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Events for April
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Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Apr 01, 2025 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Suvrajeet Sen, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California
Host: Dr. Qiang Huang
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Casi Jones/ ISE
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. StudentsWed, Apr 02, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CS Colloquium: Amir Houmansadr (UMass Amherst) - The Road Not Taken: Towards Proactive Research on Internet Censorship
Wed, Apr 02, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Amir Houmansadr, UMass Amherst
Talk Title: The Road Not Taken: Towards Proactive Research on Internet Censorship
Abstract: Internet censorship poses a major threat to free speech and open access to information worldwide. While numerous tools exist to bypass censorship, they often fail to provide censored users with effective and reliable solutions. A key reason for this inefficacy is the reactive nature of circumvention tool development—developers modify their tools in response to censorship tactics, allowing censors to maintain the upper hand in this ongoing arms race. In this talk, I will make the case for a proactive approach to censorship circumvention research and share insights from our ongoing efforts towards proactive circumvention.
As AI continues to transform Internet services, I argue that the future of Internet security is inextricably linked to AI. I will also outline my vision for safeguarding online freedom and security in the age of AI, exploring both its potential and the challenges it presents.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Amir Houmansadr is an Associate Professor of computer science at UMass Amherst. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. Amir is broadly interested in the security and privacy of networked/AI systems. To that end, he designs and deploys privacy-enhancing technologies, analyzes network protocols and services (e.g., messaging apps and machine learning APIs) for privacy leakage, and performs theoretical analysis to derive bounds on privacy (e.g., using game theory and information theory). Amir has received several awards including the 2013 IEEE S&P Best Practical Paper Award, a 2015 Google Faculty Research Award, a 2016 NSF CAREER Award, a 2022 DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA), the 2023 Best Practical Paper Award from the FOCI Community, the first place at CSAW 2023 Applied Research Competition, a Distinguished Paper Award from ACM CCS 2023, a 2024 Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP), and a 2024 DARPA Directors Award.
Host: Harsha V. Madhyastha
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone (USC) is invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
PhD Dissertation Defense - Hanchen Xie
Wed, Apr 02, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Dissertation Title: Mitigating Environment Misalignment And Discovering Intrinsic Relations Via Symbolic Alignment
Date and Time: April 2, 12 pm to 2 pm.
Location: RTH 217
Committee: Yue Wang (Chair), Wael Abd-Almageed, Aram Galstyan, Emilio Ferrara, Peter Beerel
Abstract: Deep learning models have achieved remarkable success on various computer vision tasks. Modern state-of-the-art methods can not only recognize the visual appearance of objects but also discover intrinsic relations of objects (e.g., dynamics or causal relations). However, collecting sufficient training data for the intrinsic relations can be expensive or infeasible in many scenarios, such as car incident videos in the real world. As an alternative, one can generate data in a different environment, such as synthetic data, that depicts the same intrinsic relations. Yet, end-to-end models may suffer from environment misalignment challenges, such as visual domain or environment context shift, so the model generality is limited. To mitigate such misalignment challenges, we propose symbolic alignment, a novel learning strategy that utilizes a common symbolic space to align various environments. We first conduct a case study on dynamics prediction to reveal the environment misalignment challenges on our proposed datasets. Next, to obtain insight into the challenge, we provide an investigation of the implicit position encoding in the dynamics prediction model. Then, we present a learning framework that separates the learning of appearance recognition and dynamics relations discovery to improve the generality of the dynamics prediction model. Then, we generalize the symbolic alignment strategy and introduce a novel framework, Look, Learn, and Leverage L3. L3 decomposes the learning process into three distinct phases and achieves promising results on three intrinsic relations discovery tasks. Finally, we extend the environment misalignment discussion to video classification and demonstrate the potential of symbolic alignment to mitigate the video content inconsistency between training and inference.Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hanchen Xie
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95803531086?pwd=LwnaIMsMv44jIIkvvlUEXD3gAbqb2N.1
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ECE Seminar: Optimizing Distributed Applications in Networked Computing Environments
Thu, Apr 03, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Carlee Joe-Wong, Robert E. Doherty Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Optimizing Distributed Applications in Networked Computing Environments
Abstract: The recent proliferation of Internet-connected devices with computational and data collection capabilities, e.g., in the Internet-of-Things, promises to enable an explosion in new applications and services like artificial intelligence and mixed reality. Realizing these new applications, however, inherently requires device cooperation, whether integrating user data collected across multiple smart homes to train a prediction model for smart home usage, or synthesizing multiple sensors' readings to predict how a wildfire will spread. Such cooperation is inherently limited by constraints on the available compute, storage, or communication resources on Internet-connected devices—and to make matters worse, these devices are often highly heterogeneous and may need to support a range of different applications or services, each with their own unique needs. In this talk, I describe some of our recent work on optimizing device cooperation by learning and exploiting latent similarities across devices and applications. We first consider the general problem of optimally placing components of a distributed application, e.g., for data pre-processing and analysis, within a distributed network of devices. To meet these challenges, we introduce a new reinforcement learning-based problem representation that allows us to learn generalizable policies for dynamic environments. We then consider the specific problems of distributing machine learning applications across devices, demonstrating that we can exploit the structure of the learned data across devices to improve learning performance.
Biography: Carlee Joe-Wong is the Robert E. Doherty Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her A.B. degree (magna cum laude) in Mathematics, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied and Computational Mathematics, from Princeton University in 2011, 2013, and 2016, respectively. Her research interests lie in optimizing various types of networked systems, in particular applications of machine learning and economics to computing and communication networks. From 2013 to 2014, Carlee was the Director of Advanced Research at DataMi, a startup she co-founded from her research on mobile data pricing. Her work has received best paper and poster awards at several conferences, including IEEE INFOCOM, ACM/IEEE IPSN, ACM SIGMETRICS, and IEEE ICDCS. She received the NSF CAREER award in 2018, the Army Young Investigator award in 2019, and the Department of Energy Early Career Research Program Award in 2024.
Host: Dr. Leana Golubchik, leana@usc.edu
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95435744209?pwd=XZXbX2oiSTg9AXpAwN3oHsy1g6W37u.1Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95435744209?pwd=XZXbX2oiSTg9AXpAwN3oHsy1g6W37u.1
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
DEN@Viterbi Exams Information Session
Thu, Apr 03, 2025 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Join us to learn about the DEN exam proctoring process and exam guidelines.
Location: Online Event
Audiences:
Contact: Ruby Rodriguez
Event Link: https://engage.usc.edu/viterbi/rsvp?id=403611
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Fri, Apr 04, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
AI Seminar-Experiments in Scaling Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards
Fri, Apr 04, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Nathan Lambert, Allen Institure
Talk Title: Experiments in Scaling Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards
Series: AI Seminar
Abstract: With the release of DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model, interest in reinforcement learning may be at an all time high. Academics are pouring energy into the space, trying to replicate DeepSeek’s results and establish clear trade-offs and capabilities of this new era of reinforcement learning on language models. This talk discusses these new results with language models trained with Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR), our efforts at scaling them for Ai2’s OLMo and Tülu language models, hints that we may have missed indicating that RL is more effective than people give credit for, and some history from my background in model-based RL/robotics. The goal of the talk is to present a mix of (recent) historical context on language modeling and cutting edge research with RL to forecast how the rapidly expanding industry of language models may change in the near future.
Biography: Nathan Lambert is a Senior Research Scientist and post-training lead at the Allen Institute for AI focusing on building open language models. At the same time he founded and operates Interconnects.ai to increase transparency and understanding of current AI models and systems.
Previously, he helped build an RLHF research team at HuggingFace. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley working at the intersection of machine learning and robotics. He was advised by Professor Kristofer Pister in the Berkeley Autonomous Microsystems Lab and Roberto Calandra at Meta AI Research. He was lucky to intern at Facebook AI and DeepMind during his Ph.D. Nathan was was awarded the UC Berkeley EECS Demetri Angelakos Memorial Achievement Award for Altruism for his efforts to better community norms.
If speaker approves to be recorded for this seminar it will be posted on the USC/ISI YouTube page within 1-2 business days: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCISI.
Subscribe here to learn more about upcoming seminars: https://www.isi.edu/events/ .
Host: Eric Boxer and Justina Gilleland
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/5553/experiments-in-scaling-reinforcement-learning-with-verifiable-rewards/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94409584905?pwd=Sm5LVkd0bndUdEluM3piK0NWTUQrUT09Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Virtual Only
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94409584905?pwd=Sm5LVkd0bndUdEluM3piK0NWTUQrUT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/events/5553/experiments-in-scaling-reinforcement-learning-with-verifiable-rewards/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Alfred E.Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering - Seminar series
Fri, Apr 04, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Xiaoping P. Hu, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Bioengineering;Director, Center for Advanced Neuroimaging Reza Abbaschian Chair Professor University of California, Riverside
Talk Title: Some Recent Advances in MRI of Neurodegeneration
Abstract: MRI is a widely used modality in neuroimaging in both clinical medicine and research. For neurodegeneration, in addition to providing exquisite anatomic measures, MRI can assess function, connectivity, and neurobiologically relevant biomarkers such as iron and melanin. In this talk, I will first present our work on the development of neuromelanin imaging and applying it, in conjunction with iron imaging and diffusion tensor imaging, to the diagnosis and assessment of Parkinson’s disease. Our data demonstrate that both neuromelanin and iron imaging could provide potential biomarkers for the early detection of Parkinson’s disease. Second, I will describe our more recent endeavor in imaging the integrity and structural connectivity of locus coeruleus and investigation of their relevance to aging and cognition. I will demonstrate that MR imaging of locus coeruleus could provide highly relevant measure in studying aging.
Biography: Xiaoping Hu obtained his Ph.D. in medical physics in 1988 from the University of Chicago. From 1990 to 2002, he was a faculty member at the University of Minnesota where he became a full professor in 1998. In 2002-2016, he was Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Imaging in the Wallace H. Coulter joint department of biomedical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. In July 2016, Dr. Hu joined UC Riverside as professor and chair of bioengineering and director of the center for advanced neuroimaging. Dr. Hu has worked on the development and biomedical application of magnetic resonance imaging, with an emphasis on the brain, for almost 4 decades. He has authored or co-authored 325 peer-reviewed journal articles, with a total of 33,000+ citations and an h-index of 101. He is currently on the editorial board of Brain Connectivity and is an associate editor of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. He is a fellow of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, a fellow of IEEE, a fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, a fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and a fellow of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineers. He was named Reza Abbaschian Chair in July, 2023 and promoted to distinguished professor in July, 2024.
Host: Qifa Zhou
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 109
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CA DREAMS - Technical Seminar Series
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Fri, Apr 04, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Shaya Fainman, Professor, University of California, San Diego
Talk Title: Foundry Enabled Chip-scale Photonics Technology and Applications
Abstract: Dense photonic integration requires miniaturization of materials, devices, circuits and systems, including passive components (e.g., engineered composite metamaterials, filters, etc.), active components (e.g., modulators and nonlinear wave mixers) and integrated circuits (Fourier transform spectrometer, programmable phase modulator of free space modes, linear algebra processors, etc.). In this talk we will discuss recent progress in developing CMOS compatible nonlinear optical materials as well as examples of foundry enabled silicon photonic circuits and systems. Specifically, we will review silicon photonics-based Fourier transform spectrometer (Si-FTS) that can bring broadband operation and fine resolution to the chip scale. Here we will present the modeling and experimental demonstration of a thermally tuned Si-FTS accounting for dispersion, thermo-optic non-linearity, and thermal expansion. We show how these effects modify the relation between the spectrum and interferogram of a light source and we develop a quantitative correction procedure through calibration with a tunable laser. Providing design flexibility and robustness, the Si-FTS is poised to become a fundamental building block for on-chip spectroscopy. Moreover, taking advantage of nanofabrication we will discuss on-chip spectrometers using stratified waveguide filters and machine learning. Moving forward, we will discuss chip-scale integrated circuit/system that will allow to realize linear algebra accelerators with superior performance in speed, energy consumption and size compared to its electronic counterpart. Such system can be manufactured using monolithic CMOS process and impact such applications as 5G/6G and beyond wireless MIMO systems as well as deep learning and artificial intelligence.
Biography: Yeshaiahu (Shaya) Fainman is an inaugural ASML/Cymer Chair of Advanced Optical Technologies and Distinguished Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He received the M. Sc and Ph. D degrees from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in 1979 and 1983, respectively. He is directing research of the Ultrafast and Nanoscale Optics group at UCSD and made significant contributions to near field optical phenomena, nanoscale science and engineering of ultra-small, sub-micrometer semiconductor light emitters and nanolasers, inhomogeneous and meta-materials, nanophotonics and plasmonics, non-conventional imaging and silicon photonics. His current research interests are in near field optical science and optical technology with applications targeting information technologies and biomedical sensing. He contributed over 360 manuscripts in peer review journals and over 560 conference presentations and conference proceedings. During his career he has led as Director and Deputy Director of numerous large size interdisciplinary projects and centers supported by BMDO, DARPA, NSF-ERC, and ONR. He is a Fellow of the OSA, IEEE, SPIE, and a recipient of the Miriam and Aharon Gutvirt Prize, Lady Davis Fellowship, Brown Award, SPIE Gabor Award, OSA Emmett N. Leith Medal, OSA Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize and OPTICA (former OSA) Nick Holonyak Jr Award.
Host: Dr. Steve Crago
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/5445/foundry-enabled-chip-scale-photonics-technology-and-applications/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97017422125?pwd=Dbrt8MNMrmBV3xalKQJcAiNsggFJjJ.1&from=addonWebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97017422125?pwd=Dbrt8MNMrmBV3xalKQJcAiNsggFJjJ.1&from=addon
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Amy Kasmir
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/events/5445/foundry-enabled-chip-scale-photonics-technology-and-applications/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Mon, Apr 07, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Deans Transformative Lecture Series
Mon, Apr 07, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Ph.D., Malcolm Gillis University Professor Director, Rice 360 Institute for Global Health Department of Bioengineering at Rice University
Talk Title: Point-of-Care Tools to Improve Global Cancer Care
Biography: Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Ph.D.is the Rice University Malcolm Gillis University Professor of Bioengineeringand co-Director of Rice 360 Institute for Global Health. Her research has been instrumental in improving earlydetection of cancers and in developing and scaling affordable technologies to improve newborn and maternalhealth, especially in low-resource settings. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a member of theUS National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors,the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. She received her Ph.D. inMedical Physics from MIT and her BS in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Nebraska.
Host: Keck School of Medicine- USC
Location: Aresty Auditorium -Norris Cancer Center
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
"Keys to Life" series at USC ORSL
Mon, Apr 07, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
"Keys to Life" with Prof. Weiss is a motivational discussion series designed to promote student success and well-being. This series is for students who want to develop their "keys" in a small group setting and a peaceful, reflective environment. Finding purpose is essential to living a meaningful life and key to personal fulfillment. This series will help students identify and articulate their purpose and provide group motivation to work towards it. A unique feature of the series will be its peripatetic "Purpose Walks" through campus.
More Information: Keys to Life with Prof. Weiss.jpg
Location: University Religious Center (URC) - courtyard
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elisabeth Arnold Weiss
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Apr 08, 2025 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Nabeel Gillani, Assistant Professor in the Department of Design and Data Analysis at Northeastern University
Host: Dr. Qiang Huang
More Information: FLYER 651 guest Nabeel Gillani 4.8.25.png
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Casi Jones/ ISE
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Six Sigma Black Belt
Tue, Apr 08, 2025 @ 04:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: IISE Faculty, IISE Faculty
Talk Title: Six Sigma Black Belt
Abstract: USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Six Sigma Black Belt program, offered in partnership with the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, enables professionals to learn how to integrate principles of business, statistics, and engineering to achieve tangible results. Learn the advanced problem-solving skills you need to implement the principles, practices, and techniques of our Six Sigma Black Belt course in order to maximize performance and cost reductions in your organization. During this three-week practitioner course, you will learn how to measure a process, analyze the results, develop process improvements, and quantify the resulting savings. You will be required to complete a project demonstrating mastery of appropriate analytical methods and pass an examination to earn Six Sigma Black Belt Certification. This practitioner course for Six Sigma implementation provides extensive coverage of the Six Sigma process, as well as intensive exposure to the key analytical tools associated with Six Sigma, including project management, team skills, cost analysis, FMEA, basic statistics, inferential statistics, sampling, goodness of fit testing, regression and correlation analysis, reliability, design of experiments, statistical process control, measurement systems analysis, and simulation. Computer applications are emphasized.
Host: USC Viterbi Corporate and Professional Programs
More Info: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-black-belt/
Audiences: Six Sigma Black Belt Students
Contact: VASE Executive Education
Event Link: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-black-belt/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Wed, Apr 09, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CS Colloquium: Xia (Ben) Hu (Rice University) - Efficient LLM Serving via Lossy Computation
Wed, Apr 09, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Xia (Ben) Hu, Rice University
Talk Title: Efficient LLM Serving via Lossy Computation
Series: Computer Science Colloquium
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have exhibited human-like conversational abilities. Yet, scaling LLMs to longer contexts, such as extracting information from lengthy articles, one of the most fundamental tasks in healthcare applications, poses significant challenges. The primary issues are their inability to handle contexts beyond pre-training lengths and system constraints that make deployment difficult, as memory requirements for inference increase with context length. The key idea to overcome these challenges is that LLMs are extremely robust to noise from lossy computation, such as low-precision computation. Following this insight, we will discuss recent advancements in serving LLMs at scale, particularly in handling longer contexts. To address the algorithmic challenge, I will share our recent work on extending LLM context length to at least 8× longer by coarsening the positional information of distant tokens. To address the system challenge, I will discuss our recent efforts in quantizing the intermediate states of past tokens to 2-bit numbers, leading to a 8x memory efficiency and 3.5x wall-clock time speedup without harming performance. Finally, I will highlight our latest projects applying LLMs in healthcare, particularly how we utilize retrieval techniques for long contexts to mitigate the hallucination problem in healthcare chatbots. This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Dr. Xia “Ben” Hu is an Associate Professor at Rice University in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Hu has published over 200 papers in several major academic venues, including NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, KDD, IJCAI, etc. An open-source package developed by his group, namely AutoKeras, has become the most used automated deep learning system on GitHub (with over 9,000 stars and 1,000 forks). Additionally, his work on LLM efficiency, deep collaborative filtering, anomaly detection, knowledge graphs, and fast interpretation has been incorporated into production systems at Hugging Face, TensorFlow, Apple, Bing, and Meta, respectively. His papers have received several Best Paper (Candidate) awards from venues such as ICML, WWW, WSDM, ICDM, AMIA, and INFORMS. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the ACM SIGKDD Rising Star Award. His work has been cited more than 30,000 times with an h-index of 76. He served as General Co-Chair for WSDM 2020 and ICHI 2023, as well as Program Co-Chair for AIHC 2024 and CHASE 2025.
Host: Yan Liu
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone (USC) is invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Apr 09, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Receptions & Special Events
Bi-Weekly regular faculty meeting for invited full-time Computer Science faculty and staff only. Event details emailed directly to attendees.
Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 107
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Julia Mittenberg-Beirao
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Six Sigma Black Belt
Wed, Apr 09, 2025 @ 04:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: IISE Faculty, IISE Faculty
Talk Title: Six Sigma Black Belt
Abstract: USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Six Sigma Black Belt program, offered in partnership with the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, enables professionals to learn how to integrate principles of business, statistics, and engineering to achieve tangible results. Learn the advanced problem-solving skills you need to implement the principles, practices, and techniques of our Six Sigma Black Belt course in order to maximize performance and cost reductions in your organization. During this three-week practitioner course, you will learn how to measure a process, analyze the results, develop process improvements, and quantify the resulting savings. You will be required to complete a project demonstrating mastery of appropriate analytical methods and pass an examination to earn Six Sigma Black Belt Certification. This practitioner course for Six Sigma implementation provides extensive coverage of the Six Sigma process, as well as intensive exposure to the key analytical tools associated with Six Sigma, including project management, team skills, cost analysis, FMEA, basic statistics, inferential statistics, sampling, goodness of fit testing, regression and correlation analysis, reliability, design of experiments, statistical process control, measurement systems analysis, and simulation. Computer applications are emphasized.
Host: USC Viterbi Corporate and Professional Programs
More Info: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-black-belt/
Audiences: Six Sigma Black Belt Students
Contact: VASE Executive Education
Event Link: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-black-belt/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
NL Seminar-Title TBA
Thu, Apr 10, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Tolulope Ogunremi, Stanford University
Talk Title: TBA
Abstract: Meeting hosts only admit on-line guests that they know to the Zoom meeting. Hence, you’re highly encouraged to use your USC account to sign into Zoom. If you’re an outside visitor, please inform us at (nlg-seminar-host(at)isi.edu) to make us aware of your attendance so we can admit you. Specify if you will attend remotely or in person at least one business day prior to the event. Provide your: full name, job title and professional affiliation and arrive at least 10 minutes before the seminar begins. If you do not have access to the 6th Floor for in-person attendance, please check in at the 10th floor main reception desk to register as a visitor and someone will escort you to the conference room location. https://usc.zoom.us/j/93979709729?pwd=v8abin7zGE0E7jWy4cGoEj8vyyFlUT.1 Meeting ID: 939 7970 9729 Passcode: 804448
Biography: If speaker approves to be recorded for this seminar, it will be posted on the USC/ISI YouTube page within 1-2 business days: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCISI Subscribe here to learn more about upcoming seminars: https://www.isi.edu/events/ For more information on the NL Seminar series and upcoming talks, please visit: https://www.isi.edu/research-groups-nlg/nlg-seminars/ Hosts: Jonathan May and Katy Felkner
Host: Jonathan May and Katy Felkner
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93979709729?pwd=v8abin7zGE0E7jWy4cGoEj8vyyFlUT.1Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Conf Rm#689
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93979709729?pwd=v8abin7zGE0E7jWy4cGoEj8vyyFlUT.1
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Six Sigma Black Belt
Thu, Apr 10, 2025 @ 04:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: IISE Faculty, IISE Faculty
Talk Title: Six Sigma Black Belt
Abstract: USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Six Sigma Black Belt program, offered in partnership with the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, enables professionals to learn how to integrate principles of business, statistics, and engineering to achieve tangible results. Learn the advanced problem-solving skills you need to implement the principles, practices, and techniques of our Six Sigma Black Belt course in order to maximize performance and cost reductions in your organization. During this three-week practitioner course, you will learn how to measure a process, analyze the results, develop process improvements, and quantify the resulting savings. You will be required to complete a project demonstrating mastery of appropriate analytical methods and pass an examination to earn Six Sigma Black Belt Certification. This practitioner course for Six Sigma implementation provides extensive coverage of the Six Sigma process, as well as intensive exposure to the key analytical tools associated with Six Sigma, including project management, team skills, cost analysis, FMEA, basic statistics, inferential statistics, sampling, goodness of fit testing, regression and correlation analysis, reliability, design of experiments, statistical process control, measurement systems analysis, and simulation. Computer applications are emphasized.
Host: USC Viterbi Corporate and Professional Programs
More Info: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-black-belt/
Audiences: Six Sigma Black Belt Students
Contact: VASE Executive Education
Event Link: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-black-belt/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Fri, Apr 11, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Six Sigma Black Belt
Fri, Apr 11, 2025 @ 04:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Executive Education
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: IISE Faculty, IISE Faculty
Talk Title: Six Sigma Black Belt
Abstract: USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Six Sigma Black Belt program, offered in partnership with the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, enables professionals to learn how to integrate principles of business, statistics, and engineering to achieve tangible results. Learn the advanced problem-solving skills you need to implement the principles, practices, and techniques of our Six Sigma Black Belt course in order to maximize performance and cost reductions in your organization. During this three-week practitioner course, you will learn how to measure a process, analyze the results, develop process improvements, and quantify the resulting savings. You will be required to complete a project demonstrating mastery of appropriate analytical methods and pass an examination to earn Six Sigma Black Belt Certification. This practitioner course for Six Sigma implementation provides extensive coverage of the Six Sigma process, as well as intensive exposure to the key analytical tools associated with Six Sigma, including project management, team skills, cost analysis, FMEA, basic statistics, inferential statistics, sampling, goodness of fit testing, regression and correlation analysis, reliability, design of experiments, statistical process control, measurement systems analysis, and simulation. Computer applications are emphasized.
Host: USC Viterbi Corporate and Professional Programs
More Info: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-black-belt/
Audiences: Six Sigma Black Belt Students
Contact: VASE Executive Education
Event Link: https://viterbiexeced.usc.edu/engineering-program-areas/six-sigma-lean-certification/six-sigma-black-belt/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Mon, Apr 14, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
"Keys to Life" series at USC ORSL
Mon, Apr 14, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
"Keys to Life" with Prof. Weiss is a motivational discussion series designed to promote student success and well-being. This series is for students who want to develop their "keys" in a small group setting and a peaceful, reflective environment. Finding purpose is essential to living a meaningful life and key to personal fulfillment. This series will help students identify and articulate their purpose and provide group motivation to work towards it. A unique feature of the series will be its peripatetic "Purpose Walks" through campus.
More Information: Keys to Life with Prof. Weiss.jpg
Location: University Religious Center (URC) - courtyard
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elisabeth Arnold Weiss
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Apr 15, 2025 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Mihai Anitescu,
Talk Title: Exponential Decay of Sensitivity in Graph-Indexed Optimization Problems, such as Control, and Distributed Optimization
Host: Dr. Johannes Royset
More Information: FLYER 651 Mihai Anitescu 4.15.25.png
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Casi Jones/ ISE
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
DREAM Industry Mentorship speaker series
Wed, Apr 16, 2025 @ 09:00 AM - 10:00 AM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
DREAM connects students with experienced industry professionals from a variety of tech and destination companies who help them create a vision for their futures, align their careers around purpose, and build character in the context of growth, reinvention, and constant change. Industry mentors discuss how professional challenges present opportunities for character and leadership development. This event features Binti Yost, Principal at KPMG- Economic and Valuation Services, sharing insights from her career in consulting for Fortune 500 companies. https://eis.usc.edu/dream/
More Information: DREAM Flyer 4-16 Binti Yost.png
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elisabeth Arnold Weiss
Event Link: https://cglink.me/2nB/r403700
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Wed, Apr 16, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Apr 16, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Receptions & Special Events
Bi-Weekly regular faculty meeting for invited full-time Computer Science faculty and staff only. Event details emailed directly to attendees.
Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 107
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Julia Mittenberg-Beirao
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
PhD Thesis Proposal - Mi-Ying Miryam Huang
Thu, Apr 17, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Presentation Title: Towards Publicly Verifiable Cryptography: Obfuscation, Fully Homomorphic Encryption, and Proof Carrying State.
Date and Time: April 17th 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: Ginsburg 503C
Committee members: David Kempe, Greta Panova (math department), Vatsal Sharan, Shanghua Teng, Jiapeng Zhang
Abstract: We explore public verifiability in cryptography. This proposal highlights two main results and one ongoing research direction:
Through a quantum lens, we introduce Quantum Obfuscation for approximate Unitary Quantum Functionality. By using advanced quantum techniques, our construction supports approximate unitary quantum functionalities with quantum inputs and outputs, significantly extending beyond existing limitations by Bartusek et al (STOC 2023, STOC 2024). Utilizing Quantum Teleportation combined with Projective Linear Measurement (PLM) quantum programs, we overcome critical obstacles from previous works and open potential applications in quantum copy-protection, quantum functional encryption, and secure quantum software distribution.
From a classical cryptographic perspective, we develop a Publicly Verifiable Fully Homomorphic Encryption (pvFHE) scheme, building upon the FHEW framework by Ducas and Micciancio (Eurocrypt 15). Integrating the GINX homomorphic accumulator, our scheme improves efficiency during bootstrapping and verification. Moreover, we introduce a generalized Rank-1 Constraint System (Ring R1CS) and construct a succinct non-interactive argument (SNARG). This approach provides efficient verifiability and strong security guarantees, including enhanced client data privacy, adhering to the recently introduced privacy framework by Cini et al. (Crypto 24).
Finally, our ongoing project, Proof-Carrying Quantum States, further extends these concepts to achieve verifiable quantum computations, bridging classical and quantum cryptographic techniques to ensure computation integrity and privacy. Together, these contributions advance both theoretical foundations and practical applications of publicly verifiable cryptographic protocols.Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 503C
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mi-Ying Miryam Huang
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Career & Internship Bootcamp
Fri, Apr 18, 2025 @ 09:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Want to secure an internship or job? Participate in Career & Internship Bootcamp on April 18th to learn how to increase your chances of getting contacted for an interview, how to excel at interviews, and how to negotiate a higher salary.
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
Event Link: https://viterbicareers.usc.edu/bootcamp/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Fri, Apr 18, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Startup Stories-Ajinkya Apte
Fri, Apr 18, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Viterbi Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Every startup has a story. Uncover the blueprint of success in the words of our very own Viterbi Alumni, Ajinkya Apte and hear about resources available to you start a business while at USC.
Location: Sign into EngageSC to View Location
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jashan Dhami
Event Link: https://engage.usc.edu/Viterbitie/rsvp?id=402986
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Mon, Apr 21, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
"Keys to Life" series at USC ORSL
Mon, Apr 21, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
"Keys to Life" with Prof. Weiss is a motivational discussion series designed to promote student success and well-being. This series is for students who want to develop their "keys" in a small group setting and a peaceful, reflective environment. Finding purpose is essential to living a meaningful life and key to personal fulfillment. This series will help students identify and articulate their purpose and provide group motivation to work towards it. A unique feature of the series will be its peripatetic "Purpose Walks" through campus.
More Information: Keys to Life with Prof. Weiss.jpg
Location: University Religious Center (URC) - courtyard
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elisabeth Arnold Weiss
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Apr 22, 2025 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Erim Kardes,
Host: Dr. Randy Hall
More Information: FLYER 651 Erim Kardes 4.22.25.png
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Casi Jones/ ISE
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (RASC) Seminar
Tue, Apr 22, 2025 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
USC School of Advanced Computing, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Davide Scaramuzza, Professor of Robotics and Perception at the University of Zurich
Talk Title: Vision-based Agile Robot Navigation
Abstract: Autonomous drones play a crucial role in inspection, agriculture, logistics, and search-and-rescue missions and promise to increase productivity by a factor of 10. However, they still lag behind human pilots in speed, versatility, and robustness. What does it take to fly autonomous drones as agile as or even better than human pilots? Autonomous, agile navigation through unknown, GPS-denied environments poses several challenges for robotics research regarding perception, learning, planning, and control. In this talk, I will show how the combination of model-based and machine-learning methods, united with the power of new, low-latency sensors, such as event cameras, can allow drones to achieve unprecedented speed and robustness by relying solely on onboard computing. This can result in better productivity and safety of future autonomous aircraft.
Biography: Davide Scaramuzza is a Professor of Robotics and Perception at the University of Zurich and currently distinguished visiting scientist at NASA JPL. He did his Ph.D. at ETH Zurich, a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, and was a visiting professor at Stanford University. His research focuses on autonomous, agile microdrone navigation using standard and event-based cameras. He pioneered autonomous, vision-based navigation of drones, which inspired the navigation algorithm of the NASA Mars helicopter and many drone companies. He contributed significantly to visual-inertial state estimation, vision-based agile navigation of microdrones, and low-latency, robust perception with event cameras, which were transferred to many products, from drones to automobiles, cameras, AR/VR headsets, and mobile devices. In 2022, his team demonstrated that an AI-powered drone could outperform the world champions of drone racing, a result published in Nature and considered the first time an AI defeated a human in the physical world. He is a consultant for the United Nations on disaster response and disarmament. He has won many awards, including an IEEE Technical Field Award, the elevation to IEEE Fellow, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award, a European Research Council Consolidator Grant, a Google Research Award, two NASA TechBrief Awards, and many paper awards (TRO, CVPR, RAL, IROS). In 2015, he co-founded Zurich-Eye, today Meta Zurich, which developed the world-leading virtual-reality headset Meta Quest. In 2020, he co-founded SUIND, which builds autonomous drones for precision agriculture. Many aspects of his research have been featured in the media, such as The New York Times, The Economist, and Forbes. Homepage: https://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/people_scaramuzza.html
Host: Executive Vice Dean of USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Director of the USC School of Advanced Computing, Gaurav Sukhatme
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond Duran
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (RASC) Seminar
Tue, Apr 22, 2025 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Davide Scaramuzza, Professor of Robotics and Perception at the University of Zurich
Talk Title: Vision-based Agile Robot Navigation
Abstract: Autonomous drones play a crucial role in inspection, agriculture, logistics, and search-and-rescue missions and promise to increase productivity by a factor of 10. However, they still lag behind human pilots in speed, versatility, and robustness. What does it take to fly autonomous drones as agile as or even better than human pilots? Autonomous, agile navigation through unknown, GPS-denied environments poses several challenges for robotics research regarding perception, learning, planning, and control. In this talk, I will show how the combination of model-based and machine-learning methods, united with the power of new, low-latency sensors, such as event cameras, can allow drones to achieve unprecedented speed and robustness by relying solely on onboard computing. This can result in better productivity and safety of future autonomous aircraft.
Biography: Davide Scaramuzza is a Professor of Robotics and Perception at the University of Zurich and currently distinguished visiting scientist at NASA JPL. He did his Ph.D. at ETH Zurich, a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, and was a visiting professor at Stanford University. His research focuses on autonomous, agile microdrone navigation using standard and event-based cameras. He pioneered autonomous, vision-based navigation of drones, which inspired the navigation algorithm of the NASA Mars helicopter and many drone companies. He contributed significantly to visual-inertial state estimation, vision-based agile navigation of microdrones, and low-latency, robust perception with event cameras, which were transferred to many products, from drones to automobiles, cameras, AR/VR headsets, and mobile devices. In 2022, his team demonstrated that an AI-powered drone could outperform the world champions of drone racing, a result published in Nature and considered the first time an AI defeated a human in the physical world. He is a consultant for the United Nations on disaster response and disarmament. He has won many awards, including an IEEE Technical Field Award, the elevation to IEEE Fellow, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award, a European Research Council Consolidator Grant, a Google Research Award, two NASA TechBrief Awards, and many paper awards (TRO, CVPR, RAL, IROS). In 2015, he co-founded Zurich-Eye, today Meta Zurich, which developed the world-leading virtual-reality headset Meta Quest. In 2020, he co-founded SUIND, which builds autonomous drones for precision agriculture. Many aspects of his research have been featured in the media, such as The New York Times, The Economist, and Forbes.
Homepage: https://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/people_scaramuzza.html
Host: Executive Vice Dean of USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Director of the USC School of Advanced Computing, Gaurav Sukhatme
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond Duran
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Wed, Apr 23, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Apr 23, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Receptions & Special Events
Bi-Weekly regular faculty meeting for invited full-time Computer Science faculty and staff only. Event details emailed directly to attendees.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Julia Mittenberg-Beirao
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Fri, Apr 25, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
AI Seminar- Texera: An Open-Source System for Cloud-Based Collaborative Data Science and AI/ML Using Workflows
Fri, Apr 25, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Chen Li,, UC Irvine
Talk Title: Texera: An Open-Source System for Cloud-Based Collaborative Data Science and AI/ML Using Workflows
Abstract: Since 2016 our team at UC Irvine has been developing the Texera open-source system (texera.io), with the goal of enabling a cloud-based platform to support collaborative data science, AI, and ML. It allows users with various backgrounds, including those with limited coding skills, domain scientists, and ML experts, to conduct AI-centric data science with a collaboration experience similar to Google Docs. After eight years of development, the system has a rich set of features, such as shared editing, shared execution, version control, commenting, debugging, user-defined functions in multiple languages (e.g., Python, R, Java), and support of state-of-the-art AI/ML techniques. Its backend parallel engine enables scalable computation on large data sets using computing clusters. It allows bioinformaticians to elastictly request resources from AWS to form a cluster to run computationally intensive jobs. It also supports community-based sharing of resources including datasets and workflows. In this talk, we will give an overview of the system, and focus on research challenges encountered in the development and our solutions. We will show use cases in both education and scientific communities.
Biography: Prof. Chen Li is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at UC Irvine. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, and his M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, China. His research interests are in the fields of data management, data science, AI/ML, databases, data-intensive computing, search, and visualization. He was a co-founder and CTO of a startup to commercialize his research. He was a recipient of an NSF CAREER award, an ACM Distinguished Member, and an IEEE fellow. If speaker approves to be recorded for this seminar it will be posted on the USC/ISI YouTube page within 1-2 business days: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCISI. Subscribe here to learn more about upcoming seminars: https://www.isi.edu/events/ .
Host: Zhuoyu Shi and Pete Zamar + Maura Covaci
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/5507/texera-an-open-source-system-for-cloud-based-collaborative-data-science-and-ai-ml-using-workflows/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95166882238?pwd=id334Bxxz7ZULMFpYWuHEppmFKlfUd.1Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Virtual Only
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95166882238?pwd=id334Bxxz7ZULMFpYWuHEppmFKlfUd.1
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Mon, Apr 28, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Apr 29, 2025 @ 03:30 AM - 04:30 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Minhee Kim ,
Host: Dr. Qiang Huang
More Information: FLYER 651 Minee Kim 4.29.25.png
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Casi Jones/ ISE
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. Students
Wed, Apr 30, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ECE Pioneer Talk - Prof. Alice Parker
Wed, Apr 30, 2025 @ 04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Alice Parker, Professor Emerita, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, USC
Talk Title: From Silicon to the Brain using Microelectronics as a Bridge
Series: ECE Pioneer Series
Abstract: This presentation spans 55 years of my career in science and engineering, from graduate school in the MSEE program at Stanford to final research at the University of Southern California as a Dean's Professor. My background in electronic circuits laid the groundwork for my final two decades of research in electronics to model the brain, a research interest I had for my entire career but placed on hold due to successes early on with graduate students on high-level synthesis of digital circuits, including system and intranet synthesis. The talk focuses first on high-level synthesis of digital circuits and then on the BioRC Biomimetic Research Cortex, a project focused on building an electronic brain based on pulseand timing circuits.
Biography: Alice C. Parker is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California and is a former Division Director for Computer Engineering, a former Dean of Graduate Studies, and a former Vice Provost for Research at USC. She was elected President of the Academic Senate in 1993. She was previously on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Parker received the B.S.E.E. and Ph.D degrees from North Carolina State University and an M.S.E.E. from Stanford University. She was elected a Fellow of the IEEE for her contributions to design automation in the areas of high-level synthesis, hardware description languages and design representation. She also received an NSF Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers, an NSF Fellowship, an award from ASEE (the Sharon Keillor award), and an teaching award from the Viterbi school.
Host: Richard Leahy, leahy@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Cathy Huang
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
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