USC - Viterbi School of Engineering

Nov
01

Science & Litigation - The basic Science of Mold as a Resultant Damage
Wed, Nov 01, 2006 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker: Harry L. Skalsky, Ph.D.
DABT. Skalsky & AssociatesAbstract:
During the past ten years both celebrities and news media have "headlined" the adverse health effects resulting from alleged mold exposures in their private home or in public buildings. Likewise, the Internet is replete with information concerning the hazards of toxic mold, how to find it, and what to do about it. This seminar is intended to outline the scientific approach that is necessary to gather appropriate information to answer specific litigation questions. The seminar is based on over ten years of experience in mold litigation and addresses a wide range of issues from both a scientific and a court room point of view.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall, Room 203
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Nov
01

Pop, Politics and Propaganda
Wed, Nov 01, 2006 @ 03:00 PM - 05:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

This interactive discussion will explore how political parties and critics have used art and popular culture for political ends. The panel will feature journalist Marc Cooper, artist Robbie Conal, Center for the Study of Political Graphics executive director Carol A. Wells and the Annenberg School's Marty Kaplan.
Location: Estelle Doheny Eye Foundation (DOH) - eny 233
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski
Nov
01

Geophysical Vortex Streets: The Dynamics that Determines The Late-Time Behavior
Wed, Nov 01, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Phil Marcus Professor of Fluid MechanicsDepartment of Mechanical Engineering University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, CA Rotating, stratified 3D flows often act as if they were nearly 2D and the inverse cascade of energy often leads to large, turbulent vortices and jets. In general, the flows are not unique, and there are several basins of attraction of the flow - each characterized by its own pattern of vortices and jet streams. The transport properties of each pattern vary markedly, so in a geophysical, or climate-change context, the robustness of each pattern and how patterns are selected due to small changes in the environment are important. We explore pattern selection, and present a physical model that works well in correctly predicting the outcomes of long-term numerical simulations. This study was originally motivated by the behavior of the long-lived vortical storms on Jupiter, and we show the relationship between the results of this study and Jupiter's new (as of March 2006) red spot.
Location: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall, Rm 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: April Mundy
Nov
01

SHPE-USC Joint General Meeting
Wed, Nov 01, 2006 @ 07:00 PM - 08:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Cisco Systems will be speaking at the joint general meeting. The meeting will be hosted by SHPE-USC, NSBE, SWE. Free food will be provided. An Ipod Nano will be raffled.
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 124
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: SHPE
Nov
02

Chi Epsilon: BBQ
Thu, Nov 02, 2006 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Chi Epsilon will be hosting a BBQ for all Viterbi Engineers! Join us at Kaprielian Hall Thrusday 11/2 for FREE FOOD!!!
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall
Audiences: All Viterbi Engineers

Contact: Chi Epsilon
Nov
02

ASCE General Meeting
Thu, Nov 02, 2006 @ 05:15 PM - 06:15 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

KPFF will be coming in to speak. Bring your resumes! Free food as well.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 146
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: American Society of Civil Engineers
Nov
02

Talk Talk: An Evening with T.C. Boyle
Thu, Nov 02, 2006 @ 07:30 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

USC English professor and world-renowned author T.C. Boyle will read from his new novel Talk Talk, a story about a deaf woman whos identity has been stolen. Talk Talk is a fictional meditation not only on difference, but on the nature of identity itself, and on the role that language and acculturation play in its construction. The event will be followed by a discussion, book signing and reception. For more information please visit:
http://www.usc.edu/webapps/events_calendar/custom/113/index.php?category=Item&item=0.861412
Location: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - co Neurosciences Building, co Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski
Nov
03

Vapor Intrusion and Indoor Air Sampling Issues
Fri, Nov 03, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker:Mr. Rafat Abbasi, P.E.
Senior Project Manager
School Unit-Cypress Office
School Property Evaluation and Cleanup Division
Cypress, CAAbstract:
The vapor intrusion (VI) into the buildings is one of the most potent pathways for assessing risks associated with releases of chemicals into the environment. In cases where groundwater is shallow, VI becomes an issue of immediate concern to the occupants of the building and poses challenges with respect to acquisition of quality data, associated evaluation, and subsequent need for mitigation. There are approximately 375,000-500,000 contaminated sites in the United States. Half of the high priority sites are contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) and approximately half of those have possible VI of TCE. Almost a quarter of high priority sites have VI issues associated with TCE. As the field of VI evolves and environmental community gains experience in this field, it also realizes the need for higher quality data for risk-management decision-making. In this presentation, we will attempt to address approaches for screening sites for VI and indoor air sampling and highlight issues associated with acquisition of indoor air data. Based on our agency experience, we will also try to provide some recommendations to address data quality issues.

Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 156
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Nov
03

Honors Program Colloquium: Flight Test; Towards the Unexplored
Fri, Nov 03, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Engineering Honors Colloquium lecture given by Capt. Aaron Tucker a C5/C17 Experimental Test Pilot
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Faculty and Honors Program Students

Contact: Erika Chua
Nov
03

Materials Science Seminar
Fri, Nov 03, 2006 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

IS SEGREGATION-INDUCED GRAIN BOUNDARY EMBRITTLEMENT
A POLYMORPHOUS MELTING PROCESS?Nghi Q. Lam
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, IL 60439 A number of important contributions to our understanding of solid-state amorphization and segregation-induced grain boundary embrittlement have been made
in recent years. The two processes have traditionally been regarded as completely different phenomena belonging to different branches of materials science. However, recent systematic studies on Ni-S alloys have revealed striking similarities in the kinetics of S-implantation-induced amorphization and S-induced grain boundary embrittlement. In this presentation, we examine the underlying thermodynamics and show that both phenomena can be regarded as a polymorphous melting process. Disorder-induced melting of grain boundaries gives rise to low fracture resistance due to the ability of a crack to propagate readily through amorphous material.All first year MASC students are required to attend.

Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Petra Pearce
Nov
06

BME Seminar Series
Mon, Nov 06, 2006 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

"Tissue Engineering for Myocardial Repair"Randall Lee, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Adam Wyatt
Nov
06

Data Integration and Planning Techniques for Automatic Web Service Composition
Mon, Nov 06, 2006 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Dr. Jose Luis Ambite
Computer Scientist
USC/Information Sciences InstituteTITLE: Data Integration and Planning Techniques for Automatic Web Service CompositionABSTRACT:
In this talk, I will present three approaches to web service composition. The first approach uses data integration techniques to automatically generate a composition of information-gathering services.
The advantages of this approach include that the services can be precisely described using logical (Datalog) rules, and that it can generate recursive compositions. However, the modeling of complex inputs is limited. The second approach overcomes such limitations by using planning techniques and a more expressive logic (a first-order logic:
Powerloom) to model complex relational inputs and outputs of services.
This approach has been applied to generate scientific data-processing workflows. Finally, I will briefly describe our current work on extending the previous approaches to consider both information-gathering and causal effects of services.BIO:
Jose Luis Ambite is a Computer Scientist at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California. His research interests include information integration, automated planning,databases, and knowledge representation. His current focus is on automatic web service composition, a problem that combines aspects of planning and information integration. Dr. Ambite has published extensively on planning and information integration. He has served as technical reviewer and program committee member for major funding agencies, journals and conferences. In 2003, he started a series of international workshops on AI for Service Composition (at ICAPS, AAAI, and ECAI). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 1998.

Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 107
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien
Nov
06

VSC: 4th General Meeting
Mon, Nov 06, 2006 @ 06:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 224
Audiences: Viterbi Student Council

Contact: VSC
Nov
07

A Baseband, Impulse Ultra Wideband Transceiver for Low Power Applications
Tue, Nov 07, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker: Dr. Ian O'Donnell, UC BerkeleyAbstract: Low bit-rate, short range radios are being proposed for a variety of applications including remote sensing/control, asset tracking, security, and as a replacement for wired interconnect. While not demanding aggressive throughput, these applications do require low cost, power efficient operation and optionally the ability to perform distance measurements. Unfortunately, current radio performance is up to an order of magnitude away from these cost and power targets. However, ultra-wideband signaling using short impulses presents an attractive alternative that is well-suited to a highly integrated, low power implementation. This talk explores the system performance and power consumption trade-offs, discusses the system specification and low power circuit design, and demonstrates a low power, impulse ultra-wideband transceiver. Based on a digital correlating filter architecture, this transceiver employs the novel approach of duty-cycling the analog gain and sampling circuitry between received pulses to further reduce power consumption. A single-chip front-end design, implemented in a standard digital 0.13micron CMOS process, will be presented. The front-end is comprised of a 1-bit, 1.92Gsample/s ADC, a 50-Ohm input match, 0dB to 42dB of variable gain, programmable control logic, a sub-1-PPM trimmable 60MHz oscillator, and a pulse transmitter. Power consumption was measured at 4mW (RX) and 2mW (TX) for a 30Mpulse/s pulse rate and 0.6mW (RX) and 0.4mW (TX) for 1Mpulse/s at 1.1V. The digital backend functionality was emulated, and extracted simulations predict a power consumption of 3.8mW (tracking) and 33mW (acquisition) during reception at 30Mpulse/s and 0.1mW (tracking) and 1.1mW (acquisition) at 1Mpulse/s.Bio: Ian David O'Donnell received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1993, 1996 and 2006 respectively. His master's topic was in the area of digital, low power, CMOS circuit and system design for a wireless LAN receiver as part of the InfoPad project. From 1996 to 1999 he worked at Silicon Graphics, Inc. as a digital ASIC designer, and in 1999 he joined NVIDIA, Inc. where he worked on high-speed serial design. In 1998 he returned to Berkeley at the Berkeley Wireless Research Center to investigate low cost, low power, short range radio design. His Ph.D. research focused on the demonstration of ultra low power communication through the use of impulse-based ultra-wideband signaling combined with an examination of performance and power consumption trade-offs at the system and circuit levels. In 2006 he received the Jack Neubauer Award from the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society for the best system paper of the year.Host: Prof. Keith Chugg, chugg@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Nov
08

Probabilistic Construction and Numerical Analysis of Model Verification and Validation
Wed, Nov 08, 2006 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker:Alireza Doostan,Ph.D.
John Hopkins University
Department of Civil EngineeringAbstract: In this presentation, some recent developments in verification and validation (V&V) of predictive models are introduced. Verification is a mathematical concept which aims at assessing the accuracy of the solution of a given computational simulation compare to sufficiently accurate or analytical solutions. Validation, on the other hand, is a physics-based issue that aims at appraising the accuracy of a computational simulation compare to experimental data.The proposed developments cast V&V in the form of an approximation-theoretic representation that permits their clear mathematical definition and resolution. In particular, three types of problems will be addressed. First, a-priori and a-posteriori error analysis of spectral stochastic Galerkin schemes, a widely used tool for uncertainty propagation, are discussed. Second, a statistical procedure is developed in order to calibrate the uncertainty associated with parameters of a predictive model from experimental or model-based measurements. An important feature of such data-driven characterization algorithm, is in its ability to simultaneously represent both the intrinsic uncertainty and also the uncertainty due to data limitation.
Third, a stochastic model reduction technique is proposed in order to increase the computational efficiency of spectral stochastic Galerkin schemes for the solution of complex stochastic systems.While the second part of this research is essential in model validation phase, the first part is particularly important as it provides one with basic components of the verification phase.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 203
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Nov
08

Observations of Ice Sheet Dynamics in a Warming Climate from Space
Wed, Nov 08, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Eric Rignot Senior Research Scientist
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Pasadena, CA A little over ten years ago we knew very little about the state of mass equilibrium of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. The nature of our knowledge has changed considerably with the advent of satellite techniques capable of measuring ice motion, surface elevation and more recently gravity. In this presentation, I will review the technique I have been using for the past ten years to study glacier dynamics in Greenland and Antarctica and determine their state of mass balance: satellite radar interferometry. It has been employed to detect ice motion, grounding lines, flow speed up and other detailed features associated with ground water migration at an unprecendented level of precision and spatial details. I will discuss how it has been used in combination with other data to come up with new estimates of the present-day evolution of ice sheets, how these results compare to other techniques (some of which published results as recently as a few weeks ago), and how these results (do not) match predictions made by numerical models that international panels of experts rely on to predict future sea level rise. This work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Admistration's Cryosphere Science Program.
Location: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall, Rm 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: April Mundy
Nov
10

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
Nov
10

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
Nov
10

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
Nov
10

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
Nov
11

SWE: Horseback Riding Retreat
Sat, Nov 11, 2006 @ 09:30 AM - 01:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

WE members, join us for our annual horseback riding trip through Griffith Park. It will be a great opportunity to mingle with other SWEsters and ride horses (beginners are welcome).Spots are limited so sign up fast!! Bring your $23 deposit (cash or check made our to SWE USC) to RTH 210. Please leave it with Maggie Achoy at the front desk of CED.
Location: Griffith Park
Audiences: Undergrad

Contact: SWE
Nov
12

IEEE: 4th Annual World Cup Soccer Tournament
Sun, Nov 12, 2006 @ 11:00 AM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

IEEE is having its 4th Annual Soccer Tournament on Sunday Nov 12th. It's taking place on Cromwell Field starting at 11 AM. Games are 5 on 5, with each team allowed 2 alternates. Sign up sheets are available in RTH 110. First prize for each team member is $25 iTunes and second prize is movie tickets!!!
Location: Cromwell Field
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: IEEE
Nov
13

From Universal Channel Coding to the Tracking of Stopping Times
Mon, Nov 13, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

SPEAKER: Dr. Aslan Tchamkerten, Postdoctoral Associate, MITABSTRACT: We consider point-to-point communication over discrete memoryless channels. Since early 1960's it has been known that, without feedback, the set of achievable rates strongly depends on whether the channel statistics are revealed to the communicating parties. In contrast, if noiseless feedback is available, there is no rate loss under very general assumptions. However, if we now consider the second order question "what is the optimal tradeoff between delay and error probability for universal communication?" the answer is far from clear. Are there blind feedback schemes that perform as quickly and as reliably as if the channel were revealed to the communicating parties? Except for trivial cases (e.g., binary erasure channel) this has been an open question since mid 1970's.In the first part of the talk, we first show that there exist non-trivial families of channels for which universally optimal feedback schemes exist. Maybe somewhat surprisingly, these schemes are not training based. Second, given a pair of channels, we give a simple criterion under which no universally optimal scheme exist for that pair.As part of our quest for robust communication, in the second part of the talk, we address the situation where the feedback channel is noisy. This setting leads to an important synchronization issue when encoder and decoder decide on the basis of stopping times. We provide insights into this issue by solving a new statistical problem, the tracking stopping times problem. Interestingly, this problem is a generalization of the celebrated (Bayesian) change-point problem, and it has several applications in other areas, such as detection and forecasting.This is based on joint work with U. Niesen, E. Telatar, and G. Wornell.Bio: Aslan Tchamkerten received the engineer physicist diploma from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 2000. After finishing the graduate school in communication systems at EPFL in 2001, he started his Ph.D. in the Information Theory Lab., and graduated in 2005. Since 2005 he has been a postdoctoral associate at MIT (EECS).Host: Prof. Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Nov
13

BME Seminar Series
Mon, Nov 13, 2006 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

"Functional Neuroimaging of Complex Animal Behaviors with Microbolus Infusion Pump"Jean-Michel Maarek, D.Ing.
Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering
University of Southern CaliforniaandDaniel Holdschneider, MD
Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Cell and Neurobiology
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Adam Wyatt
Nov
13

Design of Asynchronous Pipelined Systems
Mon, Nov 13, 2006 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

CENG SEMINAR SERIES"Design of Asynchronous Pipelined Systems"Prof. Montek SinghDepartment of Computer ScienceUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillAbstract:In this talk, I will present some of our recent work on several aspects of the design of asynchronous pipelined systems. I will begin with an overview of our asynchronous pipelined circuit styles, focusing especially on Mousetrap, which is a high-speed pipeline style suitable for efficient standard-cell implementations. Mousetrap was chosen for the industrial-strength asynchronous pipelined synthesis flow being developed under the DARPA CLASS program. I will present our recent accomplishments in and experiences with the CLASS synthesis flow. Next I will present a novel approach to "counterflow pipelining," which enables several useful architectural concepts (e.g. preemption, speculation, eager evaluation) to be efficiently implemented in asynchronous pipelined ASICs. The key idea is to send "anti-tokens" opposite to the flow of data in order to preempt computations whose results are deemed to be no longer useful. Unlike existing approaches, our approach is arbiter-free, yet correctly handles all metastability issues. Finally, I will describe a high-level synthesis approach called "loop pipelining," which alleviates performance bottlenecks in iterative specifications. We introduce a novel self-timed ring architecture and a synthesis approach, which allows multiple problem instances to be concurrently computed, thereby obtaining substantial performance improvements (1.3-9.7X).Bio:Montek Singh has been an assistant professor in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill since 2001. He received the PhD degree from Columbia University in 2002, and the BTech degree from IIT Delhi, India. His research interest is in the area of asynchronous circuits and systems. His work has been transfered to industry, including IBM, Boeing, and Handshake Solutions (a Philips subsidiary). He is co-Program Chair for ASYNC 2007. He has received a Best Paper award and a Best Paper Finalist nomination at the ASYNC Symposium, an IBM Faculty Award, and was awarded a contract under the prestigious DARPA CLASS program.Host: Prof. Peter Beerel, Ext. 04481
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Rosine Sarafian
Nov
14

Interface between Information Theory and Estimation Theory: THEORY AND APPLICATIONS
Tue, Nov 14, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

SPEAKER: Prof. Antonia Tulino, University of NaplesABSTRACT: For signals observed in Gaussian noise, there are several interesting intersections between information theory and linear and nonlinear minimum mean-square error (MMSE) estimation.A recently unveiled fundamental relationship between the input-output mutual information and the MMSE achievable by the optimal estimator of the input is now emerging as a powerful new tool that provides with explicit expressions for the sought derivative of the mutual information. This relationship holds for arbitrarily distributed scalar and vector signals, as well as for discrete-input discrete-output channels.Using this new tool, we have been able to analytically solve some of the long-standing constrained optimization problems in information theory. One example of such optimization problems is the problem often encountered in transmitter design of allocating a certain amount of power among a bank of parallel noninteracting channels. Examples abound, both in the wireline and the wireless domains are:* Multicarrier transmission. Signalling takes place over a number of distinct frequency bands, each of which constitutes a parallel channel. These bands may be nonoverlapping or, as in OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), overlapping but with spectral shapes designed to ensure orthogonality. A prime application in the wireline world is the DMT (discrete multitone) technique employed in digital subscriber lines.* Multiantenna communication. If multiple transmit and receive antennas are employed and the transmitter knows the transfer coefficients between the antennas, the left singular vectors of the resulting matrix can be used for signaling and the right singular vectors for reception. The outcome is a set of parallel noninteracting channels.* Power control for fading channels. When the gain of an individual frequency-flat channel varies over time, it can be seen as a collection of parallel channels where each such channel encompasses a group of symbols over which the fading coefficients are identical.* Dispersive channels. For linear dispersive channels or parallel channels with correlated noises, a power-preserving orthonormal linear transformation at transmitter and receiver turns the channel into one with parallel branches with uncorrelated noises and possibly different signal-to-noise ratios.Another example of problems that use this fundamental link between information theory and estimation theory we have been able to analytically solve is the monotonic Decrease of the Non-Gaussianness of the Sum of independent Random Variables. Although long suspected that the non-Gaussianness decreases at each convolution, it was not shown until 2004 (in the equivalent version of increasing differential entropy) by Artstein, Ball, Barthe and Naor by means of a tour-de-force in functional analysis. Using the relationship between non-Gaussianness and MMSE in Gaussian channels, we will give a simplified proof of the above result dealing with the more general setting of non-identically distributed random variables.Bio:
Antonia Maria Tulino was born in Napoli, Italy, on September 12, 1971. She received the Dr. Engr. degree (summa cum laude) from the Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy, in 1995 and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from the Seconda Universita degli Studi di Napoli, Napoli, Italy, in 1999. In 1999, she was a Research Scientist at the Center for Wireless Communications (CWC), Oulu, Finland. From January 2000 to February 2001, she was a post-doctoral visitor with Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. From February 2001 to November 2002, she was an Assistant Professor with the Dipartmento di Ingegneria delle Telecomunicazioni, Universita degli Studi del Sannio, Benevento, Italy. From November 2002 she has been an Associate Professor with the Dipartmento di Ingegneria Elettronica e delle Telecomunicazioni, Universita degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II", Napoli, Italy. She is periodically appointed as a visiting research staff member in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University. Her current research interests are in the areas of statistical signal processing, information theory, and random matrix theory.Host: Prof. Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Nov
14

Codes for Optical CDMA
Tue, Nov 14, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

SPEAKER: Mr. Reza Omrani, Communication Sciences Institute, University of Southern CaliforniaABSTRACT: There has been a recent upsurge of interest in applying code division multiple access (CDMA) techniques to optical networks. This interest is in part due to the increase in security afforded by OCDMA as measured for instance, by the increased effort needed to intercept an OCDMA signal, and in part due to the flexibility and simplicity of network control afforded by optical-CDMA (OCDMA). There are two main approaches to code design for OCDMA systems. The first approach uses direct sequence encoding, which employs {0,1} sequences with good correlation properties as code sequences, and the data sequence modulates the code sequence simply by switching it on or off. These may be termed as 1-D optical orthogonal codes (OOC) since the code sequences are only associated with the time dimension. It has recently been recognized that in order to bring down the required chip rate to within practical limits, it is desirable that 2-D {0,1} codes be used in which the code sequence consist of a 2-D pattern in which the second dimension corresponds to wavelength.The second OCDMA approach is via phase encoding in which the code sequences are collections of complex numbers of unit magnitude with each entry associated to a carrier of different wavelength. The phase of an element in the Î»-th sequence corresponds to the phase of the Î»-th carrier. The focus of our work is on efficient code design for OCDMA systems under both direct sequence and phase encoding approaches.We first introduce some new bounds on the size of 1-D and 2-D OOCs. Subsequently, the focus is on explicit constructions for 2-D wavelength-time OOCs. We introduce four major constructions for wavelength-time OOCs which include a method to map 1-D OOCs to 2-D OOCs, a method based on Reed-Solomon Codes, a method which concatenates a constant weight code with a Reed-Solomon based 2-D OOC and finally a function-plot method in which the values of an appropriately-chosen function are used to derive the 2-D codes. The functions used in function plot construction include polynomial functions and rational functions.A major drawback of OCDMA systems is their low spectral efficiency. In this work we explore a modulation scheme for OCDMA systems which has the potential for increasing the spectral efficiency manyfold. We term this scheme code-cycle modulation (CCM). Under this modulation scheme, different cyclic shifts of the code sequence assigned to each user are used to transmit M-ary information. While this means of modulation was known earlier in the literature, most prior modulation schemes needed M different receiver units to recover the data resulting in increased complexity and power. In this work we provide a novel receiver architecture with significantly reduced power requirements and complexity.Following this, we turn our attention to phase-encoded OCDMA. We first derive a mathematical model for the output of this system and based on this model we introduce a metric to design code sequences for asynchronous transmission. Then, a connection between the phase-encoding sequence design problem and the PMEPR (peak to mean envelope power ratio) problem which arises in OFDM transmission is established. We construct a family of phase sequences which are based on the theory of generalized bent functions and with properties desirable for asynchronous phase encoding OCDMA systems.BIO: Reza Omrani received his B.S. degree from the University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, and his M.S. degree from the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, both in electrical engineering, in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He did his PhD dissertation under the supervision of Professor P. Vijay Kumar at the Communication Sciences Institute, Department of Electrical Engineering-Systems, USC. His research interests include low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, network coding, combinatorics and signal design for good correlation properties.Host: Michael J. Neely, mjneely@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Nov
14

USC CS Colloquium Lecture Series
Tue, Nov 14, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

John P. WilsonProfessor of GeographyUSCTitle: "Fusing Computer Science and Geography: Research Advances and Opportunities in Geographic Information Science"Abstract:This talk will start from a typical geographic research project – the Green Visions Plan project that provides a vision and tools to support public and private investment to protect and restore native biodiversity, improve watershed health, and remedy inequities in recreational open space across the southern California region. From there, the talk will endeavor to situate this work and similar projects within the rapidly evolving field of geographic information science and the Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST) Body of Knowledge that was recently published by the University Consortium of Geographic Information Science and the Association of American Geographers. This leads to a discussion of the role of geography and computer science as fundamental building blocks for the next generation geographic information science toolsets. The talk concludes by noting some of the ongoing research projects in the USC GIS Research Laboratory and how they might advance those tools and the accompanying datasets.Biography:Dr. John P. Wilson is Professor of Geography at the University of Southern California where he directs the GIS Research Laboratory and also holds an adjunct appointment as Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. From 1998 to 2001 he was Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Southern California. From 1992 to 1997 he was Professor of Geography in the Department of Earth Sciences, Adjunct Professor of Soil Science in the Department of Plant and Soil Science, and Director of the Geographic Information and Analysis Center at Montana State University. His early career was an Assistant Professor (1984-1990) and then Associate Professor of Geography (1990-1994) with corresponding adjunct appointments in Soil Science at Montana State University. He founded the Geographic Information and Analysis Center at Montana State University in 1989 and the GIS Research Laboratory at the University of Southern California in 1997. He has held several visiting appointments in environmental studies, geography, and planning at the Australian National University, the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and the University of Waikato in New Zealand.He founded the journal Transactions in GIS (Blackwell Publishers) in 1996 and has served as Editor-in-Chief since its inception. He has served on the editorial board of Applied Geography (1992-2001) and has just started a four-year term on the editorial board of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. He has chaired the Applied Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (1989-1991) and the Research Committee of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (2002-2005). He is currently President of the University Consortium of Geographic Information Science and an active participant in the UNIGIS International Network, a worldwide consortium of 20+ institutions who collaborate on the development and delivery of online geographic information science academic programs. His research is focused on GIS tool development, spatial analysis, and environmental modeling. He has published numerous books and articles on these topics, including two edited volumes Terrain Analysis: Principles and Applications (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 2000) and the Handbook of Geographic Information Science (Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 2006). Much of this work is collaborative and multidisciplinary in character with the general goal of improving our knowledge and understanding of human impact on both the natural and built environments. The work of his group can be seen on the website http://www.uscgislab.net/. He has received numerous honors for his research and teaching, the most recent being a Mellon Award for Excellence in Mentoring from the Center for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Southern California (2005) and an Albert S. Raubenheimer Outstanding Faculty Award for his research, teaching, and service contributions in the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the University of Southern California (2004). Host: Cyrus Shahabi

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien
Nov
14

IEEE: General Meeting
Tue, Nov 14, 2006 @ 05:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

TOPIC: Implantable Biomimetic Electronics as Neural Prostheses for lost Cognitive FunctionDr. Berger will present the results of a multidisciplinary project developing a microchip-based neural prosthesis for the hoppocampus, a region of the brain responsible for the formation of long-term memories.
Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: IEEE
Nov
14

Industry Panel Night
Tue, Nov 14, 2006 @ 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Great netwroking chance for everyone. Get your questions answered about Civil, ISE, and AME/ME. Bring questions and your appetite!
Location: Mark Taper Hall Of Humanities (THH) - 114
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: NSBE
Nov
15

The Information Lost in Erasures
Wed, Nov 15, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

SPEAKER: Professor Sergio Verdu, Princeton UniversityABSTRACT: In this talk we examine the impact of erasures on the fundamental limits of lossless data compression, lossy data compression, channel coding and denoising. Particular attention is focused on the regime of sporadic erasures.We define the erasure entropy of a collection of random variables as the sum of entropies of the individual variables conditioned on all the rest. The erasure entropy rate is shown to be the minimal amount of bits per erasure required to recover the lost information in the limit of small erasure probability.When we allow recovery of the erased symbols within a prescribed degree of distortion, the fundamental tradeoff is described by the erasure rate-distortion function which we characterize. We also examine the decrease of channel capacity due to sporadic erasures. The fundamental limits when no additional encoded information is available are also studied; in this case the erased and corrupted information is reconstructed by the denoiser solely on the basis of its context.Based on joint work with Prof. Tsachy Weissman (Stanford University).Bio: Sergio Verdu is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984. His 1998 text "Multiuser Detection" earned him the 2000 Frederick E. Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education. Elected IEEE Fellow in 1992 for "contributions to multiuser communications and to information theory", he received the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000. In 2005 he was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain.He has received the 1992 IEEE D. Fink Paper Award, the 1998 Information Theory Outstanding Paper Award, a Golden Jubilee Paper Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society, the 2000 Paper Award from the Japan Telecommunications Advancement Foundation, the 2002 Leonard G. Abraham Prize Award from the IEEE Communications Society, and the 2006 Joint IEEE Communications/Information Theory Paper Award.Sergio Verdu served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 1997 and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory.Host: Prof. Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Nov
15

Biomedical Ultrasound
Wed, Nov 15, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Kirk Shung Professor of Biomedical Engineering Medical Ultrasonic Transducer ResourceUniversity of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-1111 Ultrasound has been used in medicine for many years. There are two major applications of ultrasound: diagnosis and therapy. As a diagnostic tool, its major advantages over other imaging modalities like magnetic resonance imaging, x-ray, CT and nuclear imaging lie in that it is non-invasive, capable of producing images in real-time, more cost-effective and portable. Ultrasound has been found to be of clinical value in many medical disciplines including OB/GYN and cardiology. As the frequency is further increased, applications in ophthalmology, dermatology and small animal imaging are being explored.
Location: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall, Rm 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: April Mundy
Nov
16

Photons in the Bio-Nanotech Era
Thu, Nov 16, 2006 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

DISTINGUISHED LECTURER SERIES"Photons in the Bio-Nanotech Era"Prof. Sadik EsenerUniversity of California, San DiegoGerontology Auditorium (GER-124)Thursday, November 16, 20062:00-3:00p.m.[A reception will follow at 3:00p.m.]Abstract: One of the important scientific missions over the next decade will be the exploration of the "Inner Space" at the cellular and molecular levels. Indeed developing a detailed understanding of the "Intra Cellular Nanoworld" appears to be the key for fighting many major diseases including cancer. This mission to the biological Nanoworld is dictated on one hand by the desire to understand life at the molecular level and on the other hand by the need to reduce suffering, death, and the economic burden of these diseases on the society. Since the invention of the microscope optics and biology have been strongly tied together with the uncovering the cellular structure of biological tissues. However, as the research interest shifts from micro-systems to nano-systems for the exploration of the "inner space" new challenges and opportunities emerge in the use of photons. This presentation will first summarize the techniques we are developing at the NanoTumor Center at UCSD and its partner institutions established by NCI to investigate the use of Nanotechnology to fight cancer. Challenges and opportunities to photonic techniques when compared to these new techniques will be discussed. Several on going experiments and related results will be highlighted.Biography: Sadik Esener is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials Sciences at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He holds a Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering from UCSD (1987). He is the Director and PI of the UCSD Cancer Nanotechnology Center funded by the National Cancer Institute. Previously he served as the Director of the Center for Heterogeneously Integrated Photonics Systems (CHIPS), a multi-university DARPA funded opto-center for biophotonics and nanophotonics. From 1997 to 2001, he has served as the director of the Opto-Electronic Stacked Processors (OESP) industry/university consortium on Free Space Optical Interconnects and on the integration of Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser arrays. From 1998 to 2001, he also was the Director of the Fast Read-out Optical Storage consortium on parallel accessing optical disks, partially supported by DARPA and partially by Industry. He has authored several book chapters, and organized and chaired scientific international conferences. Esener is also a co-founder of several companies including Nanogen Inc. that relates to his work on electrically addressed gene chips, Call/Recall Inc. that relates to his work on multilayer optical disk storage, Optical Micro Machines and Ziva Inc. that relate to his work on all optical switching and free space optics, and Genoptix Inc., that relates to his more recent work in biophotonics. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America.Host: Prof. Alexander Sawchuk
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Rosine Sarafian
Nov
16

Energy Loss Mechanisms in Micromechanical Resonators
Thu, Nov 16, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Dr. Julie Zhili HaoAssistant ProfessorDepartment of Mechanical EngineeringOld Dominion UniversityNorfolk, VirginiaABSTRACT
Micromechanical resonators are of great interests for a wide range of applications, such as rotation rate sensors (gyroscopes), electrical filters, and physics research instruments. For their practical applications, quality factors (Q) or energy loss mechanisms of micromechanical resonators are of critical importance, as a higher Q in these devices translates to higher sensitivity, lower motional resistance, better stability, and lower power consumption. Therefore, it is desirable to design and fabricate micromechanical resonators with ultra-high Q or very little energy loss. To this end, we need to understand and analyze energy loss mechanisms in such devices, not only for improving their performance, but also for establishing the fundamental limit of the Q. In fact, arising from its own nature, each loss mechanism in a micromechanical resonator exhibits a unique phenomenon that is governed by its related theory and can be analytically expressed and experimentally characterized. In this talk, I will discuss the analytical and experimental study on support loss and thermoelastic damping (TED) in micromechanical resonators. From this study, the closed-form expressions for their quantitative evaluation are obtained, shedding significant insights into the geometrical design and choice of materials in high-Q micromechanical resonators.BIO
Julie Z. Hao received the B.S and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, in 1994 and 1997, respectively. She received her doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Central Florida in 2000. Her dissertation topic was the research and development of a MEMS-based cooling system for microelectronics. After graduation, Dr. Hao worked as a MEMS Engineer in industry for two years and was involved in the development of optical MEMS and microfluidic products. From 2002-2006, she worked in the Integrated MEMS Laboratory at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. In July 2006, Dr. Hao joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Old Dominion University. Her research focuses on the development of MEMS devices for sensory, biomedical, and communications applications. These include high precision gyroscopes, bulk-mode resonators, high-Q biosensors, as well as microfluidic devices. Also, Dr. Hao works on the analytical and experimental study of complex multidisciplinary micromechanics that is critical for the performance of MEMS devices and microsystems.

Location: Laufer Library, RRB 208
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: April Mundy
Nov
16

CS Distinguished Lecture Series
Thu, Nov 16, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Dr. Peter NorvigDirector of Research
Google, Inc.Title: "Theorizing from Data: Avoiding the Capital Mistake" Abstract: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's words from 1891 remain true today. Researchers in computational linguistics and information retrieval now have a million times more data than was available 30 years ago. This talk explores what this data can do for problems in language understanding, translation, information extraction, and inference, and extrapolates to what more data may bring in the future.Biography: Peter Norvig is the Director of Research at. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the leading textbook in the field. Previously he was head of Computational Sciences at NASA and a faculty member at USC and Berkeley.Hosted by: Prof. Ram Nevatia
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien
Nov
16

ASBME: Med School Night
Thu, Nov 16, 2006 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Todd Bennett, founder of the Berkeley Review, will be speaking about medical school requirements, the application process, and interviews!
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 118
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: ASBME
Nov
16

Science, Serendipity and the Search for Truth: Uncertainty
Thu, Nov 16, 2006 @ 07:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Science, Serendipity and the Search for Truth puts science on stage in an informal series of conversations and performances. This event focuses on uncertainty, with Annenberg's Larry Pryor and JPL senior research scientist Moustafa Chahine investigating how and why journalists failed in their efforts to understand and convey the true nature of uncertainty surrounding the global warming issue. Showing how uncertainty is a central tool in art, USC's Thornton School of Music's composer Veronika Krausas, accompanied by performers, will discuss and illustrate how uncertainty plays an essential role in music. And finally, uncertainty in engineering? You bet. USC alumni Farzad Naeim, an engineer who played a leading role in the structural engineering of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, will tell us how it works.
Location: Annenberg Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski
Nov
17

Engineering New Treatments for Cardiovascular Disease Via Optimal Design and Physiologic Simulation
Fri, Nov 17, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Alison L. Marsden, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow
Stanford University
Stanford, CA Rigorous modeling and optimization of treatments for cardiovascular disease according to engineering principles provide a framework for testing new surgeries and interventions at no risk to patients. Ultimately these tools have the potential to complement doctors' clinical judgement and experience to improve outcomes for patients suffering from both congenital and acquired heart disease. In this talk I will discuss the application of computational fluid dynamics to the Fontan surgery, a treatment for severe congenital heart defects in which a patient is born with only one functioning ventricle. Patient specific geometric models were used to evaluate the performance of current Fontan surgical designs by quantifying fluid-mechanical efficiency under physiologic conditions including rest, graded exercise, and respiration (Marsden, et. al, Ann Biomed Eng, to appear). This work inspired a new "y-graft" design of the Fontan surgery. Evaluation of the new design demonstrates improved efficiency and lower Fontan pressures. Optimization is commonly used in engineering industry for design, but neither simulation or optimization are currently used to test surgical designs in advance of trying them on patients. Optimization of new surgical designs for patient specific models such as the Fontan surgery requires methods that are appropriate for expensive fluid mechanics problems with little or no gradient information. Efficient derivative-free surrogate-based optimization methods have been previously successful in reducing aerodynamic noise generated by airfoils in turbulent flow (Marsden, et. al J Fluid Mech, to appear). A similar set of tools is now being applied to fully couple optimization algorithms with time-dependent simulations of blood flow. I will present two model problems for optimization that are representative of important cardiovascular problems, a vessel bifurcation and an end-to-side anastomosis. Next, I will discuss the application of optimization tools in future work for the design of the Fontan surgery. Finally, I will describe the potential broad impact of optimization in designing devices and surgical procedures for congenital heart disease, coronary artery disease, and peripheral vascular disease.
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall (GFS), Room 107
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: April Mundy
Nov
17

Using Advanced Site Diagnostics and In-Situ Treatment Technologies...
Fri, Nov 17, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Using Advanced Site Diagnostics and In-Situ Treatment Technologies to Optimize Environmental RemediationSpeaker:Stephen S. Koenigsberg, Ph.D.
Vice President
WSP Environmental Strategies
www.wspes.com
www.wspgroup.comAbstractSite remediation has evolved from energy intensive, mechanically driven remediation processes to more effective and cost efficient in situ processes. In situ remediation is best served when it incorporates advanced technologies, such as molecular biology, stable isotope analysis, and advanced geophysical methods. These advanced technologies assure the optimization of in situ bioremediation, chemical oxidation, chemical reduction, treatment trains thereof, and even monitored natural attenuation. Furthermore, there is a great deal of variation within the remedial methods themselves, which can also be optimized with the proper information and understanding to serve the ultimate goal of site closure.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall, Room 156
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Nov
17

Engineering Honors Colloquium Lecture
Fri, Nov 17, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Engineering Honors Colloquium lecture, speaker TBA
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Faculty and Honors Program Students

Contact: Erika Chua
Nov
19

Engineering Futures
Sun, Nov 19, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Your future employer wants you to have top-notch teamwork and interpersonal skills. Come tune them up for free with professional training at the Engineering Futures workshop.An Engineering Futures workshop is an interactive training course in teamwork developed specifically from materials used in Fortune 500 companies to help engineering students be successful in their careers. It is presented through slides, role plays, group discussion, team exercises, and case studies by a trained Tau Beta Pi alumni.The workshop is free and food is provided.
All engineering, science, and food is provided.To learn more about Engineering Futures and the program's benefits, visit TBP headquarters' website at http://www.tbp.org/pages/WhatWeDo/EF.cfm.
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 118
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Tau Beta Pi
Nov
20

BME Seminar Series
Mon, Nov 20, 2006 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

"Biomechanics at the Micro Scales"William Tang, PhD
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
University of California, Irvine
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Adam Wyatt
Nov
21

Error-Control and Constrained Coding Solutions for DNA Microarrays and Aptamer Array Designs
Tue, Nov 21, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

SPEAKER: Professor Olgica Milenkovic, University of Colorado, BoulderABSTRACT: DNA microarrays and aptamer arrays are two classes of systems used for analyzing the dynamical activity of cells in terms of their RNA and protein fingerprints. These macromolecule arrays provide valuable information for disease diagnostics and monitoring, as well as for the development and testing of genetic drugs and therapeutic RNA antibodies. In the past, substantial efforts were made to increase the quality of the manufacturing process and to improve the reliability of microarrays and aptamer arrays. Nevertheless, there still exist many issues that have to be resolved in order to ensure proper functionality of these arrays in the presence of failures and dropout events occurring during and after the production process.In the first part of the talk, we focus on several problems related to DNA microarrays. We briefly introduce gene regulatory networks and the process of reverse engineering regulatory networks in terms of DNA microarray data. We then proceed to describe how classical error-control coding techniques can be used to increase the accuracy of data generated by DNA arrays subjected to spot failures. We propose an integrated framework for analyzing quality control and error-correction in DNA microarrays generated by photolitographic VLSIPS (Very Large Scale Immobilized Polymer Synthesis) methods. In this context, the issues of base scheduling, mask design and border-length minimization, construction of quality control arrays and good probe multiplexing strategies are addressed. The presented analysis is based on combining and extending results regarding balanced error-correcting codes and superimposed codes.In the second part of the talk, we briefly describe aptamers and the SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment) process used for identifying and isolating RNA aptamers. We then proceed to describe a generalization of the paradigm of constrained coding and its application to structured selection and generation of RNA aptamers. The proposed approach is based on viewing (folded) RNA aptamers as words of regular and context-free grammars which include bio-chemical constraints in their production rules. The grammar based approach to constrained coding allows for counting the number of aptamer structures and for generating such structures in terms of well known combinatorial techniques.The material to be presented in the talk is self-contained and it is assumed that the audience does not have a background in molecular biology.BIO: Olgica Milenkovic received her MS degree in mathematics and PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2001 and 2002, respectively. In August 2002, she joined the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In the summer of 2005, she was a Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) Visitor at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies. She is currently a Visiting Professor at the Center for Information Theory and Applications at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include error-control and constrained coding, analysis of algorithms, combinatorics, probability theory, and bioinformatics.Host: Prof. Keith Chugg, chugg@usc.edu
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 163
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Nov
21

USC CS Colloquium Series
Tue, Nov 21, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Dr. David ChiangComputer ScientistUSC Information Sciences InstituteTitle: Finding Structure in Statistical Machine TranslationAbstract:The introduction of data-driven methods into machine translation (MT) in the 1990s created a whole new way of doing MT, and the recent move from the word-based models developed at IBM to the phrase-based models developed by Och and others has led to a breakthrough in MT performance.
The next breakthrough, the move to syntax-based models that deal with the hierarchical, meaning-bearing, structures of sentences, is waiting in the wings. It is only recently that such models, based on synchronous context-free grammars and related formalisms, have become top contenders in large-scale evaluations such as those conducted by NIST, especially for Chinese-to-English translation. And this framework offers many avenues for potential advances.I will present Hiero, the first grammar-based MT system, to our knowledge, to outperform a phrase-based baseline when measured using the widely-used BLEU metric, and describe several related approaches. Two current challenges for this approach are: (1) how can the training and translation process be made efficient for extremely large amounts of data? (2) how can we obtain synchronous grammars that better model the structure of a parallel corpus? I will present some recent progress and future work at ISI that addresses these two questions.Biography:Dr. David Chiang has been a computer scientist at the Information Sciences Institute since January 2006. He completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Dr. Aravind Joshi, working on formal language theory, statistical natural language processing, and computational biological sequence analysis. His current research is on using grammars and parsing for statistical machine translation.

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien
Nov
27

Polymers for Bionanotechnology
Mon, Nov 27, 2006 @ 11:00 AM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Graduate Seminar
"Polymers for Bionanotechnology."Dr. Karen Christman
Postdoctoral Scholar
University of California at Los AngelesAbstract
Over the past few decades, techniques to produce submicron and
nanoscale features on surfaces have emerged. While such advances
were initially applied to the electronics field, the fusion of biology and
nanotechnology has begun to provide useful tools for biosensors,
biomaterials, and tissue engineering applications. The ability to
spatially orient and anchor proteins in particular affords many
opportunities for biotechnology and medicine. Site-specifically
immobilizing proteins, forming protein assemblies, and fabricating threedimensional
biological nanostructures using various polymers and
lithography techniques will be discussed.Monday, November 27, 2006
Seminar at 11:00 a.m.
HED 116
The Scientific Community is Cordially Invited to Attend.
Location: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Petra Pearce
Nov
27

Loop Calculus in Statistical Physics and Information Theory
Mon, Nov 27, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

SPEAKER: Dr. Michael Chertkov, Los Alamos National LaboratoryABSTRACT: In this talk I describe loop calculus. This recently developed theoretical tool allows to express partition function of a statistical inference physics problem on a graph in terms of a series, where each term is associated with a loop on the graph. Utility of the loop calculus for analysis of modern (Low-Density-Parity-Check) error-correction codes, and also for improving decoding, is demonstrated.Bio: Chertkov's areas of interest include theoretical physics and non-equilibrium statistical physics applied to error-correction (information) theory, turbulence (statistical hydrodynamics) and statistical and nonlinear optics.Chertkov received his Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1996, and his M.Sc. from Novosibirsk State University in 1990. After his Ph.D., Chertkov spent three years at Princeton University as the R.H. Dicke Fellow in the Department of Physics. He joined Los Alamos National Lab in 1999, initially as the J.R. Oppenheimer Fellow in the Theoretical Division. In 2002, he became a full-term technical staff member in the same division at LANL.Host: Prof. Keith Chugg, chugg@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Nov
27

BME Seminar Series
Mon, Nov 27, 2006 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

"Steady-State Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging"Krishna Nayak, PhD
Assistant Professor of EE-Systems
University of Southern California
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Adam Wyatt
Nov
29

Understanding Interfacial Processes:....
Wed, Nov 29, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker:Dr. Megan Ferguson, Postdoctoral Fellow
Occidental College
Los Angeles, CA Understanding interfacial processes: TiO2-photocatalyzed As(III) oxidation and Bacterial predation by Bdellovibrio bacteriovorusAbstract
The U.S. drinking water standard has recently been revised from 50 ƒÝg L-1 to 10 ƒÝg L-1, thus requiring thousands of water distribution facilities to implement new As removal procedures. However, most As removal technologies treat As(V) much more effectively than As(III), so a pre-oxidation step is recommended for source waters containing As(III) at significant concentrations. The photocatalyzed oxidation of As(III) on titanium dioxide (TiO2) has been critically evaluated as a potential technology to achieve pre-oxidation. Mechanistic studies conducted with batch slurries demonstrated that the extent of As(III) sorption to TiO2 dictates the order of the photooxidation reaction and that photogenerated superoxide plays a major role in this reaction. Experiments with fixed-bed, flow-through reactors did not suffer from catalyst poisoning or severe mass transport limitations. The UV requirement for this photooxidation of micromolar levels of As(III) was sufficiently small that both a 365 nm handheld lamp and natural sunlight were effective. Based on these findings, TiO2-photocatalyzed As(III) oxidation could be a viable pre-oxidation technology for certain small water distribution facilities.
The predation of E. coli by Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus is a very different example of interactions at an interface. B. bacteriovorus burrows into the periplasm of other gram-negative bacteria, where it feeds on the prey cell cytoplasm and ultimately divides, lyses the prey cell, and moves on to new prey. Understanding these microbial interactions could contribute to many potential applications in which B. bacteriovorus is used to reduce unwanted bacteria in agriculture, medicine, and industry. In these studies, atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used in contact, tapping, and force modes to characterize the cell surface properties over the course of B. bacteriovorus infection. Force curves taken in buffer solution show that the adhesive force between a cell and the AFM tip increases significantly after an E. coli cell has been infected.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall, Room 203
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Nov
29

Chemical Kinetic Modeling of Alkane Ignition
Wed, Nov 29, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Tim BarckholtzExxonMobil Research and EngineeringFairfax, VirginiaThis talk will summarize work on extending high temperature kinetic models to lower temperatures, for which the ignition process is significantly different than that at high temperatures. A single, unified model has been constructed for the combustion of all alkane isomers from CH4 through C5H12 as well as for n C6H14, n C7H16, and iso C8H18. A variety of techniques were used in the assembly of the model. Sophisticated ab initio calculations were employed for the prediction of the isomerization rates of peroxy radicals; abstraction rates were generated by using linear free-energy relationships; and many rates were derived empirically or semi-empirically. The complete, pressure-dependent model has over 700 chemical species and 11,000 reactions. The performance of the model is quite good with respect to the prediction of ignition delays in rapid compression machines and other experimental devices. Finally, a methodology for the drastic reduction of reacting species in this model will be summarized, in which the sub-model for n-heptane can be reduced from approximately 250 species to less than 40 for use in CFD codes.

Location: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall, SLH, Room 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: April Mundy
Nov
30

De-Watering of Hunton Reservoir – What Makes It Work
Thu, Nov 30, 2006 @ 12:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Distinguished LectureDe-Watering of Hunton Reservoir – What Makes It Work?Dr. Mohan Kelkar
Department of Petroleum Engineering
The University of TulsaAbstract
Hunton Reservoir in Oklahoma represents one of the largest discoveries in Oklahoma in
recent history. Since 1995, several fields in Hunton Reservoir have been exploited by
various operators. The principle behind this exploitation remains the same. The wells
produce large quantities of water, and along with it, significant quantities of gas, and
sometimes, oil. Examination of various fields producing from Hunton reservoir indicates
that the economic success from these fields is not uniform. Some fields produce
significant quantities of oil, whereas, some fields only produce gas. In some fields,
horizontal wells work the best, whereas, in some other fields, vertical wells do a good job.
The water production from the fields ranges from as low as few hundred barrels per day
to several thousands of barrels per day.
In this presentation, we present the results from various fields to indicate the
parameters needed in Hunton field to make it economically successful. We restrict our
evaluation to parameters which can be easily measured or are readily available. These
include log data (gamma ray, resistivity, neutron and density), initial potential data,
production data (oil, gas, and water – if available) and well configuration (vertical or
horizontal). By comparing the recovery of oil and gas to various reservoir parameters,
we develop methodology for predicting the future success of the field. For example, a
clear relationship exists between porosity of the rock and initial hydrocarbon saturation.
Higher the oil saturation, better is the recovery factor. Initial potential is critical in
determining the possible recovery. Horizontal wells cost 1.5 to 2 times more than
vertical wells, but may not provide the additional recovery to justify the costs.
Similar formations exist in other parts of the U.S. If we want to extend the
success of some of the fields to other areas, we need clear guidelines in terms what is
needed to exploit those fields. This presentation provides some of those guidelines based
on the examination of the currently producing fields.Thursday, November 30, 2006
Seminar at 12:45pm
OHE 122
Refreshments will be served after the seminar in the HED Lobby.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Petra Pearce
Nov
30

SWE: Gingerbread House Making
Thu, Nov 30, 2006 @ 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

SWE's last general meeting for the year.Come ready to celebrate the holidays and compete in our annual gingerbread house decorating contest.
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 101
Audiences: Undergrad

Contact: SWE

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