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Events for the 2nd week of February

  • CS Colloquium: Leilani Battile (CSAIL MIT) - Behavior-Driven Optimizations for Big Data Exploration

    Mon, Feb 06, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Leilani Battile , CSAIL MIT

    Talk Title: Behavior-Driven Optimizations for Big Data Exploration

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.

    The physical and biological sciences are becoming more data driven, often due overwhelming quantities of data collected from satellites, telescopes, sequencers, and other sensors. One of the key issues for scientists who work with large datasets is efficient visualization of their data to extract patterns, observe anomalies, and debug their workflows. Though a variety of visualization tools exist to help people make sense of their data, these tools often rely on database management systems (or DBMSs) for data processing and storage; and unfortunately, DBMSs fail to process the data fast enough to support a fluid, interactive visualization experience.

    My work blends optimization techniques from databases and methodology from HCI and visualzation in order to support interactive and iterative exploration of large datasets. In this talk, I will discuss Sculpin, a visual exploration system that learns user exploration patterns automatically, and exploits these patterns to pre-fetch data ahead of users as they explore. I will show that Sculpin's pre-fetching techniques provide significant performance benefits compared to existing systems. I will then discuss our ongoing work with Sculpin, which aims to avoid wasting computational resources, while still providing a fluid, interactive exploration experience for users. To do this, we combine data-prefetching with incremental data processing and visualization-focused caching optimizations, and incorporate these techniques in Sculpin to further boost performance.

    Biography: Leilani Battile is a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate in the CSAIL Database Group at MIT, advised by Prof. Michael Stonebraker. Her research interests lie at the intersection of data management, user interface design, and visual analytics, with the aim of building intuitive and scalable database exploration tools. She was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow from 2011 to 2013. She obtained a M.S. from MIT in 2013, and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Washington in 2011.

    Host: CS Department

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • TBA

    Mon, Feb 06, 2017 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM

    Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: J. Jack Whalen, PhD, Assistant Professor of Research Ophthalmology, USC Roski Eye Institute, Keck School of Medicine

    Talk Title: Novel Biomaterials Strategies to Treat Ocular Trauma

    Host: Qifa Zhou

    Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta

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  • Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems

    Mon, Feb 06, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Karl Henrik Johansson, Professor, KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

    Talk Title: Collaborative Road Freight Transport

    Abstract: Freight transportation is of outmost importance for our society. Road transporting accounts for about 26% of all energy consumption and 18% of greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union. Goods transport in the EU amounts to 3.5 trillion tonne-km per year with 3 million people employed in this sector, whereas people transport amounts to 6.5 trillion passenger-km with 2 million employees. Despite the influence the transportation system has on our energy consumption and the environment, road goods transportation is mainly done by individual long-haulage trucks with no real-time coordination or global optimization. In this talk, we will discuss how modern information and communication technology supports a cyber-physical transportation system architecture with an integrated logistic system coordinating fleets of trucks traveling together in vehicle platoons. From the reduced air drag, platooning trucks traveling close together can save more than 10% of their fuel consumption. Control and estimation challenges and solutions on various level of this transportation system will be presented. It will be argued that a system architecture utilizing vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication enable optimal and safe control of individual trucks as well as optimised vehicle fleet collaborations and new markets. Extensive experiments done on European highways will illustrate system performance and safety requirements. The presentation will be based on joint work over the last ten years with collaborators at KTH and at the truck manufacturer Scania.

    Biography: Karl H. Johansson is Director of the Stockholm Strategic Research Area ICT The Next Generation and Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He received MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Lund University. He has held visiting positions at UC Berkeley, Caltech, NTU, HKUST Institute of Advanced Studies, and NTNU. His research interests are in networked control systems, cyber-physical systems, and applications in transportation, energy, and automation. He is a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society Board of Governors and the European Control Association Council. He has received several best paper awards and other distinctions, including a ten-year Wallenberg Scholar Grant, a Senior Researcher Position with the Swedish Research Council, and Future Research Leader Award from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. He is Fellow of the IEEE and IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.

    Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Estela Lopez

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  • USC Stem Cell Seminar: Laura Niklason, Yale University

    Tue, Feb 07, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Laura Niklason, Yale University

    Talk Title: TBD

    Series: Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC Distinguished Speakers Series

    Host: USC Stem Cell

    More Info: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events

    Webcast: http://keckmedia.usc.edu/stem-cell-seminar

    Location: Eli & Edythe Broad CIRM Center for Regenerative Medicine & Stem Cell Resch. (BCC) - First Floor Conference Room

    WebCast Link: http://keckmedia.usc.edu/stem-cell-seminar

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Cristy Lytal/USC Stem Cell

    Event Link: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events

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  • CS Colloquium: Heather Culbertson (Stanford University) - Realistic and Intuitive Haptic Feedback for Communication in Virtual and Real-World Environments

    Tue, Feb 07, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Heather Culbertson, Stanford University

    Talk Title: Realistic and Intuitive Haptic Feedback for Communication in Virtual and Real-World Environments

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.

    The haptic (touch) sensations felt when interacting with the physical world create a rich and varied impression of objects and their environment. Humans are capable of gathering a significant amount of information through touch with their environment, allowing them to assess object properties and qualities, dexterously handle objects, and communicate social cues and emotions. Humans are spending significantly more time in the digital world, however, and are increasingly interacting with people and objects through a digital medium. Unfortunately, digital interactions remain unsatisfying and limited, representing the human as having only two sensory inputs: visual and auditory.

    This talk will focus on the investigation of haptic devices and rendering algorithms to provide humans with touch information when communicating through a computer. I will present a background on the sense of touch, and illustrate how we can leverage this knowledge in order to design haptic devices and rendering systems that allow the human to communicate through the digital world in a natural and intuitive way. I will highlight contributions I have made in furthering haptic realism in virtual reality through the creation of highly realistic virtual objects. These objects are created by modeling high-frequency acceleration, force, and speed data recorded during physical interactions and displaying the appropriate haptic signals during rendering. I will then describe advances I have made in novel wearable haptic devices for communicating information to a human using intuitive and natural cues.

    Biography: Heather Culbertson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University where she works in the Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine (CHARM) Lab. She received her PhD in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015 working in the Haptics Group, part of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory. She completed a Masters in MEAM at the University of Pennsylvania in May of 2013, and earned a BS degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno in 2010.

    Host: CS Department

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • Epstein Institute Seminar, ISE 651

    Tue, Feb 07, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM

    Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Dusan M. Stipanovic, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

    Talk Title: Control of Dynamic Systems with Multiple Objectives

    Abstract: The challenges of controlling multiple dynamic systems with multiple objectives include problems in multi-player dynamic games, multi-objective optimization, and decentralized control and estimation. The additional complexities are caused by the existence of non linearities, time delays and perturbations in dynamic models, as well as various state, input and communication constraints. In this talk, a number of results related to multi-objective control of multiple dynamic systems will be presented. To illustrate these results some particular examples of controlling multiple dynamical systems in pursuit of accomplishing multiple objectives such as guaranteed capture or evasion, collision avoidance, tracking, and coverage control, will be presented.

    Biography: Dr. Dusan Stipanovic received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia, in 1994, and the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees (under supervision of Professor Dragoslav Siljak) in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, in 1996 and 2000, respectively. Dr. Stipanovic had been an Adjunct Lecturer and Research Associate with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University (1998-2001), and a Research Associate in Professor Claire Tomlin's Hybrid Systems Laboratory of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University (2001-2004). In 2004 he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he is now Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering and Coordinated Science Laboratory. He is a visiting Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia, and in the Robotics and Telematics Department at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, and also held a visiting faculty position in the EECS Department at the University of California at Berkeley. His research interests include decentralized control and estimation, stability theory, optimal control, and dynamic games with applications in control of autonomous vehicles, circuits, and medical robotics. Dr. Stipanovic served as an Associate Editor on the Editorial Boards of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I and II. Currently he is an Associate Editor for Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications.

    Host: Professor Ali Abbas

    More Information: February 7, 2017_Stipanovic.pdf

    Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Grace Owh

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  • Navigating the Internship & Job Search

    Tue, Feb 07, 2017 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Are you looking for an industry position and want to know where to begin? This workshop will give you the tips needed to help you find an engineering internship and co-op opportunities!

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211

    Audiences: All Viterbi

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Interviewing Strategies and Techniques

    Wed, Feb 08, 2017 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Discover tips on how to prepare for both technical and behavioral interviews, as well as the proper steps for follow-up!

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: All Viterbi

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • The Business of Oil and Gas

    Wed, Feb 08, 2017 @ 05:00 PM - 06:30 PM

    Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Mr. Jim Crompton, Reflections Data Consulting

    Talk Title: Integrated Operations Centers: A New Paradigm for working in the Digital Oilfield

    Series: USC Energy Institute Seminar Series

    Host: USC Energy Institute

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Juli Legat

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  • CS Colloquium: Dorsa Sadigh (UC Berkeley) -Towards a Theory of Safe and Interactive Autonomy

    Thu, Feb 09, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dorsa Sadigh, UC Berkeley

    Talk Title: Towards a Theory of Safe and Interactive Autonomy

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.

    Today's society is rapidly advancing towards cyber-physical systems (CPS) that interact and collaborate with humans, e.g., semi-autonomous vehicles interacting with drivers and pedestrians, medical robots used in collaboration with doctors, or service robots interacting with their users in smart homes. The safety-critical nature of these systems requires us to provide provably correct guarantees about their performance in interaction with humans. The goal of my research is to enable such human-cyber-physical systems (h-CPS) to be safe and interactive. I aim to develop a formalism for design of algorithms and mathematical models that facilitate correct-by-construction control for safe and interactive autonomy.

    In this talk, I will first discuss interactive autonomy, where we use algorithmic human-robot interaction to be mindful of the effects of autonomous systems on humans, and further leverage these effects for better safety, efficiency, coordination, and estimation. I will then talk about safe autonomy, where we provide correctness guarantees, while taking into account the uncertainty arising from the environment. Further, I will discuss a diagnosis and repair algorithm for systematic transfer of control to the human in unrealizable settings. While the algorithms and techniques introduced can be applied to many h-CPS applications, in this talk, I will focus on the implications of my work for semi-autonomous driving.


    Biography: Dorsa Sadigh is a Ph.D. candidate in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department at UC Berkeley. Her research interests lie in the intersection of control theory, formal methods, and human-robot interactions. Specifically, she works on developing a unified framework for safe and interactive autonomy. Dorsa received her B.S. from Berkeley EECS in 2012. She was awarded the NDSEG and NSF graduate research fellowships in 2013. She was the recipient of the 2016 Leon O. Chua department award and the 2011 Arthur M. Hopkin department award for achievement in the field of nonlinear science, and she received the Google Anita Borg Scholarship in 2016.

    Host: CS Department

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • Neuromorphic Systems to Reverse Engineer Reflex Function

    Thu, Feb 09, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Professor Francisco Valero-Cuevas, USC

    Talk Title: Neuromorphic Systems to Reverse Engineer Reflex Function

    Abstract: The objective of this work is to build a neuromorphic robotic system that can interact with the physical world by implementing neuromechanical principles. It is a faithful implementation of the spinal circuitry responsible for the afferentation of muscles and is capable of producing both normal and pathological functions.

    We used state-of-the-art models of muscle spindle mechanoreceptors with fusimotor drive, monosynaptic circuitry of the stretch reflex, and alpha motoneuron recruitment and rate coding. This multi-scale, hybrid system driven by populations of 1024 spiking neurons, emulated the physiological characteristics of the afferented mammalian muscles. We implemented these models on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) which are capable of running these complex computations in real-time. The FPGAs control the forces of two muscles acting on a joint via long tendons. We performed ramp-and-hold perturbations and systematically explored a range of muscle spindle gains (fusimotor drive) to characterize the stretch reflex response in different phases of the perturbation. Finally, we explored the fidelity of four models for isometric muscle force production by testing their responses to rate-coding using spike trains and produced force ramps.

    This autonomous integrated system was self-stable and the closed-loop behavior of populations of muscle spindles, alpha and gamma motoneurones, and muscle fibers emulated muscle tone and function. Sweeping the range of muscle spindle gains provided us with a subset of values that produced tenable physiological and pathological responses. Moreover, isometric force generation revealed that the dynamic response in the tendons is very sensitive to tendon elasticity, especially at high firing rates.

    This hybrid, neuromorphic, neuromechanical system is a precursor to neuromorphic robotic systems. It provides a platform to study healthy function and the potential spinal and/or supraspinal sources of pathologic behavior.

    Biography: I attended Swarthmore College from 1984-88 where I obtained a BS degree in Engineering. After spending a year in the Indian subcontinent as a Thomas J Watson Fellow, I joined Queen's University in Ontario and worked with Dr. Carolyn Small. The research for my Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering at Queen's focused on developing non-invasive methods to estimate the kinematic integrity of the wrist joint.

    In 1991, I joined the doctoral program in the Design Division of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford University. I worked with Dr. Felix Zajac developing a realistic biomechanical model of the human digits. This research, done at the Rehabilitation R & D Center in Palo Alto, focused on predicting optimal coordination patterns of finger musculature during static force production.

    After completing my doctoral degree in 1997, I joined the core faculty of the Biomechanical Engineering Division at Stanford University as a Research Associate and Lecturer. In 1999, I joined the faculty of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University as Assistant Professor, and was tenured in 2005. In 2007, I joined the faculty at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the Division of Biokinesiology & Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California as Associate Professor; where I was promoted to Full Professor in 2011. In 2013 I was elected Senior Member of the IEEE, and in 2014 to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineers.

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

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  • Lyman L. Handy Colloquia

    Thu, Feb 09, 2017 @ 12:45 PM - 01:50 PM

    Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Rampi Ramprasad , University of Connecticut

    Talk Title: Rational Computation-Guided Design of Polymer Dielectrics

    Series: Lyman Handy Colloquia

    Host: Professor Rajiv Kalia

    Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Martin Olekszyk

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  • Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems

    Thu, Feb 09, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Justinian Rosca , Siemens Corporate Technology, Princeton, NJ

    Talk Title: Synchronizing the Real and Digital Worlds: Lessons from Autonomous Cars

    Abstract: Computational estimation problems for real-world applications are rife with myriad sources of uncertainty from noise, sensor inaccuracies, incompleteness of the data, unmeasured effects, calibration errors, to physical principles not modeled in computation. We are interested in inference and reasoning frameworks with capabilities for characterizing and handling uncertainty throughout the computational process in all phases of the unified digital twin of a cyber physical system.
    In this talk I present examples from my research on uncertainty handling for two problems. Each deals with a different phase for building the digital twin of an automated system, such as an autonomously driven connected car. Automated vehicle technology senses the driving environment and operates a vehicle with limited or even without human input. Digital twins offer the potential to unify models across the lifecycle phases of a complex cyber physical system, from design (CAD models), engineering (CAE models), production (CAM and simulation models), to operation and maintenance (PHM and reliability models).

    The first use case is from the engineering phase of an autonomous vehicle that drives safely through intersections. Simulation is a powerful cost-effective method for developing, testing, and evaluating various components of new technologies, where a limited initial market penetration and unknown human behavioral responses are the status-quo. Realistic modeling of how connected vehicles "talk" to each other while moving in traffic is essential for large scale simulations of time-critical applications. However, there is no widely agreed upon physical model for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) over the 75 MHz of spectrum using the IEEE 802.11p standard. How do we sum up and exploit real world measurements of interference, fading, antennas, weather, environment type, vehicle movement and traffic density, which are difficult to characterize and rich in uncertainty at all levels? Brought into simulation, these will affect the very algorithms that control the vehicle and acquire new data. Therefore, we bring data from the real world into the digital twin to affect the design and engineering phases and vet the application on a large scale. At the other end of the digital twin, the second use case is about edge intelligence in a vehicle perpetually connected to its physical world through hundreds of sensors and communication links, which offer fast analogue and digital data to be exploited in understanding the patterns of operation for machine health management and ultimately, for control. Again we face the challenge of processing a river of data and reasoning with uncertainty pro-actively about the past and the future, to explain system dynamics, gain immediate insights for control, and connect to the prior lifecycle phases of design and engineering.


    Biography: Justinian Rosca is Senior Key Expert of Siemens Corp., Corporate Technology in Princeton NJ, where he has been managing research and innovation since 1999. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Rochester, NY. He also holds the M.S. degree in Computers and Control Engineering from Polytechnic University Bucharest. He was Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington, 2008-2011, and obtained a certificate in executive management for innovation, from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business.

    Dr. Rosca's primary research interests span sensing and communication, statistical signal processing, machine learning, probabilistic inference, and artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on embedded intelligence in autonomous systems. Dr. Rosca holds close to 50 patents, 100 publications in the areas of signal processing, machine learning, and cyber-physical systems, and co-authored two books in mathematics and signal processing. Several of his innovations are at the foundation of Siemens' multi-channel digital hearing aids technology, and affect the quality of hearing for millions of people worldwide. His scientific contributions were transferred into a variety of products and systems such as microphone array technologies for hearing aids and mobile phones, adaptive multimedia wireless network management, traffic services for connected vehicles, and edge analytics in industry, and earned him multiple Siemens business unit awards. He served as program chair of the 6th Independent Component Analysis and Blind Signal Separation International Conference, chair of the Neural Information and Processing Systems workshop on Sparse Representations in Signal Processing, and recently as chair of the Data Challenge 2015 and 2016 competitions of the Prognostics and Health Management Society.


    Host: Paul Bogdan

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Estela Lopez

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  • PhD Defense: Analysis and Modeling of Multi-Level Dynamics of Multimodal Behavior in Affective Human Interactions

    Thu, Feb 09, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Zhaojun Yang, University of Southern California, PhD Candidate

    Talk Title: Analysis and Modeling of Multi-Level Dynamics of Multimodal Behavior in Affective Human Interactions

    Abstract: Human communication is a dynamical and interactive process that is established on a common ground of conveying emotions, achieving the interaction goals and sharing mutual interests of the interaction participants. Such an interactive process naturally induces a multi-level dynamical flow along various verbal and nonverbal behavior dimensions of spoken words, speech prosody, body gestures, and facial expressions. As one of the major components that shape the structure of social interactions, emotions greatly affect the multi-level dynamics of multimodal behavior throughout the course of an interaction. This thesis, from three perspectives, explores computational methodologies to understand, analyze and model human behaviors dynamics that relate to and arise from affective processes underlying human interactions: 1) modeling the dynamics of body gesture expression of emotions; 2) studying how multimodal behavior channels, speech and body particularly, of an individual dynamically interact with one another towards emotion expression; and 3) exploring interpersonal coordination of multimodal behavior induced in human interactions.

    Defense committee: Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan (Chair), Prof. C.-C. Jay Kuo, Prof. Gayla Margolin (Outside member)

    Biography: Zhaojun Yang is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). She received her B.E. Degree from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) 2009 and M.Phil. Degree from Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) 2011. She was awarded with the USC Annenberg Fellowship (2011-2015). Her work (with S. S. Narayanan) has won the Best Student Paper Award at IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2016. Her research interests include Affective Computing, Machine Learning, and Human-centered multimodal signal processing.

    Host: Shrikanth Narayanan

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 320

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-Systems

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  • Schlumberger Information Session

    Thu, Feb 09, 2017 @ 06:30 PM - 08:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Learn about Schlumberger and network with company representatives.

    Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101

    Audiences: All Viterbi Students

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program Colloquium

    Fri, Feb 10, 2017 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM

    USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

    University Calendar


    Join us for a presentation by Mr. Brandon Iglesias, Director of Engineering at Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, titled "Engineering Your Future."

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Ramon Borunda/Academic Services

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  • Seminars in Biomedical Engineering

    Fri, Feb 10, 2017 @ 02:30 PM - 04:30 PM

    Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Sook-Lei Liew, Assistant Professor, Occupational Therapy, Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC

    Talk Title: Large scale neuroimaging and neuromodulation to promote motor recovery after stroke

    Series: Seminars in BME (Lab Rotations)

    Abstract: Stroke is a leading cause of adult long term disability, and up to 2/3 of stroke survivors do not fully recover, despite intensive therapy. Identifying and personalizing rehabilitation treatments based on each patient's neurological and behavioral profile could greatly enhance the post-stroke outcomes. In this talk, I will discuss a two-pronged approach to address this problem. First, we are characterizing how specific neuroanatomical changes relate to motor recovery on a large scale. In partnership with ENIGMA Center for Worldwide Medicine, Imaging, and Genomics, we have developed an ENIGMA working group on stroke recovery to harmonize stroke neuroimaging efforts around the world, with an initial goal of n>3000 MRIs. Our preliminary data shows promising results, with specific post-stroke neuroanatomical motor regions relating to motor impairment and recovery, and results becoming more robust as data across sites is combined. Second, we are developing and evaluating neuromodulatory approaches to affect brain activity in key regions after stroke, using noninvasive brain stimulation and brain computer interfaces to enhance therapeutic outcomes. Preliminary work using transcranial direct current stimulation, real-time fMRI connectivity neurofeedback and a portable EEG-based virtual reality neurofeedback system will be discussed, along with future implications of this work for translational research.

    Host: Brent Liu, PhD

    Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - 146

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta

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  • NL Seminar-THE LIMITS OF UNSUPERVISED SYNTAX AND THE IMPORTANCE OF GROUNDING IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

    Fri, Feb 10, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Information Sciences Institute

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Yonatan Bisk, USC/ISI

    Talk Title: THE LIMITS OF UNSUPERVISED SYNTAX AND THE IMPORTANCE OF GROUNDING IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

    Series: Natural Language Seminar

    Abstract: The future of self driving cars, personal robots, smart homes, and intelligent assistants hinges on our ability to communicate with computers. The failures and miscommunications of Siri style systems are untenable and become more problematic as machines become more pervasive and are given more control over our lives. Despite the creation of massive proprietary datasets to train dialogue systems, these systems still fail at the most basic tasks. Further, their reliance on big data is problematic. First, successes in English cannot be replicated in most of the six thousand plus languages of the world. Second, while big data has been a boon for supervised training methods, many of the most interesting tasks will never have enough labeled data to actually achieve our goals. It is, therefore, important that we build systems which can learn from naturally occurring data and grounded, situated interactions.

    In this talk I will discuss work from my thesis on the unsupervised acquisition of syntax which harnesses unlabeled text in over a dozen languages. This exploration leads us to novel insights into the limits of semantics free language learning. Having isolated these stumbling blocks I will then present my recent work on language grounding where we attempt to learn the meaning of several linguistic constructions via interaction with the world.

    Biography: Yonatan Bisk has research that focuses on Natural Language Processing from naturally occurring data unsupervised and weakly supervised data. He is a postdoc researcher with Daniel Marcu at USCs Information Sciences Institute. Previously, he received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign under Julia Hockenmaier and his BS from the University of Texas at Austin.

    Host: Marjan Ghazvininejad and Kevin Knight

    More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/

    Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 6th Flr -CR#689 (ISI/Marina Del Rey)

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Peter Zamar

    Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/

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  • Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. Seminar

    Fri, Feb 10, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Aycut Ayca and Arsalan Heydarian, Ph.D. Students -Astani Civil Engineering Department

    Talk Title: TBA

    Abstract: TBA

    Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Evangeline Reyes

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