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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for October
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Oct 02, 2017 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Baotran Vo (alumna, USC BME M.S. program), Design Quality Engineer, MicroVention
Talk Title: Cerebrovascular Medical Device Technology
Host: Stacey Finley, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 02, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Aaron Ames, California Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Unified Control of Dynamic Robotic Systems
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Humans have the ability to locomote with deceptive ease, navigating everything from daily environments to uneven and uncertain terrain with efficiency and robustness. With the goal of achieving these capabilities on robotic systems, this talk will present a unified formal framework for realizing dynamic behaviors in an efficient, provably correct and safety-critical fashion, along with the application of these ideas experimentally on a wide variety of robotic systems. In particular, we will introduce an optimization-based control framework that is able to dynamically balance control objectives and safety constraints for dynamic robotic systems. These concepts will be illustrated through their application to the humanoid robot DURUS, with the result being dynamic and efficient locomotion displaying the hallmarks of natural human walking: heel-toe behavior. The translation of these ideas to robotic assistive devices, and specifically powered prostheses, will be described in the context of custom-built hardware. Finally, the extension of these concepts to safety-critical systems-”including automotive applications, multi-agent systems, and swarms of quadrotors-”will be discussed.
Biography: Aaron D. Ames is the Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control and Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Caltech, he was an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Ames received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of St. Thomas in 2001, and he received a M.A. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley in 2006. He served as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Control and Dynamical Systems at Caltech from 2006 to 2008, and began is faculty career at Texas A&M University in 2008. At UC Berkeley, he was the recipient of the 2005 Leon O. Chua Award for achievement in nonlinear science and the 2006 Bernard Friedman Memorial Prize in Applied Mathematics. Dr. Ames received the NSF CAREER award in 2010, and is the recipient of the 2015 Donald P. Eckman Award recognizing an outstanding young engineer in the field of automatic control. His research interests span the areas of robotics, nonlinear control and hybrid systems, with a special focus on applications to bipedal robotic walking-”both formally and through experimental validation. His lab designs, builds and tests novel bipedal robots, humanoids and prostheses with the goal of achieving human-like bipedal robotic locomotion and translating these capabilities to robotic assistive devices.
Host: Mihailo Jovanovic
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Six Sigma Green Belt for Process ImprovementTue, Oct 03, 2017 @ 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: TBA, TBA
Talk Title: Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement
Abstract: Learn how to integrate principles of business, statistics, and engineering to achieve tangible results. Master the use of Six Sigma to quantify the critical quality issues in your company. Once the issues have been quantified, statistics can be applied to provide probabilities of success and failure. Six Sigma methods increase productivity and enhance quality. As a Six Sigma green belt, you will be equipped to support and champion a Six Sigma implementation in your organization. To earn the Six Sigma Green Belt Certificate, you will be required to pass the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineer's green belt exam (administered on the final day of the course).
Host: USC Viterbi Executive Education
More Info: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-green-belt-process-improvement/
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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Epstein Institute Seminar, ISE 651
Tue, Oct 03, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Myong Kee (MK) Jeong, Professor, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Talk Title: Advanced Spatial Data Mining Methodology and its Applications to Semiconductor Manufacturing Processes*
Host: Prof. Qiang Huang
More Information: October 3, 2017.pdf
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - GER 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement
Wed, Oct 04, 2017 @ 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: TBA, TBA
Talk Title: Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement
Abstract: Learn how to integrate principles of business, statistics, and engineering to achieve tangible results. Master the use of Six Sigma to quantify the critical quality issues in your company. Once the issues have been quantified, statistics can be applied to provide probabilities of success and failure. Six Sigma methods increase productivity and enhance quality. As a Six Sigma green belt, you will be equipped to support and champion a Six Sigma implementation in your organization. To earn the Six Sigma Green Belt Certificate, you will be required to pass the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineer's green belt exam (administered on the final day of the course).
Host: USC Viterbi Executive Education
More Info: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-green-belt-process-improvement/
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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Novel Theoretical Characterization and Optimization of Experimental Efficiency for Diffusion MRI (Ph.D. Defense)
Wed, Oct 04, 2017 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Divya Varadarajan, Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California
Talk Title: Novel Theoretical Characterization and Optimization of Experimental Efficiency for Diffusion MRI (Ph.D. Defense)
Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
Abstract: Diffusion MRI (dMRI) has the unique ability to noninvasively quantify the Brownian motion characteristics of water molecules, and thus infer structural tissue features at microscopic spatial scales that are otherwise inaccessible through conventional millimeter-scale MRI. When applied to the brain, dMRI has emerged as an especially important tool for quantifying tissue microstructural characteristics that change as a result of factors such as brain development, plasticity, and pathology. Diffusion MRI is also used for reconstructing the white matter pathways that connect different brain regions.
However, long scan times continue to be a major challenge for dMRI . While spending an hour or more in the scanner is acceptable forex-vivo tissue analysis or for motivated, healthy volunteers, it becomes challenging for in-vivo analysis for a number of important subject populations (such as younger children and sick individuals). In practice, scan times are constrained for human subjects, and studies have to make inferences working with the few samples acquired. The overall performance is directly impacted by the efficiency of the dMRI protocol, which consists of the sampling scheme used to acquire dMRI data, as well as the parameter estimation method used to make inferences from
measured data.
This work addresses the problem of making dMRI experiments as efficient as possible, including: (i) optimizing the scanner sampling protocol to maximize the amount of relevant information contained in the data, (ii) optimizing the parameter estimation protocol to maximize the amount of information extracted from the measured data, and (iii) developing statistical models that can be used to suppress noise contamination.
Host: Prof. Justin Haldar
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
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Systems Engineer Research Center Open Forum Discussion
Wed, Oct 04, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Systems Architecting and Engineering, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Gary McGraw, Vice President for Security Technology, Synopsys
Talk Title: What are the Top Ten Software Security Flaws?
Series: SERC Talks
Abstract: SERC Talks is an open forum discussion series featuring researchers sharing their insights on various questions relevant to Systems Engineering (SE) and its evolution. Prof. Barry Boehm is the Editor-in-Chief of the series, curating the talks. The Systems Engineering Research Center encourages input and insights during these lively discussions to create an ongoing and more collaborative dialogue between academia, government and industry sectors of the SE community.
Software security defects come in two categories--bugs in the implementation and flaws in the design. In the commercial marketplace, much more attention has been paid to finding and fixing bugs than has been paid to finding and fixing flaws. That is because automatically identifying bugs is a much easier problem than identifying design flaws. The IEEE Center for Secure Design was founded to address this issue head on. This will cover the IEEE CSD's first deliverable by introducing and discussing how to avoid the top ten software security flaws. The content was developed in concert with Twitter, Google, Cigital, HP, Sadosky Foundation of Argentina, George Washington University, Intel/McAfee, RSA, University of Washington, EMC, Harvard University, and Athens University of Economics and Business. The talk will include how to avoid the top ten software security design flaws. It is important, of course, to know that these flaws account for half of the defects commonly encountered in software security. But more important still is learning how to avoid these problems when designing a new system or revisiting an existing system.
Biography: Gary McGraw is the Vice President Security Technology of Synopsys (SNPS), a silicon valley company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. He is a globally recognized authority on software security and the author of eight best selling books on this topic. His titles include Software Security, Exploiting Software, Building Secure Software, Java Security, Exploiting Online Games, and 6 other books. He is editor of the Addison-Wesley Software Security series. Dr. McGraw has also written over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications, authors a periodic security column for SearchSecurity, and is frequently quoted in the press. Besides serving as a strategic counselor for top business and IT executives, Gary is on the Advisory Boards of Max Financial, NTrepid, and Ravenwhite. He has also served as a Board member of Cigital (acquired by Synopsys) and as Advisor to Dasient (acquired by Twitter), Fortify Software (acquired by HP), and Invotas (acquired by FireEye). His dual PhD is in Cognitive Science and Computer Science from Indiana University where he serves on the Dean's Advisory Council for the School of Informatics. Gary produces the monthly Silver Bullet Security Podcast for Synopsys and IEEE Security and Privacy magazine (syndicated by SearchSecurity).
Host: Prof. Barry Boehm
More Info: https://www.garymcgraw.com/
Webcast: http://www.sercuarc.org/events/serc-talks-what-are-the-top-ten-software-security-flaws/Location: • Online via WebEX
WebCast Link: http://www.sercuarc.org/events/serc-talks-what-are-the-top-ten-software-security-flaws/
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: James Moore II
Event Link: https://www.garymcgraw.com/
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CiSoft Seminar
Wed, Oct 04, 2017 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mr. Jim Crompton, founder of Reflections Data Consulting
Talk Title: Industry Overview: Lower for How Much Longer
Series: CiSoft Seminar
Host: CiSoft
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 324
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Juli Legat
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Cross-listed between CCI-MHI Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems and CSC@USC Seminar Series
Wed, Oct 04, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Carolyn Beck, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Epidemic Processes Over Topologically Varying Networks
Abstract: The study of epidemic processes has been a topic of interest for many years over a wide range of areas, including mathematical systems, biology, physics, computer science, social sciences and economics. More recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of epidemic processes focused on the spread of viruses over networks, motivated not only by recent devastating outbreaks of infectious diseases, but also by the rapid spread of opinions over social networks, and the security threats posed by computer viruses. Most of the models considered in these recent studies have been focused on network models with static network structures, however almost all systems being considered have inherently dynamic structures. In this talk, we will discuss the modeling of epidemic processes over topologically varying networks, and present stability analysis results which elucidate the behavior of these systems. Specifically, we will derive conditions that guarantee convergence to the disease free equilibrium under varying assumptions on the networks and disease process parameters. Simulation results and potential control actions will be presented and discussed to conclude the talk.
Biography: Carolyn L. Beck is a faculty member in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. She completed her Ph.D. at Caltech, her M.S. at Carnegie Mellon, and her B.S. at Cal Poly, all in Electrical Engineering. Prior to completing her Ph.D., she was an R&D engineer at Hewlett- Packard in Santa Clara. Carolyn has held visiting faculty positions at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Stanford University, and Lund University in Lund, Sweden.
She was the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and an ONR Young Investigator award, as well as local teaching awards. Her research interests range from network inference problems to control of anesthetic pharmacodynamics and include mathematical systems theory, model reduction and approximation for the purpose of analysis and control design, and clustering and aggregation methods.
Host: Ketan Savla, ksavla@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Wed, Oct 04, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Matthew McHenry, Professor/UC Irvine
Talk Title: Predator Sensing and Evasion in Fish
Abstract: The ability to survive encounters with predators is fundamental to the biology of a broad diversity of species. However, it is largely unclear how prey animals sense and evade predators. We study how the sensory and motor systems of fishes facilitate predator evasion with a focus on zebrafish (Danio rerio), where the adults prey on larvae of the same species. We have learned that the flow-sensitive lateral line system is necessary for survival by rapidly triggering a 'fast start' escape response. By replicating these conditions with a predator robot and modeling the flow stimulus with computational fluid dynamics, we were able to examine the cues that prey fish use to sense a predator. We similarly modeled the visual stimuli presented by a predator's approach. For both stimuli, we found that larvae direct their escape rapidly with coarse directionality. By examining these interactions with pursuit-evasion game modeling, we found that these directional responses are effective due to the high speed of the escape relative to the slow approach of the predator. Therefore, zebrafish survive encounters with a predator using either visual or flow cues that trigger a poorly-directed, but fast, escape response.
Biography: Matt McHenry is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Irvine. Since his freshman year at Vassar College, Matt has studied biomechanics and sensing in aquatic animals. He earned a doctorate with Mimi Koehl at UC Berkeley and completed postdoctoral studies with George Lauder at Harvard. His lab's research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.
Host: Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ashleen Knutsen
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Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement
Thu, Oct 05, 2017 @ 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: TBA, TBA
Talk Title: Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement
Abstract: Learn how to integrate principles of business, statistics, and engineering to achieve tangible results. Master the use of Six Sigma to quantify the critical quality issues in your company. Once the issues have been quantified, statistics can be applied to provide probabilities of success and failure. Six Sigma methods increase productivity and enhance quality. As a Six Sigma green belt, you will be equipped to support and champion a Six Sigma implementation in your organization. To earn the Six Sigma Green Belt Certificate, you will be required to pass the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineer's green belt exam (administered on the final day of the course).
Host: USC Viterbi Executive Education
More Info: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-green-belt-process-improvement/
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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W.V.T. RUSCH ENGINEERING HONORS COLLOQUIUM
Fri, Oct 06, 2017 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Grace Yee, Senior Licensing Officer at University of California Riverside
Talk Title: Patenting and Commercializing Early Stage Technologies
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Su Stevens
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Fri, Oct 06, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Inge Wiersema, and Lenise Marrero , Carollo Engineers and City of LA Sanitation
Talk Title: One Water LA 2040 Plan An Overview of Integrated Water Management Planning for the City of Los Angeles
Abstract: The presentation will provide an overview of how the City of Los Angeles is working collaboratively to prepare a strategic plan with a planning horizon of 2040. The One Water approach provides a new paradigm of how water can be managed by considering all types of water potable water, wastewater, recycled water, stormwater, groundwater, etc. as One Water. The One Water LA 2040 Plan identifies strategies to achieve the Mayor Sustainable City Plan water related goals to make Los Angeles a more sustainable and resilient city. The presentation will highlight the key components of this very comprehensive planning effort and provides a wide variety of examples of how environmental engineering is used to address water related challenges, such as droughts, flooding, and water quality.
Biography:
Inge Wiersema is a Vice President with Carollo Engineers and serves as the Regional Planning Manager for Southern California. She is a registered civil engineer with over 20 years experience specializing in water resources and utility master planning. Inge is currently project manager for One Water LA 2040 Plan, which is a strategic and collaborative planning effort with Los Angeles Departments of Sanitation LASAN and Los Angeles Department of Water & Power LADWP. As the prime consultant, she leads a team with over 20 subconsultants to develop the One Water LA 2040 Plan, which identifies strategies and integration opportunities to manage all water as One Water.
Lenise Marrero has a Bachelor Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico. She is a Senior Civil Engineer with City of L.A. Sanitation, and her experience ranges from sewer infrastructure and facilities planning to policy development. She helped implement the City Water Integrated Resources Plan IRP through inter agency collaboration, stakeholder and public engagement. More recently, Ms. Marrero leads the development of the City One Water LA Plan which is a collaborative, integrated approach to managing the City watersheds, water resources, and water facilities.
Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Oct 09, 2017 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Narendran Murugan (alumnus, USC BME M.S. program), Senior Regulatory Affairs Specialist, Edwards Lifesciences
Talk Title: Research Presentation & Career Path
Host: Stacey Finley, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 09, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Allen Tannenbaum, Stony Brook University
Talk Title: Optimal Mass Transport and the Robustness of Complex Networks
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Today's technological world is increasingly dependent upon the reliability, robustness, quality of service and timeliness of networks including those of power distribution, financial, transportation, communication, biological, and social. For the time-critical functionality in transferring resources and information, a key requirement is the ability to adapt and reconfigure in response to structural and dynamic changes, while avoiding disruption of service and catastrophic failures. We will outline some of the major problems for the development of the necessary theory and tools that will permit the understanding of network dynamics in a multiscale manner.
Many interesting networks consist of a finite but very large number of nodes or agents that interact with each other. The main challenge when dealing with such networks is to understand and regulate the collective behavior. Our goal is to develop mathematical models and optimization tools for treating the Big Data nature of large scale networks while providing the means to understand and regulate the collective behavior and the dynamical interactions (short and long-range) across such networks.
The key mathematical technique will be based upon the use optimal mass transport theory and resulting notions of curvature applied to weighted graphs in order to characterize network robustness. Examples will be given from biology, finance, and transportation.
Biography: Allen Tannenbaum is an applied mathematician and presently Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics & Statistics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is also Investigator of Medical Physics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
Tannenbaum has done research in numerous areas including robust control, computer vision, and biomedical imaging, having more than 500 publications. He pioneered the field of robust control with the solution of the gain margin and phase margin problems using techniques from Nevanlinna-“Pick interpolation theory, which was the first H-infinity type control problem solved. He was one of the first to introduce partial differential equations in computer vision and biomedical imaging co-inventing an affine-invariant heat equation for image enhancement. Tannenbaum and collaborators further formulated a new approach to optimal mass transport (Monge-Kantorovich) theory. In recent work, he has developed techniques using graph curvature ideas for analyzing the robustness of complex networks.
His work has won several awards including IEEE Fellow, O. Hugo Schuck Award of the American Automatic Control Council in 2007 (shared with S. Dambreville and Y. Rathi), and the George Taylor Award for Distinguished Research from the University of Minnesota in 1997. He has given numerous plenary talks at major conferences including the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control of the IEEE Control Systems Society in 2000, the International Symposium on the Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (MTNS) in 2012, and the SIAM Conference in 2017.
Host: Mihailo Jovanovic, mihailo@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Tue, Oct 10, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Amos Winter, Associate Professor and GEAR Lab Director, MIT
Talk Title: Engineering Reverse Innovations: Using Emerging Markets' Constraints to Drive the Creation of High-Performance, Low-Cost, Global Technologies
Abstract: This presentation will demonstrate how the Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Lab at MIT characterizes the unique technical and socioeconomic constraints of emerging markets, then uses these insights with engineering science and product design to create high-performance, low-cost, globally-relevant technologies. The talk will focus on three areas of GEAR Lab's research: high-performance, low-cost prosthetic feet: low-pressure, low-power drip irrigation, and solar-powered desalination. We have created a novel method of connecting the mechanical design of a foot to its biomechanical performance, which allows the stiffness and geometry to be optimized to induce able-bodied walking kinematics and kinetics. This theory has resulted in a single-part foot architecture which can be made of nylon to hit a $10 price point for developing countries, and which will be ruggedized and customizable for the US military/veteran population. By characterizing the coupled fluid/solid mechanics within drip irrigation emitters, we have designed new drippers that operate at 1/7th the pressure of existing products. This technology can cut the overall pressure, pumping power, and energy usage of drip irrigation systems by approximately 50%, and lower the capital cost of off-grid systems by up to 40%. GEAR Lab elucidated a disruptive market opportunity in arid countries for photovoltaic-powered electrodialysis (PV-ED) desalination, which requires half the energy and reduces water wastage from 60% toLocation: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ashleen Knutsen
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CS Colloquium: Robert Sedgewick (Princeton University) - A 21st Century Model for Disseminating Knowledge
Tue, Oct 10, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Robert Sedgewick, Princeton
Talk Title: A 21st Century Model for Disseminating Knowledge
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.
In the early years of the third millenium, most professors are still teaching in virtually the same way they were taught and their teachers were taught, stretching back centuries. This situation is likely to change, relatively soon. Technology is transforming (if not threatening to overwhelm) higher education, as MOOCs and online content become widely available. University students seeking to learn a topic who now have little if any choice are about to be presented with a vast array of choices. What student would not want to swap a tired professor writing slowly on a chalkboard for a well-produced series of videos and associated content, given by a world leader in the field? We are on the verge of a transformation on the scale of the transformation wrought by Gutenburg. This imminent change raises a host of fascinating and far-reaching questions.
In this talk, we describe a scalable model for teaching and learning based on a combination of studio-produced video lectures, innovative online content and assessment mechanisms, and an authoritative classic textbook. We initially proved this approach effective for teaching algorithms and data structures, the analysis of algorithms, and analytic combinatorics. More recently, we have published a new textbook in computer science, new studio-produced lectures, and online content that teachers and learners can use for a first-year course sequence in computer science that can stand alongside traditional first courses in physics, chemistry, economics, and other disciplines. Our model enables us to reach millions of students and programmers around the world.
Biography: Robert Sedgewick is the founding chair and the William O. Baker Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton and served for many years as a member of the board of directors of Adobe Systems. He has held visiting research positions at Xerox PARC, IDA, INRIA, and Bell Laboratories.
Prof. Sedgewick's research interests include analytic combinatorics, algorithm design, the scientific analysis of algorithms, curriculum development, and innovations in the dissemination of knowledge. He has published widely in these areas and is the author of twenty books, which have sold nearly one million copies. He has also published extensive online content (including studio-produced video lectures) on analysis of algorithms and analytic combinatorics and (with Kevin Wayne) algorithms and computer science. Their MOOC on algorithms has been named one of the "top 10 MOOCs of all time."
Host: Computer Science Department
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Computer Science Department
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Epstein Institute Seminar, ISE 651
Tue, Oct 10, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Frank E. Curtis, Associate Professor, Lehigh University
Talk Title: Second-Order Methods for Stochastic and Nonsmooth Optimization
Host: Prof. Suvrajeet Sen
More Information: October 10, 2017.pdf
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - GER 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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INCOSE-LA Speaker Meeting
Tue, Oct 10, 2017 @ 05:30 PM - 07:30 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Phyllis Marbach, President, INCOSE-LA, Boeing Designated Expert in both Software Engineering and Systems Engineering as well as Agile Practices
Talk Title: A Systems Engineering Solution To Clean Up The Oceans' Plastic Waste
Series: INCOSE-LA Speaker Series
Abstract: The 2017 INCOSE International Symposium Practitioners Challenge Delivery Team was Nicole Hutchison, Robert Edson, Megan Clifford and Jaci Pratt. The team presented a problem and challenged the assembled systems engineers to work together to present a solution to the problem. This year's problem: About 19 Billion tons of plastic waste end up in the oceans each year and the amount of global trash is expected to increase every year for the next century. What can we do about this plastic trash problem?
Come to the next speaker meeting at the Aerospace Corporation on October 10 to learn how the systems engineers self-organized, discussed the issues, and presented a way forward to clean up the plastic, reuse or dispose of the plastic, and prevent plastic from entering our oceans in the future.
DIRECTIONS TO THE AEROSPACE CORPORATION
Location: between Imperial and El Segundo Blvd (north to south), between the 405 Freeway and Sepulveda (east to west).
From the 105 Freeway traveling WEST:
1. Take the exit towards 405 South
2. Before getting onto the 405 Freeway, take the El Segundo Blvd exit
3. At the bottom of the ramp, turn left (west)
4. Turn right on Aviation Blvd.
5. Bldg. D8 will be on the third building on the Right, just past the discount bakery.
The facility is the third building from the corner of Aviation and El Segundo, just north of the discount bakery outlet. The facility has 4 gates, but only the southern-most gate is open. Identify yourself to the security guard as attending the INCOSE meeting. You can park where Security directs and enter through the lobby at the center of the building where the flag poles are. Knock on the first of the double doors, and someone will open the door for you. The handicap ramp is on the north side and can be reached by driving all the way around the back of the building. Inform the security guard if you plan to use that ramp.
Schedule:
5:15-5:30 Sign-in/Registration
5:30-6:00 Networking/Refreshments
6:10-6:20 Introduction
6:20-6:30 WG Presentation (TBD)
6:30-7:30 Guest Speaker Presentation
Please RSVP by noon October 3rd to facilitate event registration and planning, foreign nationals by September 26th.
Biography: Phyllis Marbach is the current President of INCOSE-LA. She attended IS 2017 and participated in the Practitioners Challenge with about a dozen engineers from multiple disciplines and countries. Phyllis retired from Boeing last year after 37 years working as a development, systems, software and project engineer as well as Manager depending on the job and skills needed. She was a Boeing Designated Expert in both Software Engineering and Systems Engineering as well as Agile Practices. She has presented numerous papers at conferences in the past 10 years, is a member of several INCOSE working groups, and is a Certified SAFe(R) Program Consultant and trainer.
Host: The Aerospace Corporation (Venue); INCOSE-Los Angeles (Event)
More Info: http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=l4ihvgeab&oeidk=a07ee508ycufa13055c
Location: The Aerospace Corporation, Building D8/1010, 200 N. Aviation, El Segundo, CA
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Deborah A. Cannon
Event Link: http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=l4ihvgeab&oeidk=a07ee508ycufa13055c
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Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Wed, Oct 11, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ufuk Topcu, Assistant Professor, University of Texas Austin
Talk Title: Autonomous systems in the intersection of learning theory, formal methods and controls
Abstract: Autonomous systems are emerging as a driving technology for countlessly many applications. Numerous disciplines tackle the challenges toward making these systems agile, adaptable, reliable, user friendly and economical. On the other hand, the existing disciplinary boundaries delay and possibly even obstruct progress. I argue that the non-conventional problems that arise in the design and verification of autonomous systems require hybrid solutions at the intersection of learning, formal methods and controls.
I will present our recent results in two problems. The first one is on automated synthesis of correct-by-construction, hierarchical control protocols. These results account for dynamics that are subject to rich temporal logic specifications, heterogeneous uncertainties and possibly adversarial environments. They combine ideas from control theory with those from formal methods, and exploit underlying system-theoretic interpretations to suppress the inherent computational complexity. My studies of the second problem have resulted in a series of new reinforcement learning algorithms that build on both learning theory and formal methods. A common feature in these algorithms is the guarantees they provide during both training and execution with respect to given formal specifications expressed in variants of temporal logic.
Biography: Ufuk Topcu joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor in Fall 2015. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 2008. He held research positions at the University of Pennsylvania and California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the theoretical, algorithmic and computational aspects of design and verification of autonomous systems through novel connections between formal methods, learning theory and controls.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Wed, Oct 11, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mark R. Cutkosky, Fletcher Jones Professor, Stanford University
Talk Title: Bioinspired Robots: Embracing the Environment
Abstract: As we bring robots out of the laboratory and into the world, one of the most important lessons we can learn from nature is how to exploit interactions with materials and surfaces in the environment. Examples of robots that need to take advantage of surface interactions include multimodal flying/climbing robots, microtugs, and free-flying robots that grasp objects using gecko-inspired adhesives. These robots use specialized materials and mechanisms to manage interactions with the surfaces they contact. In each case dynamic models and tests lead to computed "envelopes" of conditions for which the robot is expected to perform reliably - for example, to latch onto a surface without slipping or bouncing off. As contact takes place the dynamics are typically fast, so passive properties of mechanisms are more effective than closed-loop control to dissipate energy, distribute forces and stabilize the robot. Nature offers many examples of structures and functional materials that help to manage these interactions. Investigations of surface interactions also allow us to discover new opportunities for synergy when combining multiple locomotion modes (e.g., flying and climbing). Here again, we find parallels in nature.
Biography: Mark R. Cutkosky is the Fletcher Jones Professor in the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. He joined Stanford in 1985, after working in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and as a design engineer at ALCOA, in Pittsburgh, PA. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985.
Cutkosky's research activities include robotic manipulation and tactile sensing and the design and fabrication of biologically inspired robots. He has graduated over 47 Ph.D. students and published extensively in these areas. He consults with companies on robotics and human/computer interaction devices and holds several patents on related technologies. His work has been featured in Discover magazine, The New York Times, National Geographic, Time magazine and other publications and has appeared on PBS NOVA, CBS Evening News, and other popular media.
Cutkosky's awards include a Fulbright Faculty Chair (Italy 2002), Fletcher Jones and Charles M. Pigott Chairs at Stanford University, an NSF Presidential Young Investigator award and Times Magazine Best Innovations (2006) for the Stickybot gecko-inspired robot. He is a fellow of ASME and IEEE and a member of Sigma Xi. Cutkosky's laboratory and research can be found at http://bdml.stanford.edu.
Host: Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ashleen Knutsen
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Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Thu, Oct 12, 2017 @ 02:00 AM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mirela Alistar, Postdoc, Hasso-Plattner-Institute, Germany
Talk Title: Are microfluidic biochips the 'arduinos' for biology?
Abstract: Biochips are cyber-physical systems with realistic potential to improve the healthcare process, e.g., by providing faster disease disease diagnosis and at-home direct treatment. Traditionally, biochips are developed to be used by experts in laboratories or clinics. I expand this vision, by exploring the possibility of an integrated platform for personal use of biochips.
In my work, I address the main challenges that users may encounter: accessibility, bio-protocol design and interaction with microfluidics. I believe this is a first step towards personal laboratories: small portable devices that people can own and use to develop customized bio-protocols ('bio-apps'), similar to today's Arduinos.
I will present my work around biochips, finishing with a live demo of my latest device.
Biography: Mirela Alistar is a Postdoc at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute, Germany. She received a PhD in computer engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 2014. Her main research interests are in the area of system-level design of embedded systems, with a special focus on digital microfluidics. She is supporting open access research and she has organized art and science events, where she disseminates to the public with the aim of involving them into creating more knowledge.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Munushian speaker - Mike Mayberry, Friday, October 13th at 10:00am in EEB 132
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mike Mayberry, Intel Corporation
Talk Title: The Future of Computing
Abstract: In this seminar Dr. Mayberry will share with participants Intel's
view of the future of computing and communication technologies. He will share insights regarding Intel's research agenda and collaborative efforts to deliver innovative products and advanced technology.
Biography: Mike Mayberry is corporate vice president and director
of Intel Labs. He is responsible for Intel's global research efforts in computing and communications. In addition he leads the Corporate Research Council which drives allocation and prioritization of directed university research across Intel.
Since joining Intel in 1984 as a process integration engineer, Mayberry has held a variety of positions. As part of the California Technology Development team, he developed EPROM, flash and logic wafer fabrication processes. In 1994 he moved to Sort Test Technology Development, responsible for roadmaps and development of test processes for Intel microprocessors. In 2005, he moved to Components Research and was responsible for research to enable future process options for Intel's technology development organizations.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
More Info: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures
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AI Seminar
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Erick Moen, USC
Talk Title: ADVANCED METHODOLOGIES FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF TRANSIENT MEMBRANE BEHAVIOR
Abstract: Understanding how biology responds to stimuli is one of the most challenging, yet fundamental, questions in biophysics. An in depth analysis of this relationship would allow for the development of more powerful biomedical tools and could provide a roadmap for more intelligent artificial systems. To conduct this type of research, though, we need tools to ask increasingly incisive questions of the cell membrane, the epicenter of cell function. In light of these needs, this talk will describe a nonlinear optical measurement technique developed to rapidly detect subtle changes in cell membrane structure. The method is tested in multiple cell lines and the in vitro results are validated against a complementary model of the cell membrane. The measurement technique is then used to explore transmembrane potential and investigate the mechanisms underlying neuronal stimulation and inhibition. The talk will conclude with an overview of concurrent efforts to develop a multi-faceted virtual reality VR suite for immersive scientific computing and data visualization. While this work is broadly applicable to a number of fields, the approach is used here to help better understand results from in silico studies of dynamic membrane behavior. As time allows, I will discuss how specific aspects of this research could be improved by machine learning approaches and how the projects can be extended from the single cell level to networked systems.
Biography: Personal Bio:
Erick Moen is a Research Associate with the Center for Cyber Physical Systems and the Internet of Things at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. He is multidisciplinary scientist who develops new ways to measure and understand biology through nonlinear optics, high performance computing, and virtual reality. In addition to his primary lines of research, his interests extend to resonator physics, sensor technology, and artificial intelligence.
Dr. Moen received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from USC. He also holds M.S. degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Last year, he was named a Ming Hsieh Institute Scholar awarded to the top students in the department. Dr. Moen also serves as a consultant for the Entertainment Technology Center at USC holding the mirror for an organization helping Hollywood see around corners. Prior to entering graduate school, he converted a Porsche 914 into a rolling testbed for electric vehicle research and spent time in industry as a principal of a building design and engineering firm.
Host: Kristina LermanLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th floor large conference room
WebCast Link: http://webcastermshd.isi.edu/Mediasite/Play/ffdb85fc430947539dc2e22215f9a6531d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kary LAU
Event Link: http://webcastermshd.isi.edu/Mediasite/Play/ffdb85fc430947539dc2e22215f9a6531d
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W.V.T. RUSCH ENGINEERING HONORS COLLOQUIUM
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. David Siegel, Distinguished Professor at the Department of Geography and Earth Research Institute, UCSB, Earth Research Institute
Talk Title: The Ocean Below
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Su Stevens
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Raymond Goldsworthy, PhD, Associate Professor of Clinical Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery
Talk Title: Improving Signal Processing for Cochlear Implants
Abstract: A cochlear implant is a biomedical device that restores a degree of hearing to deafened individuals. Cochlear implant technology has evolved to the point that the majority of recipients typically understand speech in quiet environments; consequently, scientific emphasis is increasingly placed on the more challenging problems of speech reception in background noise and of music appreciation. Dr. Goldsworthy will describe approaches that he has taken towards improving cochlear implant signal processing including multiple-microphone spatial filtering, encoding temporal fine structure, and auditory modeling of healthy hearing. Each of these approaches has demonstrated potential for improving hearing for cochlear implant users.
Biography: Dr. Ray Goldsworthy received his B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Kentucky in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology through a joint program between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005. From 2005 until 2014, Ray led projects at Sensimetrics Corporation to develop signal processing solutions for cochlear implants and hearing aids. In 2015, Ray joined the faculty of the University of Southern California in the Department of Otolaryngology where he continues to explore the interplay of signal processing, rehabilitation, and the fundamentals of auditory perception.
Host: Brent Liu, PhD
Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - 145A
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series on Integrated Systems
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Sudhakar Pamarti, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
Talk Title: Time Varying Circuits for Radio Receiver Applications
Host: Profs. Hossein Hashemi, Mike Chen, Mahta Moghaddam, Dina El-Damak
More Information: MHI Seminar Series IS -Sudhakar Pamarti.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jenny Lin
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Luis Montoya , Astani CEE Ph.D. Candidate
Talk Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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NL Seminar: Context is Everything: From language modeling to language generation
Fri, Oct 13, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yangfeng Ji , University of Washington
Talk Title: Context is Everything: From language modeling to language generation
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: Contextual information is critical for language processing and generation. Particularly for large texts consisting of multiple sentences or paragraphs, how to capture the contextual information beyond sentence boundaries is important for building better language processing systems. This talk will discuss our recent effort on incorporating contextual information to language modeling and generation. It presents three models with each of them corresponds a specific linguistic phenomenon of context shared in written texts: i. local context from preceding sentences; ii. semantic and pragmatic relations between adjacent sentences; and iii. evolving of entities e.g., characters in novels through coreference links in texts. The starting point of our model design is sentence-level recurrent neural network language models RNNLMs. To capture these aspects of contextual information, we extend RNNLMs by either adding extra connections among existing network components, or adding dedicated components particularly to encode specific linguistic information. Evaluation results show that these models outperforms strong baselines and prior work language modeling tasks. Their ability of capturing contextual information is also verified by the quantitative evaluation on each corresponding task, such as identifying the relation between sentences, and resolving coreference ambiguity. Qualitative analysis is also included to demonstrate the ability of these models for text generation.
Biography: Yangfeng Ji is a postdoc researcher at University of Washington working with Noah Smith. His research interests lie in the interaction of natural language processing and machine learning. He is interested in designing machine learning models and algorithms for language processing, and also fascinated by how linguistic knowledge helps build better learning models. He completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016, advised by Jacob Eisenstein. He was one of the area co-chairs on Discourse and Pragmatics in ACL 2017.
Host: Marjan Ghazvininejad and Kevin Knight
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/
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INCOSE-LA Tutorial Series
Sat, Oct 14, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Systems Architecting and Engineering, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Rick Hefner and Dr. Sue Gabriele, Program Director, California Institute of Technology Center for Technology and Management Education; Executive Director, Gabriele Educational Materials and Systems
Talk Title: Systems Thinking Tutorial
Abstract: What is systems thinking? How does systems thinking, or the lack of it, affect you and your work?
Systems thinking is an approach to understanding a system by examining the interactions among its components and between the system and the external environment. Systems thinking is essential to proper systems engineering, because it provides a framework for understanding and influencing the system's behavior. The ability to design systems relies on applying systems thinking rules to the definition of the system boundary, structure and interfaces to predict system performance.
This workshop will discuss the fundamental concepts, tools, and methods of systems thinking, and describe how their application distinguishes systems engineering from more traditional product development. Participants will apply these techniques to various systems engineering problems in this hands-on and interactive workshop.
Come to this Systems Thinking Tutorial to learn more about systems thinking participate in a Systems Thinking Roundtable, and enjoy lunch while networking with INCOSE-LA members and wrap-up by 2 p.m.
Cost: $10.00
Where: California Institute of Technology (Powell-Booth building, room 120), 1200 E California Blvd., Pasadena, CA. Visitors may park in any unreserved space. Permits are required between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, and may be purchased from the machine in the lot or parking structure. Permits are not required on the weekend.
Agenda:
9:00am-10:55am Systems Thinking Introduction, Dr. Rick Hefner
10:55am-11:05am Break
11:05am-12:00pm Systems Thinking Roundtable, Dr. Sue Gabriele
12:00pm- 1:00pm Lunch and networking
1:00pm- 2:00pm Wrap-up, next steps
Biography: Rick Hefner, PhD, currently works at the Caltech Center for Technology and Management Education, where he helps industry professionals and high-tech companies understand and apply systems engineering concepts. He has over 40 years of experience in the aerospace, communications, electronics, and health sciences industries. This includes work with AeroVironment, Applied Physics Laboratory, Applied Materials, Ares Management, Boeing, DRS Technologies, Halliburton, Herbalife, Honeywell, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, John Deere, L-3 WESCAM, Maytag, Motorola, Pacific Bell, Raytheon, Schlumberger, Southern California Edison, St. Jude Medical, Toshiba, U.S. Navy, and Xerox.
Dr. Hefner is credited with over 100 publications and presentations. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, in applied dynamic systems control, and his MS and BS from Purdue University in interdisciplinary engineering.
Dr. Sue Gabriele of Gabriele Educational Materials and Systems is an innovator and consultant in systemic school and workplace renewal. Her expertise builds on twenty-years as a high school teacher. Following her teaching career, she turned to graduate school seeking answers to problems in public education. Finding solutions in general systems theory and control systems, she earned her PhD in "Human Science: Social and Institutional Change" by creating and researching the "RoundTable" as a seed for social system renewal.
Host: Caltech (venue) INCOSE-Los Angeles (event)
More Info: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07eejw1c4la2c89235&llr=l4ihvgeab
More Information: Rick and Sue.jpg
Location: CalTech (Powell-Booth Bldg, room 120), 1200 E California Blvd., Pasadena, CA
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Phyllis Marbach
Event Link: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07eejw1c4la2c89235&llr=l4ihvgeab
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Epstein Department - Guest Speaker Event
Mon, Oct 16, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Selin Damla Ahipasaoglu, Assistant Professor, Singapore University of Technology and Design
Talk Title: Flexibility of Distributionally Robust Choice Models in Traffic Equilibrium
Host: Prof. Jong-Shi Pang
More Information: Selin_flyer.pdf
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - GER 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Oct 16, 2017 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Pilar Ruiz-Lozano, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Regencor
Talk Title: Of the Cardiac Regenerative Secretome (...or why men are not fish)
Host: Stacey Finley, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 16, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bin Hu, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Talk Title: Dissipativity Theory for Optimization and Machine Learning Research
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Empirical risk minimization (ERM) is a central topic for machine learning research, and is typically solved using first-order optimization methods whose convergence proofs are derived in a case-by-case manner. In this talk, we will present a simple routine which unifies the analysis of such optimization methods including gradient descent method, Nesterov's accelerated method, stochastic gradient descent (SGD), stochastic average gradient (SAG), SAGA, Finito, stochastic dual coordinate ascent (SDCA), stochastic variance reduction gradient (SVRG), and SGD with momentum. Specifically, we will view all these optimization methods as dynamical systems and then use a unified dissipativity approach to derive sufficient conditions for convergence rate certifications of such dynamical systems. The derived conditions are all in the form of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). We solve these resultant LMIs and obtain analytical proofs of new convergence rates for various optimization methods (with or without individual convexity). Our proposed analysis can be automated for a large class of first-order optimization methods under various assumptions. In addition, the derived LMIs can always be numerically solved to provide clues for constructions of analytical proofs.
Biography: Bin Hu received his B.S in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Science and Technology of China, and received the M.S. in Computational Mechanics from Carnegie Mellon University. He received the Ph.D in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Minnesota, advised by Peter Seiler. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the optimization group of Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is working with Laurent Lessard and closely collaborating with Stephen Wright. He is interested in building connections between control theory and machine learning research. His current research focuses on tailoring robust control theory (integral quadratic constraints, dissipation inequalities, jump system theory, etc) to unify the study of stochastic optimization methods (stochastic gradient, stochastic average gradient, SAGA, SVRG, Katyusha momentum, etc) and their applications in related machine learning problems (logistic regression, deep neural networks, matrix completion, etc). He is also particularly interested in the generalization mechanism of deep learning.
Host: Insoon Yang, insoonya@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Epstein Institute Seminar, ISE 651
Tue, Oct 17, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Christopher Ryan, Associate Professor of Operations Management, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Talk Title: Monotonicity of Optimal Contracts Without the First-Order Approach
Host: Prof. John Carlsson
More Information: October 17, 2017.pdf
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - GER 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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CS Colloquium: Max Levchin (Affirm) - Fireside Chat with Max Levchin, CEO of Affirm
Tue, Oct 17, 2017 @ 06:30 PM - 08:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Max Levchin, Affirm
Talk Title: Fireside Chat with Max Levchin, CEO of Affirm
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Fireside Chat with Max Levchin from 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM followed by networking from 7:30 PM - 8:00 PM. Coffee and cookies will be served.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium. Please note, due to limited capacity in GFS 106, seats will be first come first serve.
Biography: Max Levchin is the founder and CEO of Affirm, a financial services technology company, cofounder and Chairman of Glow, a women's reproductive and sexual health company, and cofounder and general partner at SciFi VC, a private venture capital firm. All three companies were created and launched from his San Francisco based innovation lab, HVF (Hard, Valuable, Fun). Max was one of the original cofounders of PayPal where he served as the CTO until its acquisition by Ebay in 2002. In 2002, he was named to the Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world as well as Innovator of the Year. In 2004, he founded Slide, a personal media-sharing service for social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook which he sold to Google in August 2010. Also in 2004, he helped start Yelp, where he was the first investor in and Chairman of the Board from 2004 until 2015. He has served on several boards such as Yahoo!, Yelp, Evernote and currently serves on the Consumer Advisory Board of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Max is a serial entrepreneur, computer scientist, philanthropist and active investor in more than 100 startups.
Host: Computer Science Department
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Computer Science Department
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CS Colloquium: Henny Admoni (Carnegie Mellon University) - Toward Natural Interactions With Assistive Robots
Wed, Oct 18, 2017 @ 12:00 PM - 01:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Henny Admoni, Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Toward Natural Interactions With Assistive Robots
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
Robots can help people live better lives by assisting them with the complex tasks involved in everyday activities. This is especially impactful for people with disabilities, who can benefit from robotic assistance to increase their independence. For example, physically assistive robots can collaborate with people in preparing a meal, enabling people with motor impairments to be self sufficient in cooking and eating. Socially assistive robots can act as tutors, coaches, and partners, to help people with social or learning deficits practice the skills they have learned in class or therapy. Developing effective human-robot interactions in these cases requires a multidisciplinary approach that involves fundamental robotics algorithms, insights from human psychology, and techniques from artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In this talk, I will describe my vision for robots that collaborate with and assist humans on complex tasks. I will explain how we can leverage our understanding of natural, intuitive human behaviors to detect when and how people need assistance, and then apply robotics algorithms to produce effective human-robot interactions. I explain how models of human attention, drawn from cognitive science, can help select robot behaviors that improve human performance on a collaborative task. I detail my work on algorithms that predict people's mental states based on their eye gaze and provide assistance in response to those predictions. And I show how breaking the seamlessness of an interaction can make robots appear smarter. Throughout the talk, I will describe how techniques and knowledge from cognitive science help us develop robot algorithms that lead to more effective interactions between people and their robot partners.
Biography: Henny Admoni is an Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she works on assistive robotics and human-robot interaction. Henny develops and studies intelligent robots that improve people's lives by providing assistance through social and physical interactions. She studies how nonverbal communication, such as eye gaze and pointing, can improve assistive interactions by revealing underlying human intentions and increasing human-robot communication. Previously, Henny was a postdoctoral fellow at CMU with Siddhartha Srinivasa in the Personal Robotics Lab. Henny completed her PhD in Computer Science at Yale University with Professor Brian Scassellati. Henny holds an MS in Computer Science from Yale University, and a BA/MA joint degree in Computer Science from Wesleyan University. Henny's scholarship has been recognized with awards such as the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship, and the Palantir Women in Technology Scholarship.
Host: Computer Science Department
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 123
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Computer Science Department
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Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Wed, Oct 18, 2017 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sajal K. Das, Professor, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla
Talk Title: Smart Living: The Next Frontier
Abstract: We live in an era in which our physical and personal environments are becoming increasingly intertwined and smarter due to the advent of pervasive sensing, wireless communications, computing, and actuation technologies. Indeed our daily living in smart cities and connected communities depend on a wide variety of smart service systems and cyber-physical infrastructures, such as smart energy, transportation, healthcare, supply-chain, etc. Alongside, the availability of low-cost wireless sensor networks (WSNs), Internet of Things (IoTs), and rich mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) are also empowering humans with fine-grained information and opinion collection through crowdsensing about events of interest, thus resulting in actionable inferences and decisions. This synergy has led to the cyber-physical-social (CPS) convergence with human in the loop that exhibits complex interactions, inter-dependencies and adaptations between engineered/natural systems and human users with a goal to improve quality of life experience what we call smart living. However, the main challenges are posed by the scale, heterogeneity, big data, and resource limitations (e.g., energy) in context recognition and situation awareness using sensors, IoTs and CPS networks. This talk will highlight unique research issues and challenges in smart living and CPS systems, solutions for energy-efficient data gathering and fusion, lifetime optimization and security in WSNs, and trade-off between energy and information quality in multi-modal context recognition. Our research is based on online and randomized algorithms, graph theory, game theory, trust model, and information theory. Case studies and experimental results will be presented for energy efficient homes and smart healthcare applications. The talk will be concluded with directions for future research.
Biography: Dr. Sajal K. Das is a professor of Computer Science and Daniel St. Clair Endowed Chair at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla. During 2008-2011, he served the NSF as a Program Director in the Computer and Network Systems Division. Prior to 2013, he was a University Distinguished Scholar Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and founding director of Center for Research in Wireless Mobility and Networking (CReWMaN) at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research interests include wireless and sensor networks, mobile and pervasive computing, cyber-physical systems and smart environments including smart grid and smart healthcare, distributed and cloud computing, security and privacy, big data and IoT, biological and social networks, and applied graph theory and game theory. He has published over 600 research articles in these areas, 52 book chapters, and 5 US patents. He coauthored four books - "Smart Environments: Technology, Protocols, and Applications" (John Wiley, 2005); "Handbook on Securing Cyber-Physical Critical Infrastructure: Foundations and Challenges" (Morgan Kaufman, 2012); "Mobile Agents in Distributed Computing and Networking" (Wiley, 2012); and "Principles of Cyber-Physical Systems: An Interdisciplinary Approach" (Cambridge University Press, 2017). His h-index is 75 with more than 23,500 citations according to Google Scholar. Dr. Das is a recipient of 10 Best Paper Awards in prestigious conferences (e.g., ACM MobiCom and IEEE PerCom) and numerous awards for research, teaching, mentoring and professional services, including IEEE Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award for pioneering contributions to sensor networks and mobile computing. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier's Pervasive and Mobile Computing journal and serves as Associate Editor of several journals including IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, and Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. A founder of IEEE PerCom, IEEE WoWMoM, IEEE SMARTCOMP, and ICDCN conferences, he has served on numerous ACM and IEEE conference committees as General Chair, Technical Program Chair, or Program Committee member. Dr. Das is an IEEE Fellow for pioneering contributions to parallel, distributed and mobile computing.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Wed, Oct 18, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jasmine Foo, Associate Professor, U. Minnesota
Talk Title: Field Cancerization in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma
Abstract: High rates of local recurrence in tobacco-related head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) are commonly attributed to unresected fields of precancerous tissue. Because they are not easily detectable at the time of surgery without additional biopsies, there is a need for noninvasive methods to predict the extent and dynamics of these fields. Here, we developed a spatial stochastic evolutionary model of tobacco-related HNSCC at the tissue level and calibrated the model using a Bayesian framework and population-level incidence data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry. Our model predicted a strong dependence of the local field size on age at diagnosis. Similarly, the probability of harboring multiple, clinically unrelated fields at the time of diagnosis was found to increase substantially with patient age. This work highlights the importance of spatial structure in models of epithelial carcinogenesis and suggests that patient age at diagnosis may be a critical predictor of the size and multiplicity of precancerous lesions.
Host: Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ashleen Knutsen
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CS Colloquium: Phillip Isola (UC Berkeley) - Learning to See Without a Teacher
Thu, Oct 19, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Phillip Isola, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Learning to See Without a Teacher
Series: Visa Research Machine Learning Seminar Series hosted by USC Machine Learning Center
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
Over the past decade, learning-based methods have driven rapid progress in computer vision. However, most such methods still require a human "teacher" in the loop. Humans provide labeled examples of target behavior, and also define the objective that the learner tries to satisfy. The way learning plays out in nature is rather different: ecological scenarios involve huge quantities of unlabeled data and only a few supervised lessons provided by a teacher (e.g., a parent). I will present two directions toward computer vision algorithms that learn more like ecological agents. The first involves learning from unlabeled data. I will show how objects and semantics can emerge as a natural consequence of predicting raw data, rather than labels. The second is an approach to data prediction where we not only learn to make predictions, but also learn the objective function that scores the predictions. In effect, the algorithm learns not just how to solve a problem, but also what exactly needs to be solved in order to generate realistic outputs. Finally, I will talk about my ongoing efforts toward sensorimotor systems that not only learn from provided data but also act to sample more data on their own.
Biography: Phillip Isola is currently a Fellow at OpenAI, and he will be starting as an Assistant Professor in EECS at MIT in 2018. He received his Ph.D. in the Brain & Cognitive Sciences department at MIT, and spent two years as a postdoc in the EECS department at UC Berkeley. He studies visual intelligence from the perspective of both minds and machines.
Host: Joseph Lim
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Computer Science Department
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W.V.T. RUSCH ENGINEERING HONORS COLLOQUIUM
Fri, Oct 20, 2017 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Steve Chien, Head of the Artificial Intelligence Group, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Talk Title: ESA Rosetta Mission and the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Orbiter Science Operations
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Su Stevens
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Debdeep Jena - Munushian Seminar speaker, Friday, October 20th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Fri, Oct 20, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Debdeep Jena, Cornell University
Talk Title: The Wide-Bandgap Semiconductor Revolution in Electronic, Photonic, and Energy Systems
Abstract: Wide-bandgap nitride materials and devices have revolutionized the electronics and photonics industries in the last two decades. The optical device impact is moving from visible lighting and lasers to deep-UV photonics for biological applications. By exploiting the high electrical breakdown fields, and the high mobility of 2-dimensional electron gases, GaN HEMTs are now capable of generating enormous amounts of microwave power at high frequencies, and have become very attractive for RF amplifiers that power communications. At the same time, both lateral GaN HEMTs, and vertical GaN FETs are making inroads into high-voltage power electronics. Surprisingly, GaN also has a significant role to play in low-power energy-efficient electronics by exploiting internal polarization fields driven by the Berry phase. This talk will review these successes and discuss the physics underlying these revolutionary advances of the past two decades. Then, the same physics and a slew of new nitride materials to augment the conventional nitrides and to take Wide-bandgap electronics well into the future into areas of quantum computation and communications will be discussed.
Biography: Dr. Debdeep Jena is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University. His research and teaching interests are in the MBE growth and electronic and photonic device applications of quantum semiconductor heterostructures (III-V nitrides, oxides, and 2D crystal semiconductors). By combining experiment and theory, his group explores fundamental speed, power, and efficiency limits of electronic and photonic devices based on a deep investigation of charge, heat, and spin transport. He has authored more than 200 scientific publications including articles in Science, Nature Journals, Physical Review Letters, Electron Device Letters, and Applied Physics Letters. During his research career, he has received the International MBE Young Scientist award in 2014, the IBM faculty award in 2012, the ISCS Young Scientist award in 2012, the most valuable contribution awards at the Workshop for Compound Semiconductor Materials and Devices (WOCSEMMAD) in 2014, 2010 and 2008, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award in 2006, a best student paper award at the Electronic Materials Conference in 2002, and a young author best paper award from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) in 2000. He is most proud of the Joyce award for excellence in undergraduate teaching which he received in 2010. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
More Info: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian
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BME Lab Rotation Presentations
Fri, Oct 20, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Lirong Yan, PhD, Assistant Professor Of Research Neurology, USC Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics
Talk Title: Cerebrovascular MRI with Dynamic Arterial Spin Labeling
Series: Seminars in BME (Lab Rotations)
Host: Brent Liu, PhD
Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - 145A
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Oct 20, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Wael M. Hassan, Ph.D., P.E., S.E., Asst Professor of Structural and Earthquake Engineering
Talk Title: Seismic Assessment of Beam-Column Joints in Existing Concrete Buildings
Abstract: See attachment
More Information: Wael Hassan_Seminar 10_20_17.pdf
Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Oct 23, 2017 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Gilles Gnacadja, Ph.D., Director of Life Sciences Mathematics, Amgen
Talk Title: Non-Monotone Dose-Response Curves in Receptor Pharmacology
Host: Stacey Finley, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 23, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Fabio Pasqualetti, University of California, Riverside
Talk Title: Synchronization Patterns in Networks of Kuramoto Oscillators: A Network-Theoretic Approach for Analysis and Control
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Synchronized behaviors among the nodes of a network are ubiquitous in nature and in several man-made systems. While some systems require complete synchronization among all the parts to function properly, others rely on cluster or partial synchronization, where subsets of nodes exhibit coherent behaviors that remain independent from the evolution of other nodes in the network. For example, while patterns of partial synchronization have been observed in healthy individuals, complete synchronization in neural systems is often associated with degenerative diseases including Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases, and epilepsy.
In this talk, I will present novel network-theoretic methods to predict and control the formation of synchronization patterns within a network of Kuramoto oscillators. I will show that exact patterns of synchronized oscillators are possible if and only if the interconnection structure and the oscillators satisfy certain stringent conditions. On the other hand, approximately synchronized patterns, which often appears in experimental time series, can emerge more easily depending on a graded combination of the interconnection structure and the intrinsic properties of the oscillators. Further, I will present structural control schemes to enforce the emergence of a desired synchronization landscape and, lastly, I will show how the proposed techniques find applicability in a broad class of network analysis and control problems.
Biography: Fabio Pasqualetti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Riverside. He completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2012, a Laurea Magistrale degree (M.Sc. equivalent) in Automation Engineering at the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2007, and a Laurea degree (B.Sc. equivalent) in Computer Engineering at the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2004. He received a Young Investigator Program Award from ARO in 2017, and the TCNS Outstanding Paper Award from IEEE CSS in 2016. His main research interest is in secure control systems, with application to multi-agent networks, distributed computing, and power networks. Other interests include computational neuroscience, vehicle routing, and combinatorial optimization, with application to distributed area patrolling and persistent surveillance.
Host: Ashutosh Nayyar, ashutosh.nayyar@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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CS Colloquium: Rachel Greenstadt (Drexel University) - Using Stylometry to Attribute Programmers and Writers
Tue, Oct 24, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rachel Greenstadt, Drexel University
Talk Title: Using Stylometry to Attribute Programmers and Writers
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
In this talk, I will discuss my lab's work in the emerging field of adversarial stylometry and machine learning. Machine learning algorithms are increasingly being used in security and privacy domains, in areas that go beyond intrusion or spam detection. For example, in digital forensics, questions often arise about the authors of documents: their identity, demographic background, and whether they can be linked to other documents. The field of stylometry uses linguistic features and machine learning techniques to answer these questions. We have applied stylometry to difficult domains such as underground hacker forums, open source projects (code), and tweets. I will discuss our Doppelgänger Finder algorithm, which enables us to group Sybil accounts on underground forums and detect blogs from Twitter feeds and reddit comments. In addition, I will discuss our work attributing unknown source code and binaries.
Biography: Dr. Rachel Greenstadt is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Drexel University where she teaches graduate-level courses in computer security, privacy, and machine learning. She founded the Privacy, Security, and Automation Laboratory at Drexel University in 2008. She has attracted a research team of PhD students and undergraduates with interests and expertise in information extraction, machine learning, agents, privacy, trust, and security.
Dr. Greenstadt's scholarship has been recognized by the privacy research community. She is an alum of the DARPA Computer Science Study Group and a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award. Her work has received the PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies and the Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award. She currently serves as co-editor-in-chief of the journal Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs). Her research has been featured in the New York Times, the New Republic, Der Spiegel, and other local and international media outlets.
Host: Aleksandra Korolova
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Computer Science Department
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Upper Airway Dynamic Imaging During Awake and Asleep Tidal Breathing
Wed, Oct 25, 2017 @ 01:30 AM - 02:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Chantal Darquenne, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Medicine University of California, San Diego
Talk Title: Upper Airway Dynamic Imaging During Awake and Asleep Tidal Breathing
Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
Abstract: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by recurrent partial or complete airway closure during sleep, and has important clinical implications ranging from disruption of sleep with daytime sequelae of excessive sleepiness and poor quality of life to adverse cardiovascular or metabolic outcomes. While polysomnography and studies based on measurements of airway pressures and resistance have provided a wealth of information on upper airway physiology, they are unable to assess the three- dimensional anatomy of the upper airway and its conformational changes during breathing. Knowledge of the morphology and mechanical behavior of this structure is essential for a more complete understanding of the occurrence of upper airway obstruction. Such information can be obtained with imaging technology and will be the focus of this seminar.Data will be presented from a group of OSA subjects and a group of age- and BMI-matched healthy controls that underwent MR imaging to assess upper airway morphometry and changes in airway size during tidal breathing. Data were collected both during wakefulness and natural sleep with simultaneous measurement of nasal-oral flow partition and sleep state and stages. Results show significant differences in the magnitude of the changes in upper airway size over a tidal breath between OSA subjects and controls both during wakefulness and natural sleep suggesting that, for tidal breathing conditions, dynamic OSA imaging during wakefulness is representative of behavior during sleep.
Biography: Chantal Darquenne is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the President-elect of the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Applied Sciences from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) in 1995. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Physiology at UCSD where she still holds her current position. Her laboratory uses an interdisciplinary approach combining engineering principles and lung physiology concepts to address her primary research interests that focus on aerosol transport and deposition in the lung, on lung ventilation inhomogeneities in health and disease, and more recently on upper airway dynamics in obstructive sleep apnea.
Host: Professor Krishna Nayak
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
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Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Wed, Oct 25, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Thomas Wahl, Northeastern University
Talk Title: Stabilizing Numeric Programs against Platform Uncertainties
Abstract: Floating-point arithmetic (FPA) is a loosely standardized approximation of real arithmetic available on many computers today, and widely employed in cyber-physical systems. The use of approximation incurs commonly underestimated risks for the reliability of numeric software, including reproducibility issues caused by the relatively large degree of freedom for FPA implementers offered by the IEEE 754 floating-point standard. If left untreated, such problems can seriously interfere with program portability and simply our trust in numeric results.
In this talk I discuss numeric programs' lack of robustness against platform variations, including irreproducible control flow and invariants that hold on some platforms but not others. I also demonstrate how such reproducibility violations can be repaired with low impact on performance, which results in a more stable program execution. I illustrate the use of our techniques both on decision-making and on purely numeric programs, and present an outlook to its applicability to addressing reproducibility issues among CPU and GPU versions of kernel support vector machines. Much of this is joint work with Miriam Leeser at Northeastern University, as well as our respective students.
Biography: Thomas Wahl joined the faculty of Northeastern University in 2011. He moved to Boston from Oxford/United Kingdom, where he was a Research Officer in the Computing Laboratory (now Department of Computer Science). Prior to the Oxford experience, Wahl held a postdoctoral position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. He obtained a PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007.
Wahl's research concerns the reliability of complex computing systems. Two domains notorious for their fragility are concurrency and numerical computing. With colleagues, Wahl has developed leading algorithms and techniques for the automated analysis of concurrent software, such as multi-threaded or data-parallel programs, using rigorous formal techniques, which are able to track down deep and unintuitive program bugs. He has also investigated how floating-point arithmetic can "hijack" a program's computation when run on non-standard architectures, such as heterogeneous and custom-made embedded platforms.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Wed, Oct 25, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Adam Steinberg, Associate Professor/University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies
Talk Title: Thermoacoustic Dynamics in Aeronautical Gas Turbine Combustors
Abstract: Thermoacoustic instability in combustion systems refers to the tendency for small perturbations to grow into sustained high-amplitude oscillations, driven by feedback between heat release and pressure dynamics. This seminar will explore various aspects of thermoacoustic instabilities that were studied experimentally in a practical aeronautical gas turbine combustor using optical measurement techniques. Specific challenges arising in the application of optical diagnostics to high-pressure, liquid-fueled combustors will be addressed. We then will discuss two types of thermoacoustic behavior. The first involves apparently spontaneous increases and decreases in oscillation amplitude that occurred at particular operating points. The second pertains to conditions exhibiting steady and intense oscillations, but with extreme sensitivity between the operating point and oscillation amplitude. Both of these behaviors can be explained using the experimental data. Such insights help guide engine designers to more robust systems, and provide important information regarding the application of computational fluid dynamics simulations to thermoacoustically oscillating combustion systems.
Biography: Adam Steinberg is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, where he holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Turbulent Reactive Flows. His research focuses on the application of laser-based measurement techniques to solve problems in fundamental and applied thermo-fluids, with particular emphasis on aerospace and power generation systems. He obtained his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2009, and worked at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) before joining the University of Toronto in 2011. He is the recipient of the inaugural Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Research Award from the Combustion Institute, as well as several other distinctions. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Combustion and Flame and the AIAA Propellants and Combustion Technical Committee, and is a Colloquium Co-Chair for the International Symposium on Combustion.
Host: Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ashleen Knutsen
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Causal Inference in Complex Networks
Thu, Oct 26, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Negar Kiyavash, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Causal Inference in Complex Networks
Abstract: One of the paramount challenges of this century is that of understanding complex, dynamic, large-scale networks. Such high-dimensional networks, including social, financial, and biological networks, cover the planet and dominate modern life. In this talk, we propose novel approaches to inference in such networks, for both active (interventional) and passive (observational) learning scenarios. We highlight how timing could be utilized as a degree of freedom that provides rich information about the dynamics. This information allows resolving direction of causation even when only a subset of the nodes is observed (latent setting). In the presence of large data, we propose algorithms that identify optimal or near-optimal approximations to the topology of the network.
Biography: Negar Kiyavash is Willett Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois and a joint Associate Professor of Industrial and Enterprise Engineering (IE) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). She is the director of Advance Data Analytics Program in IE and is further affiliated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) and the Information Trust Institute. She received her Ph.D. degree in ECE from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. Her research interests are in design and analysis of algorithms for network inference and security. She is a recipient of NSF CAREER and AFOSR YIP awards and the Illinois College of Engineering Dean's Award for Excellence in Research.
Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 536, x04667
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Fred S. Grodins Keynote Lecture
Thu, Oct 26, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Na Ji, PhD, Associate Professor Departments of Physics and Molecular Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Probing neural circuits with shaped light
Series: Annual Grodins Keynote Lecture
Abstract: To understand computation in the brain, one needs to understand the input-output relationships for neural circuits and the anatomical and functional relationships between individual neurons therein. Optical microscopy has emerged as an ideal tool in this quest, as it is capable of recording the activity of neurons distributed over millimeter dimensions with sub-micron spatial resolution. I will describe how we use concepts in astronomy and optics to develop next-generation microscopy methods for imaging neural circuits at higher resolution, greater depth, and faster speed. By shaping the wavefront of the light, we have achieved synapse-level spatial resolution through the entire depth of primary visual cortex, optimized microendoscopes for imaging deeply buried nuclei, and developed a video-rate (30 Hz) volumetric imaging method. We apply these methods to understanding neural circuits, using the mouse primary visual cortex as our model system.
Biography: Na Ji studied chemistry and physics as an undergraduate in the University of Science and Technology of China, then pursued her graduate degree at the University of California Berkeley. In 2006, she moved to Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where she worked with Eric Betzig on improving the speed and resolution of in vivo brain imaging. She started her own group in Janelia in 2011, where, in addition to imaging technology development, her lab applies the resulting techniques to outstanding problems in neurobiology. Na Ji, PhD, is currently at Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Department of Molecular Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Host: Department of Biomedical Engineering; Reception will be held at the Andrus Gerontology Courtyard from 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm.
More Information: Grodins Template_FINAL_BGedits.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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CAIS Seminar: Dr. Sze-Chuan Suen (University of Southern California) - A POMDP Model for Drug Resistant Tuberculosis Screening
Thu, Oct 26, 2017 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Sze-Chuan Suen, University of Southern California
Talk Title: A POMDP Model for Drug Resistant Tuberculosis Screening
Series: Center for AI in Society (CAIS) Seminar Series
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
Patients with drug resistant disease may need different treatment than those with drug-sensitive disease. However, identifying these patients may be difficult since tests to determine disease strain may be time consuming or costly. In this project, we develop a model using POMDP and simulation techniques to identify when and which first-line tuberculosis patients are most likely at risk for drug resistance and should be screened to reduce costs and increase health outcomes.
Biography: Sze-Chuan Suen received her PhD in the department of Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University in 2016. Her research interests include developing applied mathematical models to identify epidemiological trends and evaluate health policies to support informed decision-making. Her research draws from techniques in simulation, dynamic systems modeling, optimization, and decision analysis.
Host: Milind Tambe
Location: Seeley Wintersmith Mudd Memorial Hall (of Philosophy) (MHP) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Computer Science Department
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Towards Fully Flexible Energy Autonomous Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks
Fri, Oct 27, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hans-Peter Bernhard, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Institute for Communications Engineering and RF-Systems
Talk Title: Towards Fully Flexible Energy Autonomous Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks
Abstract: Wireless communication links in industrial environments are gradually replacing wired solutions. This transition offers more flexibility and enables new technologies and applications to arise. However for industrial monitoring tasks, currently available wireless standards do not meet all requirements, and depending on the application, different standards have to be used. In this overview, results from the European research project Dependable Embedded Wireless Infrastructure (DEWI) are presented, which led to the development of a new highly flexible wireless protocol. The degree of flexibility of the protocol not only allows to meet various requirements in industrial monitoring, but also to cover communication needs of the entire operation cycle of sensor nodes. Additionally, to enable a maximum degree of freedom, it is designed to operate energy autonomously with a strictly limited power budget imposed by energy harvesting. Aside of all theses requirements, synchronized sampling is a very important topic in industrial measurement environments using hundreds of sensors. We show the use of a \alpha\epsilon-modulator to synchronize the nodes within a wireless sensor network. This is a new method to achieve long term synchronization, also during long offline periods, with least possible short term sampling jitter. Closely related to synchronization is clock frequency estimation. Without a highly accurate estimated clock, network synchronization won't work. But, in wireless systems or harsh environments, it is likely that clock events can be missed and, therefore, the observed process has to be treated as a sparse periodic process. To parameterize the clock, current research is applying periodogram estimators at a complexity of at least O(N log N). Here a highly accurate iterative frequency estimator for pulse signals with low computational complexity is shown. It is an unbiased estimator with a complexity of O(N). Furthermore, the mean square error (MSE) of this new efficient approach is proportional to O(N_3) and thus as accurate as periodogram or frequency domain based methods. The talk concludes with a short review and an outline of ongoing and future research in highly flexible wireless sensor networks.
Biography: He received the Dipl.-Ing. (M.Sc.) degree in communication engineering and the Dr. techn. (Ph.D.) degree with distinction from Vienna Technical University in 1991 and 1997, respectively.
From 1985 to 1992 he worked for different companies in the area of database and organizational programming. From 1992 to 1998 he was with the Institute for Communications and Radio Frequency Engineering at the Technical University Vienna as a research assistant and became in 1994 assistant professor at this institute. From 1997 on he started teaching at HTBLA-Steyr. In 1999 he joined the Institute for Communications Engineering and RF-Systems, Johannes Kepler University Linz, as a lecturer and he currently holds a senior researcher position at this institute. He was guest researcher with the Institute for Information Theory and Automation, Academy of Sciences Prague and with the University of Cambridge UK, Engineering Department, Inst. f. Vision Speech and Robotics. Starting in 2004 he served as consultant for several companies as there are Infineon, DICE (Danube Integrated Circuit Engineering GmbH & Co KG), and others. In 2007 he founded a scientific consulting company with focus on assisting handicapped persons and nonprofit health care organizations. He is holding patents in the field of computer science and computer assisting systems for handicapped persons. He has contributed to the following research projects "Nonlinear Methods in Speech processing", "Assisting Handicapped Persons in Computer Handling" and he supervised the research project "Information Theoretic Methods for Load Curve Prediction" in collaboration with SIEMENS power grid department. From 2014 to 2017 he worked also with the European ARTEMIS project DEWI (Dependable Embedded Wireless Infrastructure) focussed on energy efficient sensing, signal processing and communication. Currently he is involved in the joint undertaking of Electronic Components and Systems for European Leadership (ECSEL) on Secure Connected Trustable Things (SCOTT) as a senior scientist. His research interests include algorithm design for wireless communications with a special focus on synchronization, security and energy efficient protocols.
Hans-Peter Bernhard received the GIT-Award in 1991, in the year 2000 he was awarded with the innovation award of Upper Austrian government and he was Austrian representative at the Novartis International Science Week Switzerland with the best Austrian education project in health care. Hans-Peter Bernhard is an IEEE senior member and member of the signal processing society.
Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 536, x04667
Location: 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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W.V.T. RUSCH ENGINEERING HONORS COLLOQUIU
Fri, Oct 27, 2017 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: TBA, TBA
Talk Title: TBA
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Su Stevens
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Oct 27, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Luis Montoya and Seyedpouyan Hosseinialiabad, Astani CEE Graduate Students
Talk Title: Understanding Properties of Extreme Ocean Wave Runup and Analysis and Control of Signalized Arterial Networks
Abstract: In recent history sneaker waves or king waves in Australia, also referred in this study as extreme infragravity EIG waves, have been responsible for killing many people throughout the world. Particularly so on the coast of Oregon, where more than 21 people have died since the year 1990 due to this phenomenon. These extreme runup events may also result in coastal flooding, beach erosion, damage to coastal structures and damage to marine vessels. In this study, the main objective is to better understand EIG waves and EIG wave runup during storms. It is revealed that the input spectrum frequency resolution plays an important role when studying IG waves and runup. Also, it is shown that there is an ideal frequency resolution which can make the modeling part more accurate and efficient by capturing most of the low frequency energy transfers during the nonlinear wave interactions. It is established that runup predictions from numerical simulations that use 10 frequencies in the input energy spectrum are not the same from those that use 100 frequencies because of nonlinearity. It is established that extreme runup is therefore affected by frequency resolution and convergence can be achieved using the fine resolution. For high energy wave conditions, with beaches that have IG-dominated runup, in order to get numerically convergent predictions of 0.0001-0.00005 Hz is needed. This is more than 100 times smaller than what is typically used in these Boussinesq coastal phase-resolving models.
Talk Title: Analysis and Control of Signalized Arterial Networks
In this study, we first focus on queue length analysis of urban traffic networks. We consider traffic flow dynamics for a network of signalized intersections, where the outflow from every link is constrained to be equal to a given capacity function if the queue length is positive, and equal to the minimum of cumulative inflow and capacity function otherwise. In spite of the resulting dynamics being discontinuous, recent work has proved existence and uniqueness of the resulting queue length trajectory if the inter-link travel times are strictly bounded away from zero. We provide an alternate framework to obtain queue length trajectories by direct simulation of delay differential equations, where link outflows are obtained from the provably unique solution to a linear program. Existence and uniqueness of the solution to the proposed model for traffic flow dynamics is established for piecewise constant external inflow and capacity functions. Additionally, if the external inflow and capacity functions are periodic and satisfy a stability condition, then there exists a globally attractive periodic orbit. We provide an iterative procedure to compute this periodic orbit. A periodic trajectory is iteratively updated for every link based on updates to a specific time instant when its queue length transitions from being zero to being positive. The resulting iterates are shown to converge uniformly monotonically to the desired periodic orbit. Illustrative simulation results are presented. In the second part of this study, we focus on control techniques for signalized arterial networks. We study the throughput of arterial network under specific type of adaptive controller, namely Proportionally Fair, and traditional Fixed-time controllers. This comparison is done both in terms of theoretical upper bounds and the empirical values calculated from microscopic traffic simulations.
Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Oct 30, 2017 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Chuck Li (Alumnus, USC BME MS program), Senior Engineer, Research & Automation Technologies, Amgen
Talk Title: Engineering solutions in drug discovery-”how automation and innovation improve efficiency and enable better science
Host: Stacey Finley, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Oct 30, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Anil Aswani, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Making Robust Decisions from Data
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Though machine learning has found success in decision-making contexts, these methods are fragile to model mismatch and malicious interference. This is a major impediment to the deployment of automated decision-making in safety-critical systems like those found in healthcare or physical infrastructure. This talk describes three methods we have developed for robust decision-making in different scenarios. The first is a framework for combining robust control with machine learning, and applications to energy efficiency and robotics are highlighted. The second is algorithms to solve inverse optimization (and inverse reinforcement learning) with noisy data. This problem arises when estimating utility functions or modeling human-automation systems, and we show it is NP-hard and that existing approaches are statistically inconsistent. We develop a polynomial time algorithm that is asymptotically optimal as more data is collected. Then we discuss applications of our inverse optimization approach to a clinical trial on personalized goal-setting through smartphone apps to increase physical activity, and to studying an incentive design problem in the Medicare Shared Savings Program where we show that an investment sharing plan could potentially save Medicare an additional $85 million per year. The third is an approach for bandit models where repeated application of an action causes habituation and a decrease of that action's rewards, while refraining from an action causes recovery and an increase of that action's awards. Though such problems are PSPACE-complete, we define a class of models called ROGUE bandits for which we can construct policies that achieve logarithmic regret. We describe an application of ROGUE bandits to a personalized healthcare problem of choosing an optimal sequence of daily messages to encourage an individual to increase their physical activity.
Biography: Anil Aswani is an Assistant Professor in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) at UC Berkeley. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2005, M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from UC Berkeley in 2007, and Ph.D. in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2010. He received a Hellman Fellowship for his research on food insecurity, the Leon O. Chua award from Berkeley for outstanding achievement in an area of nonlinear science, and a William Pierskalla Runner-Up Award from the INFORMS Health Applications Society. His research interests include data-driven decision making, with particular emphasis on addressing inefficiencies and inequities in health systems and physical infrastructure.
Host: Insoon Yang, insoonya@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Epstein Institute Seminar, ISE 651
Tue, Oct 31, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Nicholas X. Fang, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Architectured Metamaterials: from Tunable Thermal Expansion to Microvascular Tissue Scaffolding
Host: Prof. Yong Chen
More Information: October 31, 2017.pdf
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - GER 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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USC Viterbi Data Analytics Bootcamp
Tue, Oct 31, 2017 @ 06:30 PM - 09:30 PM
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: TBA,
Talk Title: TBA
Abstract: October 31 - May 3, 2018 (24 weeks)
Tuesdays/Thursdays - 6:30pm - 9:30pm
Saturdays - 10am - 2pm
Students will learn the fundamental and specialized skills necessary to pursue a career or advance in the booming field of data analytics, including Python, JavaScript, Advanced Excel, SQL Databases and more.
Students are equipped with the technical skills needed to translate data into competitive insights in the workplace, leading to career advancement opportunities.
Students receive a hands-on, classroom learning experience, conducting robust analytics on a host of real-world problems.
Students working to change career paths receive career-planning assistance, including industry speakers and company-led events, resume, Linkedln and portfolio support, and interview preparation.
Host: USC Viterbi Executive Education
More Info: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/computer-science/usc-viterbi-data-analytics-boot-camp/
Audiences: Registered Attendees
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
