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Events for the 3rd week of February
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CS Colloquium: Anirudh Sivaraman (CSAIL MIT) - Making the fastest routers programmable
Mon, Feb 13, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Anirudh Sivaraman, CSAIL MIT
Talk Title: Making the fastest routers programmable
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.
Historically, the evolution of network routers was driven primarily by performance. Recently, owing to the need for better control over network operations and the constant demand for new features, programmability of routers has become as important as performance.
However, today's fastest routers, which run at line rate, use fixed-function hardware, which cannot be modified after deployment. I will describe two router primitives we have developed to build programmable routers at line rate. The first is a programmable pocket scheduler. The second is a way to execute stateful packet-processing algorithms to manage network resources. Together, these primitives allow us to program several packet-processing functions at line rate, such as in-network congestion control, active queue management, data-plane load balancing, network measurement, and packet scheduling.
This talk is based on joint work with collaborators at MIT, Barefoot Networks, Cisco Systems, Microsoft Research, Stanford University, and the University of Washington.
Biography: Anirudh Sivaraman is a Ph.D. student at MIT, advised by Hari Balakrishnan and Mohammad Alizadeh. His recent research work has focused on hardware and software for programmable high-speed routers. He has also been actively involved in the design and evolution of the P4 language for programmable network devices. His past research includes work on congestion control, network emulation, improving Web performance, and network measurement. He received the MIT EECS department's Frederick C. Hennie III Teaching Award in 2012 and shared the Internet Research Task Force's Applied Networking Research Prize in 2014.
Host: CS Department
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Feb 13, 2017 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: John Lasch, Director, USC AMI
Talk Title: Technology Development
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 13, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Michael Shlesinger, Office of Naval Research
Talk Title: Pitfalls and Paradoxes in the History of Probability Theory
Abstract: This lecture traces the history of probability theory from the throwing of bones, sticks, and dice to modern times. Early 18th century books, Jacob Bernouill's "The Art of Conjecturing" and Abraham DeMoivre's "The Doctrine of Chances" were rich with new mathematics, insight and gambling odds. Progress was often made by confronting paradoxes. The first of these confused probabilities with expectations and was explained in the Pascal-Fermat letters of 1654. The St. Petersburg Paradox involved a distribution with an infinite first moment, and Levy discovered a whole class of probabilities with infinite moments that have found a surprising utility in physics connected to fractals. Through conditional probabilities, Bayes introduced what later has become hypothesis testing. Arriving at two different answers, the Bertrand paradox involved measure theory for continuous probabilities, Poisson discovered that adding random variables need not always produce the Gaussian, and Daniel Bernoulli and D'Alembert argued over the probabilities for the safety of smallpox vaccinations. Using these and other anecdotes, this lecture discusses vignettes that have brought us to today's widespread use of probability and statistics.
Biography: Dr. Michael Shlesinger manages the nonlinear physics program at the Office of Naval Research. He has published over 200 scientific papers on topics in stochastic processes, glassy materials, proteins, neurons, and nonlinear dynamics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was a Divisional Associate Editor of the Physical Review Letters. In 2006 he received ONR's Saalfeld Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Science, and earlier the federal government's Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Senior Professionals, and the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award. He held the Kinnear Chair in Physics at the USNA, was the Michelson Lecturer at the USNA, the Regents' Lecturer at UCSD and received the U. Maryland's Distinguished Postdoc Alum award. His Ph. D., in Physics, is from the U. of Rochester in 1975, and his 1970 B.S. in Mathematics and Physics is from SUNY Stony Brook.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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USC Stem Cell Seminar: Christine Brown, City of Hope
Tue, Feb 14, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Christine Brown, City of Hope
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-seminarWebCast 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: Aurojit Panda (UC Berkeley) - A New Approach to Network Functions
Tue, Feb 14, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Aurojit Panda, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: A New Approach to Network Functions
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.
Modern networks do far more than just deliver packets, and provide network functions -- including firewalls, caches, and WAN optimizers -” that are crucial for scaling networks, ensuring security and enabling new applications. Network functions were traditionally implemented using dedicated hardware middleboxes, but in recent years they are increasingly being deployed as VMs on commodity servers. While many herald this move towards network function virtualization (NFV) as a great step forward, I argue that accepted virtualization techniques are ill-suited to network functions. In this talk I describe NetBricks -” a new approach to building and running virtualized network functions that speeds development and increases performance. I end the talk by discussing the implications of being able to easily create and insert new network functions.
Biography: Aurojit Panda is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of California Berkeley, where he is advised by Scott Shenker . His work spans programming languages, networking and systems, and his recent work has investigated network verification, consensus algorithms in software defined networks and frameworks for building network functions.
Host: CS Department
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Rock Your Linked In Profile
Tue, Feb 14, 2017 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Come chat with the Linked In USC Campus Ambassador! Get tips on how to network effectively, how to toot your own horn, and how to rock your LinkedIn profile.
Location: 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Epstein Institute Seminar, ISE 651
Tue, Feb 14, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Oguzhan Alagoz, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Talk Title: A Mathematical Modeling Framework to Personalize Mammography Screening Decisions
Abstract: Breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-death in US women. Although mammography is the most effective modality for breast cancer diagnosis, it has several potential risks, including high false positive rates, which are not very rare. Therefore, the balance of benefits and risks, which depend on personal characteristics, is critical in designing a mammography screening schedule. In contrast to prior research and existing guidelines which consider population-based screening recommendations, we propose a personalized mammography screening policy based on the prior screening history and personal risk characteristics of women.
We formulate a finite-horizon partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) model for this problem. Our POMDP model incorporates two methods of detection (self or screen), age-specific unobservable disease progression, and age-specific mammography test characteristics. We use a validated micro-simulation model based on real data in estimating the parameters and solve this POMDP model optimally for individual patients. Our results show that our proposed personalized screening schedules outperform the existing guidelines with respect to the total expected quality-adjusted life years, while significantly decreasing the number of mammograms. We further find that the mammography screening threshold risk increases with age. We derive several structural properties of the model, including the sufficiency conditions that ensure the existence of a control-limit policy.
Biography: Dr. Oguzhan Alagoz is currently an Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his BS from Bilkent University in 1997, MS from Middle East Technical University in 2000, and PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2004. He worked as a visiting assistant professor of Operations at the Weatherhead School of Management of Case Western Reserve University between 2004 and 2005. His research interests include stochastic optimization, medical decision making, completely and partially observable Markov decision processes, simulation, risk-prediction modeling, health technology assessment, and scheduling. He is on the editorial boards of Operations Research, IIE Transactions, and IIE Transactions on Healthcare Engineering and previously served on the board of Medical Decision Making. He has received various awards including a CAREER award from National Science Foundation (NSF), outstanding young industrial engineer in education award from IIE, Dantzig Dissertation Honorable Mention Award from INFORMS, 2nd place award from INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group best paper competition, best paper award from INFORMS Service Science Section, and best poster award from UW Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center. He has been the principal investigator and co-investigator on grants more than $3.5 million funded by NSF and NIH.
Host: Professor Phebe Vayanou
More Information: February 14, 2017_Alagoz.pdf
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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CS Colloquium: Theodoros Rekatsinas (Stanford University) - Data Integration with Unreliable Sources
Wed, Feb 15, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Theodoros Rekatsinas, Stanford University
Talk Title: Data Integration with Unreliable Sources
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.
Data integration is an essential element of data-intensive science and modern analytics. Users often need to combine data from different sources to gain new scientific knowledge, obtain accurate insights, and create new services. However, today's upsurge in the number and heterogeneity-”in terms of format and reliability-”of data sources limits the ability of users to reason about the value of data. This raises the fundamental questions: what makes a data source useful to end users, how can we integrate unreliable data, and which sources we need to combine to maximize the user's utility?
In this talk, I discuss how to assess and leverage the quality and reliability of data to make data integration more efficient. Specifically, I demonstrate how statistical learning is the key to managing large volumes of heterogeneous sources effectively. Building upon this observation, I introduce new solutions to classical data integration problems, such as data conflict resolution and data cleaning, and show that these solutions outperform their traditional counterparts by large margins. I finish with an outlook on how recent advancements in machine learning have the potential to streamline the construction of end-to-end data curation systems and bring data closer to users.
Biography: Theodoros (Theo) Rekatsinas is a Moore Data Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford working with Christopher Ré; he earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, where he was advised by Amol Deshpande and Lise Getoor. His research interests are in data management, with a focus on data integration, data cleaning, and uncertain data. Theo's work on using quality-aware data integration techniques to forecast the emergence and progression of disease outbreaks received the Best Paper Award at SDM 2015. Theo was awarded the Larry S. Davis Doctoral Dissertation award in 2015.
Host: CS Department
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Cover Letter Workshop
Wed, Feb 15, 2017 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Not sure how to write a cover letter? In this workshop we'll explain the components of a strong cover letter, and students will have time to craft their own cover letter! Bring any existing cover letter drafts you may have, a job description you would like to apply to, and your resume.
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 360
Audiences: All Viterbi
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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MHI CommNetS seminar
Wed, Feb 15, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Marcella M. Gomez, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Delays in biological networks and feedback design
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Gene regulatory networks lie at the crux of life and, despite rapidly evolving tools in synthetic biology, our ability to replicate the robustness of these systems remains a challenge. We have not been able to fully understand and, hence, design effective feedback mechanisms. I present work towards said challenge through extensions in control and dynamical systems lending to an effective network design in the presence of delays, an adversarial facet of biology.
In this talk I focus on the role of delays in biological networks. I show how understanding the effects of delays and stochastic processes on gene expression dynamics can be used to design effective controllers for stability. First, I present a stability condition for stochastic linear systems with identically, independently, distributed stochastic delays. In an application to a single gene oscillator, I demonstrate the stabilizing effects of increasing the relative variance of the delay uncertainty. Using the insight gained from this analysis along with inspiration from nature, I present a stabilizing controller for the single gene oscillator based on adding a larger delay in parallel. A generalized delay-based feedback design approach shows this architecture to be near optimal. In summary, through a deeper understanding of the effects of delays on dynamics, I arrive at an effective stabilizing controller in a system with large delays, where traditional methods in controls cannot be used for feedback design.
Biography: Marcella M. Gomez is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She received her bachelors from UC Berkeley in 2008 and her PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 2015, both in Mechanical Engineering. Her research interests lie in developing synergistic methods combining control and dynamical systems with synthetic biology for the advancement in understanding and designing of complex genetic networks.
Host: Prof. Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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AME Seminar: Christopher S. Combs
Wed, Feb 15, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Christopher S. Combs, Research Assistant Professor
Talk Title: Advancement of Non-Intrusive Optical Diagnostics for the Study of Supersonic Aerothermodynamics
Host: USC Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
More Info: http://ame-www.usc.edu/seminars/2-15-17-combs.shtml
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: USC AME (OHE 430)
Event Link: http://ame-www.usc.edu/seminars/2-15-17-combs.shtml
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Navigating the Internship & Job Search
Wed, Feb 15, 2017 @ 04:30 PM - 05:30 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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Trojan Talk with California Resources Corporation
Wed, Feb 15, 2017 @ 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
California Resources Corporation (CRC) is an oil and natural gas exploration and production company with conventional and unconventional assets exclusively in California. CRC is dedicated to providing safe, affordable, reliable, local energy: "Energy for California by Californians"
Join us to learn more about California Resources Corporation and Engineering Intern opportunities!
Potential intern locations: Long Beach, CA; Bakersfield, CA; Chatsworth, CA
As an intern, you will gain organizational awareness, be exposed to other disciplines, participate in meaningful projects, and engage with senior leadership! See attached flyer for more information!Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: All Viterbi
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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CECS Alumni & Industry Spotlight
Wed, Feb 15, 2017 @ 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Students will hear from alumni and industry representatives regarding their academic/professional experiences.
Free Pizza!Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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CS Colloquium: Rashmi K. Vinayak (UC Berkeley) - Smart redundancy for big-data systems: Theory and Practice
Thu, Feb 16, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rashmi K. Vinayak, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Smart redundancy for big-data systems: Theory and Practice
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.
Large-scale distributed storage and caching systems form the foundation of big-data systems. A key scalability challenge in distributed storage systems is achieving fault tolerance in a resource-efficient manner. Towards addressing this challenge, erasure codes provide a storage-efficient alternative to the traditional approach of data replication. However, classical erasure codes come with critical drawbacks: while optimal in utilizing storage space, they significantly increase the usage of other important cluster resources such as network and I/O. In the first part of the talk, I present new erasure codes and theoretical optimality guarantees. The proposed codes reduce the network and I/O usage by 35-70% for typical parameters while retaining the storage efficiency of classical codes. I then present an erasure-coded storage system that employs the proposed codes, and demonstrate significant benefits over the state-of-the-art in evaluations under production setting at Facebook. Our codes have been incorporated into Apache Hadoop 3.0. The second part of the talk focuses on achieving high performance in distributed caching systems. These systems routinely face the challenges of skew in data popularity, background traffic imbalance, and server failures, which result in load imbalance across servers and degradation in read latencies. I present EC-Cache, a cluster cache that employs erasure coding to achieve a 3-5x improvement as compared to the state-of-the-art.
Biography: Rashmi K. Vinayak is a postdoctoral researcher in the EECS department at UC Berkeley, where she received her PhD in 2016. Her dissertation received the Eli Jury Award 2016 from the EECS department at UC Berkeley for outstanding achievement in the area of systems, communications, control, or signal processing. Rashmi is also a recipient of the Facebook Fellowship 2012-13, the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship 2013-15, and the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship 2015-16. She is also the recipient of the IEEE Data Storage Best Paper and Best Student Paper Awards for the years 2011/2012. Her research interests lie in the theoretical and system challenges that arise in storage and analysis of big data, with a current focus on erasure coding for big-data systems.
Host: CS Department
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Interviewing Strategies and Techniques
Thu, Feb 16, 2017 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 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: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: All Viterbi
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Sonny Astani Department Seminar
Fri, Feb 17, 2017 @ 03:00 AM - 03:30 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ruda Zhang, PhD Student, Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Talk Title: Demand and Supply Distribution of Street Hailing Taxi Service
Abstract: Before the rise of taxi hailing via mobile devices, passengers and taxi drivers have no information about each others' locations. For traditional street hailing taxi services, where are the potential passengers? Where are the free taxis? Does free taxi supply match passenger demand? Using New York City taxi trip records during 2009-2013, we built and tested models to answer these questions.
Host: Roger Ghanem
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kaela Berry
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AI Seminar - Interview Talk
Fri, Feb 17, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jay Pujara, University of California, Santa Cruz
Talk Title: Probabilistic models for large, noisy, and dynamic data
Abstract: We inhabit a vast, uncertain, and dynamic universe. To succeed in such an environment, artificial intelligence approaches must handle massive amounts of noisy, changing evidence. My research addresses the problems of building scalable, probabilistic models amenable to online updates. To illustrate the potential of such models, I present my work on knowledge graph identification, which jointly resolves the entities, attributes, and relationships in a knowledge graph by combining statistical NLP signals and semantic constraints. Using probabilistic soft logic, a statistical relational learning framework I helped develop, I demonstrate how knowledge graph identification can scale to millions of uncertain candidate facts and tens of millions of semantic dependencies in real-world data while achieving state-of-the-art performance. My work further extends this scalability by adopting a distributed computing approach, reducing the inference time of knowledge graph identification from two hours to ten minutes. Updating large, collective models like those used for knowledge graphs with new information poses a significant challenge. I develop a regret bound for probabilistic models and use this bound to motivate practical algorithms that support low-regret updates while improving inference time over 65%. Finally, I highlight several active projects in sustainability, bioinformatics, and mobile analytics that provide a promising foundation for future research.
Biography: Jay Pujara is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz whose principal areas of research are machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science. He completed his PhD at the University of Maryland, College Park and received his MS and BS at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to his PhD, Jay spent six years at Yahoo! working on mail spam detection, user trust, and contextual mail experiences, and he has also worked at Google, LinkedIn and Oracle. Jay is the author of over twenty peer-reviewed publications and has received three best paper awards for his work. He is a recognized authority on knowledge graphs, and has organized the Automatic Knowledge Base Construction (AKBC) workshop, recently presented a tutorial on knowledge graph construction, and has had his work featured in AI Magazine. For more information, visit https://www.jaypujara.org
Host: Craig Knoblock
More Info: http://webcastermshd.isi.edu/Mediasite/Play/1ed0700540864caabaedfc675e89543e1d
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kary LAU
Event Link: http://webcastermshd.isi.edu/Mediasite/Play/1ed0700540864caabaedfc675e89543e1d
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program Colloquium
Fri, Feb 17, 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 Dr. William Ballhaus, CEO of The Aerospace Corporation (retired), titled "Space Is Still a One Strike and You're Out Business."
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ramon Borunda/Academic Services
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Munushian Keynote Lecture - William E. Moerner, Friday, February 17th at 2:00pm in GER124
Fri, Feb 17, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. William E. Moerner - Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Foundation (2014), Stanford University
Talk Title: The Story of Photonics and Single Molecules, from Early Spectroscopy in Solids, to Super-Resolution Nanoscopy in Cells and Beyond
Abstract: More than 25 years ago, low temperature experiments aimed at establishing the ultimate limits to optical storage in solids led to the first optical detection and spectroscopy of a single molecule in the condensed phase. At this unexplored ultimate limit, many surprises occurred where single molecules showed both spontaneous changes (blinking) and light-driven control of emission, properties that were also observed in 1997 at room temperature with single green fluorescent protein variants. In 2006, PALM and subsequent approaches showed that the optical diffraction limit of ~200 nm can be circumvented to achieve super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, or nanoscopy, with relatively nonperturbative visible light. Essential to this is the combination of single-molecule fluorescence imaging with active control of the emitting concentration and sequential localization of single fluorophores decorating a structure. Super-resolution microscopy has opened up a new frontier in which biological structures and behavior can be observed in live cells with resolutions down to 20-40 nm and below. Examples range from protein superstructures in bacteria to bands in actin filaments to details of the shapes of amyloid fibrils and much more. Current methods development research addresses ways to extract more information from each single molecule such as 3D position and orientation, and to assure not only precision, but also accuracy. Still, it is worth noting that in spite of all the interest in super-resolution, even in the "conventional" single-molecule tracking regime where the motions of individual biomolecules are recorded in solution or in cells rather than the shapes of extended structures, much can still be learned about biological processes when ensemble averaging is removed.
Biography: William Moerner is an American physical chemist and chemical physicist with current work in the biophysics and imaging of single molecules. He is credited with achieving the first optical detection and spectroscopy of a single molecule in condensed phases, along with his postdoc, Lothar Kador. Optical study of single molecules has subsequently become a widely used single-molecule experiment in chemistry, physics and biology. In 2014 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
He attended Washington University in St. Louis for undergraduate studies as an Alexander S. Langsdorf Engineering Fellow, and obtained three degrees: a B.S. in physics with Final Honors, a B.S. in electrical engineering with Final Honors, and an A.B. in mathematics summa cum laude in 1975. This was followed by graduate study, partially supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, at Cornell University in the group of Albert J. Sievers III. Here he received an M.S. degree and a Ph.D. degree in physics in 1978 and 1982, respectively.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
More Info: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian-lecture
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 124
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian-lecture
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PhD Defense- Om Prasad Patri
Fri, Feb 17, 2017 @ 02:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Modeling and Recognition of Events from Temporal Sensor Data for Energy Applications
Ph.D. candidate: Om Prasad Patri
Friday, February 17, 2017
2:30PM, EEB 248
Abstract:
The ubiquitous nature of sensors and smart devices collecting more and more data from industrial and engineering equipment (such as pumps and compressors in oilfields or smart meters in energy grids) has led to new challenges in faster processing of temporal data to identify critical happenings (events) and respond to them. We deal with two primary challenges in processing events from temporal sensor data: (i) how to comprehensively model events and related happenings (event modeling), and (ii) how to automatically recognize event patterns from raw multi-sensor data (event recognition).
The event modeling problem is to build a comprehensive event model enabling complex event analysis across diverse underlying systems, people, entities, actions and happenings. We propose the Process-oriented Event Model for event processing that attempts a comprehensive representation of these processes, particularly those seen in modern energy industries and sensor data processing applications. This model brings together, in a unified framework, the different types of entities that are expected to be present at different stages of an event processing workflow and a formal specification of relationships between them.
Using event models in practice requires detailed domain knowledge about a variety of events based on raw data. We propose to learn this domain knowledge automatically by using recent advances in time series classification and shape mining, which provide methods of identifying discriminative patterns or subsequences (called shapelets). These methods show great potential for real sensor data as they don't make assumptions about the nature, source, structure, distribution, or stationarity of input time series, provide visual intuition, and perform fast event classification. By combining shape extraction and feature selection, we extend this temporal shape mining paradigm for processing data from multiple sensors. We present evaluation results to illustrate the performance of our approaches on real-world sensor data.
Biography:
Om Prasad Patri is a CS PhD candidate at USC advised by Prof. Viktor K. Prasanna. His interests are broadly in the areas of data science, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and event-based systems. For his dissertation, he has worked on modeling and processing information in event-based systems and pattern mining from multivariate time series sensor data. At USC, he has been a part of the Center for Smart Interactive Oil Field Technologies (CiSoft) and the USC Data Science Lab. He has also worked on internships at NEC Labs America and Cylance Inc. He holds a Bachelors in Computer Science (2011) from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati and a Masters in Computer Science (2014) from USC. He is a member of the IEEE, ACM, ISSIP and SPE.
Defense Committee: Viktor K. Prasanna (chair), Iraj Ershaghi, Dennis McLeod
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Lizsl De Leon
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Feb 17, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ruda Zhang and Pedram Oskoue , Astani Ph.D. Students
Talk Title: Demand and Supply Distribution of Street Hailing Taxi Service/ In-situ Quality Control of Scan Data for As-built Models
More Information: Astani CEE Ph.D. Seminar Abstract 2-17-2017.pdf.docx
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Sonny Astani Department Seminar
Fri, Feb 17, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ruda Zhang, PhD Student, Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Talk Title: Demand and Supply Distribution of Street Hailing Taxi Service
Abstract: Before the rise of taxi hailing via mobile devices, passengers and taxi drivers have no information about each others' locations. For traditional street hailing taxi services, where are the potential passengers? Where are the free taxis? Does free taxi supply match passenger demand? Using New York City taxi trip records during 2009-2013, we built and tested models to answer these questions.
Host: Roger Ghanem
More Information: Sonny Astani Department Seminar.pdf
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kaela Berry
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ASBME Makeathon Kick Off Event
Fri, Feb 17, 2017 @ 05:55 PM - 07:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Student Activity
The Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California have recognized the need to provide students with real-life, application-based challenges to students interested in the biomedical field. This event provides students interested in biomedical related fields a hands-on opportunity to solve a real-world problem in a collaborative environment. Students are presented with a research-based challenge, and have a limited amount of time and resources to solve the challenge. By working in teams, students engage in an interdisciplinary sharing of knowledge in order to solve a time-sensitive case. During the competition, corporate representatives and graduate students act as mentors, providing feedback to students, and offering advice. Students from other universities are invited to compete to provide exposure to Viterbi-�s innovative and collaborative environment and to foster bonds with students and organizations from other schools.
Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - 227
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Breanne Grady
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ASBME Makeathon Competition
Sat, Feb 18, 2017 @ 07:30 AM - 12:00 AM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Student Activity
The Makeathon is a hackathon for designers instead of coders. In 30 hours, 18 teams of 4-5 people will brainstorm, design, and CAD a device under material and functional constraints. At the eight hour mark, teams will present preliminary designs to a panel of judges who will deliberate and select five teams that will move on to device fabrication. These five teams will utilize the USC Fabrication Lab to construct their designs from a variety of materials and methods. All teams will prepare a final presentation to be delivered to the panel of judges as well as the rest of the students that will cover design motivations, device functionality, impact on the field or on client needs, as well as other device- and field-related information. There will be one grand prize winner chosen from the four teams sent to production and two runner-up winners chosen from the remaining teams based on final presentations. Though biomedical engineering students are the target demographic, undergraduates from other fields will also be encouraged to participate.
Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - 450, 350, and 227
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Breanne Grady
