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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for November 10, 2006
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Last Day to Withdraw with W
Fri, Nov 10, 2006
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
University Calendar
Audiences: Graduate/Undergrad/
Contact: Monica De Los Santos
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Portland- Freshmen Admission Interviews
Fri, Nov 10, 2006
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Receptions & Special Events
Matthew O'Pray, Director of Admission, will be in the area conducting Admission Interviews for those students interested.Freshman applicant interviews are not required as part of the admission process, however we would like to meet as many of our applicants as possible. All interview appointments are scheduled online.Learn more about Interviews:
http://viterbi.usc.edu/admission/freshman/interviews/Schedule an Off-Campus Interview:
http://www.usc.edu/admissioninterviewsLocation: Hotel Vintage Plaza<br>422 SW Broadway<br>Portland, OR 97205
Audiences: Freshmen Applicants for Fall 2007
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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Meet USC (AM session)
Fri, Nov 10, 2006 @ 09:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions
This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process; a student led walking tour of campus and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process and financial aid.Reservations are required for Meet USC. Please call the USC Admission Center at (213) 740-6616 to check availability and to make an appointment. Be sure to tell them you are interested in Engineering!
Location: USC Admission Center
Audiences: Prospective Freshmen and Family Members - RESERVATIONS REQUIRED
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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SHORT COURSE on CODING and OPTIMIZATION
Fri, Nov 10, 2006 @ 09:30 AM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Dr. Pascal Vontobel (HP Labs)ABSTRACT: Whenever information is transmitted across a channel, we have to ensure its integrity against errors. The ground-breaking work of Shannon showed (at least theoretically) how such integrity can be achieved, namely by using an appropriately chosen encoder at the sender side and an appropriately chosen decoder at the receiver side.From a practical point of view, so-called low-density parity-check (LDPC) and turbo codes together with message-passing iterative decoders have become increasingly popular in the last decade. It is fair to say that these codes and decoding algorithms (and ideas related to them) have thoroughly changed much of modern communications. Before this backdrop, a good understanding of these types of communication techniques is obviously highly desirable, especially the understanding of iterative decoding of finite-length codes.Another interesting development in coding theory is the linear programming decoder that was recently proposed by Feldman, Karger, and Wainwright. Simulation results indicate that this decoding algorithm seems to have a similar decoding behavior as iterative decoding.Ideas from optimization theory have arguably played a key role in the two above-mentioned developments. This stems from the fact that decoding can be formulated as an optimization problem. Given that this optimization problem cannot be solved efficiently for good codes, one has to look for suboptimal, yet efficient, algorithms that approximately solve the optimization problem. Both message-passing iterative decoding and linear programming decoding can be seen as successful attempts to formulate such algorithms.Starting from the optimization setup, the first part of this tutorial will introduce message-passing iterative decoding and linear programming decoding and show how they are tightly connected. (This part of the tutorial is planned to be accessible to an broad audience with a general background in communication theory / decision theory.) The second part will go more into the details of certain topics as listed below.First Part: a) Motivation for coding theory, b) Factor graphs and message-passing iterative decoding, c) Linear programming decoding, d) Graph-cover decoding as a way to connect message-passing iterative decoding and linear programming decodingSecond Part: a) Geometry and properties of the fundamental cone, b) Pseudo-weights; lower bounds on the minimum pseudo-weight, c) Low-complexity algorithms for linear programming decoding, d) Bounds on the threshold of linear programming decoding(Based on joint work with Ralf Koetter, UIUC.)BIO: Pascal O. Vontobel received a diploma in electrical engineering in 1997, a post-diploma in information techniques in 2002, and a PhD degree in electrical engineering in 2003, all from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. After being a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (visiting assistant professor), and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he joined the Information Theory Research Group at Hewlett-Packard Labs in Palo Alto, CA, in the summer of 2006 as a research scientist. For his PhD thesis he was awarded the ETH medal.He is interested in information theory and signal processing in general. More specifically, for his diploma thesis he worked on source coding. Since then, he has mainly looked at the construction of LDPC and turbo codes based on algebraic principles, the calculation and bounding of capacities and information rates of finite-state machine channels, and connections between factor graphs, the summary-product algorithm, and electrical networks. Most recently, he has worked towards an understanding and characterization of the summary-product algorithm on factor graphs with cycles and its connections to linear programming (LP) decoding.Host: Dr. Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 360
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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Invitation to Healthcare Medical Executive Presentation
Fri, Nov 10, 2006 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
University Calendar
The USC SPPD Health Management & Policy Programs are pleased to invite all USC students and faculty to the following executive presentation:SHARON GRIGSBY,
Chief Network Officer, LA Co. Department of Health ServicesFRIDAY — NOVEMBER 10, 2006,
10:00 A.M-Noon,
Ralph & Goldy Lewis Hall (RGL) 219As part of our course, PPD608: Leadership Symposium in Health Management and Policy, Prof. Thomas Collins has agreed to open this portion of his class to the SPPD and university community. Space is limited! Kindly RSVP to: shirose@sppd.usc.edu. SPEAKER BIO: Sharon Grigsby is chief network officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. In this role she is responsible for the County's five acute teaching hospitals and related clinics. Previously, Ms. Grigsby was executive director, LA Co. Public Health Bioterrorism Preparedness. Her prior assignment in public health was as area health officer for Service Planning Area 2, San Fernando Valley. Ms. Grigsby has extensive experience in public-sector and community based services, including hospitals, mental health and public health settings. She is the former chief executive officer of Visiting Nurse Association of Los Angeles, Inc. and has served as associate hospital administrator and chief operating officer at both Rancho Los Amigos and Harbor UCLA Medical Centers, and as associate director of finance at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Ms. Grigsby began her public service career in the Department of Public Health overseeing federally funded projects, subsequently managing finance and administration in the Department of Mental Health, and then serving as principal analyst and team leader in the County Chief Administrative Office. She currently serves on the USC SPPD Health Advisory Board and has had a faculty appointment as an adjunct clinical professor. Ms. Grigsby is a graduate of Occidental College and holds an MBA from the California State University at Los Angeles.
Location: Ralph And Goldy Lewis Hall (RGL) - 219
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Likelihood Based Inference for Diffusion Driven State Space Models
Fri, Nov 10, 2006 @ 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
University Calendar
INFORMATION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT, MARSHALL SCHOOL OF BUSINESS PRESENTSDr. Siddhartha ChibHarry C. Hartkop Professor of Econometrics and Statistics, Olin School of Business, Washington State University in St. LouisFriday, November 10, 2006Hoffman Hall 40410:30 am – 12:00 noonABSTRACT: In this paper we develop likelihood based inferential methods for a novel class of (potentially non-stationary) diffusion driven state space models. Examples of models in this class are continuous time stochastic volatility models and counting process models. Although our methods are sampling based, making use of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to sample the posterior distribution of the relevant unknowns, our general strategies and details are different from previous work on related but simpler models. The proposed methods are easy to implement and simulation efficient. Importantly, unlike methods for related models, the performance of our method is not worsened, in fact it improves, as the degree of latent augmentation is increased to reduce the bias of the Euler approximation. We also consider the problems of model choice, model checking and filtering and apply the techniques and ideas to both simulated and real data.Keywords: Bayes estimation, Brownian bridge, Non-linear diffusion, Euler approximation, Markov chain Monte Carlo, Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, Missing data, Simulation, Stochastic differential equation.SPEAKER BIO: Professor Chib's research is in the area of Bayesian statistics and Markov chain Monte Carlo computational methods. He has published papers on a number of different topics including the analysis of binary and ordinal data, Markov mixture models, stochastic volatility, Metropolis-Hastings algorithms and model choice. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.*Paper co-authored with Michael K. Pitt, Department of Economics, University of Warwick and Neil Shephard, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Location: H. Leslie Hoffman Hall Of Business Administration (HOH) - 404
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Meet USC (PM session)
Fri, Nov 10, 2006 @ 12:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions
This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process; a student led walking tour of campus and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process and financial aid.Reservations are required for Meet USC. Please call the USC Admission Center at (213) 740-6616 to check availability and to make an appointment. Be sure to tell them you are interested in Engineering!
Location: USC Admission Center
Audiences: Prospective Freshmen and Family Members - RESERVATIONS REQUIRED
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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Viterbi Museum Open Today 12:30-2:00
Fri, Nov 10, 2006 @ 12:30 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Receptions & Special Events
The Viterbi Museum is located on the 2nd Floor of RTH near the elevators. For more information please visit: http://viterbi.usc.edu/about/viterbimuseum/
Location: 2nd Floor RTH near the elevators
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jason Dziegielewski
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THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Fri, Nov 10, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:Dr. James G. Speight
CD&W Inc.
2476 Overland Road,
Laramie, WY 82070-4808, USA
Tel: 307-745-6069 Fax: 307-721-3128
E-mail: JamesSp8@aol.com
Web page: http://www.drjamesspeight.qpg.comABSTRACT
There are many areas of the chemical industry that are responsible for the release of pollutants into the environment. Petroleum refining is one such industry that has seen inadvertent spillage of unrefined petroleum and petroleum products.
The continuing question, since the beginning of the environmental movement in the 1960s, relates to the relative condition of the environment. The capacity of the environment to absorb the air emissions and waste products as well as the other impacts of process technologies is limited. The petroleum refining industry is keeping pace with environmental legislation to insure that air emissions, effluents, and waste products are handled without maximum expediency and without environmental disruption. In fact, expenditures by the refining industry have risen remarkable over a very short period that speaks for the efforts by the industry to protect the environment. Dramatic improvements have been made in pollution control by the industry. But there is work to be done. Perhaps the place most in need of further work is an understanding the nature of the waste materials and to understand these materials, strong analytical programs are necessary.
The intent of this presentation is to focus on the issues that become of the focus of any environmental monitoring or cleanup program for petroleum refineries. Even though the prime focus is on refining operations, and test methods are also subject to question as applied to release of petroleum and petroleum products during storage, transport, and utilization.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall, Room 156
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Honors Program Colloquium: Lost in Translation: Writing about Science for the General Public
Fri, Nov 10, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Engineering Honors Colloquium lecture given by Professor KC Cole, Visiting Professor of Journalism af the Annenberg School of Communications.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Faculty and Honors Program Students
Contact: Erika Chua
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Fundamental Limits on Wide Bandwidth Signal Acquisition (A Convexity and Optimization Perspective)
Fri, Nov 10, 2006 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Professor Moe Z. Win, MITABSTRACT: Signal acquisition is a challenging task in wide bandwidth transmission systems. The problem involves searching for a location of sequence-phase within a required accuracy, which is inversely proportional to the transmission bandwidth. To address this, we propose a search technique that takes advantage of multipath, which has long been regarded as deleterious for efficient communication, to aid the sequence acquisition in dense multipath channels. Using optimization and convexity theories, we determine the fundamental limits of achievable mean acquisition times (MATs) for a class of serial-search strategies. In particular, we derive both the minimum and maximum MATs and the conditions for achieving these limits. We prove that a fixed-step serial search, a form of non-consecutive serial search, achieves the near-optimal MAT. Our results also show that the conventional serial search, in which consecutive cells are tested serially, should be avoided since it results in the maximum MAT. We also consider a randomized search strategy and show that the corresponding MAT is at most two times the MAT of the optimal serial search. These results are valid for all signal-to-noise ratio values, regardless of the specifics of the detection layer and the fading distributions.Joint work with Watcharapan Suwansantisuk.Bio: Moe Win is an Associate Professor at the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to joining MIT, he spent 5 years at AT&T Research Laboratories and 7 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As a Presidential Fellow at USC, he received both an M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1998. His main research interests are the application of mathematical and statistical theories to communication, detection, and estimation problems. Specific current research topics include measurement and modeling of time-varying channels, design and analysis of multiple antenna systems, ultra-wide bandwidth (UWB) communications systems, optical communications systems, and space communications systems.Dr. Win has been involved actively in organizing and chairing a number of international conferences. He is the current chair and past secretary (2002-2004) for the Radio Communications Committee of the IEEE Communications Society. He served as Area Editor (2003-2006) for Modulation and Signal Design and Editor (1998-2006), both for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS. He was Guest-Editor for the 2002 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS (Special Issue on Ultra-Wideband Radio in Multiaccess Wireless Communications). He received the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Sergei A. Schelkunoff Transactions Prize Paper Award in 2003. In 2004, he received the Fulbright Fellowship, the Institute of Advanced Study Natural Sciences and Technology Fellowship, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House. In 2006 he was co-recipient (jointly with Professor Robert A. Scholtz) of the Eric E. Sumner Award, an IEEE Technical Field Award, "for pioneering contributions to ultra-wide band communications science and technology." Professor Win is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and elected Fellow of the IEEE, cited "for contributions to wideband wireless transmission."Host: Prof. Robert Scholtz, scholtz@usc.edu
Location: Frank R. Seaver Science Center (SSC) - 319
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
