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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for October 01, 2008
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Meet USC
Wed, Oct 01, 2008
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions
This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process; a student led walking tour of campus and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process and financial aid.Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 9:00 a.m. and again at 1:00 p.m. Please visit http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/visit/meet_usc.html to check availability and make an appointment. Be sure to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!
Location: USC Admission Center
Audiences: Prospective Freshmen and Family Members - RESERVATIONS REQUIRED
Contact: Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs Division
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Cerritos College Transfer Fair
Wed, Oct 01, 2008 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Receptions & Special Events
Students interested in transferring to USC's Viterbi School of Engineering can explore Viterbi's programs and majors, learn about the application process, and speak directly with a Viterbi transfer advisor.
Location: Cerritos College
Audiences: Prospective Transfer Students
Contact: Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs Division
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Preparing for the Career Fair
Wed, Oct 01, 2008 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Make a great first impression! Learn how to optimize your time, approach employers and prepare for the recruiting event of the semester
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
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CS Colloquium (Venue changed)
Wed, Oct 01, 2008 @ 01:30 PM - 02:50 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Relational Agents: Social and Communicative Competencies for Maintaining Engagement with Users Over Multiple InteractionsSpeaker: Prof. Timothy Bickmore, Northeastern UniversityHost: Prof. Maja MataricAbstract:Many applications in healthcare, education, sales and games require maintenance of user adherence to a desired interaction usage pattern. In this talk I will present principles and techniques from a number of disciplines for building and maintaining social bonds between users and computer agents. I will discuss applications of these principles to two very different application areas: health communication by a virtual nurse agent for low health literacy patients, and direction giving by an animated robotic tour guide agent in a science museum.Ninety million Americans have low health literacy, resulting in difficulty reading and following written medical instructions. Evidence suggests that face-to-face encounters with a health provider —in conjunction with written instructions—remains one of the best methods for communicating health information to these individuals. I will describe recent work my lab has done in studying human experts explaining written health instructions to individuals with varying degrees of health literacy, and models of the observed verbal and nonverbal behavior that we have incorporated into computer animated agents that can explain health documents to users. I will present results from a series of lab studies on the efficacy of these agents, in addition to two rounds of user testing of a virtual nurse that performs bedside patient education prior to hospital discharge at Boston Medical Center.I will also discuss the development and evaluation of an animated tour guide agent that has been running in the Boston Museum of Science since April that has interacted with over 20,000 visitors. The main challenges we confronted in developing this agent were sensing visitor conversational cues in a very noisy public environment, and re-identifying repeat visitors (using biometrics) so that prior discourse and relational models could be continued.Biography:Timothy Bickmore is an Assistant Professor in the College of Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University. Dr. Bickmore's research focus is on the development of Relational Agents--computational artifacts designed to build long-term social-emotional relationships with their users. These agents have been deployed within the context of behavior change interventions in which they are designed to establish working alliance relationships with patients in order to maximize intervention outcomes. Prior to joining Northeastern, Dr. Bickmore was an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Bickmore received his PhD from the MIT Media Lab, studying under Profs. Rosalind Picard (Affective Computing) and Justine Cassell (Gesture and Narrative Language).
Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Environmental Technology Challenges & Entrepreneurship
Wed, Oct 01, 2008 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
University Calendar
Environmental Technology Challenges & EntrepreneurshipAnthony MichaelsManaging Director
Proteus Environmental Technologies
Los Angeles, CA 90071The entrepreneurial spirit that creates new and profitable companies is one of the most effective methods for spreading new technologies and innovations throughout the human population and across the Earth's landscape. This can be for both better and worse. Damaging technologies with good local economics can quickly spread a form of pollution or an impact on human or environmental health. At the same time, a novel solution to a compelling environmental challenge can gain widespread use through the self-reinforcing power of markets. Environmental scholarship within universities is one of the most creative sources of innovation, however many challenges exist for using markets to spread those innovative solutions to our homes, towns and lives. These challenges reside in the university culture, the sources of funding - the valley of death - and within the traditions and practices of the business community. However, I have a great optimism about the potential for markets to take some of the best academic scholarship, apply it to some of the largest human environmental challenges and make a major improvement in the quality of life and the sustainability of our society. I will present a few examples based on my own USC experience - one made more real by my personal choice to leave academia and form Proteus Environmental Technologies, a company designed specifically to help universities commercialize their academic environmental discoveries. Biofuels are a renewable energy source that illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of new environmental technologies. Algae-based fuels have the greatest promise, but have significant challenges, both biological and technical. The systems at full scale require well-mixed bio-reactors with cost effective methods for re-introducing carbon and nutrients. Extracting algae and processing becomes a dynamic problem as the extraction process shifts the algal ecosystem towards cells that escape extraction. It is also the largest capital cost in an algae farm. Scaling itself is an interesting challenge as individual farms must be at the scale of 1000s of hectacres and a meaningful solution may require 10-20 million hectacres. In the end, nobody wants algae for its own sake, it must be a product that fits into the current or future energy or food markets. The technologies to transform 1,000s of tons per day of green powder to a coal substitute, a liquid fuel or an animal feed must parallel the development of an algae farm and have a strong feedback on the design choices for the farm and its crop. Microbial fuel cells are a biological curiosity with the potential to transform energy production world wide. Again, scaling is key. How do we take a device at the scale of liters and make a facility that can process a million cubic meters per day? The technical challenges range from the biology of biofilms, the materials for anodes and cathodes to the fluid mechanics of dilute solutions that must interact with those biofilms, all at a reasonable cost.Location: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall, Room 102 (SLH 102)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jennifer Cantwell
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Central Intelligence Agency Information Session
Wed, Oct 01, 2008 @ 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Join representatives of this company as they share general company information and available opportunities.
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori (GFS) 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
