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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for November
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Nov 03, 2014 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Elliot E. Hui, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine
Talk Title: TBA
Biography: Elliot E. Hui is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He received the bachelorâs degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Following his doctoral work in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) under Roger Howe, he trained as an NIH Kirschstein fellow in the laboratory of Sangeeta Bhatia at MIT, where he developed MEMS tools to probe cell-cell interactions in the liver.
In 2008, he joined the faculty at UC Irvine. His research group employs tools such as MEMS, microfluidics, and optogenetics to control biological systems dynamically at the microscale. His interests include tumor progression and stem cell differentiation as well as point-of-care diagnostics. He is a member of the Center for Complex Biological Systems, the Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology, and the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. For more information about his lab, go to: http://hui.bme.uci.edu/index.html
Host: Megan McCain
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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CS Colloquium: Bert Zwart (CWI - Stochastics) - Learning and Earning
Tue, Nov 04, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bert Zwart , CWI - Stochastic Group
Talk Title: Learning and Earning
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Price experimentation is an important tool for firms to find the optimal selling price of their products and has become more popular due to the rise of internet as a sales channel. It should be conducted properly, since experimenting with selling prices can be costly. A firm therefore needs to find a pricing policy that optimally balances between learning the optimal price and gaining revenue. The topic is exciting from an academic standpoint, bridging control, game theory, machine learning, operations research and statistics.
We investigate the so-called 'certainty equivalent pricing' policy, where estimating consumer behavior and optimizing profit are completely decoupled, and discuss situations where this rule may or may not lead to the profit rate that is achievable. It turns out that it is sometimes necessary to develop algorithms that ensure that the right amount of price experimentation is undertaken so as to learn and exploit consumer behavior as efficiently as possible.
This is based on joint work with Arnoud den Boer (UTwente, NL)
Biography: Bert Zwart is a researcher at CWI, where he leads the Stochastic group. He also holds secondary positions at VU University Amsterdam (Professor), Georgia Tech (Adjunct Professor) and the Dutch research center on Stochastics, Eurandom. Before that he was holding a Coca-Cola Chair at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research is in applied probability and stochastic operations research, inspired by problems in computer, communication, energy and service networks. Bert Zwart is the 2008 recipient of the Erlang prize for outstanding contributions to applied probability by a researcher not older than 35 years old, an IBM faculty award, VENI and VIDI awards from the Dutch Science Foundation NWO, numerous best papers awards, and co-authered more than 100 refereed publications. Bert has been area editor of Stochastic Models for the journal Operations Research, the flagship journal of his profession, since 2009, and serves on several additional journal boards and TPC's.
Host: Leana Golubchik
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Distinguished Lecture: Dr. Gregory D. Hager (Johns Hopkins University)
Tue, Nov 04, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Gregory D. Hager, Johns Hopkins University
Talk Title: Shaping the Future of Computing Research: Renaissance, Enlightenment, or Diaspora?
Series: CS Distinguished Lectures
Abstract: In 1822, Charles Babbage did an amazing thing - he realized that machines designed to perform physical work could process information. It would be over 100 years before electronic devices would allow effective realizations of his ideas. It would take an additional 40 years before computers became household devices, but only another 20 years until smart mobile devices revolutionized the connection between people, information, and the world around them. In those 60 years, computing has forged new industries, reshaped the workforce, invented new ways to interact and recreate, and reshaped society.
What are the implications of these trends for the computing research community? Where might new drivers for the field emerge, and where will they lead us? How can we frame future challenges and opportunities to ensure the continued health and growth of the field?
In this talk, I will offer some perspectives on computing research, how it is evolving, and some of the forces at work in shaping its future. I will relate some examples of how the Computing Community Consortium has successfully catalyzed efforts at creating new national computing initiatives and offer some perspective on new opportunities going forward.
Streaming for this talk will be available HERE at 3:30 PM.
Biography: Gregory D. Hager is Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. He is also Chair of the Computing Community Consortium which has the mission of catalyzing the computing research community and enable the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research. He received his MSE and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986 and 1988, respectively. After a year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Karlsruhe, he joined the faculty of Yale University in 1990. He moved to Johns Hopkins in 1999. His research interests include image-guided robotics, human-machine collaboration, and medical applications of image analysis and robotics. He has served as the Deputy Director of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology, he serves on board of the International Federation of Robotics Research and is a fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to vision-based robotics.
Host: Wyatt Lloyd
Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/737763866Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/737763866
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Steve Chien (JPL) - Using Constraint-based Search to Schedule Science Campaigns for the Rosetta Orbiter
Wed, Nov 05, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Steve Chien, JPL
Talk Title: Using Constraint-based Search to Schedule Science Campaigns for the Rosetta Orbiter
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: In August 2014, Rosetta (http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/) entered orbit around the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta, a European Space Agency led mission to explore the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, will be the first mission to deploy a soft lander to a comet, and to escort a comet for an extended period (over one year).
But Rosetta is also a pathfinding space mission from the perspective of Operations, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence in itâs usage of the ASPEN Artificial Intelligence planning and scheduling software for early to mid-range science activity scheduling. In my talk I first briefly discuss comets and their importance understanding the evolution of our solar system and life on Earth. Second, I describe elements of the multi- disciplinary Roseta science planning process which incorporates diverse science, geometric, engineering, and resource constraints. Finally, I describe the constraint-driven scheduling automation and how AI has much to offer not only in schedule generation, but in constraint enforcement, problem and constraint analysis, and in iterative schedule refinement.
Biography: Dr. Steve Chien is Head of the Artificial Intelligence Group and Senior Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology where he leads efforts in autonomous systems for space exploration.
Dr. Chien was a recipient of the 1995 Lew Allen Award for Excellence, JPLs highest award recognizing outstanding technical achievements by JPL personnel in the early years of their careers. In 1997, he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his work in research and development of planning and scheduling systems for NASA. He is the Team Lead for the ASPEN Planning System , which received Honorable Mention in the 1999 Software of the Year Competition and was a contributor to the Remote Agent System which was a co-winner in the same 1999 competition. In 2000, he received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for service and leadership in research and deployment of planning and scheduling systems for NASA. He is the Principal Investigator for the Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment which is a co-winner of the 2005 NASA Software of the Year Award. In 2007, he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for outstanding technical accomplishments in the development of the Autonomous Sciencecraft deployed on the Earth Observing One Mission and the development of the Earth Observing Sensorweb. He also led the deployment of the WATCH software to operational use onboard the Mars rover Opportunity to autonomously detect dust devils and cloud formations. In 2011 He was awarded the innaugural AIAA Intelligent Systems Award, for his contributions to Spacecraft Autonomy. In 2011, he was the team co-lead for the Sensorweb Toolbox team, which was awarded Honorable mention in the 2011 NASA Software of the Year Competition. He is the principal investigator of the IPEX cubesat, which launched in December 2013, which uses onboard image processing and automated planning software. He is currently leading the deployment of ASPEN for scheduling science observations for the Rosetta mission, an ESA-led mission to explore the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
For additional information please visit: http://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/home/chien/
Host: Sven Koenig
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 352
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Wed, Nov 05, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Addis Kidane, Assistant Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
Talk Title: Mechanics of Materials at Extreme Environment, at Different Time and Length Scale: A Digital Image Based Approach
Series: Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Abstract: Understanding the failure mechanism of materials at extreme condition is essential and at the same time challenging. There have been different approaches proposed over the years to studying materials response at extremely aggressive environment, for example high pressure, ultrahigh temperature. With the advent of high speed imaging systems and computer processing power, these days, high quality images can be taken as fast as 200 million frames / sec and one can study the failure mechanisms at such a high events by carefully analyzing the digital images taken during testing. We used a digital image based approach and characterize the deformation mechanism of materials at different loading conditions, at different time and length scale and temperature. In this talk, different examples such as, shock loading of rigid foams and pre-stressed composite, local heterogeneity in polycrystalline materials and deformation of materials at temperature above 1000°C will be presented.
Biography: Addis Kidane is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Carolina. He got his Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island in 2009 and spent 2 years at California Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral scholar before he moved to Columbia. His research interests are in the areas of failure and fracture of materials at extreme conditions, functionally graded materials, digital image based experimental analysis. He is a recipient of the 2013 Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grants, from the ASME Applied Mechanics Division and the 2014 AFOSR Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) award.
Host: Professor Paul Ronney
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
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Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering along with UCLA Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Wed, Nov 05, 2014 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Bruce Logan, Pennsylvania State University, AEESP Distinguished Lecturer
Talk Title: Microbial Fuel Technologies for Renewable Power and Biofuels Production from Waste Biomass
Abstract:
The ability of certain microorganisms to transfer electrons outside the cell has created opportunities for new methods of renewable energy generation based on microbial fuel cells (MFCs) that can be used to produce electrical power, microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) for transforming biologically generated electrical current into transportable fuels such as hydrogen and methane gases, as well as other devices to desalinate water or capture phosphorus. In this presentation, Dr. Logan will summarize key findings in the electromicrobiological studies of the exoelectrogenic microorganisms and communities that produce electrical current, and the electrotrophic and methanogenic communities that are used to produce hydrogen and methane gases. Recent advances will be highlighted on materials and architectures that are being developed to make these different types of METs more cost efficient, which are leading to them becoming commercially viable technologies.
Biography:
Professor Bruce E Logan is an Evan Pugh Professor, the Stan & Flora Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering, and Director of the Engineering Energy & Environmental Institute at Penn State University. He is the founding Deputy Editor of the new ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and a fellow of AAAS, the International Water Association (IWA), the Water Environment Federation (WEF), and the Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors (AEESP). Dr. Logan is a visiting professor at several universities including Newcastle University (England) and Tsinghua University (China), with ties to several other universities in Saudi Arabia, Belgium and China. He received his Ph.D. in 1986 from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 1997, he was on the faculty at the University of Arizona
Host: Dr. Amy Childress
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Lyman L. Handy Colloquia: Sadasivan Shankar (Intel)
Thu, Nov 06, 2014 @ 12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sadasivan Shankar, Intel Corp.
Talk Title: From Atoms to Systems - Bridging of Theory to Applications
Series: Lyman L. Handy Colloquia
Abstract: The talk will have 3 parts:
1. Examples of specific industrial applications on computational processing, materials, and chemistry,
2. nanomaterials, and
3. thermodynamics of information processing.
Currently, development of materials from concept to product is both capital- and time-intensive.
Computational Materials Design is one of the techniques starting to get used to accelerate designing materials from atoms or condensed matter that when synthesized exhibits targeted properties at the systems level. As one of the earliest proponents and adopters of using Materials Design in the industry for bringing materials to prototyping faster, we have used a variety of techniques for industrial applications in semiconductor industry. We will show some examples of these applications. In this section of the talk, we will have talk about nano materials as the enabler for the next industrial revolution. In the next era, we contend that materials application will be based on nano dimensions, where size will be used to design materials with targeted properties. With the advent of so-called âsmartâ materials, nano dimensions (between atomic and macrostructures) is the front at which the difference between devices and materials will disappear, and both designed properties and synthesis will lead to new applications. This will also pose challenges in terms of modeling and characterization given the complex nature of the materials and the increased influence of interfaces between different nano-scale components. We will outline cases where these issues play out with examples drawn from multiple technology sectors, including the semiconductor and energy industries.
In the final section of the talk, we will use concepts of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and computing to assess efficiency of information processing. Energy or Power minimization is a universal macro-constraint for on-chip architectures. In addition, we will provide some pointers to architectures that could make existing systems more energy efficient.
Host: Prof. Vashista
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ryan Choi
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CS Student Colloquium: Boqing Gong - Kernel Methods for Domain Adaptation
Thu, Nov 06, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Boqing Gong, USC
Talk Title: Kernel Methods for Domain Adaptation
Series: Student Seminar Series
Abstract: The problem of domain adaptation occurs when the test data (of a target domain) and training data (of some source domain(s)) are generated by different distributions. It arises in a variety of applications, including computer vision, natural language process, speech recognition, etc.
In this talk, I will present some of our recent efforts on unsupervised domain adaptation using kernel methods. One cannot solve the domain adaptation problems given arbitrary source-target pairs. We have to explore the structures or properties in data, under which potentially successful solutions exist. Kernel methods are versatile in modeling such structures or properties. I will demonstrate several kernel methods ("kernel trick", discriminative multiple kernel learning, kernel embedding of distributions, etc.) which have been successfully used to model the structures of subspaces, landmarks, and latent domains. I will also present a sequential determinantal point process (seqDPP) with applications to supervised video summarization. This serves as the starting point of my future work on domain adaptation for video analysis.
Host: CS Department
More Information: GBQ.png
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium
Fri, Nov 07, 2014 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Varouj S. Abkian, Assistant Director, Bureau of Sanitation, City of Los Angeles Executive Office
Talk Title: Strategic Management Practices in City of Los Angeles Sanitation
Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jeffrey Teng
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NL Seminar- Aligning English Strings with Abstract Meaning Representation Graphs
Fri, Nov 07, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Nima Pourdamghani, USC/ISI
Talk Title: Aligning English Strings with Abstract Meaning Representation Graphs
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: We align pairs of English sentences and corresponding Abstract Meaning Representations (AMR), at the token level. Such alignments will be useful for downstream extraction of semantic interpretation and generation rules. Our method involves linearizing AMR structures and performing symmetrized EM training. We obtain 86.5% and 83.1% alignment F score on development and test sets.
Biography: Nima Pourdamghani is a second year Ph.D. student at ISI. He works with Professor Kevin Knight on Abstract Meaning Representation and its application to machine translation
Host: Aliya Deri and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 6th Flr Conf Rm # 689, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Nov 10, 2014 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Terence Sanger, Provost Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Neurology and Biokinesiology
Talk Title: TBA
Biography: http://bme.usc.edu/directory/faculty/core-faculty/terence-sanger/
Host: David D'Argenio
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Seminars in Engineering, Neuroscience & Health (ENH)
Mon, Nov 10, 2014 @ 03:50 PM - 04:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Meng Law, , Professor of Radiology, Neurology, Neurological Surgery (Keck School of Medicine) and Biomedical Engineering (Viterbi School of Engineering) Director of Neuroradiology, Director of Neuroradiology Fellowship Program Director of Alzheimhers Disease Neuroi
Talk Title: Neuroimaging in Neurogeneration, Neurotrauma and Neurorestoration
Series: Seminars in Engineering, Neuroscience & Health (ENH)
Abstract: Insights into the pathophysiology, possible etiology and ultimately the therapeutic options for debilitating neurological diseases such as epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsonâs disease and Alzheimerâs disease may be provided by neuroimaging. Understanding the underlying molecular, genetic, functional, and immunological basis for disease can allow us to look towards concepts such as diapeutics (diagnosis and therapeutics) or theranostics (therapy and diagnostics) in one single approach towards making a diagnosis and then therapy.
There are many advanced neuroimaging tools now such as PET imaging, functional MRI, diffusion tensor MRI, perfusion/permeability MRI, MR spectroscopy, which allows us to investigate these underlying mechanisms. This, combined with a modeling, machine-learning approach to incorporate âbig data,â gives us an all-encompassing understanding of what provides the most accurate diagnosis for individual patients and ultimately the most optimal theory.
Biography: http://www.keckmedicine.org/doctor/meng-law/
Host: Francisco Valero-Cuevas, Charles Liu, Christianne Heck
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 100D
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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CS Colloquium: Sachin Patil (UC Berkeley) -Coping with Uncertainty in Robotic Navigation, Exploration, and Grasping
Tue, Nov 11, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sachin Patil , UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Coping with Uncertainty in Robotic Navigation, Exploration, and Grasping
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: A key challenge in robotics is to robustly complete navigation, exploration, and manipulation tasks when the state of the world is uncertain. This is a fundamental problem in several application areas such as logistics, personal robotics, and healthcare where robots with imprecise actuation and sensing are being deployed in unstructured environments. In such a setting, it is necessary to reason about the acquisition of perceptual knowledge and to perform information gathering actions as necessary. In this talk, I will present an approach to motion planning under motion and sensing uncertainty called "belief space" planning where the objective is to trade off exploration (gathering information) and exploitation (performing actions) in the context of performing a task. In particular, I will present how we can use trajectory optimization to compute locally-optimal solutions to a determinized version of this problem in Gaussian belief spaces. I will show that it is possible to obtain significant computational speedups without explicitly optimizing over the covariances by considering a partial collocation approach. I will also address the problem of computing such trajectories, given that measurements may not be obtained during execution due to factors such as limited field of view of sensors and occlusions. I will demonstrate this approach in the context of robotic grasping in unknown environments where the robot has to simultaneously explore the environment and grasp occluded objects whose geometry and positions are initially unknown.
Biography: Sachin Patil is a postdoctoral researcher working with Prof. Pieter Abbeel and Prof. Ken Goldberg at the University of California at Berkeley. He previously completed his PhD with Prof. Ron Alterovitz at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on developing rigorous motion planning algorithms to enable new, minimally invasive medical procedures and to facilitate reliable operation of robots in unstructured environments.
Host: Gaurav Sukhatme
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Nov 12, 2014 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Rajgopal Kannan, Louisiana State University
Talk Title: Balancing Delay and Congestion Costs in Scheduling and Computing Bottleneck Congestion Equilibria
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: We consider the problem of minimum cost scheduling of an arbitrary sequence of packet arrivals over a given time frame where the cost of transmission during a slot is the sum of an arbitrary function of the congestion (number of packets transmitted) during that slot and the delay incurred by these packets. This problem could arise in various contexts such as wireless link transmissions where both congestion costs and scheduling delays must be balanced as well as in transactional memory systems where one can complete a transaction during a slot by paying a cost proportional to the number of interfering transactions during that slot (the congestion) or defer by some slots and try again. We find the offline optimal solution to this problem given the exact sequence of packet arrivals and then develop algorithms with constant factor competitive ratio for the online version of the problem in which the sequence of packet arrivals is unknown. For the second part of the talk, we consider the problem of computing bottleneck congestion equilibria in networks. This problem has been shown to be PLS complete and we describe an algorithm for finding logN approximate equilibra.
Biography: Rajgopal Kannan is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at Louisiana State University. He obtained his PhD from the University of Denver and a B.Tech from IIT-Bombay. His areas of interest are in wireless network algorithms, game-theory and cybersecurity. He is currently on sabbatical at the ANRG group at USC with Prof. Bhaskar Krishnamachari.
Host: Prof. Ashutosh Nayyar and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Wed, Nov 12, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Emmanuel Gdoutos, Professor in Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL & School of Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi, Greece
Talk Title: Failure Modes of Sandwich and Cellular Materials
Series: Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Abstract: Sandwich structures consisting of strong and stiff facings and light weight cores offer improved stiffness and strength to weight ratios compared to monolithic materials. Under flexural loading the facings carry almost all of the bending, while the core takes the shear loading and helps to stabilize the facings. Facing materials include metals and fiber reinforced composites. The latter are being used in advanced applications due to the large strength-to-weight ratio. The core materials mainly include honeycombs, cellular foams and wood. In the present seminar the failure behavior of composite sandwich beams subjected to three- and four-point bending will be presented. The beams were made of unidirectional carbon/epoxy facings and various core materials including PVC closed-cell foams, a polyurethane foam and an aluminum honeycomb. Various failure modes including facing wrinkling, indentation failure and core failure were observed and compared with analytical predictions. It was established that the initiation, propagation and interaction of failure modes depend on the type of loading, constituent material properties and geometrical dimensions. The crack growth behavior of polymeric foams under mixed-mode loading conditions will also be presented. Polymeric foams are anisotropic materials and crack kinking occurs even though the applied load is perpendicular to the crack plane. The stress analysis of the plate was performed by finite elements. Crack trajectories for various angles of the orientation of the axes of orthotropy of the material with respect to the applied load were obtained.
Biography: Emmanuel Gdoutos is Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and Director of the Laboratory of Applied Mechanics at the Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, and Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University. His interests and experience include many areas of mechanics of materials with emphasis on experimental mechanics, fracture mechanics, composite materials and nanotechnology. He serves on the editorial board of eight international journals. He has awarded two Fulbright fellowships and an excellent teaching award from the University of Toledo. He has held numerous lectureships and visiting professorships (Lehigh Univ., Univ. of California at Santa Barbara and Davis, Toledo Univ., Michigan Technological University. and Northwestern University). He served as chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering of the Democritus University of Thrace. He authored over 240 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings, 15 books and edited 14 books. His book titled "Fracture Mechanics - An Introduction" is a widely used textbook for fracture mechanics courses.
Host: Professor Paul Ronney
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
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CS Colloquium: Sergey Levine (UC Berkeley) - Learning to Move: Machine Learning for Robotics and Animation
Thu, Nov 13, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sergey Levine , UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Learning to Move: Machine Learning for Robotics and Animation
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Being able to acquire new motion skills autonomously could help robots build rich motion repertoires suitable for tackling complex, varied environments. I will discuss my work on motion skill learning for robotics, including methods for learning from demonstration and reinforcement learning. In particular, I will describe a class of "guided" policy search algorithms, which combine reinforcement learning and learning from demonstration to acquire multiple simple, trajectory-centric policies, with a supervised learning phase to obtain a single complex, high-dimensional policy that can then generalize to new situations. I will show applications of this method to simulated bipedal locomotion, as well as a range of robotic manipulation tasks, including putting together two parts of a plastic toy and screwing bottle caps onto bottles. I will also discuss how such techniques can be applied to character animation in computer graphics, and how this field can inform research in robotics.
Biography: Sergey Levine is a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Pieter Abbeel at the University of California at Berkeley. He previously completed his PhD with Professor Vladlen Koltun at Stanford University. His research areas include robotics, reinforcement learning and optimal control, machine learning, and computer graphics. His work includes the development of new algorithms for learning motor skills, methods for learning behaviors from human demonstration, and applications in robotics and computer graphics, ranging from robotic manipulation to animation of martial arts and conversational hand gestures.
Host: Fei Sha
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Hand-portable NMR Instrument for Point of Care Diagnostics
Fri, Nov 14, 2014 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Pablo Prado, One Resonance, LLC
Talk Title: Hand-portable NMR Instrument for Point of Care Diagnostics
Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
Abstract: Open-concept NMR sensors have been used in the oil industry for over 20 years. Single-sided NMR probes are effective tools for in-situ material assessment for large objects. This has been demonstrated in applications such as moisture in wood, near surface water content in soil and rubber cross-linking in tires. Similar concepts can be utilized to inspect skin tissue and even fat content in the human liver. During this presentation we will discuss general aspects of open-concept NMR instrumentation.
Biography: Dr. Prado is the President of One Resonance LLC and co-founder and CEO of One Resonance Sensors, LLC. He has more than 20 years of experience with NMR instrumentation. In previous positions he was Senior Department Manager and New Product Introduction Lead at GE; VP Development at T2 Biosystems; VP Engineering at Quasar Federal Systems; and CTO at Progression, Inc.Dr. Prado is inventor for 9 issued patent and author of 2 book chapters and over 40 peer-reviewed articles.
Host: Professor Krishna Nayak
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium
Fri, Nov 14, 2014 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jeff Stibel and Aaron Stibel, Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp
Talk Title: Engineering Entrepreneurs for the 21st Century
Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jeffrey Teng
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NL Seminar - Machine Reading of the Biomedical Literature: It's All About Data
Fri, Nov 14, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Gully Burns, USC/ISI
Talk Title: Machine Reading of the Biomedical Literature: It's All About Data
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: Like most scientific disciplines, cancer biology involves performing experiments and interpreting them. At present, most modeling efforts center on trying to bring together collections of interpretations as 'pathway diagrams' but do not attempt to capture the semantics of supporting experimental data. Here, I will describe a new strategic approach for machine reading of scientific articles based on a generic representation of experimental data with explicit examples within the field of cancer biology. I will also discuss this effort in the context of the Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR) and present an informal generative story for your consideration and feedback.
Biography: Gully Burns develops pragmatic biomedical knowledge engineering systems for scientists that provide directly useful functionality in their everyday use and is based on innovative, cutting edge computer science. He was originally trained as a physicist at Imperial College in London before switching to do a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Oxford. He came to work at USC in 1997, developing the 'NeuroScholar' project in Larry Swanson's lab before joining the Information Sciences Institute in 2006. He is now works as project leader in ISI's Information Integration Group.
Host: Aliya Deri and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 6th Flr Conf Rm # 689, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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Astani CEE Seminar
Fri, Nov 14, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Dominiki Asimaki, Department of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, Caltech
Talk Title: Site effects in three dimensions: Theory, experiments and numerical simulations
Abstract:
This seminar will cover a series of studies on site effects, ranging from semi-ana¬lytical solutions of wave propagation in infinite wedges, to centrifuge experiments on topo¬graphy effects, to numerical simulations of idealized and true ground surface features subjected to seismic loading. Starting from the simplest configuration, I will first discuss our work on the response of infinite wedges, which comprises a semi-analytical solution and numerical simulations of wedge response to incident in-plane shear (SV) and compressional (P) waves. I will present results, focusing specifically on the insight that idealized features provide into the physics of wave focusing and scattering by non-flat surfaces in the context of earthquake ground motion simulations. I will then summarize results of a collaborative project that used cen¬trifuge experiments to study site effects for single, step-like slopes on the surface of shallow granu¬lar soils overlaying stiff bedrock; and I will present in detail our validated nonlinear numerical simulations of the said experiments, which we have extended to study the effects of soil stiffness and thickness, and the effects of bedrock-soil velocity contrast on the ground motion characteristics near the slope crest. Our results have shown that the inelastic response of pressure-dependent soils near the surface has a significant impact on the manifestation of topographic amplification, which may differ substantially from viscoelastic model predictions traditionally used in studies of site effects on the surface of non-flat ground. In the last part of the talk, I will present a system of dimensionless parameter¬s that we have synthesized from our semi-analytical, experimental and numerical results for the study of 3D site effects; a systematic parametric investigation of 3D site effects for idealized features; and a series of site-specific simulations at strong motion station sites in Southern California with irregular ground surface topography.
Biography: Dominiki Asimaki is a Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering at Caltech. She has a bachelorâs diploma in civil engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (1998), and an MS (2000) and PhD (2004) from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. Her research combines geotechnical engineering, computational mechanics, and structural dynamics to study how natural and man-made geotechnical systems (ridges, valleys, dams, tunnels, building foundations, and offshore structures) respond to dynamic loading induced, for example, by earthquakes, hurricanes, and blast. She then uses results from these studies to develop predictive models for resilient design procedures for geotechnical systems, and for hazard assessment and mitigation in urban environments. Domniki is associate editor for the Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering (ASCE), for Earthquake Spectra (EERI), and for Soils and Foundations (Japanese Geotechnical Society); and she is the recipient of the 2009 Arthur Casagrande Award from the ASCE Geo-Institute and the 2012 Shamsher Prakash Research Award in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering.
Host: Dr. Maria Todorovska
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Integrated Seminar Series
Fri, Nov 14, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Zach Griffith, Teledyne Scientific
Talk Title: TBA
Biography: Hosted by Prof. Hossein Hashemi, Prof. Mike Chen and Prof. Mahta Moghaddam
Organized and hosted by Masashi Yamagata
For questions or additional details, please email myamagat@usc.edu
Host: Hosted by Prof. Hossein Hashemi, Prof. Mike Chen, Prof. Mahta Moghaddam, and Masashi Yamagata
More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=910781
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elise Herrera-Green
Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=910781
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Nov 17, 2014 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: David B. Agus, MD, Professor Of Medicine Director,Usc Center For Applied Molecular Medicine Director,Usc Westside Prostate Cancer Center
Talk Title: TBA
Biography: http://www.keckmedicine.org/doctor/david-b-agus/
Host: Norberto Grzywacz
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Epstein Institute Seminar
Mon, Nov 17, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Boray Huang, Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore
Talk Title: "Support SME Suppliers Through Buyer-Backed Purchase Order Financing"
Abstract: Supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to access finance has received rapidly-rising attention in recent years. In some countries, large buyers in supply chains are considering credit guarantee schemes (CGS) through which the credit coverage can be extended to assist their SME suppliers. While such sup-port is beneficial to the suppliers, an issue arises regarding the motivation of the large buyers to join and support the SME suppliers. In practice, SMEs are often attractive but riskier sources of supply. Supporting SME suppliers through the financial guarantee may bring even more risk concern to buyers. To study the buyersâ sourcing and guarantee strategy, we analyze a simplified model where a core enterprise procures components from only two sources: an SME supplier with a lower price and the spot market with a higher price. A novel Buyer-Backed Purchase Order Financing (BPOF) scheme is studied in supporting the supplierâs financing. We analyze the effect of the market interest and identify the properties of the buyerâs optimal joint sourcing and credit-guarantee decisions. Through numerical experiments, BPOF is shown to significantly improve the core enterpriseâs profitability.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2014
ANDRUS GERONTOLOGY CENTER (GER) ROOM 206
3:30 - 4:30 PM
Biography: Dr. Boray Huang is an Assistant Professor in Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at National University of Singapore. He received his Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences from Northwestern University. His current research interest is the interface between finance and operations in supply chains and social enterprises. He has published articles in Operations Research, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Operations Research Letters and others. He is a member of INFORMS and IIE.
Host: Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
More Information: Seminar-Boray Huang.docx
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Epstein Institute / ISE 651 Seminar Series
Tue, Nov 18, 2014 @ 03:30 AM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Natashia Boland, Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Newcastle, Australia (2008-2014) and School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (January 2015)
Talk Title: "Biobjective Mixed Integer Programming: Two Motivating Applications and A New Algorithm"
Series: Epstein Institute Seminar Series
Abstract: Scheduling maintenance in a coal export supply chain so as to minimize its impact on system throughput, and allocating water to maximize the health of plant and animal species in a river system, are two quite different applications. Yet both give rise to mixed integer programming problems with two objectives. In this talk, we will give a brief overview of both these applications, and the progress made to date on solving them in practice. We then present a new method for biobjective mixed integer programming that exploits the power of modern MIP solvers. The resulting method deduces the efficient frontier in a computationally effective way. One of the features exploited in these methods is the ability of MIP solvers to make use of high quality feasible solutions.
TUESDAY, November 18, 2014
GRACE FORD SALVATORI HALL (GFS) ROOM 101
3:30 - 4:50 PM
Biography: Professor Natashia Boland held the position of Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Newcastle, Australia from 2008-2014, a role she took up after completing her PhD at the University of Western Australia in 1992, followed by two years of postdoctoral research at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, respectively, and 13 years with the University of Melbourne. She is an expert in the field of integer programming, and an exponent of its application to address complex problems in government and industry. Her contributions to the field have spanned theory, algorithms, modelling and applications, in domains as diverse as mining, renewable energy, airline planning and cancer radiotherapy treatment, with emerging interests in maintenance scheduling and water management. She has supervised 12 PhD students to completion, with 7 current, has published over 50 articles in international scientific journals, and has held 8 nationally competitive large grants in the past, currently holding 5 more. Of these 10 support joint research with business and/or government partners, to improve decision making processes and outcomes for these organizations. Professor Boland will join the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in January 2015.
Host: Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
More Information: Seminar-Boland.docx
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Nov 19, 2014 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Anant Sahai, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Information Theory Meets Control
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Control is an intellectual sibling to communication. Both are about removing uncertainty with limited resources --- communication by sharing something about the world and control by shaping the world itself. While information theory has for decades been providing insights into problems of communication, traditional approaches to control did not use information-theoretic techniques or ideas. Recently, we have found some surprising connections between wireless information theory and some central problems in decentralized control. In addition, we have begun to understand how modern insights can be used to better make wireless protocols that support control problems for the Internet of Things.
On the theoretical side, it turns out that the machinery of linear deterministic models that has been so helpful in understanding problems of relaying and interference in communication can be brought to shed light on the fundamental limits of performance in control. Approximately-optimal strategies can be found and the control-theoretic counterparts to ideas like generalized degrees-of-freedom and cut-set bounds can be discovered. There are control/estimation counterparts to ideas like non-coherent communication channels.
All this suggests that there is an entire parallel realm of information theory that connects to control problems --- just waiting to be explored. This talk will give some glimpses into this.
Biography: Anant Sahai received his B.S. in 1994, from the University of California, Berkeley, and his S.M. and Ph.D. from MIT in 1996 and 2001, respectively. He is an associate professor in the EECS Department at Berkeley, where he joined as an assistant professor in 2002. Prior to that, he spent a year as a research scientist at the wireless startup Enuvis in South San Francisco, developing software-radio signal-processing algorithms to enable very sensitive GPS receivers for indoor operation. From 2007 to 2009, he was the treasurer for the IEEE Information Theory Society. His current research interests are at the intersection of information theory and decentralized control, as well as in wireless communication, particularly dynamic spectrum sharing and its regulatory dimensions. He enjoys working very closely with his small group of graduate students on fun and deep problems. He usually teaches small intimate courses but this semester, is teaching a giant intro course with hundreds of students.
Host: Dr. Ashutosh Nayyar and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Wed, Nov 19, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sunghwan (Sunny) Jung, Assistant Professor in Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
Talk Title: Fluid Mechanics of Drinking and Diving
Series: Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Abstract: Drinking is defined as the animal action of taking water into the mouth, but to fluid mechanists, it is simply one kind of fluid transport phenomena. Classical fluid mechanics show that fluid transport can be achieved by either pressure-driven or inertia-driven processes. In a similar fashion, animals drink water using pressure-driven or inertia-driven mechanisms. For example, domestic cats and dogs lap water by moving the tongue fast, thereby developing the inertia-driven mechanism. We will investigate how cats and dogs drink water differently and discuss the underlying fluid mechanics.
Diving is the activity of falling from air into water, which is somewhat dangerous due to the impact. Humans dive for entertainments less than 20 meters high, however seabirds dive as a hunting mechanism from more than 20 meters high. Moreover, most birds including seabirds have a slender and long neck (13~25 vertebrae) compared to many other animals, which can potentially be the weakest part of the body upon axial impact compression. Motivated by the diving dynamics, we investigate the effect of surface and geometric configurations on structures consisting of a beak-like cone and a neck-like elastic beam. A transition from non-buckling to buckling is characterized and understood through physical experiments and an analytical model.
Biography: Sunghwan (Sunny) Jung is a faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics (formerly, Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics), Virginia Tech. Dr. Jung received his PhD in Physics at the University of Texas at Austin and spent two years at the Courant Institute, NYU. Prior to Virginia Tech, he was a math instructor at MIT for two years. His research interests are a variety of fluid mechanics problems occurring in biological systems.
Host: Professor Paul Ronney
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
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Read a Lot, Talk as Fast as You Can
Thu, Nov 20, 2014 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Peter C. Gordon, Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Talk Title: Read a Lot, Talk as Fast as You Can
Abstract: Substantial effort has been devoted to understanding how variability in component cognitive abilities contributes to individual differences in reading skill. As skilled readers rapidly move their eyes through sequences of words, deeper comprehension of earlier words continues while encoding occurs for the word that is currently fixated. Therefore, skilled reading depends on robust, easily accessible word knowledge as well as the ability to efficiently process multiple linguistic units in parallel. The current project investigates how individual differences in each of these skills affect reading ability by examining eye-movement patterns during reading in relation to two very different measures of individual differences: the Author Recognition Task, which primarily taps word knowledge, and Rapid Automatized Naming, which requires rapid responses to a series of items. Results show that word recognition and the ability to coordinate multiple processes in parallel are independent skills, and shed new light on the nature of the cognitive mechanisms underlying reading ability.
Biography: Dr. Peter C. Gordon received his B.S. in Psychology from Georgetown University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1984. He was Assistant and Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University from 1984 through 1993, and subsequently joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he is Professor of Psychology and Faculty Fellow at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and a superannuated member of the Psychological Round Table; his awards include appointment as John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor at Harvard University and a W.N. Reynolds Leave from the University of North Carolina. He has served as a reviewer for multiple NSF programs (Cognition & Perception, Information & Intelligent Systems and Linguistics) and as a member of the Language and Communication panel at NIH. He served a four-year term as Associate Editor at Psychological Science, has been on the editorial boards of major journals (Cognitive Psychology, JEP:LMC) and in January 2015 will begin a term as Consulting Editor at Psychological Review. Dr. Gordonâs program of research focuses on uncovering the psychological basis of language comprehension and production, with a particular focus on the nature of discourse coherence and on the interaction of discourse-level processing and lower-level processes such as word recognition. His research on the processing of written and spoken language has been highly interdisciplinary, including long-term collaborations with researchers trained in computer science, linguistics and neuroscience, as well as researchers with clinical specializations. His recent research has involved coordinated use of behavioral and neural methods for studying how language processing is coordinated with perception, attention, memory and motor control, and has additionally involved development of eye-tracking and computational-linguistic methods for studying cognitive and interpersonal processes in normal and impaired populations.
Host: Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam
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MFD - Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Distinguished Lecture: Paul Debevec (U. Illinois)
Thu, Nov 20, 2014 @ 12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Paul Debevec, Professor Emeritus, U. Illinois Dept. of Physics
Talk Title: Understanding the Energy Challenge: Science, Technology, Economics and Policy
Series: Distinguished Lectures
Abstract: TBA
Host: Prof. Fred Aminzadeh
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ryan Choi
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It Takes Time to Prime: Semantic Priming in Ocular Response Tasks
Thu, Nov 20, 2014 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Renske S. Hoedemaker, Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Talk Title: It Takes Time to Prime: Semantic Priming in Ocular Response Tasks
Abstract: Semantic priming - the facilitation in processing a word when it is preceded by a semantically related word - is very robust in tasks where words are recognized in isolation but is quite limited during text reading. We evaluate the contributions of response mode and task goals to semantic priming by replacing the manual response mode typically used in isolated word recognition tasks with an eye-movement response through a sequence of words. These ocular response tasks combine the explicit control of subjectsâ goals found in isolated word-recognition asks with the fast, well-practiced ocular response mode used in reading text. Across both lexical decision and recognition memory tasks, ocular response times are much shorter than manual responses for the same words in comparable tasks, yet show a strong relationship with word frequency as well as a robust effect of semantic priming. Ongoing work on this project uses Ex-Gaussian distribution fits to investigate how task goals may interact with semantic priming effects on eye movements during visual word recognition.
Biography: Renske S. Hoedemaker received her BA in Psychology from Lawrence University in 2010 and her MA in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012. She is currently a PhD candidate working with Dr. Peter C. Gordon in the cognitive psychology program at UNC Chapel Hill, expecting to graduate in May 2015. Her research focuses on the way skilled readers coordinate different stages of lexico-semantic and other cognitive processes in a goal-driven manner to achieve fast and efficient performance on word recognition and other sequential tasks. Her dissertation explores the nature of semantic priming using ocular response tasks.
Host: Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam
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NL Seminar- Technologies for every language: how machine learning can reach everyone in the world
Thu, Nov 20, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Robert Munro, Idibon
Talk Title: Technologies for every language: how machine learning can reach everyone in the world
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: Speakers of more than 5,000 languages have access to internet and communication technologies. The majority of phones, tablets and computers now ship with language-enabled capabilities like speech-recognition and intelligent auto-correction, and people increasingly interact with data-intensive cloud-based language technologies like search-engines and spam-filters. For both personal and large-scale technologies, the service quality drops or disappears entirely outside of a handful of languages. Speakers of low-resource languages correlate with lower access to healthcare, education and higher vulnerability to disasters. Serving the broadest possible range of languages is crucial to ensuring equitable participation in the global information economy. I will present examples of how natural language processing and distributed human computing are improving the lives of speakers of all the world's languages, in areas including education, disaster-response, health and access to employment. When applying natural language processing to the full diversity of the world's communications, we need to go beyond simple keyword analysis and implement complex technologies that require human-in-the-loop processing to ensure usable accuracy. I will share results that show how for-profit technologies are improving people's lives by providing sustainable economic growth opportunities when they support more languages, aligning business objectives with global diversity.
Biography: Robert Munro is the CEO of Idibon, a company with the objective of providing language technologies for all the world's languages. In past work he has served as Chief Information Officer for the largest solar energy company in Sierra Leone; was the Chief Technology Officer for the largest use of big data technologies to track disease outbreaks globally; worked for the UN High Commission for Refugees in Liberia; lead the crowdsourced response to the 2010 earthquake Haiti; and has helped information processing in disaster response and election monitoring in more than a dozen countries. In current work, Idibon helps everyone from Fortune 500s to disaster response organizations process language data at scale. Outside of work, he has learned about the world's diversity by cycling more than 20,000 kilometers across 20 countries. Robert has a PhD from Stanford University.
Host: Aliya Deri and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 6th Flr Conf Rm # 689, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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CS Colloquium: Rajiv Gandhi (Rutgers University-Camden) - From Potential to Promise - Developing Scholars, one Eureka moment at a time
Thu, Nov 20, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rajiv Gandhi , Rutgers University-Camden
Talk Title: From Potential to Promise - Developing Scholars, one Eureka moment at a time
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: In this talk, I will tell the story of our work with some truly remarkable undergraduate students at Rutgers-Camden, who despite many odds have achieved success that is unprecedented for the Camden campus. I will discuss the various challenges that we faced and some ideas that have worked very well (and some that have not) for us. We have been applying some of these ideas in our work with high school students and students at other institutions. Additional information can be found at the website for the Program in Theoretical CS: http://rajivgandhics.wordpress.com (website constructed and maintained by high school students)
Biography: Dr. Rajiv Gandhi is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Rutgers University-Camden. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2003. His research interests lie in the broad area of theoretical computer science. Specifically, he is interested in approximation and randomized algorithms, distributed algorithms, and graph theory. He has published papers in these areas in leading journals and conferences. He has been the recipient of several teaching excellence awards -- at Rutgers and at other universities. He was also the recipient of the Chancellor's award for Civic Engagement at Rutgers-Camden in 2013. He was a Fulbright Fellow from Jan-June 2011, during which he worked with students in Mumbai. Since 2009, he has also been working with high school students as part of the Program in Algorithmic and Combinatorial Thinking.
Host: Leana Golubchik
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Energy Informatics Distinguished Seminar Series
Fri, Nov 21, 2014 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Marija Ilic, Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Physics-Based Modeling and Control for Plug-and-Play Electric Energy Systems
Series: Energy Informatics Distinguished Seminar Series
Abstract: In this talk we consider future electric energy grids as interconnections of coupled modules, often hierarchically arranged. We first review current operating practices, and then describe how one could think of cyber design for the changing grids using simpler-to-understand mechanical representations of these systems. We discuss most of the ideas using these coupled mechanical system analogies and propose a new, physically intuitive state space model which lends itself to modular modeling and cyber design for provable performance. Once the model is established, it becomes possible to identify open control and communication problems necessary to define the information exchange among the modules (type, rate of exchange and entities exchanging this information). This modeling paradigm is illustrated for both bulk power grids and for the emerging micro-grids. Fundamentally, the problem of using coupling (interactions) between modules to support cooperative control and communications within either weakly or strongly coupled nonlinear grids is suggested as the problem presenting theoretical challenge to both control and communications design. This very difficult problem is made manageable by combining physics-based models with the cyber design objectives. It is shown how such an approach could be used to integrate fast power electronically-switched control in micro-grids to stabilize the unconventional dynamics resulting from the presence of distributed energy resources (DERs) and the variable speed drives embedded into responsive demand. The same concept can be used to control flow in delivery systems. A very tangible problem of suppressing subsynchronous control instabilities created by the interactions of power electronics controllers is illustrated using this approach.
Biography: Marija D. Ilic received her Doctor of Science Degree in Systems Science at Washington University in St. Louis, MO in 1980. She is currently a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, with a courtesy appointment in the Public Policy Department. She is the Director of the Electric Energy Systems Group (EESG) at Carnegie Mellon. She was an Assistant Professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and tenured Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was then a Senior Research Scientist in Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, from 1987 to 2002. She has over 30 years of experience in teaching and research in the area of electrical power system modeling and control. Her main interest is in the systems aspects of operations, planning, and economics of the electric power industry. She has co-authored and co-edited a number of books in her field of interest. Her most recent book is Engineering IT-Enabled Sustainable Electricity Services: The Tale of Two Low-Cost Green Azores Islands. Prof. Ilic is an IEEE Fellow.
Host: Viktor Prasanna and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium
Fri, Nov 21, 2014 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Donald Paul, Executive Director of the USC Energy Institute
Talk Title: The American Energy Renaissance
Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jeffrey Teng
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Integrated Seminar Series
Fri, Nov 21, 2014 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Pedram Mohseni, Case Western University
Talk Title: Integrated Systems for High-Fidelit Sensing and Manipulation of Brain Neurochemistry
Biography: Hosted by Prof. Hossein Hashemi, Prof. Mike Chen and Prof. Mahta Moghaddam
Organized and hosted by Masashi Yamagata
For questions or additional details, please email myamagat@usc.edu
Host: Hosted by Prof. Hossein Hashemi, Prof. Mike Chen, Prof. Mahta Moghaddam, and Masashi Yamagata
More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=910785
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elise Herrera-Green
Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=910785
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CEE Ph. D. Seminar
Fri, Nov 21, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Farrokh Jazizadeh, CE Ph.D. Candidate
Talk Title: User-Centric Smart Sensing For Non-Intrusive Electricity Consumption Disaggregation in Buildings
Abstract: Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) is a low-cost alternative to appliance level sub-metering, that leverages signal processing and machine learning techniques to estimate the power consumption of individual appliances from whole-home measurements. However, the difficulty associated with obtaining training data sets for the commonly used supervised NILM classification algorithms is a major obstacle in wide commercial adoption of the technology. The diversity of electrical load signatures (patterns of appliancesâ power draw) demands in-situ training (labeling of the signatures), which often needs to be performed by users through user-system interaction. To produce the example signatures required for training, continuous interaction with users might be required, which could reduce the success of the training process due to user fatigue. Pre-populating a training data set could potentially reduce the need for user-system interaction. A heuristic unsupervised clustering algorithm has been presented and evaluated to enable autonomous partitioning of appliances signature space (i.e. feature space) for applications in electricity consumption disaggregation without a priori information. The algorithm determines the partition of a feature space recursively to account for multi-scale nature of the binary cluster tree.
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Nov 24, 2014 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Sanjeev Shroff , Chair of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh
Talk Title: Relaxin: Cardiovascular Actions and Therapeutic Potential
Abstract: RELAXIN: CARDIOVASCULAR ACTIONS AND THERAPEUTIC POTENTIAL
Sanjeev G. Shroff, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of and Gerald McGinnis Chair in Bioengineering; Professor of Medicine
University of Pittsburgh
Relaxin, a 6-kDa peptide hormone in the insulin-relaxin superfamily, has important vascular actions that include potent vasodilation and anti-fibrotic effects. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave relaxin âbreakthrough statusâ in 2013 and Cleveland Clinic named relaxin as one of the Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2014. Much of our knowledge of relaxin has stemmed from investigations of maternal vascular adaptations to pregnancy. With the discovery of local tissue expression and function of relaxin and relaxin receptor in non-pregnant females and males, relaxin has become even more important in the context of the cardiovascular system. This presentation will focus on discussing our relaxin-related work over the past decade, covering basic physiology to potential therapeutic applications: (1) Although our original focus was on relaxinâs vascular actions in the context of pregnancy (Endocrinology 145:3289-3296, 2004; Endocrinology 147:5126-5131, 2006), we made a surprising discovery that relaxinâs vascular actions are not confined to females; males respond equally robustly (J. Appl. Physiol. 98:1013-1020, 2005). Furthermore, relaxin-induced vascular geometric remodeling, and not compositional remodeling, contributes to increased vascular passive compliance under physiological conditions (J. Appl. Physiol. 111: 260-271, 2011; Curr. Hypertens. Rep. 13:409-420, 2011). (2) We provided the first evidence for local relaxin ligand-receptor expression and function in arteries (FASEB J. 20:2352-2362, 2006). (3) We have been examining relaxinâs cardiac actions and therapeutic potential in the context of two pathologies: relaxin-induced left atrial remodeling and suppression of atrial fibrillation (Circ. Res. 113:313-321, 2013) and relaxin-induced left ventricular remodeling and associated functional benefits in the setting of diastolic dysfunction (unpublished data). The cardiovascular actions of relaxin, especially potent systemic and renal vasodilation and potential for improving renal function, were the bases for recent clinical trials (Pre-RELAX-AHF and RELAX-AHF) examining relaxinâs therapeutic efficacy in the setting of acute heart failure.
Biography: http://www.engineering.pitt.edu/SanjeevShroff/
Host: Norberto Grzywacz
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Epstein Institute / ISE 651 Seminar Series
Tue, Nov 25, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Karthik Ramani, Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering (Courtesy), Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Talk Title: "Hands-on Design and Creative Expression in Digital Environments"
Series: Epstein Institute Seminar Series
Abstract: The recent success of tablets and depth cameras is a direct example of the importance of using natural interactions to create simple and more interesting virtual experiences. On the other hand current interactive sketching media, shape modeling paradigms and tools remain non-intuitive and require significant training. They are often built on WIMP-based (windows-icons-menus-pointers) metaphors and interactions, thus binding the user to stringent procedural steps making interactions cumbersome. The first part of this talk presents skWiki and Juxtapoze. SkWiki is a web application framework for collaborative creativity in multi-media projects, including hand-drawn sketches. Built on the browser, skWiki uses the concept of paths as trajectories of persistent state over time. This model has intrinsic support for collaborative editing, including cloning, branching, and merging paths edited by multiple contributors. Juxtapoze is a clipart composition workï¬ow that supports creative expression and serendipitous discoveries in the shape domain. Allowing multiple exploration channels, such as doodles, shape filtering, and relaxed search facilitates serendipitous discovery of shapes. The second part of the talk presents zPots and ChiRobot. Using a depth camera we present new interaction paradigms for creation, interaction and manipulation of 2.5D shapes through natural integration of human gestures with shape modeling schemes. Finally the talk concludes by developing a new âcyber-physicalâ toy platform (ChiRobot) that combines construction and craft to enable children to build toys from their imagination and animate it in a short time. User studies support all the research presented.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2014
GRACE FORD SALVATORI HALL (GFS) ROOM 101
3:30 - 4:50 PM
Biography: Karthik Ramani is a Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. He earned his B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1985, an MS from Ohio State University, in 1987, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1991, all in Mechanical Engineering. Among his many awards he received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Initiation and Career Award, the Ralph Teetor Educational Award from the SAE, and the Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from SME. In 2006 he won the innovation of the year award from the State of Indiana. He serves in the editorial board of Elsevier Journal of Computer-Aided Design and ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. In 2008 he was a visiting Professor at Stanford University (computer sciences) as well as a research fellow at PARC (formerly Xerox PARC). He also serves on the Engineering Advisory sub-committee for the NSF IIP (Industrial Innovation and Partnerships). In 2006 and 2007, he won the Most Cited Journal Paper award from Computer-Aided Design and the Research Excellence award in the College of Engineering at Purdue University. He was the co-founder of the worldâs first commercial shape-based search engine (VizSeek/Imaginestics). In 2009, he won the Outstanding Commercialization award from Purdue University. He has won several best paper awards from ASME and in 2014 the Outstanding Research Excellence Award from ASME Computers and Information Sciences in Engineering Division. NSF recently invited him for a distinguished lecture in cyber-learning. His recent papers have been published in ACM UIST, IEEE CVPR, ACM SIGCHI, ACM IDC, ASME JMD and ACM SPM.
Host: Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
More Information: Seminar-Ramani.doc
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Epstein Institute / ISE 651 Seminar Series
Tue, Nov 25, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Karthik Ramani, Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering (Courtesy), Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Talk Title: "Hands-on Design and Creative Expression in Digital Environments"
Series: Epstein Institute Seminar Series
Abstract: The recent success of tablets and depth cameras is a direct example of the importance of using natural interactions to create simple and more interesting virtual experiences. On the other hand current interactive sketching media, shape modeling paradigms and tools remain non-intuitive and require significant training. They are often built on WIMP-based (windows-icons-menus-pointers) metaphors and interactions, thus binding the user to stringent procedural steps making interactions cumbersome.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2014
GRACE FORD SALVATORI HALL (GFS) ROOM 101
3:30 - 4:50 PM
Biography: Karthik Ramani is a Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. He earned his B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1985, an MS from Ohio State University, in 1987, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1991, all in Mechanical Engineering. Among his many awards he received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Initiation and Career Award, the Ralph Teetor Educational Award from the SAE, and the Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from SME. In 2006 he won the innovation of the year award from the State of Indiana. He serves in the editorial board of Elsevier Journal of Computer-Aided Design and ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. In 2008 he was a visiting Professor at Stanford University (computer sciences) as well as a research fellow at PARC (formerly Xerox PARC). He also serves on the Engineering Advisory sub-committee for the NSF IIP (Industrial Innovation and Partnerships). In 2006 and 2007, he won the Most Cited Journal Paper award from Computer-Aided Design and the Research Excellence award in the College of Engineering at Purdue University. He was the co-founder of the worldâs first commercial shape-based search engine (VizSeek/Imaginestics). In 2009, he won the Outstanding Commercialization award from Purdue University. He has won several best paper awards from ASME and in 2014 the Outstanding Research Excellence Award from ASME Computers and Information Sciences in Engineering Division. NSF recently invited him for a distinguished lecture in cyber-learning. His recent papers have been published in ACM UIST, IEEE CVPR, ACM SIGCHI, ACM IDC, ASME JMD and ACM SPM.
Host: Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
More Information: Seminar-Ramani.doc
Location: 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
