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Events for November 27, 2007

  • Biophotonics: Lighting the way

    Tue, Nov 27, 2007 @ 03:00 PM

    Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Dr. Andrea ArmaniCalifornia Institute of TechnologyAbstractFor many biological and chemical experiments, a sensor must have high sensitivity, high specificity, and fast response time. There are many technologies which are able to achieve one or two of these three requirements, but many still face fundamental sensitivity or response limitations.Silica optical resonators are able to overcome these limitations because of the high quality factor (Q). In their application as a single molecule sensor, the sensitivity is derived from the long photon lifetime inside the microcavity, and the specificity is derived from functionalization of the silica surface. During the initial series of label-free detection experiments, pure Interleukin-2 (IL-2) solutions were injected into the volume surrounding the microtoroid. The microtoroid successfully detected step-like shifts in resonance wavelength from individual IL-2 molecules binding. Additional experiments have shown that even in the more complex environment of serum individual binding events of IL-2 are still resolved. Therefore, this single molecule sensor will enable research in new areas of biophysics and cell biology.

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir

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  • Broadcasting without Knowing the Channel: Outage-Efficient Transmission

    Tue, Nov 27, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    SPEAKER: Dr. Wenyi Zhang, Post-Doc, CSIABSTRACT: A prevailing assumption in multiuser information theory is that the transmitter(s) has perfect channel state information (CSI). However, transmit CSI may not be readily available under certain scenarios, for example, in fading channels, or in lack of an adequate feedback link. In this talk, we investigate a fading Gaussian broadcast channel (BC) without transmit CSI. Specifically, we consider a quasi-static scenario, to model delay-sensitive applications over slowly time-varying fading channels, and characterize system performance by outage achievable rate regions. For scalar-input channels, we propose two coding schemes: blind dirty paper coding (B-DPC), and statistical superposition coding (S-SC). Both schemes lead to the same outage achievable rate region, which always dominates that of time-sharing, irrespective of the particular fading distributions. We also show that the S-SC scheme can be extended to BCs with multiple transmit antennas. (Joint work with S. Kotagiri and J. N. Laneman)BIO: Wenyi Zhang was born in Chengdu, Sichuan, China in 1979. He received B.E. degree in Automation from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2001; and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering both from the University of Notre Dame, in 2003 and 2006, respectively. He is now affiliated with the Communication Sciences Institute (CSI), the University of Southern California (USC), as a postdoctoral research associate. He was awarded the Michael J. Birck Endowed Graduate Fellowship in 2002-2003, and the Center for Applied Mathematics (CAM) Fellowship of the University of Notre Dame in summer 2004 and 2005-2006. He received the Kaneb Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2005. He is a member of IEEE and Sigma Xi.

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

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  • VSC General Meeting

    Tue, Nov 27, 2007 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Student Activity


    The last Viterbi Student Council meeting of the semester. We'll have more discussion on plans for E-Week as well as other pertinant topics.

    Location: Norman Topping Student Activities Center (TSC) - 205

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Viterbi Student Council (VSC)

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  • Jacobs Engineering Information Session

    Tue, Nov 27, 2007 @ 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Join representatives of this company as they share general company information and available work opportunities.

    Location: Seeley G. Mudd (SGM) 124

    Audiences: All Viterbi Students

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services

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