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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for December
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Dec 01, 2014 @ 12:30 AM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Richard H. Casaburi, M.D., M.Eng, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Medicine Associate Chief of Research, Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Physiology & Medicine Professor, Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Physiology & Medicine Academic Advancement Program
Talk Title: TBA
Biography: http://people.healthsciences.ucla.edu/institution/personnel?personnel_id=47332
Host: Stanley Yamashiro
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Lost in Fathoms: A conversation on art and science collaborations at dawn of the Anthropocene
Mon, Dec 01, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Anaïs Tondeur & Jean-Marc Chomaz, Visual Artist & Director of Research at CNRS in Paris, France
Talk Title: Lost in Fathoms: A conversation on art and science collaborations at dawn of the Anthropocene
Abstract: Anais Tondeur and Jean-Marc Chomaz will discuss their practice art and science and reflect on a year of collaboration which led to the project LOST IN FATHOMS, an art and science investigation around the disappearance of an island. This series of installation is exhibited at GV Art Gallery from October 16th to November 19th, 2014.
In 2012, at the very point where two continents collided, the island of Nuuk disappeared without a trace. At the same time, the 34th International Geological Congress advanced a new era - the Anthropocene: an age where mankind has become a global telluric force. Was the disappearance of Nuuk Island a one-off or a direct consequence of the emergence of the Anthropocene? In one year of research involving the oceanographic fluids laboratories of Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Normale Superieure (FR), and Cambridge University (UK), this project set out to investigate the causes that led Nuuk Island to disappear from the horizon line.
They will discuss how this project challenges our perception of oceanic and geologic time scales and human's impact on the environment and ways this research explores the narrative and profoundly human nature of science through the looking glass of the fiction.
Biography: Anaïs Tondeur is a visual artist who works and lives in Paris. She has been commissioned as an artist in residence at the Hydrodynamics laboratory (LadHyx, CNRS, Polytechnique School) (2014-2013, FR), Les 26 Couleurs in their Centre for New Media Arts (2013, FR), Audax Textiel Museum (2011, NL), the Cité Internationale de la dentelle (2011, FR). Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions in Paris and London and group exhibitions shown nationally and internationally. She graduated from the MA Mixed Media at Royal College of Art in 2010, after completing a BA (Hons) in Textiles at Central Saint Martins in 2008. Anaïs Tondeur is represented exclusively by GV Art gallery, London.
Jean-Marc Chomaz is Director of Research at the CNRS, Professor at Ãcole Polytechnique, Chair of the LaSIPS department of University Paris-Saclay and associate editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. He is Fellow of the American Physical Society (2001), Churchill College (2008) and received the silver medal of CNRS (2005) and the Ampère price of the French Science Academy (2012). His works on soap films, global instability of real flows, vortex breakdown, zigzag instability and turbulence cascade in stratified flow are largely referenced. In 1992, he co-founded the Laboratoire dâHydrodynamique and initiated art and science collaborations that has led to more than twenty installations realized in collaboration with ten different artists which have been shown in France and abroad.
Host:
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Dec 03, 2014 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Steven Low, Caltech
Talk Title: Semidefinite Relaxation of Optimal Power Flow
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: The optimal power flow (OPF) problem seeks to optimize a certain objective, such as power loss, generation cost or user utility, subject to Kirchhoffâs laws, power balance as well as capacity, stability and contingency constraints on the voltages and power flows. It is a fundamental problem that underlies many power system operations and planning. It is nonconvex and many algorithms have been proposed to solve it approximately. A new approach via semidefinite relaxation of OPF has been developed in the last few years.
In this tutorial, we present a bus injection model and a branch flow model, formulate OPF within each model, and prove their equivalence. The complexity of OPF formulated here lies in the nonconvex quadratic constraints on the feasible set of OPF. We characterize these feasible sets that lead to three different convex relaxations based on semidefinite programming (SDP), chordal extension, and second-order cone programming (SOCP). When a convex relaxation is exact, an optimal solution of the original nonconvex OPF can be recovered from every optimal solution of the relaxation. We summarize three types of sufficient conditions that guarantee the exactness of these relaxations.
Biography: Steven H. Low is a Professor of the Department of Computing & Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Electrical Engineering at Caltech. Before that, he was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, and the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems and the IEEE Transactions on Network Science & Engineering, is on the editorial boards of NOW Foundations and Trends in Networking, and in Electric Energy Systems, as well as Journal on Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks. He is an IEEE Fellow and received his B.S. from Cornell and PhD from Berkeley, both in EE.
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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Zhisheng Niu Seminar
Thu, Dec 04, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Zhisheng Niu, Tsinghua University
Talk Title: 5G: A Paradigm Shift of Cellular Networks
Abstract: Abstract: Cellular concept was invented to improve the spectrum efficiency by spectrum reuse and has contributed a lot for the explosive deployment of todayâs mobile communication industry. As mobile data and video traffic is fast growing, the next-generation mobile communication (5G) networks are expected to further provide 10-fold more capacity than 4G mobile networks with the limited spectrum as well as energy resources. To deal with this challenge, the traditional physical- and MAC-layer capacity-enhancement approaches are no more sufficient and efficient. A system- or network-level approach is needed, including rethinking about the existing cellular structure. On the other hand, cellular networks are transforming from just a mobile communication platform to a smart information infrastructure on which more and more always-online type of traffic (e.g., short but frequent signaling packets of various social networks, sensing information of smart earth and smart community, control packets in cooperative heterogeneous wireless networks) need to be handled in an energy-efficient way. As a result, the existing cellular framework should be revisited.
Biography: Zhisheng Niu graduated from Northern Jiaotong University (currently Beijing Jiaotong University), Beijing, China, in 1985, and got his M.E. and D.E. degrees from Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Japan, in 1989 and 1992, respectively. After spending two years at Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan, he joined with Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1994, where he is now a professor at the Department of Electronic Engineering, deputy dean of the School of Information Science and Technology, and director of Tsinghua-Hitachi Joint Lab on Environmental Harmonious ICT. He is also a guest chair professor of Shandong University. His major research interests include queueing theory, traffic engineering, mobile Internet, radio resource management of wireless networks, and green communication and networks.
Dr. Niu has been an active volunteer for various academic societies, including Director for Conference Publications (2010-11) and Director for Asia-Pacific Board (2008-09) of IEEE Communication Society, Membership Development Coordinator (2009-10) of IEEE Region 10, Councilor of IEICE-Japan (2009-11), and council member of Chinese Institute of Electronics (2006-11). He is now a distinguished lecturer (2012-13) of IEEE Communication Society, editor of IEEE Wireless Communication Magazine, associate editor-in-chief of IEEE/CIC joint publication âChina Communicationsâ, standing committee member of both Communication Science and Technology Committee under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China and Chinese Institute of Communications (CIC), and vice chair of the Information and Communication Network Committee of CIC.
Dr. Niu received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from Natural Science Foundation of China in 2009 and the Best Paper Awards (with his students) from the 13th, 15th and 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Communication (APCC) in 2007, 2009, and 2013, respectively. He is now the Chief Scientist of the National Basic Research Program (so called â973 Projectâ) of China on "Fundamental Research on the Energy and Resource Optimized Hyper-Cellular Mobile Communication System" (2012-2016), which is the first national project on green communications in China. He is now a fellow of both IEEE and IEICE.
Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Andreas Molisch
More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/about/news/2014/12/01/distinguished-visiting-fellow-zhisheng-niu/
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elise Herrera-Green
Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/about/news/2014/12/01/distinguished-visiting-fellow-zhisheng-niu/
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CS Distinguished Lecture: Frans Kaashoek (MIT) - The Multicore Evolution and Operating Systems
Thu, Dec 04, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Frans Kaashoek, MIT
Talk Title: The Multicore Evolution and Operating Systems
Series: CS Distinguished Lectures
Abstract: Multicore chips with hundreds of cores will likely be available soon. Although many applications have significant inherent parallelism (e.g., mail servers), their scalability on many cores can be limited by the underlying operating system. We have built or modified several kernels (Corey, Linux, and sv6) to explore OS designs that scale with increasing number of cores. This talk will summarize our experiences by introducing the commutativity rule, a
design method for developing perfectly scalable software.
Joint work with: S. Boyd-Wickizer, A. Clements, Y. Mao, A. Pesterev, R. Morris, and N. Zeldovich
This lecture will be available to stream HERE starting promptly at 3:30 PM.
Biography: Frans Kaashoek is the Charles Piper Professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory since January 1993. Before joining MIT, he was a student at the department of Computer Science (afdeling Informatica) at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He received a Ph.D degree ('92) from the Vrije Universiteit for his thesis Group communication in distributed computer systems, under the guidance of Andy Tanenbaum.
In 1998 Frans cofounded Sightpath Inc, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2000. He also helped found Mazu Networks Inc and served on its board until Riverbed Technology Inc acquired Mazu in 2009.
Host: Wyatt Lloyd
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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AI SEMINAR - Towards a computational framework for how we represent other people
Fri, Dec 05, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Damian Stanley, Caltech
Talk Title: Towards a computational framework for how we represent other people
Abstract: Predicting other peoplesâ beliefs, desires, and intentions is a primary function of human cognition and is essential to thrive in our complex social world. To do this efficiently and successfully, we must form lasting representations of individuals and social groups based on information we receive through personal and vicarious experience. My research is focused on developing a computational account of the neurocognitive mechanisms through which we learn about other people, make social predictions, and are influenced by social biases. To achieve this, I employ a multidisciplinary approach, integrating a wide range of techniques from cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, neuroeconomics, computational modeling of learning and decision-making, and clinical psychology. My theoretical model of social learning and decision-making treats social group biases as a set of initial guesses (akin to Bayesian priors) that inform our social decision-making when we lack specific information about a person with whom we are interacting. Using these priors as a starting point, we form and update our mental representation of a person (as well as their social group) on the basis of observed behavior. I will present behavioral and neural data on the influence of race bias on trust estimations, as well as the computational processes through which we learn about individualsâ traits and intentions (i.e., theory of mind), and how these processes might be disrupted in individuals with social impairments (e.g. Autism Spectrum Disorder). These results suggest that while many common processes support learning about social and non-social entities, there may also exist neural computations unique to social learning.
Biography: Damian Stanley completed his Ph.D. in Neural Science at New York University in 2005, studying mid-level visual processing. In his postdoctoral work, he turned his focus toward developing a computational account of the neurocognitive processesthrough which we learn about and represent other people. In his first postdoctoral position with Elizabeth Phelps at New York University he investigated how implicit race biases influence social trust. In his current postdoctoral position, with Drs. Ralph Adolphs and John OâDoherty at Caltech, he uses computational models and model-based fMRI to characterize typical and atypical (e.g. autism spectrum disorder) social learning. This line of research is funded by an NIMH career development award (K01-MH099343).
Host: Greg Ver Steeg
Webcast: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=8d563808c16942bda353a815b33370d01dLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th floor conference room
WebCast Link: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=8d563808c16942bda353a815b33370d01d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kary LAU
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Motion Correction and Pharmacokinetic Analysis in Dynamic Positron Emission Tomography
Fri, Dec 05, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hassan Mohy-ud-Din, Departments of ECE, AMS, and Radiology Johns Hopkins University, MD
Talk Title: Motion Correction and Pharmacokinetic Analysis in Dynamic Positron Emission Tomography
Abstract: My talk will focus on two important aspects of Positron Emission Tomography (PET):
(i) Motion-compensation , and (ii) Pharmacokinetic analysis of dynamic PET images.
Motion-compensation in Dynamic PET Images: Dynamic PET images are degraded by inter-frame and intra-frame motion artifacts that can affect the quantitative and qualitative analysis of acquired PET data. I will present a Generalized Inter-frame and Intra-frame Motion Correction (GIIMC) algorithm that unifies in one framework the inter-frame motion correction capability of Multiple Acquisition Frames and the intra-frame motion correction feature of (MLEM)-type deconvolution methods. GIIMC employs a fairly simple but new approach of using time-weighted average of attenuation sinograms to reconstruct dynamic frames. Extensive validation studies show that GIIMC algorithm outperforms conventional techniques producing images with superior quality and quantitative accuracy.
Parametric Myocardial Perfusion PET Imaging using Physiological Clustering: We propose a novel framework of robust kinetic parameter estimation applied to absolute flow quantification in dynamic PET imaging. Kinetic parameter estimation is formulated as nonlinear least squares with spatial constraints problem where the spatial constraints are computed from a physiologically driven clustering of dynamic images, and used to reduce noise contamination. The proposed framework is shown to improve the quantitative accuracy of Myocardial Perfusion (MP) PET imaging, and in turn, has the long-term potential to enhance capabilities of MP PET in the detection, staging and management of coronary artery disease.
Biography: Hassan Mohy-ud-Din is a final year PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, USA. He is also pursuing an MA (thesis) in Applied Mathematics and Statistics. He completed his BS in Electronics Engineering from GIK Institute of Engineering and Technology in Pakistan. His research lies at the intersection of Applied Mathematics and Medical Imaging. His work on dynamic cardiac PET imaging won the 2014 Bradley-Alavi fellowship from SNMMI and 2014 SIAM Student Travel (Hong Kong). He has presented his work at various conferences and universities and carries a teaching experience of over 9 years.
Host: Professor Richard Leahy
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
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NL Seminar- Multisensory integration in a neural framework for concepts
Fri, Dec 05, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kingson Man , USC/BCI
Talk Title: Multisensory integration in a neural framework for concepts
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: How are concepts represented in the brain? When we hear the ringing of a bell, or watch a bell swinging back and forth, is there a shared "BELL" pattern of neural activity in our brains? Philosophers have debated the nature of concepts for centuries, but recent technical advances have allowed neuroscientists to make contributions to this topic. The combination of functional neuroimaging and machine learning has allowed us to examine distributed patterns of activity in the human brain to decode what they represent about the world, and to what level of abstraction. I describe our recent findings that revealed a hierarchical organization of multisensory information integration, leading to representations that generalize across different sensory modalities. I will also discuss our work on the social function of concepts, which enables the communication of similar thoughts and associations between individuals.
Biography: I am a research associate at the Brain and Creativity Institute of the University of Southern California. I earned my Ph.D. at USC, mentored by Antonio Damasio. I am interested in the general problem of consciousness, and in particular how different sensations are bound together by the brain into a unified experience of the world.
Host: Aliya Deri and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Webcast: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=56056025433c402fa77a297e7b2e24381dLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 6th Flr Conf Rm # 689, Marina Del Rey
WebCast Link: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=56056025433c402fa77a297e7b2e24381d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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Penalized Maximum-likelihood PET Image Reconstruction for Lesion Detection
Mon, Dec 08, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Li Yang, University of California-Davis
Talk Title: Penalized Maximum-likelihood PET Image Reconstruction for Lesion Detection
Abstract: Detecting cancerous lesions is a major clinical application in emission tomography. Statistical reconstruction methods based on the penalized maximum-likelihood (PML) principle have been developed to improve image quality. A number of metrics have been used to evaluate the quality of the reconstructed PET images, such as spatial resolution, noise variance, contrast-to-noise ratio, etc. Work has been done to optimize PML reconstruction to achieve uniform resolution and to maximize the contrast-to-noise ratio. However, these technical metrics do not necessarily reflect the performance of a clinical task. Here we focus on lesion detection and use a task-specific metric to evaluate the image quality. A multiview channelized Hotelling observer (mvCHO) is used to assess the lesion detectability in 3D images to mimic the condition where a human observer examines three orthogonal views of a 3D image for lesion detection. We derive simplified theoretical expressions that allow fast prediction of the detectability of a 3D lesion. We apply the theoretical results to guide the design of a shift-variant quadratic penalty function in PML reconstruction to maximize detectability of lesions at unknown locations in fully 3D PET. The proposed method is evaluated using computer-based Monte Carlo simulations as well as real patient data with a superimposed lesion.
Furthermore, we extend our theoretical analysis of static PET reconstruction to dynamic PET. We study both the conventional indirect reconstruction and direct reconstruction for Patlak parametric image estimation. In indirect reconstruction, Patlak parametric images are generated by reconstructing a sequence of dynamic PET images first and then performing Patlak analysis on the time activity curves (TACs) pixel-by-pixel. In direct reconstruction, Patlak parametric images are estimated directly from raw sinogram data by incorporating the Patlak model into the image reconstruction procedure. The PML reconstruction is used in both the indirect and direct reconstruction methods. Simplified expressions for evaluating the lesion detectability on Patlak parametric images have been derived and applied to the selection of the regularization parameter value to maximize the lesion detectability. Good agreements between the theoretical predictions and the Monte Carlo results are observed. The theoretical formula also shows the benefit of the direct method in dynamic PET reconstruction for lesion detection.
Biography: Li Yang received his B.S. degree in precision instrumentation from Tianjin University (China) in 2009. Currently, he is pursuing his Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering at University of California-Davis under the supervision of Prof. Jinyi Qi. His research interests are image quality evaluation and statistical image reconstruction for emission tomography
Host: Prof. Richard Leahy
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 25
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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Speculative Dynamical Systems: How Technical Trading Rules Determine Price Dynamics
Mon, Dec 08, 2014 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Li-Xin Wang, Ph.D., Xian Jiaotong University, Department of Automation Science and Technology
Talk Title: Speculative Dynamical Systems: How Technical Trading Rules Determine Price Dynamics
Abstract: In this talk, I will first show how to use fuzzy systems theory to convert the following technical trading rules commonly used by stock practitioners into price dynamical equations: moving average rules, support and resistance rules, trend line rules, big buyer and big seller rules, manipulator rules, band and stop rules, and volume and relative strength rules. Then, I will analyze the price dynamical model with the moving average rules in detail, showing: (1) there exist an infinite number of price equilibriums, but all these equilibriums are unstable; (2) volatility is a deterministic function of the model parameters; (3) short-term prediction is possible with the âprediction horizonâ characterized by the Lyapunov exponent; and (4) how return correlations move from sub-diffusion to norm-diffusion and then to super-diffusion as the model parameters change. Finally, I will apply the big buyer/seller model to Hong Kong stocks and show how to detect big buyers in the market and follow them up to make money. Specifically, I will develop two trading strategies, namely Follow-the-Big-Buyer and Ride-the-Mood, and apply them to the top 20 banking and real estate stocks listed in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the seven-year period from July 3, 2007 to July 2, 2014; the results show that the net profits would increase 67% or 120% on average if an investor switched from the benchmark Buy-and-Hold strategy to the Follow-the-Big-Buyer or Ride-the-Mood strategies during this period, respectively. This talk is based on the paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2508276.
Biography: Li-Xin Wang received the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, in 1992. From 1992 to 1993, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California at Berkeley. From 1993 to 2007, he was on the faculty of the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). In 2007, he resigned from his tenured position at HKUST to become an independent researcher and investor in the stock and real estate markets in Hong Kong and China. In Fall 2013, he returned to academic and joined the faculty of the Department of Automation Science and Technology, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian, China, after a fruitful hunting journey across the wild land of investment to achieve financial freedom. His research interests are dynamical models of asset prices, market microstructure, trading strategies, fuzzy systems, and adaptive nonlinear control. Dr. Wang received USCâs Phi Kappa Phi Student Recognition Award in 1992.
Host: Professor Jerry Mendel
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
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Short Course: Six Sigma Green Belt for Process ImprovementTue, Dec 09, 2014
DEN@Viterbi, Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: TBA
Abstract: This program, an introductory course in Six Sigma, will give you a thorough understanding of Six Sigma and its focus on eliminating defects through fundamental process knowledge. Topics covered in addition to DMAIIC and Six Sigma philosophy include basic statistics, statistical process control, process capability, financial implications and root cause analysis.This program is offered both in the classroom and online.
Register Now
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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CS Colloquium: Robert Kleinberg (Cornell University)
Tue, Dec 09, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Robert Kleinberg, Cornell University
Talk Title: Multi-Armed Bandits and the Web
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: For more than fifty years, the multi-armed bandit problem has been the predominant theoretical model for investigating how to make the most efficient use of limited experimentation resources for optimization. In the past decade, the emergence of the Web as a platform for automated experimentation at a massive scale has inspired a variety of new opportunities and challenges in this area. I will survey some new algorithms that have been developed to address these challenges. Inspired by applications to e-commerce, crowdsourcing, Web search, and advertising, the algorithms touch on broader issues in experimental design: how to design nearly optimal experimentation policies in the presence of supply limits, how to make the best use of feedback in the form of relative preference judgments, and how to mitigate the misalignment of incentives between agents who perform experiments and a principal who benefits from observing the resulting outcomes.
Biography: Robert Kleinberg is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. His research studies the design and analysis of algorithms, and their applications to electronic commerce, networking, information retrieval, and other areas. Prior to receiving his doctorate from MIT in 2005, Kleinberg spent three years at Akamai Technologies, where he assisted in designing the world's largest Internet Content Delivery Network. He is the recipient of a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, and an NSF CAREER Award.
Host: David Kempe
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Short Course: Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement
Wed, Dec 10, 2014
DEN@Viterbi, Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: TBA
Abstract: This program, an introductory course in Six Sigma, will give you a thorough understanding of Six Sigma and its focus on eliminating defects through fundamental process knowledge. Topics covered in addition to DMAIIC and Six Sigma philosophy include basic statistics, statistical process control, process capability, financial implications and root cause analysis.This program is offered both in the classroom and online.
Register Now
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Dec 10, 2014 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sérgio Pequito, University of Pennsylvania
Talk Title: A Framework for Structural Input/Output and Control Configuration Selection of Large - Scale Systems
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: The structure control system design consists mainly of two steps: input/output (I/O) selection and control configuration (CC) selection. The first one is devoted to the problem of computing how many actuators/sensors are needed and where should be placed in the plant to obtain some desired property. Control configuration is related to the decentralized control problem and is dedicated to the task of selecting which outputs (sensors) should be available for feedback and to which inputs (actuators) in order to achieve a predefined goal. The choice of inputs and outputs affects the performance, complexity and costs of the control system. Due to the combinatorial nature of the selection problem, an efficient and systematic method is required to complement the designer intuition, experience and physical insight.
Motivated by the above, this presentation addresses the structure control system design taking explicitly into consideration the possible application to large - scale systems. We provide an efficient framework to solve the following major minimization problems: i) selection of the minimum number of manipulated/measured variables to achieve structural controllability/observability of the system, and ii) selection of the minimum number of measured and manipulated variables, and feedback interconnections between them such that the system has no structural fixed modes. Contrary to what would be expected, we showed that it is possible to obtain the global solution of the aforementioned minimization problems in polynomial complexity in the number of the state variables of the system. To this effect, we propose a methodology that is efficient (polynomial complexity) and unified in the sense that it solves simultaneously the I/O and the CC selection problems. This is done by exploiting the implications of the I/O selection in the solution to the CC problem.
Biography: Sérgio Pequito is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Pennsylvania. He obtained his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and Instituto Superior Técnico, through the CMU-Portugal program. Furthermore, he received his BSc and MSc in Applied Mathematics from the Instituto Superior Técnico. Pequito's research consists in understanding the global qualitative behavior of large scale systems from their structural or parametric descriptions and provide a rigorous framework for the design, analysis, optimization and control of large scale (real-world) systems. Pequito was awarded with the best student paper finalist in the Conference on Decision and Control 2009, the ECE Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Mellon Graduate Teaching Award (university-wide) honorable mention, both in 2012.
Host: Paul Bogdan and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Short Course: Six Sigma Green Belt for Process Improvement
Thu, Dec 11, 2014
DEN@Viterbi, Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: TBA
Abstract: This program, an introductory course in Six Sigma, will give you a thorough understanding of Six Sigma and its focus on eliminating defects through fundamental process knowledge. Topics covered in addition to DMAIIC and Six Sigma philosophy include basic statistics, statistical process control, process capability, financial implications and root cause analysis.This program is offered both in the classroom and online.
Register Now
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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Eberhardt Rechtin Keynote Lecture
Thu, Dec 11, 2014 @ 02:00 AM - 04:30 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Neil Siegel, Sector Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Northrop Grumman
Talk Title: âApplying Systems Engineering to Improve Healthcareâ
Abstract: Systems engineering has proven effective at creating solutions to important societal problems that include a complicated mixture of technical, cost, legal, and social constraints. The healthcare system would seem to be a candidate for benefiting from the application of systems engineering; Dr. Siegel discusses avenues for approaching this problem.
USC Davidson Conference Center (DCC)
2:00-3:30 PM Seminar, DCC Board Room
3:00-4:30 PM Reception, 2nd Floor Lobby
Biography: Neil Siegel, Ph.D., is sector vice-president & chief technology officer at Northrop Grumman. He has been responsible for the creation of many first-of-their-kind, large-scale, high-reliability systems for Government and civilian uses. A USC alumni, he is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE, an INCOSE-certified expert systems engineering practitioner, and the recipient of the Simon Ramo Medal for systems engineering, among many other awards and honors.
Host: Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
More Information: 2014 Rechtin Announcement-Siegel.pptx
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Zhisheng Niu Seminar
Thu, Dec 11, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Zhisheng Niu, Tsinghua University
Talk Title: How Densely should the Traffic Base Stations be Deployed in Hyper-Cellular Networks?
Abstract: One of the key approaches to make the mobile communication networks more GREEN (Globally Resource-optimized and Energy-Efficient Networks) is to have the cellular architecture and radio resource allocation more adaptive to the environment and traffic variations, including making some lightly-loaded base stations (BSs) go to sleep. This is the concept of so-called TANGO (Traffic-Aware Network planning and Green Operation) and CHORUS (Collaborative and Harmonized Open Radio Ubiquitous Systems) published by the author earlier. To realize this, a new cellular framework, named hyper-cellular networks (HCN), has been proposed, in which the coverage of control signals is decoupled from the coverage of data signals so that the data coverage can be more elastic in accordance with the dynamics of traffic characteristics and QoS requirements. Specifically, the traffic base stations (TBSs) in HCN can be densely deployed during peak traffic time in order to satisfy the capacity requirement, while a portion of TBSs can be switched off or go to sleep mode if the traffic load is lower than a threshold in order to save energy. A fundamental question then arises: how densely should the TBSs be deployed in order to balance the QoS requirements and the energy consumption in hyper cellular networks?
In this talk, we characterize the optimal TBS density for both homogeneous and heterogeneous hyper cellular networks to minimize network cost with stochastic geometry theory. For homogeneous cases, both upper and lower bounds of the optimal TBS density are derived. For heterogeneous cases, our analysis reveals the best type of TBSs to be deployed for capacity extension or to be switched off for energy saving. Specifically, if the ratio between the micro TBS cost and the macro TBS cost is lower than a threshold, which is a function of path loss and their transmit power, then the optimal strategy is to deploy micro TBSs for capacity extension or to switch off macro TBSs (if possible) for energy saving with higher priority. Otherwise, the optimal strategy is the opposite. Based on the parameters from EARTH, numerical results show that in the dense urban scenario, compared to the traditional macro-only homogeneous cellular network with no TBS sleeping, deploying micro TBSs can reduce about 40% of the total energy cost, and further reduce about 20% with TBS sleeping capability.
Biography: Zhisheng Niu graduated from Northern Jiaotong University (currently Beijing Jiaotong University), Beijing, China, in 1985, and got his M.E. and D.E. degrees from Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Japan, in 1989 and 1992, respectively. After spending two years at Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan, he joined with Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1994, where he is now a professor at the Department of Electronic Engineering, deputy dean of the School of Information Science and Technology, and director of Tsinghua-Hitachi Joint Lab on Environmental Harmonious ICT. He is also a guest chair professor of Shandong University. His major research interests include queueing theory, traffic engineering, mobile Internet, radio resource management of wireless networks, and green communication and networks.
Dr. Niu has been an active volunteer for various academic societies, including Director for Conference Publications (2010-11) and Director for Asia-Pacific Board (2008-09) of IEEE Communication Society, Membership Development Coordinator (2009-10) of IEEE Region 10, Councilor of IEICE-Japan (2009-11), and council member of Chinese Institute of Electronics (2006-11). He is now a distinguished lecturer (2012-13) of IEEE Communication Society, editor of IEEE Wireless Communication Magazine, associate editor-in-chief of IEEE/CIC joint publication âChina Communicationsâ, standing committee member of both Communication Science and Technology Committee under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China and Chinese Institute of Communications (CIC), and vice chair of the Information and Communication Network Committee of CIC.
Dr. Niu received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from Natural Science Foundation of China in 2009 and the Best Paper Awards (with his students) from the 13th, 15th and 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Communication (APCC) in 2007, 2009, and 2013, respectively. He is now the Chief Scientist of the National Basic Research Program (so called â973 Projectâ) of China on "Fundamental Research on the Energy and Resource Optimized Hyper-Cellular Mobile Communication System" (2012-2016), which is the first national project on green communications in China. He is now a fellow of both IEEE and IEICE.
Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Andreas Molisch
More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/about/news/2014/12/01/distinguished-visiting-fellow-zhisheng-niu/
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elise Herrera-Green
Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/about/news/2014/12/01/distinguished-visiting-fellow-zhisheng-niu/
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MFD - Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Graduate Semina
Thu, Dec 11, 2014 @ 11:15 AM - 01:50 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ruijie Liu, PhD, Enhanced Oil Recovery Flagship; Upstream Technology, BP America Inc.
Talk Title: On Development of Geomechanics Cap Model and Its Application to Modeling Reservoir Compaction and Sand Production
Abstract: Oil and gas operators make huge investment in onshore and deepwater facilities that require efficient removal of
hydrocarbons. Significant cost overruns due to non-productive time resulting from wellbore damage and massive
sand production problems. Geomechanics modeling has been providing a powerful analytical tool to petroleum
engineers for better reservoir management. The Drucker-Prager plasticity model is the most popular geomaterial
constitutive law employed in many commercial geomechanics simulators. It is mainly used to model shear-dominated
problems but unable to predict reservoir compaction behaviors. For many reservoirs with soft rocks, the compaction
effect is the leading cause for formation failure and massive sand production during depleting operations.
Geomechanics cap plasticity theories have been proposed for describing both shear and compaction behaviors of
geomaterials. This talk focuses on finite element development on the Pelessone geomechanics cap plasticity model.
The work targets to achieve quadratic convergent rates for solving nonlinear geomechanics problems. This has been
done through deriving and implementing a consistent cap material integrator. The performance of the developed cap
model is demonstrated through solving a near oil well problem. The prediction on sand production curves following
reservoir compaction is also presented.
Biography: Dr. Ruijie Liu is the senior reservoir simulation specialist at Enhanced Oil Recovery Flagship, Upstream Technology,
BP America Inc. His responsibility is developing BP in-house massive parallel computer code for solving multiphase
flow problems with billion cells at pore-scale using rock micro-CT image data. Before joining BP in 2012, he had
worked in ANSYS as the distinguished R & D engineer for more than 7 years. In ANSYS, he developed numerous
nonlinear material models including geomechanics cap model. He is also a major developer for ANSYS coupled
elements and computational frameworks for fracture propagation. He received his PhD from The University of Texas
at Austin in 2004. His current research interests are coupled reservoir dynamics with geomechanics, hydraulic
fracturing, pore-scale modeling, parallel computing for extremely large scale petroleum systems.
In his spare time, he enjoys playing tennis and walking his chocolate lab.
Location: Mark Taper Hall Of Humanities (THH) - 210
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ryan Choi
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Astronautical Engineering Seminar
Thu, Dec 11, 2014 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Astronautical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: David Reese, Aerospace Corporation
Talk Title: Future Developments in Solid Propellant Technology
Abstract: Solid rocket motors are a key enabling technology for military and space launch applications. Current
propellants are based primarily on ammonium perchlorate (AP), which is a favored oxidizer thanks to its
unique ability to control burning rate, safe processing characteristics, and high performance. However,
much remains to be understood about the combustion dynamics of AP-based propellants: due to the short
temporal and spatial scales, high temperatures, and extreme pressures present in a solid rocket motor
chamber, it has been all but impossible to employ traditional combustion diagnostics to characterize this
environment. This talk will begin with a discussion of recent advances in the understanding of the
fundamentals of AP propellant combustion in motor-like environments enabled by new high speed and
high power laser diagnostic techniques.
Despite its advantages, however, AP carries with it a chlorine atom, which causes the exhaust products to
form hydrochloric acid smoke, unfavorable from both tactical and environmental standpoints. Potential
replacements for AP have been rejected as unsuitable due to their low performance, unstable combustion,
or unsafe handling characteristics. However, recent advances in a few molecular families appear
promising, particularly the nitrate esters, in which the 2008 discovery of a new solid material called SMX
has led to exciting developments in chlorine-free propellant compositions. The second half of this talk
will discuss results of experiments with ammonium perchlorate replacements, with a focus on SMX.
By combining modern diagnostic technology with recent advances in synthesis, entire new capabilities for
solid rocket motors may soon be realized.
Biography: Dr. Reese was an undergraduate in the first four-year ASTE B.S. class at USC, where he was co-founder
of the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. at Purdue. His dissertation was
Combustion of SMX and SMX Propellants. He joined the Aerospace Corporation after graduation in
2014.
Host: Dan Erwin
Location: Vivian Hall of Engineering (VHE) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Dan Erwin
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Short Course: Lean Six Sigma White Belt
Fri, Dec 12, 2014
DEN@Viterbi, Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: TBA,
Abstract: Lean Six Sigma White Belt will introduce you to the tools and techniques for implementing lean/six sigma principles. Participants will gain a broad understanding of the philosophy, methods and benefits of lean/six sigma and value stream mapping as they apply to all types of enterprises. You will be introduced to lean concepts via hands-on exercises.
Register Now
Host: Professional Programs
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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AI Seminar-Experiences with Opinion Mining in the Brazilian Election Scenario: beyond twitters and products reviews
Fri, Dec 12, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Karin Becker, UFRGS
Talk Title: Experiences with Opinion Mining in the Brazilian Election Scenario: beyond twitters and products reviews
Series: Artificial Intelligence Seminar
Abstract: Opinion mining aims at automatically identifying opinionative content in documents available in the web, and determine the sentiment, perception or attitude of the public with regard to the target of the opinion. Product reviews and tweets are popular sources of opinions, well explored by existing works. This talk describes some of our experiences in handling newspapers readersâ comments written in Portuguese, using the Brazilian elections scenario. More specifically, we focus on the challenges of mining user-generated content in Portuguese, a language for which tools and resources are scarce; sentiment-based prediction of the variation on vote intentions and aspect-based sentiment mining in unstructured opinion sources. These are important contributions towards a more general framework that is able to blend opinions from several different sources to find representativeness of the target population, and make more reliable sentiment-based applications.
Biography: Karin Becker is an Associate Professor at the Computer Science Institute of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) since 2010. She received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix (Belgium), and a M.Sc. degree from UFRGS (Brazil), and currently she is a visiting scholar at ISI- USC. Her research background involves both the academia and industry, mainly in the areas of database, data and web mining and software engineering. Her current interests are focused on the application of data mining techniques to web-related data (opinion mining, web services, social networks, linked data). She is also an enthusiastic of agile practices. She has near 100 published papers, including articles in journals and conference proceedings, and book chapters. She served as chairperson and member of program committee in several conferences.
Host: Craig Knoblock
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
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EE-Electrophysics Seminar
Fri, Dec 12, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Joyce Poon, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto
Talk Title: Scaling Integrated Photonic Devices and Circuits
Abstract: By 2020, the number of Internet-connected devices will be more than six times the number of people on Earth. The âInternet of Thingsâ is causing an explosion of data that must be transmitted and processed in energy-efficient ways. Optical communications have been a part of the physical backbone of this paradigm and will continue to have a vital role in enabling the interconnectivity in our world.
In this talk, I will give an overview of my groupâs research in integrated photonic devices and circuits implemented in silicon photonic platforms. We are exploring how device size, performance, and circuit complexity can be scaled to address the challenges in communications and computing. I will describe our work on optical modulators, filters, polarization management, electronic-photonic integration, and wavelength-size active components. I will also describe some ongoing and new projects. The work paves the path toward very large-scale photonic integrated circuits.
Biography: Joyce Poon is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Toronto, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Integrated Photonic Devices. She and her team conduct theoretical and experimental research in micro- and nano-scale integrated photonics.
Dr. Poon obtained the Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech in 2007 and 2003 respectively, and the B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science (physics option) from the University of Toronto in 2002. She is the recipient of a McCharles Prize for Early Research Career Distinction, a MIT TR35 award in 2012, IBM Faculty Award in 2010 and 2011, Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation Early Researcher Award in 2009, NSERC University Faculty Award in 2008, and the Clauser Doctoral Thesis Prize from Caltech in 2007.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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AI Seminar- Uncovering meaning construction and representation in the reading brain
Mon, Dec 15, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Leila Wehbe , CMU
Talk Title: Uncovering meaning construction and representation in the reading brain
Series: Artificial Intelligence Seminar
Abstract: How is information organized in the brain when it reads? Where and when do the required processes occur, such as perceiving the individual words, combining them with the previous words and maintaining a representation of the overall meaning?
I will present results from a recent experiment in which we align context-based neural network language models and brain activity during reading. When processing a text word by word, both the brain and the neural networks perform the same processes. They both maintain a representation for the previous context. They both represent the properties of the incoming word and then integrate it with context. We study the alignment between the latent vectors used by these neural networks and the brain activity observed via Magnetoencephalography (MEG) when subjects read a chapter from Harry Potter and the Sorcererâs Stone. For that purpose we apply the neural network to the same chapter the subjects are reading, and explore the ability of these vector representations to predict the observed word-by-word brain activity.
Our novel results include a suggested time-line of how the brain updates its representation of context. They also demonstrate the incremental perception of every new word starting early in the visual cortex, moving next to the temporal lobes and finally to the frontal regions. Furthermore, the results suggest the integration process occurs in the temporal lobes after the new word has been perceived.
This is joint work with Ashish Vaswani, Kevin Knight and Tom Mitchell, and is a part of a larger effort to understand how the brain organizes information in natural reading. I will describe this research direction. I will also mention results from a sister experiment in which we demonstrate how the brain areas involved in reading are processing different types of information (such as syntax, semantics or narrative information). This second experiment is joint work with Brian Murphy, Partha Talukdar, Alona Fyshe, Aaditya Ramdas and Tom Mitchell. Finally I will also mention some of our past and upcoming machine learning projects that aim to improve our methodological pipeline.
Biography: Leila is a PhD student supervised by Professor Tom Mitchell in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. She is part of the dual-track program in the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. She received her BE in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the American University of Beirut.
HomePage Link:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lwehbe/
Host: Kevin Knight
Webcast: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=e1bbe0a29af44690aa0eb5ae9c9f93081dLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
WebCast Link: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=e1bbe0a29af44690aa0eb5ae9c9f93081d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
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Zhisheng Niu Seminar
Wed, Dec 17, 2014 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Zhisheng Niu, Tsinghua University
Talk Title: Characterizing Energy-Delay Tradeoff in Hyper-Cellular Networks with Base Station Sleeping Control
Abstract: One of the key approaches to make the mobile communication networks more GREEN (Globally Resource-optimized and Energy-Efficient Networks) is to have the cellular architecture and radio resource allocation more adaptive to the environment and traffic variations, including making some lightly-loaded base stations (BSs) go to sleep. This is the concept of so-called TANGO (Traffic-Aware Network planning and Green Operation) and CHORUS (Collaborative and Harmonized Open Radio Ubiquitous Systems) published by the author earlier. To realize this, a new cellular framework, named hyper-cellular networks (HCN), has been proposed, in which the coverage of control signals is decoupled from the coverage of data signals so that the data coverage can be more elastic in accordance with the dynamics of traffic characteristics and QoS requirements. Due to this elasticity of HCN, some delay-insensitive users may have to experience some delay or other kind of QoS degradation when traffic load is high in order to save energy, i.e., energy can be traded off by some delay. The fundamental question then arises: how much energy can be traded off by a tolerable delay?
Biography: Zhisheng Niu graduated from Northern Jiaotong University (currently Beijing Jiaotong University), Beijing, China, in 1985, and got his M.E. and D.E. degrees from Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Japan, in 1989 and 1992, respectively. After spending two years at Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan, he joined with Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1994, where he is now a professor at the Department of Electronic Engineering, deputy dean of the School of Information Science and Technology, and director of Tsinghua-Hitachi Joint Lab on Environmental Harmonious ICT. He is also a guest chair professor of Shandong University. His major research interests include queueing theory, traffic engineering, mobile Internet, radio resource management of wireless networks, and green communication and networks.
Dr. Niu has been an active volunteer for various academic societies, including Director for Conference Publications (2010-11) and Director for Asia-Pacific Board (2008-09) of IEEE Communication Society, Membership Development Coordinator (2009-10) of IEEE Region 10, Councilor of IEICE-Japan (2009-11), and council member of Chinese Institute of Electronics (2006-11). He is now a distinguished lecturer (2012-13) of IEEE Communication Society, editor of IEEE Wireless Communication Magazine, associate editor-in-chief of IEEE/CIC joint publication âChina Communicationsâ, standing committee member of both Communication Science and Technology Committee under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China and Chinese Institute of Communications (CIC), and vice chair of the Information and Communication Network Committee of CIC.
Dr. Niu received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from Natural Science Foundation of China in 2009 and the Best Paper Awards (with his students) from the 13th, 15th and 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Communication (APCC) in 2007, 2009, and 2013, respectively. He is now the Chief Scientist of the National Basic Research Program (so called â973 Projectâ) of China on "Fundamental Research on the Energy and Resource Optimized Hyper-Cellular Mobile Communication System" (2012-2016), which is the first national project on green communications in China. He is now a fellow of both IEEE and IEICE.
Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Andreas Molisch
More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/about/news/2014/12/01/distinguished-visiting-fellow-zhisheng-niu/
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elise Herrera-Green
Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/about/news/2014/12/01/distinguished-visiting-fellow-zhisheng-niu/
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AI Seminar: Natural Language Semantics by Combining Logical and Distributional Methods using Probabilistic Logic
Thu, Dec 18, 2014 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Raymond Mooney, Professor at CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
Talk Title: Natural Language Semantics by Combining Logical and Distributional Methods using Probabilistic Logic
Series: AISeminar
Abstract: Traditional logical approaches to semantics and newer distributional or vector space approaches have complementary strengths and weaknesses.We have developed methods that integrate logical and distributional models by using a CCG-based parser to produce a detailed logical form for each sentence, and combining the result with soft inference rules derived from distributional semantics that connect the meanings of their component words and phrases. For recognizing textual entailment (RTE) we use Markov Logic Networks (MLNs) to combine these representations, and for Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) we use Probabilistic Soft Logic (PSL). We present experimental results on standard benchmark datasets for these problems and emphasize the advantages of combining logical structure of sentences with statistical knowledge mined from large corpora.
Biography: Raymond J. Mooney is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. He is an author of over 150 published research papers, primarily in the areas of machine learning and natural language processing. He was the President of the International Machine Learning Society from 2008-2011, program co-chair for AAAI 2006, general chair for HLT-EMNLP 2005, and co-chair for ICML 1990. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery, and the recipient of best paper awards from AAAI-96, KDD-04, ICML-05 and ACL-07.
Host: Ulf Hermjakob
Webcast: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=408d23eb190243b4ad3717c19c0b0f461dLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 1135
WebCast Link: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=408d23eb190243b4ad3717c19c0b0f461d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alma Nava / Information Sciences Institute
