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Events for October 21, 2019

  • Repeating EventMeet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, and Engineering Talk

    Mon, Oct 21, 2019

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Workshops & Infosessions


    This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen (HS seniors and younger) and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process, a student led walking tour of campus, and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. During the engineering session we will discuss the curriculum, research opportunities, hands-on projects, entrepreneurial support programs, and other aspects of the engineering school. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process, and financial aid.

    Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 8:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m.

    Please make sure to check availability and register online for the session you wish to attend. Also, remember to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!

    Register Here

    Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) -

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    View All Dates

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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  • Quantum Physics Seminar

    Mon, Oct 21, 2019 @ 09:00 AM - 10:00 AM

    Information Sciences Institute

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Alan Kadin, Consultant for various companies (see bio)

    Talk Title: Why We Should be Skeptical about Quantum Computing

    Abstract: It is widely believed that quantum computing is on the threshold of practicality, with performance that will soon surpass that of classical computing. On the contrary, it is argued that both the present and the future of quantum computing may be highly uncertain, for the following reasons:
    • The promised performance depends on entanglement-based scaling to massive parallelism, which has not been verified, and may be tested [1].
    • Even if the theory were correct, exponential sensitivity to noise for highly entangled states could make the technology impractical [2].
    • Evidence for entanglement in superconducting qubits may be explained using the nonlinear properties of classical Josephson junctions [3].
    • Evidence for entanglement in arrays of coupled qubits may be explained using conventional energy-band theory with delocalized states.

    * Poster presented at APS Meeting, March 2019. Available online at http://vixra.org/abs/1903.0501
    [1] A.M. Kadin and S.B. Kaplan, Proposed experiments to test the foundations of quantum computing, 2016, http://vixra.org/abs/1607.0105.
    [2] G. Kilai, The Quantum Computer Puzzle, 2016, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.00992.pdf
    [3] J. Blackburn, et al., Survey of Classical and Quantum Interpretations of experiments on Josephson junctions at very low temperatures, Phys. Rep. 611, 2016. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.05316.pdf



    Biography: Dr. Kadin is a long-time researcher in superconducting devices, and was a faculty member in ECE at the University of Rochester, and then a Senior Scientist at Hypres, Inc. of Elmsford, NY. He wrote the textbook, Introduction to Superconducting Circuits. Recently, he has been a consultant with Hypres and other companies and an adjunct at the College of New Jersey. He has also been an active participant in the IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative. He received his BS and PhD in physics from Princeton and Harvard, and was also a postdoc at Stony Brook and Minnesota, and a researcher at Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.

    Host: Dr. Jonathan Habif

    Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/356467557

    WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/356467557

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Michelle Bonner

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  • Quantum Physics Seminar

    Mon, Oct 21, 2019 @ 09:00 AM - 10:00 AM

    Information Sciences Institute

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Alan Kadin, Consultant for various companies (see bio)

    Talk Title: Why We Should be Skeptical about Quantum Computing

    Abstract: It is widely believed that quantum computing is on the threshold of practicality, with performance that will soon surpass that of classical computing. On the contrary, it is argued that both the present and the future of quantum computing may be highly uncertain, for the following reasons:
    • The promised performance depends on entanglement-based scaling to massive parallelism, which has not been verified, and may be tested [1].
    • Even if the theory were correct, exponential sensitivity to noise for highly entangled states could make the technology impractical [2].
    • Evidence for entanglement in superconducting qubits may be explained using the nonlinear properties of classical Josephson junctions [3].
    • Evidence for entanglement in arrays of coupled qubits may be explained using conventional energy-band theory with delocalized states.

    * Poster presented at APS Meeting, March 2019. Available online at http://vixra.org/abs/1903.0501
    [1] A.M. Kadin and S.B. Kaplan, Proposed experiments to test the foundations of quantum computing, 2016, http://vixra.org/abs/1607.0105.
    [2] G. Kilai, The Quantum Computer Puzzle, 2016, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.00992.pdf
    [3] J. Blackburn, et al., Survey of Classical and Quantum Interpretations of experiments on Josephson junctions at very low temperatures, Phys. Rep. 611, 2016. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.05316.pdf



    Biography: Dr. Kadin is a long-time researcher in superconducting devices, and was a faculty member in ECE at the University of Rochester, and then a Senior Scientist at Hypres, Inc. of Elmsford, NY. He wrote the textbook, Introduction to Superconducting Circuits. Recently, he has been a consultant with Hypres and other companies and an adjunct at the College of New Jersey. He has also been an active participant in the IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative. He received his BS and PhD in physics from Princeton and Harvard, and was also a postdoc at Stony Brook and Minnesota, and a researcher at Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.

    Host: Dr. Jonathan Habif

    Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/356467557

    Location: M

    WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/356467557

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Michelle Bonner

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  • Fall 2019 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series

    Mon, Oct 21, 2019 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Behcet Acikmese, University of Washington

    Talk Title: Real-time optimization based control for agile autonomy

    Abstract: Many future aerospace engineering applications will require dramatic increases in our existing autonomous control capabilities. These include robotic sample return missions to planets, comets, and asteroids, formation flying spacecraft applications, applications utilizing swarms of autonomous agents, unmanned aerial, ground, and underwater vehicles, and autonomous commercial robotic applications. A key control challenge for many autonomous systems is to achieve the performance goals safely with minimal resource use in the presence of mission constraints and uncertainties. In principle these problems can be formulated and solved as optimization problems. The challenge is solving them reliably onboard the autonomous system in real time. Our research has provided new analytical results that enabled the formulation of many autonomous control problems in a convex optimization framework, i.e., convexification of the control problem. The main mathematical theory used in achieving convexification is the duality theory of optimization. Duality theory manifests itself as Pontryagin's Maximum Principle in infinite dimensional optimization problems and as KKT conditions in finite dimensional parameter optimization problems. Both theories were instrumental in our developments. Our analytical framework also allowed the computation of the precise bounds of performance for a control system in term of constrained controllability/reachability sets, which enables rigorous V&V of the resulting control algorithms. This seminar introduces several real-world aerospace applications, where this approach provided dramatic performance improvements over the heritage technologies. An important application is the fuel optimal control for planetary soft landing, whose complete solution has been an open problem since the Apollo Moon landings of 1960s. We developed a novel lossless convexification method, which enables the next generation planetary missions, such as Mars robotic sample return and manned missions. We will also present a method called successive convexification to handle a general class of trajectory planning problems, such as, drone and planetary landing motion rocket planning. Another application is in Markov chain synthesis with safety constraints, which enabled the development of new decentralized coordination and control methods for spacecraft swarms.


    Biography: Behcet Acikmese is a professor in the William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and an adjunct faculty member in Department of Electrical Engineering at University of Washington, Seattle. He received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Purdue University. He was a senior technologist at JPL and a lecturer at Caltech. At JPL, He developed control algorithms for planetary landing, spacecraft formation flying, and asteroid and comet sample return missions. He developed the flyaway control algorithms in Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, and the RCS algorithms for NASA SMAP mission. Dr. Acikmese invented a novel real-time convex optimization based planetary landing guidance algorithm (G-FOLD) that was ight tested by JPL, which is a first demonstration of a real-time optimization algorithm for rocket guidance. He is a recipient of NSF CAREER Award, several NASA Achievement awards for his contributions to NASA missions and new technology development. He is an Associate Fellow of AIAA, a Senior Member of IEEE, and an associate editor of IEEE Control System Magazine and AIAA JGCD.


    Host: Mihailo Jovanovic, mihailo@usc.edu

    More Info: http://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2019Fall/acikmese.html

    More Information: 191021_Behcet Acikmese_CSC Seminar.pdf

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Brienne Moore

    Event Link: http://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2019Fall/acikmese.html

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  • J.R. Abbott Construction Inc.

    Mon, Oct 21, 2019 @ 05:30 PM - 06:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Please join Abbott for an info session and learn more about internship and full-time opportunities at Abbott Construction. Interview sign-ups will be available during the information Session.

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

    Audiences: Viterbi Civil Engineers and Environmental Engineers

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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