurately. Previous work in this field learns human preferences in the form of a policy or a reward function from user demonstrations in the given task. However, obtaining demonstrations can be tedious and time-consuming in actual assemblies. While recent approaches try to efficiently learn user preferences through actively generated queries instead of demonstrations, they do not leverage any prior knowledge of the users' preferences. In this work, I propose exploiting (1) similarities between preferences of different users in a given task and (2) similarities between different tasks performed by a given user to learn the user's preference efficiently. Based on our insight that different users can be grouped into a small set of dominant preferences, I present a novel approach for efficiently inferring the preferences of new users by matching their actions to a dominant preference cluster. For leveraging similarities between tasks, I propose learning user preferences as a function of task-agnostic features (like the mental and physical effort of actions) such that we can transfer their preferences from a canonical to an actual assembly task. I evaluate these approaches in user studies of real-world assembly tasks and show how each prior source of user preference can improve the accuracy of anticipating user actions. I also present a human-robot assembly study that shows how proactively assisting users by anticipating their actions can reduce human-idle time and improve user experience. Finally, I discuss our proposal for jointly leveraging similarities between users and tasks to accurately anticipate user actions.

    Location: 322

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92429044874?pwd=ZExXK2dRamtWK1V0MUswOVVUdnJzZz09

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Lizsl De Leon

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  • Epstein Institute - ISE 651 Seminar

    Tue, Sep 20, 2022 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM

    Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Krishna Rajan , Professor, Dept. of Materials Design and Innovation, University of Buffalo

    Talk Title: Mapping Information Connectivity in Materials Science

    Host: Prof. Carl Kesselman

    More Information: September 20, 2022.pdf

    Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - GER 206

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Grace Owh

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  • Catalyst Discovery for Metal-Free, Photoredox CO2 Reduction

    Tue, Sep 20, 2022 @ 04:00 PM - 05:20 PM

    Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Shaama Sharada, Assistant Professor

    Talk Title: Catalyst Discovery for Metal-Free, Photoredox CO2 Reduction

    Abstract: Organic photoredox catalysis will be an important part of an energy-efficient, sustainable future as these
    catalysts can access highly reactive states upon excitation and quenching to carry out reactions that are
    otherwise thermally inaccessible or energy-intensive. Our group aims to identify sustainable photoredox
    routes for CO2 utilization. Prior experiments show that a simple organic chromophore, p-terphenyl, can
    reduce and transform CO2 into useful molecules such as amino acids. However, the steps of the photoredox
    cycle and reasons for low turnover numbers of these catalysts are poorly understood. Our goal is to utilize
    quantum chemistry methods to delineate mechanisms of key steps in this cycle and leverage these insights to
    drive discovery of novel chromophores that are both active and yield high turnover numbers. Thus far, we
    have demonstrated that the electron transfer (ET) step from the p-terphenyl radical anion to CO2 is adiabatic,
    and ET barriers are lowered when electron-donating groups are substituted to p- terminal positions of the
    catalyst. To probe degradation pathways from the excited state, we are establishing a protocol for calculation
    and characterization of excited-state donor-acceptor charge transfer complexes in collaboration with the
    Dawlaty group (USC). We are also taking our first steps towards driving discovery of new chromophores by
    implementing a genetic algorithm (GA) whose fitness function factors in both catalyst activity and
    degradation resistance by means of simple descriptors obtained from routine DFT calculations. The GA yields
    several candidates that are more viable than experimentally studied terphenyls, highlighting the importance of
    automated computational tools in accelerating experimental efforts.

    Biography: Dr. Shaama Mallikarjun Sharada is the WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor in the Mork Family Department of
    Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at USC.
    Her research interests span the development and application of quantum chemistry methods to design catalysts
    for sustainable chemistry transformations. Her group is developing efficient algorithms, inspired from signal
    processing, for advancing sophisticated rate theories in catalysis. The group is also establishing frameworks for
    catalyst design and discovery towards efficient natural gas conversion and light-assisted carbon dioxide
    utilization. Dr. Sharada received her Bachelors and Masters in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute
    of Technology, Bombay (India) where she was awarded the Institute Gold Medal. She received her PhD in
    Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2015 for developing efficient reaction path search algorithms for
    catalysis. As a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, her work spanned the development of machine
    learning density functionals and surface chemistry benchmarking databases. She is a recipient of the 2022
    inaugural Chevron Research Innovation Award (USC) and the 2020 ACS Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator Award. She is also a Scialog Fellow for the Negative Emissions Science initiative.

    Host: Mork Family Department

    More Information: Shaama Sharada Seminar Flyer 9 20.pdf

    Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 352

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Anthony Tritto

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  • Abbott Snack and Chat

    Tue, Sep 20, 2022 @ 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Abbott will hosting an evening snack and chat for USC Viterbi students on September 20th at 5pm! Come enjoy snacks and learn more about Abbott career opportunities.

    September 20 from 5 to 7pm
    RTH 211
    RSVP in Viterbi Career Gateway

    What majors and degree levels are you interested in connecting with? All Engineering Majors and grade levels. Are you recruiting for internships, full-time, or both? Internships. Can you offer Visa sponsorship? Are you able to hire a student on CPT or OPT? No

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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