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Events for October 09, 2018

  • Interviews Open Forum

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Increase your career and internship knowledge for interviews by attending this professional development Q&A moderated by Viterbi Career Connections staff or Viterbi employer partners.

    For more information about Labs & Open Forums, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • CS Colloquium: Xinyu Xing (Pennsylvania State University) - Tracking down Software Vulnerabilities from Unexpected Crashes

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 03:40 PM - 04:50 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Xinyu Xing, Pennsylvania State University

    Talk Title: Tracking down Software Vulnerabilities from Unexpected Crashes

    Series: Computer Science Colloquium

    Abstract: Despite the best efforts of developers, software inevitably contains flaws that may be leveraged as security vulnerabilities. Modern operating systems integrate various security mechanisms to prevent software faults from being exploited. To bypass these defenses and hijack program execution, an attacker therefore needs to constantly mutate an exploit and make many attempts. While in their attempts, the exploit triggers a security vulnerability and makes the running process terminate abnormally.

    After a program has crashed and terminated abnormally, it typically leaves behind a snapshot of its crashing state in the form of a core dump. While a core dump carries a large amount of information, which has long been used for software debugging, it barely serves as informative debugging aids in locating software faults, particularly memory corruption vulnerabilities. As such, previous research mainly seeks fully reproducible execution tracing to identify software vulnerabilities in crashes. However, such techniques are usually impractical for complex programs. Even for simple programs, the overhead of fully reproducible tracing may only be acceptable at the time of in-house testing.

    In this talk, I will introduce a reverse execution technique, which takes as input a core dump, reversely executes the corresponding crashing program and automatically pinpoints the root cause of the vulnerable site hidden behind the crash. In the process of performing reverse execution, our technique typically encounters uncertainty (e.g., uncertain control or data flow) which significantly influence the capability of identifying vulnerabilities. Therefore, as part of the talk, I will also briefly discuss how we utilize deep recurrent neural network to tackle this technical challenge.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.


    Biography: Dr. Xinyu Xing is an Assistant Professor at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interest includes exploring, designing and developing tools to automate vulnerability discovery, failure reproduction, vulnerability diagnosis (and triage), exploit and security patch generation. Recently, he is also interested in developing deep learning techniques to perform highly accurate binary and malware analysis. His past research has been featured by many mainstream medium, such as Technology Review, New Scientists and NYTimes etc. Going beyond academic research, he also actively participates and hosts many world-class cybersecurity competitions (such as HITB and XCTF). This year, his team was selected for DEFCON/GeekPwn CAAD challenge grand final at Las Vegas. He led Penn State to finish NSA code breaker competition 2017 and ranked at the top 3 nationwide. In the white-hat hacker community, his research team has contributed many CVEs for the open source community. The tools his team developed have been downloaded by thousands of developers and security researchers.


    Host: Muhammad Naveed

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Computer Science Department

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  • Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Seminar - Distinguished Lecture Series

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 04:00 PM - 05:20 PM

    Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Vivian Ferry, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota

    Talk Title: Optical nanomaterials: chirality, refractive index, and applications to solar energy conversion

    Abstract: Optical nanomaterials offer the ability to bend, twist, guide, and confine light in nanoscale dimensions, leading to new applications in photovoltaics, sensing, light emission control, and other optoelectronic devices. The first part of this talk will discuss strategies for capturing and managing incident sunlight effectively for solar energy conversion. I will discuss complementary strategies for managing incident sunlight before it interacts with the solar panel, including luminescent solar concentrators that down shift and concentrate sunlight using a combination of luminescent nanocrystals and nanostructured surfaces, and structures that integrate with photovoltaic modules for thermal management. The second part of the talk will discuss the development of chiral nanomaterials that interact selectively with right and left handed circularly polarized light. I will discuss strategies to tune the chiral optical response of both semiconductor nanocrystals and metamaterials.

    Biography: Vivian Ferry is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. She received her S. B. in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2006, and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2011, working with Prof. Harry Atwater. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Paul Alivisatos in the Materials Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2011 to 2014. Her research focuses on light matter interactions in nanoscale materials, and her specific research interests include light management in solar energy conversion, switchable metamaterials, and nanoscale chirality. She is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, was named as one of Technology Reviews 35 Innovators under 35 in 2016, and holds a McKnight Land Grant Professorship at the University of Minnesota.

    Host: Professor Malancha Gupta

    Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 200

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Karen Woo/Mork Family

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  • NVIDIA Information Session

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 05:30 PM - 08:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Tech Talk & Coding Challenge

    Come hear from an NVIDIAN and explore our career opportunities!

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Discover USC - Philadelphia

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in Philadelphia.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: Philadelphia Marriott West

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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