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Events for the 1st week of March

  • ECE Seminar: Certifiable Outlier-Robust Geometric Perception: Robots that See through the Clutter with Confidence

    ECE Seminar: Certifiable Outlier-Robust Geometric Perception: Robots that See through the Clutter with Confidence

    Mon, Feb 28, 2022 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Heng Yang, Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT

    Talk Title: Certifiable Outlier-Robust Geometric Perception: Robots that See through the Clutter with Confidence

    Abstract: Geometric perception is the task of estimating geometric models (e.g., object pose and 3D structure) from sensor measurements and priors (e.g., point clouds and neural network detections). Geometric perception is a fundamental building block for robotics applications ranging from intelligent transportation to space autonomy. The ubiquitous existence of outliers -measurements that tell no or little information about the models to be estimated- makes it theoretically intractable to perform estimation with guaranteed optimality. Despite this theoretical intractability, safety-critical robotics applications still demand trustworthiness and performance guarantees on perception algorithms. In this talk, I present certifiable outlier-robust geometric perception, a new paradigm to design tractable algorithms that enjoy rigorous performance guarantees, i.e., they return an optimal estimate with a certificate of optimality for a majority of problem instances, but declare failure and provide a measure of suboptimality for worst-case instances. Particularly, I present two general-purpose algorithms in the certifiable perception toolbox: (i) an estimator that uses graph theory to prune gross outliers and leverages graduated non-convexity to compute the optimal model estimate with high probability of success, and (ii) a certifier that employs sparse semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation and a novel SDP solver to endow the estimator with an optimality certificate or escape local minima otherwise. The estimator is fast and robust against up to 99% random outliers in practical perception applications, and the certifier can compute high-accuracy optimality certificates for large-scale problems beyond the reach of existing SDP solvers. I showcase certifiable outlier-robust perception on robotics applications such as scan matching, satellite pose estimation, and vehicle pose and shape estimation. I conclude by remarking three opportunities arising from certifiable perception: to speedup online global optimization by offline learning from data; to enable safe learning-based perception by bridging certifiable estimation with deep representation learning; and to couple and unify perception with action towards trustworthy autonomy.

    Biography: Heng Yang is a final-year Ph.D. candidate in the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), working with Prof. Luca Carlone. He holds a B.S. degree from Tsinghua University and an S.M. degree from MIT, both in Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include large-scale convex optimization, semidefinite relaxation, robust estimation, and machine learning, applied to robotics and trustworthy autonomy. His work includes developing certifiable outlier-robust machine perception algorithms, large-scale semidefinite programming solvers, and self-supervised geometric perception frameworks. Heng Yang is a recipient of the Best Paper Award in Robot Vision at the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), a Best Paper Award Honorable Mention from the 2020 IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), and a Best Paper Award Finalist at the 2021 Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference. He is a Class of 2021 RSS Pioneer.

    Host: Dr. Keith Chugg, chugg@usc.edu

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91553052387?pwd=V0NqTFNJMlBNZkxWVnVIQmYrVWtVQT09

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

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91553052387?pwd=V0NqTFNJMlBNZkxWVnVIQmYrVWtVQT09

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

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  • iRobot: Permission to Fail Panel

    Mon, Feb 28, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Student Activity


    The panel is an open and honest discussion of the STEM journey. Engineers will share their own path, including the failures, imposter syndrome and other obstacles in their way. They offer their own tips and tricks for academic and mental health.
    There will be a Watch Party in Ronald Tutor Hall (RTH) 526 from 5:00-6:00p.m. followed by an open discussion from 6:00-6:15p.m. or you can attend via Zoom with the following Meeting ID: 945 4779 3476 and Password: 787411.
    To RSVP, please complete the following form by Monday, February 28th, 2022. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe8_7QingoidOj5mhkPWlzlNujbJxR7IgMR0tb-GI4cRfLoMw/viewform

    We hope to see you there!

    More Information: PermissionToFailFlyer2022-USC.pdf

    Location: 526

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Viterbi Undergraduate Programs

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  • Discovering Your Potential: A Conversation with Discovery's Former Tech Interns (Virtual) Monday, February 28, 2022

    Mon, Feb 28, 2022 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Join us to hear from Discovery DTC's Campus Ambassadors about their experiences as interns, why they are returning to Discovery, the types of
    projects you could be working on, ask questions, and more!
    As the pure technology arm of Discovery Inc., we work at the intersection of technology, entertainment, and everyday utility, continuously leveraging technology to create immersive viewing and interactive experiences for millions of fans around the globe.
    Link: https://discovery.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pabXqkHEREyiP9irhc2IEg
    External employer-hosted events and activities are not affiliated with the USC Viterbi Career Connections Office. They are posted on Viterbi Career Connections because they may be of interest to members of the Viterbi community. Inclusion of any activity does not indicate USC sponsorship or endorsement of that activity or event. It is the participant's responsibility to apply due diligence, exercise caution when participating, and report concerns to vcareers@usc.edu

    Location: Virtual. Link in the event description.

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • PhD Defense - Shao-Hua Sun

    Mon, Feb 28, 2022 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    University Calendar


    PhD Candidate: Shao-Hua Sun

    Time: 2/28 (Mon) 3:30pm PST

    Venue: Online (zoom link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/2133002395)

    Committee members: Prof. Joseph J. Lim (Chair), Prof. Gaurav Sukhatme, Prof. Stefanos Nikolaidis, Prof. Quan Nguyen (AME dept)


    Title: Program-Guided Framework for Interpreting and Acquiring Complex Skills with Learning Robots


    Abstract: Recent development in artificial intelligence and machine learning has remarkably advanced machines' ability to understand images and videos, comprehend natural languages and speech, and outperform human experts in complex games. However, building intelligent robots that can physically interact with their surroundings as well as learn to operate in unstructured environments, manipulate unknown objects, and acquire novel skills - to free humans from tedious or dangerous manual work- remains challenging. The focus of my research is to develop a robot learning framework that enables robots to acquire long-horizon and complex skills with hierarchical structures, such as furniture assembly and cooking. Specifically, I aim to devise a robot learning framework which is: (1) interpretable: by decoupling interpreting skill specifications (e.g. demonstrations, reward functions) and executing skills, (2) programmatic: by generalizing from simple instances to complex instances without additional learning, (3) hierarchical: by operating on a proper level of abstraction that enables human users to interpret high-level plans of robots allows for composing primitive skills to solve long-horizon tasks, and (4) modular: by being equipped with modules specialized in different functions (e.g. perception, action) which collaborate, allowing for better generalization. This dissertation discusses a series of research projects toward building such an interpretable, programmatic, hierarchical, and modular robot learning framework.

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/2133002395

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Lizsl De Leon

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  • iRobot: Permission to Fail Panel

    Mon, Feb 28, 2022 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Student Activity


    The panel is an open and honest discussion of the STEM journey. Engineers will share their own path, including the failures, imposter syndrome and other obstacles in their way. They offer their own tips and tricks for academic and mental health.
    There will be a Watch Party in Ronald Tutor Hall (RTH) 526 from 5:00-6:00p.m. followed by an open discussion from 6:00-6:15p.m. or you can attend via Zoom with the following Meeting ID: 945 4779 3476 and Password: 787411.
    To RSVP, please complete the following form by Monday, February 28th, 2022. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe8_7QingoidOj5mhkPWlzlNujbJxR7IgMR0tb-GI4cRfLoMw/viewform

    We hope to see you there!

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Viterbi Undergraduate Programs

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  • ACM - Rubber Ducky Debugging

    ACM - Rubber Ducky Debugging

    Mon, Feb 28, 2022 @ 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Workshops & Infosessions


    What is rubber duck debugging? Good question! Rubber duck debugging is a method to find bugs in your code where you explain your code aloud - to someone else, or to a rubber duck. Sometimes, talking through your code in words can help you find your mistakes.

    Come learn a little more about rubber duck debugging with ACM! We will have a short presentation to give you a quick overview. Then, this event will be a crafty one where you can decorate your very own rubber duck to take home and debug with. We will have colorful ducks and a variety of paint, fabric, and glitter!

    This is a great opportunity for you to hang out with other ACM members at one of the first in-person events of the semester!

    Location: SLH 100
    RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe-tjqWcyoVgHVtwd2TIs4u9-qZBCq8-c8utGVjRS9utZ0kxA/viewform?usp=sf_link

    Location: 100

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Association for Computing Machinery

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  • Rubber Ducky Debugging

    Mon, Feb 28, 2022 @ 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Workshops & Infosessions


    What's rubber duck debugging? Good question! Rubber duck debugging is a method to find bugs in your code where you explain your code aloud - to someone else, or to a rubber duck. Sometimes, talking through your code in words can help you find your mistakes.

    Come learn a little more about rubber duck debugging with ACM! We will have a short presentation to give you a quick overview. Then, this event will be a crafty one where you can decorate your very own rubber duck to take home and debug with. We will have colorful ducks and a variety of paint, fabric, and glitter!

    This is a great opportunity for you to hang out with other ACM members at one of the first in-person events of the semester!

    RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe-tjqWcyoVgHVtwd2TIs4u9-qZBCq8-c8utGVjRS9utZ0kxA/viewform?usp=sf_link

    Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 100

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: ACM

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  • ECE Seminar: Protecting User Security and Privacy in Emerging Computing Platforms

    ECE Seminar: Protecting User Security and Privacy in Emerging Computing Platforms

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Yuan Tian, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia

    Talk Title: Protecting User Security and Privacy in Emerging Computing Platforms

    Abstract: Computing is undergoing a significant shift. First, the explosive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) enables users to interact with computing systems and physical environments in novel ways through perceptual interfaces (e.g., microphones and cameras). Second, machine learning algorithms collect huge amounts of data and make critical decisions on new computing systems. While these trends bring unprecedented functionality, they also drastically increase the number of untrusted algorithms, implementations, interfaces, and the amount of private data processed by them, endangering user security and privacy. To regulate these security and privacy issues, privacy regulations such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) went into effect. However, there is a huge gap between the desired high-level security/privacy/ethical properties (from regulations, specifications, users' expectations) and low-level real implementations.

    To bridge the gap, my work aims to change how platform architects design secure systems, assist developers by detecting security and privacy violation of implementations and build usable and scalable privacy-preserving systems. In this talk, I will present how my group designs principled solutions to ensure modern and emerging computing platforms' security and privacy. In this talk, I will introduce two developer tools we build to detect security and privacy violations. Using the tools, we found large numbers of policy violations in healthcare voice applications and security property violations in IoT messaging protocol implementations. Additionally, I will discuss our recent work on scalable privacy-preserving machine learning.

    Biography: Yuan Tian is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. Before joining UVA, she obtained her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2017 and interned at Microsoft Research, Facebook, and Samsung Research. Her research interests involve security and privacy and its interactions with computer systems, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. Her current research focuses on developing new computing platforms with strong security and privacy features, particularly in the Internet of Things and mobile systems. Her work has real-world impacts as countermeasures and design changes have been integrated into platforms (such as Android, Chrome, Azure, and iOS), and also impacted the security recommendations of standard organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). She is a recipient of Google Research Scholar Award 2021, Facebook Research Award 2021, NSF CAREER award 2020, NSF CRII award 2019, Amazon AI Faculty Fellowship 2019, CSAW Best Security Paper Award 2019, and Rising Stars in EECS 2016. Her research has appeared in top-tier venues in security, machine learning, and systems. Her projects have been covered by media outlets such as IEEE Spectrum, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, and Telegraph.

    Host: Host: Dr. Konstantinos Psounis, kpsounis@usc.edu

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97735008231?pwd=WEJCcDJpdnZsaEZxczA0SEtaKzBJdz09

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

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97735008231?pwd=WEJCcDJpdnZsaEZxczA0SEtaKzBJdz09

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

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  • CS Colloquium: Oded Stein (MIT) - Mathematical Foundations of Robust Geometry and Fabrication

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Oded Stein, MIT

    Talk Title: Mathematical Foundations of Robust Geometry and Fabrication

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: Current geometry methods for creating and manipulating shapes on computers can sometimes be unreliable and fail unpredictably. Such failures make geometry tools hard to use, prevent non-experts from creating geometry on their computers, and limit the use of geometry methods in domains where reliability is critical. We will discuss my recent efforts in proving when existing methods work as intended, my work in making methods more robust to imperfect input, my work in the creation of new reliable tools with mathematical guarantees, and my future efforts towards a reliable geometry pipeline.
    When used for computational fabrication, geometry methods can be expensive, finicky, and require a controlled environment. I will show how simple and economical manufacturing techniques can be used for computational fabrication by exploiting the geometric constraints inherent in specific materials and fabrication methods. We will take a look at how I create geometric tools to design for constrained fabrication techniques, and discuss how computational fabrication can be made both economical as well as accessible in difficult environments.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium


    Biography: Oded Stein is a postdoc at MIT at the geometric data processing group. He obtained his MSc from ETH Zurich in 2015, and his PhD from Columbia University in 2020.
    Oded is interested in geometry, computer graphics, and applied mathematics. He works on smoothness energies, partial differential equations, discretization of geometric quantities, and their applications to computer graphics and digital fabrication.


    Host: Jernej Barbic

    Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132

    Audiences: By invitation only.

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • Learn about a career with USPS!

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Date: March 1st
    Time: 12-2 pm
    Location: RSVP on Zoom https://usc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEudOGurj8tH9Z2nR8dl5nCSHE82lJQYZtg

    We are Now Hiring OIE's for our Recent Grads and Upcoming Grads. Please click short video link below to see our Engineers "keeping it lean" projects and initiatives:
    https://youtu.be/I2tmU9rwtPo

    -Industrial Engineers
    -Mechanical Engineers
    -Computer Engineering
    -Systems Engineering

    Apply by March 14 at: usps.com/careers (search keyword: TRAINEE)
    Learn more:
    https://about.usps.com/careers/career-opportunities/students-graduates.htm

    Location: Virtual

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Learn What It Takes to Stand Out: Apple Workshop

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Register now: RSVP in Gateway

    Come hear from the Apple team. Get some tips and best practices for sharing your career story, creating your resume, learning how to network effectively, and interviewing with confidence.

    External employer-hosted events and activities are not affiliated with the USC Career Center. They are posted on Viterbi Career Connections because they may be of interest to members of the Viterbi community. Inclusion of any activity does not indicate USC sponsorship or endorsement of that activity or event. It is the participant's responsibility to apply due diligence, exercise caution when participating, and report concerns to vcareers@usc.edu.

    Location: Virtual

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • CS Colloquium: Amy Ousterhout (UC Berkeley) - Optimizing CPU Efficiency and Tail Latency in Datacenters

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Amy Ousterhout , UC Berkeley

    Talk Title: Optimizing CPU Efficiency and Tail Latency in Datacenters

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: The slowing of Moore's Law and increased concerns about the environmental impacts of computing are exerting pressure on datacenter operators to use resources such as CPUs and memory more efficiently. However, it is difficult to improve efficiency without degrading the performance of applications.

    In this talk, I will focus on CPU efficiency and how we can increase efficiency while maintaining low tail latency for applications. The key innovation is to reallocate cores between applications on the same server very quickly, every few microseconds. First I will describe Shenango, a system design that makes such frequent core reallocations possible. Then I will show how policy choices for core reallocation and load balancing impact CPU efficiency and tail latency, and present the policies that yield the best combination of both.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium


    Biography: Amy is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. She received her PhD in Computer Science from MIT and her BSE in Computer Science from Princeton University. Her research is on operating systems and distributed systems, and focuses on improving the efficiency, performance, and usability of applications in datacenters. She is a recipient of a Jacobs Presidential Fellowship at MIT, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and a Hertz Foundation Fellowship.

    Host: Barath Raghavan

    Audiences: By invitation only.

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • ISE 651 Epstein Seminar

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM

    Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Albert Shih, Professor, Dept of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan

    Talk Title: TBD

    Host: Prof. Yong Chen and Prof. Qiang Huang

    Location: Online/Zoom

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Grace Owh

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  • Evaluating & Negotiating Job Offers Workshop (ON-CAMPUS)

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 04:00 PM - 04:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    THIS EVENT WILL BE HOSTED IN-PERSON, ON-CAMPUS

    Consider best practices on evaluating and negotiating job or internship offers by attending this professional development Q&A moderated by Viterbi Career Connections staff or Viterbi employer partners.

    For more information about workshops, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.

    Attendance is limited to room capacity

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Mork Family Department Seminar - Thi Vo

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 04:00 PM - 05:15 PM

    Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Thi Vo, University of Michigan

    Talk Title: First Principles Driven Materials Design: From Building Blocks to Superlattices

    Host: Professor A.Hodge

    Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - B46

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Heather Alexander

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  • CS Colloquium: Dmitry Berenson (University of Michigan) - Learning Where to Trust Unreliable Dynamics Models for Motion Planning and Manipulation

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 04:15 PM - 05:20 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dmitry Berenson, University of Michigan

    Talk Title: Learning Where to Trust Unreliable Dynamics Models for Motion Planning and Manipulation

    Series: Computer Science Colloquium

    Abstract: **New time: 4:15pm-5:20pm, SGM 124**

    The world outside our labs seldom conforms to the assumptions of our models. This is especially true for dynamics models used in control and motion planning for complex high-DOF systems like deformable objects. We must develop better models, but we must also accept that, no matter how powerful our simulators or how big our datasets, our models will sometimes be wrong. This talk will present our recent work on using unreliable dynamics models for motion planning and manipulation. Given a dynamics model, our methods learn where that model can be trusted given either batch data or online experience. These approaches allow imperfect dynamics models to be useful for a wide range of tasks in novel scenarios, while requiring much less data than baseline methods. This data-efficiency is a key requirement for scalable and flexible motion planning and manipulation capabilities.

    Prof. Dmitry Berenson will give his talk in person at SGM 124 and we will also host the talk over Zoom.

    Register in advance for this webinar at:
    https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_prfowdXjR7iOn1mPLTnXog

    After registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.


    Biography: Dmitry Berenson is an Associate Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Robotics Institute at the University of Michigan, where he has been since 2016. Before coming to University of Michigan, he was an Assistant Professor at WPI (2012-2016). He received a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 2005 and received his Ph.D. degree from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in 2011, where he was supported by an Intel PhD Fellowship. He was also a post-doc at UC Berkeley (2011-2012). He has received the IEEE RAS Early Career Award and the NSF CAREER award. His current research focuses on robotic manipulation, robot learning, and motion planning.


    Host: Stefanos Nikolaidis

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_prfowdXjR7iOn1mPLTnXog

    Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 124

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_prfowdXjR7iOn1mPLTnXog

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Computer Science Department

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  • Application and Interview Success, Hosted by Disney Industrial Engineers (On-Campus)

    Tue, Mar 01, 2022 @ 05:30 PM - 06:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Want to land an internship or full-time position with Industrial Engineering at Disney Parks? It all starts with the strength of your resume and your performance in the interview process. Learn resume and interviewing tips from Disney Industrial Engineers and USC alumni. Your course work and area of study should be analytical or business-focused to be successful, but you don't have to be an Industrial Engineering major to apply for IE internships at Disney.

    Location: RSVP in Viterbi Career Gateway

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • ECE Seminar: Full Stack Deep Learning at the Edge

    ECE Seminar: Full Stack Deep Learning at the Edge

    Wed, Mar 02, 2022 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Amir Gholami, Research Scientist, RiseLab and BAIR at UC Berkeley

    Talk Title: Full Stack Deep Learning at the Edge

    Abstract: An important next milestone in machine learning is to bring intelligence to the edge without relying on the computational power of the cloud. This could lead to more reliable, lower latency, and privacy preserving AI for a wide range of applications. However, state-of-the-art NN models require prohibitive amounts of compute, memory, and energy resources which is often not available at the edge. Addressing these challenges without compromising on accuracy, requires a multi-faceted approach, including hardware-aware model compression and accelerator co-design.

    In this talk, I will first discuss a novel hardware-aware method for neural network quantization and pruning that achieves optimal trade-off between accuracy, latency, and model size. In particular, I will discuss a new Hessian Aware Quantization (HAWQ) method that relies on second-order information to perform low precision quantization of the model with minimal generalization loss. I will present extensive testing of the method on different learning tasks including various models for image classification, object detection, natural language processing, and speech recognition showing that HAWQ exceeds previous baselines. I will then present a recent extension of this method which allows integer-only inference for the end-to-end computations, enabling efficient deployment on fixed-point hardware. Finally, I will discuss a full-stack hardware-aware neural network architecture and accelerator design, which enables adapting the model architecture and the accelerator parameters to achieve optimal performance.

    Related paper:
    ICML'21: HAWQ-V3: Dyadic Neural Network Quantization
    ICML'21: I-BERT: Integer-only BERT Quantization

    Biography: Amir Gholami is a research scientist in RiseLab and BAIR at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD from UT Austin, working on large scale 3D image segmentation, a research topic which received UT Austin's best doctoral dissertation award in 2018. He is a Melosh Medal finalist, the recipient of best student paper award in SC'17, Gold Medal in the ACM Student Research Competition, best student paper finalist in SC'14, as well as Amazon Machine Learning Research Award in 2020. He was also part of the Nvidia team that for the first time made low precision neural network training possible (FP16), enabling more than 10x increase in compute power through tensor cores. That technology has been widely adopted in GPUs today. Amir's current research focuses on efficient AI, AutoML, and scalable training of Neural Network models.


    Host: Host: Dr. Massoud Pedram, pedram@usc.edu

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95064180366?pwd=SVJ3VzZ3aGNRKzNLdmJQeGRhdzBUZz09

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

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95064180366?pwd=SVJ3VzZ3aGNRKzNLdmJQeGRhdzBUZz09

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

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  • Center of Autonomy and AI, Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things, and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series

    Center of Autonomy and AI, Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things, and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series

    Wed, Mar 02, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dimos V. Dimarogonas, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

    Talk Title: Multi-robot Task Planning and Control Under Spatiotemporal Specifications

    Series: Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things

    Abstract: Multi-robot task planning and control under temporal logic specifications has been gaining increasing attention in recent years due to its applicability among others in autonomous systems, manufacturing systems, service robotics and intelligent transportation. Initial approaches considered qualitative logics, such as Linear Temporal Logic, whose automata representation facilitates the direct use of model checking tools for correct-by-design control synthesis. In many real world applications however, there is a need to quantify spatial and temporal constraints, e.g., in order to include deadlines and separation assurance bounds. This led to the use of quantitative logics, such as Metric Interval and Signal Temporal Logic, to impose such spatiotemporal constraints. However, the lack of automata representations for such specifications hinders the direct use of model checking tools. Motivated by this, the use of transient control methodologies that fulfil the aforementioned qualitative constraints becomes evident. In this talk, we review some of our recent results in applying transient control techniques, and in particular Model Predictive Control, Barrier Certificates based design and Prescribed Performance Control, to distributed multi-robot task planning under spatiotemporal specifications. The results are supported by relevant experimental validations.

    Biography: Dimos V. Dimarogonas received the Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2001 and the Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2007, both from National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. Between 2007 and 2010, he held postdoctoral positions at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Dept of Automatic Control and MIT, Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). He is currently Professor at the Division of Decision and Control Systems, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, at KTH. His current research interests include multi-agent systems, hybrid systems and control, robot navigation and manipulation, human-robot-interaction and networked control. He serves in the Editorial Board of Automatica and the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems and is a Senior Member of IEEE. He is a recipient of the ERC Starting Grant in 2014, the ERC Consolidator Grant in 2019, and the Knut och Alice Wallenberg Academy Fellowship in 2015.

    Host: Pierluigi Nuzzo, nuzzo@usc.edu

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zyIBh_1gQLmKpMJG0GyLxw

    Location: Online

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zyIBh_1gQLmKpMJG0GyLxw

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Talyia White

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  • Evaluating & Negotiating Job Offers Workshop (HYBRID)

    Wed, Mar 02, 2022 @ 01:00 PM - 01:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    THIS EVENT WILL BE HOSTED HYBRID: IN-PERSON & ONLINE SIMULTANEOUSLY

    Consider best practices on evaluating and negotiating job or internship offers by attending this professional development Q&A moderated by Viterbi Career Connections staff or Viterbi employer partners.

    To access the ZOOM link and for more information on this workshop, log into Viterbi Career Gateway>> Events>>Workshops: https://shibboleth-viterbi-usc-csm.symplicity.com/sso/

    For more information about workshops, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.

    For In-Person: Attendance is limited to room capacity

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • AME Seminar

    Wed, Mar 02, 2022 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

    Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Michael Burke, Columbia University

    Talk Title: Non-Equilibrium Behavior in Combustion, Planetary Atmospheres, and Compressible Flows

    Abstract: Chemically reacting flows are often interpreted and computed under the premise that all chemical species have a range of energies in their rotational and vibrational modes that are well described by the Boltzmann or thermal distribution at the local temperature. Of course, breakdown in this premise can occur naturally as a result of chemical reactions, light absorption, and/or shock waves. The manifestations of this breakdown on unimolecular reactions, where non-thermally distributed molecular ensembles dissociate, are well known to give rise to pressure-dependent reactions in combustion, photochemical reactions in the Earth atmosphere, and induction time lags in reactions following shock waves. By contrast, manifestations of non-equilibrium behavior on bimolecular reactions, where non-thermally distributed molecules react with other species, are generally less understood and historically less appreciated. Here, I describe three distinct tales of such non-equilibrium behavior across varied application domains. In particular, I present results from ab initio master equation calculations that shed light on previous hypotheses and experimental observations and reveal new processes involving non-equilibrium induced by chemistry in combustion, photons in the Earth atmosphere, and shock waves in compressible flows. Namely, the rovibrationally excited ephemeral complexes, formed from association of two molecules, with a third molecule give rise to a fourth, long-forgotten type of phenomenological reaction, involving three chemical reactants, that impacts macroscopic combustion behavior; the vibrationally excited complexes, formed upon photon absorption, collide with oxygen to produce radicals even for low photon energies in the Earth troposphere; and the rovibrationally cold molecular ensembles encountered following shock waves not only slow the reaction timescales but also change the main chemical pathways.

    Biography: Michael Burke is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University, where he also holds affiliate appointments in Chemical Engineering and the Data Science Institute. Prior to joining Columbia in 2014, Burke earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 2011 at Princeton University, where he was a Wallace Memorial Honorific Fellow, and he worked as a Directors Postdoctoral Fellow in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory. Burke is a recipient of the National Science Foundations CAREER award, the Combustion Institutes Research Excellence Award, the Combustion Institutes Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award, and the American Chemical Societys PRF Doctoral New Investigator Award. His publications have been featured in the News and Views section of Nature Chemistry, selected as the Feature Article in Combustion and Flame, and chosen for the Distinguished Paper Award at the 31st International Symposium on Combustion. His research combines physics and data across multiple scales to unravel and predict outcomes of complex reacting systems in varied application domains with major emphases on theoretical chemistry of nonequilibrium processes, multiscale datadriven modeling, and highthroughput experiments selected by optimal design.

    Host: AME Department

    More Info: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93987337017?pwd=MWd2dXBSL1FaR1RPaHNscjJ1NW80UT09

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93987337017?pwd=MWd2dXBSL1FaR1RPaHNscjJ1NW80UT09

    Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 252

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93987337017?pwd=MWd2dXBSL1FaR1RPaHNscjJ1NW80UT09

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Tessa Yao

    Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93987337017?pwd=MWd2dXBSL1FaR1RPaHNscjJ1NW80UT09

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  • A Study Break w/ Tesla: Weekly Series

    Wed, Mar 02, 2022 @ 06:00 PM - 06:45 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    A Study Break w/ Tesla is a series of professional workshops presented by the Hardware + Cell Engineering Internship Recruiting Team that will be offered on Wednesday evenings from February through April, 6:00 pm -6:45 pm.

    Each event will offer a 25-minute presentation on a specific topic, followed by a 20-minute opportunity for participants to ask questions and network with the Tesla team.

    Event: Personal Branding through LinkedIn and Handshake | March 2
    RSVP in Gateway

    This session will cover the importance of building strong candidate profiles on LinkedIn and Handshake, as well as strategies to maximize success and response rates on both career sites.

    External employer-hosted events and activities are not affiliated with the USC Career Center. They are posted on Viterbi Career Connections because they may be of interest to members of the Viterbi community. Inclusion of any activity does not indicate USC sponsorship or endorsement of that activity or event. It is the participant's responsibility to apply due diligence, exercise caution when participating, and report concerns to vcareers@usc.edu

    Location: Virtual

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • ECE Seminar: Foundations of Trusted AI for Molecular Inference: the Role of Sparsity

    ECE Seminar: Foundations of Trusted AI for Molecular Inference: the Role of Sparsity

    Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Amirali Aghazadeh, Postdoctoral Researcher, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

    Talk Title: Foundations of Trusted AI for Molecular Inference: the Role of Sparsity

    Abstract: Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled accurate prediction of protein structures from their sequences and have opened up new avenues for the engineering of proteins, drugs, and molecules with advanced and novel functional properties. However, despite their high predictive power, AI models do not provide a mechanistic understanding of interactions that give rise to many functional properties. Moreover, their generalization power has remained limited for novel and rapidly evolving molecules for which sufficient sequence data is not available.

    In this talk, I will describe how I developed a foundation for trusted AI in molecular inference. Key to my approach is the observation that the combinatorial landscapes of molecular properties reside in low dimensional subspaces characterized by sparse high order non-linear interactions. I will show how we can leverage this sparsity prior and develop new algorithms rooted in signal processing, coding and graph theory to efficiently explain, regularize, and build molecular AI models. My algorithms have resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of sequences required to infer functional properties in proteins and an improved understanding of high order interactions in the DNA repair process. I will conclude by describing how my works set the computational and statistical foundation for engineering programmable molecular machines.

    Biography: Amirali Aghazadeh is a postdoctoral researcher in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at the University of California, Berkeley, working with Kannan Ramchandran. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University with David Tse after receiving his PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University with Richard Baraniuk. His research interest is at the interface of large-scale machine learning, signal processing, and molecular engineering. He is the recipient of the Hershel M. Rich Invention Award for his thesis on universal molecular diagnostics as well as the Texas Instruments Fellowship. He received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology.

    Host: Dr. Sandeep Gupta, sandeep@usc.edu

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98808075733?pwd=MktQYUc0Z2lhZ3NZd09uTURYUFBzUT09

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

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98808075733?pwd=MktQYUc0Z2lhZ3NZd09uTURYUFBzUT09

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

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  • CS Colloquium: Saining Xie (Facebook AI Research (FAIR)) - Towards Scalable Representation Learning for Visual Recognition

    Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Saining Xie, Facebook AI Research (FAIR)

    Talk Title: Towards Scalable Representation Learning for Visual Recognition

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: A powerful biological and cognitive representation is essential for humans' remarkable visual recognition abilities. Deep learning has achieved unprecedented success in a variety of domains over the last decade. One major driving force is representation learning, which is concerned with learning efficient, accurate, and robust representations from raw data that are useful for a downstream classifier or predictor. A modern deep learning system is composed of two core and often intertwined components: 1) neural network architectures and 2) representation learning algorithms. In this talk, we will present several studies in both directions. On the neural network modeling side, we will examine modern network design principles and how they affect the scaling behavior of ConvNets and recent Vision Transformers. Additionally, we will demonstrate how we can acquire a better understanding of neural network connectivity patterns through the lens of random graphs. In terms of representation learning algorithms, we will discuss our recent efforts to move beyond the traditional supervised learning paradigm and demonstrate how self-supervised visual representation learning, which does not require human annotated labels, can outperform its supervised learning counterpart across a variety of visual recognition tasks. The talk will encompass a variety of vision application domains and modalities (e.g. 2D images and 3D scenes). The goal is to show existing connections between the techniques specialized for different input modalities and provide some insights about diverse challenges that each modality presents. Finally, we will discuss several pressing challenges and opportunities that the "big model era" raises for computer vision research.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium

    Biography: Saining Xie is a research scientist at Facebook AI Research (FAIR). He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in computer science from the University of California San Diego, advised by Zhuowen Tu. Prior to that, he received his Bachelor's degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has broad research interests in deep learning and computer vision, with a focus on developing deep representation learning techniques to push the boundaries of core visual recognition. He is a recipient of the Marr Prize Honorable Mention at ICCV 2015.

    Host: Ramakant Nevatia

    Audiences: By invitation only.

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • CS Colloquium: Lars Lindemann (University of Pennsylvania) - Safe AI-Enabled Autonomy

    Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Lars Lindemann, University of Pennsylvania

    Talk Title: Safe AI-Enabled Autonomy

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: AI-enabled autonomous systems show great promise to enable many future technologies such as autonomous driving, intelligent transportation, and robotics. Over the past years, there has been tremendous success in the development of autonomous systems, which was especially accelerated by the computational advances in machine learning and AI. At the same time, however, new fundamental questions were raised regarding the safety and reliability of these increasingly complex systems that often operate in uncertain and dynamic environments. In this seminar, I will provide new insights and exciting opportunities to address these challenges.

    In the first part of the seminar, I will present a data-driven optimization framework to learn safe control laws for dynamical systems. For most safety-critical systems such as self-driving cars, safe expert demonstrations in the form of system trajectories that show safe system behavior are readily available or can easily be collected. At the same time, accurate models of these systems can be identified from data or obtained from first order modeling principles. To learn safe control laws, I present a constrained optimization problem with constraints on the expert demonstrations and the system model. Safety guarantees are provided in terms of the density of the data and the smoothness of the system model. Two case studies on a self-driving car and a bipedal walking robot illustrate the presented method. In the past years, it was shown that neural networks are fragile and that their use in AI-enabled systems has resulted in systems taking excessive risk. The second part of the seminar is motivated by this fact and presents a data-driven verification framework to quantify and assess the risk of AI-enabled systems. I particularly show how risk measures, classically used in finance, can be used to quantify the risk of not being robust to failure, and how we can estimate this risk from data. We will compare and verify four different neural network controllers in terms of their risk for a self-driving car. I will conclude by sharing exciting research directions in this area.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium

    Biography: Lars Lindemann is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his B.Sc. degrees in Electrical and Information Engineering and his B.Sc. degree in Engineering Management in 2014 from the Christian-Albrechts-University (CAU), Kiel, Germany. He received his M.Sc. degree in Systems, Control and Robotics in 2016 and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2020, both from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. His current research interests include systems and control theory, formal methods, data-driven control, and autonomous systems. Lars received the Outstanding Student Paper Award at the 58th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and was a Best Student Paper Award Finalist at the 2018 American Control Conference. He also received the Student Best Paper Award as a co-author at the 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

    Host: Jyo Deshmukh

    Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132

    Audiences: By invitation only.

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • CommonSpirit Health Event Series (Virtual)

    Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 12:00 PM - 12:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    We would like to share an exciting opportunity for your Masters of Cyber Security, Legal Studies, Healthcare Compliance, or Privacy students. CommonSpirit Health is excited to sponsor a 12-week Corporate Responsibility summer internship, fostering training in an integrated health system. We would like to invite your students to apply for the 2022 Corporate Responsibility Summer Internship at CommonSpirit Health. The goal is for our interns to acquire marketable technical and leadership skills within Corporate Responsibility, develop a comprehensive understanding of a large integrated healthcare system, and foster organizational relationships to guide professional growth.
    CommonSpirit Health will be hosting 2 Corporate Responsibility Interns remotely this summer. We invite all interested candidates to join us for a virtual information session this winter:
    Thursday March 3rd 12pm PT. Register HERE.
    https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/commonspirit.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcudO2hqDIpGdN7OPV-OCFQflmVfq0gNTmX__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!5o8U2danY-mqqEHzD14ilYlKTxBhzfmfWcPk8Ho3A_xkqHjOF0Y_cUrgmV0ODUA$

    Applications are available on our CommonSpirit Health Careers Portal here. All application materials will be due by March 14th.
    https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/careers-commonspirit.icims.com/jobs/221843/corporate-responsibility-graduate-intern/job?mode=view&mobile=false&width=2537&height=500&bga=true&needsRedirect=false&jan1offset=-480&jun1offset=-420__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!5o8U2danY-mqqEHzD14ilYlKTxBhzfmfWcPk8Ho3A_xkqHjOF0Y_cUrg2QPuy5Q$

    CommonSpirit Health was established in 2019, when two of the largest health systems in the United States, Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health joined forces. Today, CommonSpirit Health is the largest nonprofit mission driven health system in the country and has a presence of 142 hospitals across 21 states. Our vision is a healthier future for all- inspired by faith, driven by innovation, and powered by our humanity. Our organization is founded upon the values of compassion, inclusion, integrity, excellence and collaboration.

    External employer-hosted events and activities are not affiliated with the USC Career Center. They are posted on Viterbi Career Connections because they may be of interest to members of the Viterbi community. Inclusion of any activity does not indicate USC sponsorship or endorsement of that activity or event. It is the participant's responsibility to apply due diligence, exercise caution when participating, and report concerns to vcareers@usc.edu

    Location: Virtual, RSVP on Viterbi Career Gateway

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar

    Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM

    Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Joshua Jack, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Princeton University

    Talk Title: Engineering a New Circular Economy: Waste CO2 valorization and resource recovery towards an improved water-energy-climate nexus

    Abstract: Understanding and advancing the water-energy-climate nexus is key to mitigating the immense threats of climate change and solving many of the related environmental issues we face today. Due to the rapid decrease in the cost of renewable energy, it is now practical to design devices that use renewable electrons to drive the transformation of CO2 and other waste feedstock (wastewater, food waste, biomass) into high-value products while also recovering important resources such as water, nutrients, and energy. Overall, these new sustainable technologies can help us decarbonize various sectors and enable a new circular economy. This presentation will discuss opportunities to leverage cutting-edge hybrid electrochemical-biological technologies in diverse environmental applications including wastewater reclamation, water reuse, remediation, desalination, and CO2 capture and conversion. Current lab scale experiments have demonstrated excellent production rates, titer,and energy efficiencies. Efforts towards improving scalability, expanding the portfolio of products, and implementing new types of waste streams are on going.

    Biography: Joshua Jack is a postdoctoral research scholar in the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment and the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Princeton University. Jack previously earned a bachelor degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and holds a doctoral degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder. During his graduate studies, Jack obtained extensive interdisciplinary research experience at both the DOE-National Renewable Energy Laboratory and NASA Langley Research Center, and has received numerous awards including a NASA Outstanding Research Award and NSF Fellowship. Jack current research focuses on energy and resource recovery as part of a sustainable water-energy-climate nexus with a special focus on process design of bioelectrochemical technologies toward scalable CO2 valorization and water treatment. Jack collaborates with many researchers from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering as well as various DOE laboratories and private companies such as Shell Energy. Jack has recently published in many highly cited journals including Applied Energy and Green Chemistry and plans to begin a tenure-track academic position in the near future.

    Host: D. Amy Childress

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91873923659 Meeting ID: 918 7392 3659 Passcode: 975701

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91873923659 Meeting ID: 918 7392 3659 Passcode: 975701

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Evangeline Reyes

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  • Evaluating & Negotiating Job Offers Workshop (ON-CAMPUS)

    Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 04:00 PM - 04:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    THIS EVENT WILL BE HOSTED IN-PERSON, ON-CAMPUS

    Consider best practices on evaluating and negotiating job or internship offers by attending this professional development Q&A moderated by Viterbi Career Connections staff or Viterbi employer partners.

    For more information about workshops, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.

    Attendance is limited to room capacity

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Nike X Ready Player One - INSIDIOUS Hackathon (Virtual)

    Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 04:00 PM - 08:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    INSIDIOUS is a hackathon training event brought to you by Nike's Corporate Information Security team.
    You will compete in a safe, sandboxed environment where you will seek out and take advantage of vulnerabilities in a real application.
    Please note: Students MUST RSVP through the external registration form in order to participate.
    https://nike.recsolu.com/app/collect/event/__QzR_-rdu5ni0xFGqKEVA
    The course includes instructor-led training to review how the code should be written securely, followed by an awards ceremony with prizes to celebrate the top hackers.
    This event will offer you the opportunity to show your growing skillset off to some of Nike's choice recruiting members.
    The event will be virtual and hosted on Zoom, and we have 4 sessions you can select from:
    March 3rd, 2022
    Afternoon session: 4:00-8:00 PM EST
    March 10th, 2022
    Afternoon session: 4:00-8:00 PM EST

    Access to a computer is required.
    External employer-hosted events and activities are not affiliated with the USC Viterbi Career Connections Office. They are posted on Viterbi Career Connections because they may be of interest to members of the Viterbi community. Inclusion of any activity does not indicate USC sponsorship or endorsement of that activity or event. It is the participant's responsibility to apply due diligence, exercise caution when participating, and report concerns to vcareers@usc.edu

    Location: Virtual. RSVP Link in the event description.

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Boeing Freshman Design Challenge Information Session

    Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Thursday, March 3 5-6 pm
    Location: Virtual: RSVP here: https://usc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMucOurqz4sHdB7zRcYBg0R_vkFl4a4K8so

    Attend this information session to learn about the Boeing Freshman Design Challenge! During the Info Session: Learn about the Challenge, the agenda, and teams, and receive a signup link to Create or join a team. The freshman Design Challenge will take place virtually Wednesday, March 9th

    About the freshman Design Challenge: During this unique, resume-building experience, students will also have the opportunity to network with Boeing engineers and executives, who will be available to act as mentors and judges. Also, Representatives from Boeing's campus team will share upcoming recruitment opportunities

    Location: Virtual

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • iRobot: Permission to Fail Panel

    Thu, Mar 03, 2022 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

    Workshops & Infosessions


    The panel is an open and honest discussion of the STEM journey. Engineers will share their own path, including the failures, imposter syndrome and other obstacles in their way. They offer their own tips and tricks for academic and mental health.

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Viterbi Undergraduate Programs

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  • ECE Seminar: New Generation Photoacoustic Imaging: From benchtop wholebody imagers to wearable sensors

    ECE Seminar: New Generation Photoacoustic Imaging: From benchtop wholebody imagers to wearable sensors

    Fri, Mar 04, 2022 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Lei Li, Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Medical Engineering, California Institute of Technology

    Talk Title: New Generation Photoacoustic Imaging: From benchtop wholebody imagers to wearable sensors

    Abstract: Whole-body imaging has played an indispensable role in preclinical research by providing high-dimensional physiological, pathological, and phenotypic insights with clinical relevance. Yet, pure optical imaging suffers from either shallow penetration or a poor depth-to-resolution ratio, and non-optical techniques for whole-body imaging of small animals lack either spatiotemporal resolution or functional contrast. We have developed a dream machine, demonstrating that a stand-alone single-impulse panoramic photoacoustic computed tomography (SIP-PACT) mitigates these limitations by combining high spatiotemporal resolution, deep penetration, anatomical, dynamical and functional contrasts, and full-view fidelity. SIP-PACT has imaged in vivo whole-body dynamics of small animals in real time, mapped whole-brain functional connectivity, and tracked circulation tumor cells without labeling. It also has been scaled up for human breast cancer diagnosis. SIP-PACT opens a new window for medical researchers to test drugs and monitor longitudinal therapy without the harm from ionizing radiation associated with X-ray CT, PET, or SPECT. Genetically encoded photochromic proteins benefit photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) in detection sensitivity and specificity, allowing monitoring of tumor growth and metastasis, multiplexed imaging of multiple tumor types at depths, and real-time visualization of protein-protein interactions in deep-seated tumors. Integrating the newly developed microrobotic system with PACT permits deep imaging and precise control of the micromotors in vivo and promises practical biomedical applications, such as drug delivery. In addition, to shape the benchtop PACT systems toward portable and wearable devices with low cost without compromising the imaging performance, we recently have developed photoacoustic topography through an ergodic relay, a high-throughput imaging system with significantly reduced system size, complexity, and cost, enabling wearable applications. As a rapidly evolving imaging technique, photoacoustic imaging promises preclinical applications and clinical translation.

    Biography: Lei Li obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2019. He received his MS degrees at Washington University in St. Louis in 2016. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Medical Engineering at Caltech. His research focuses on developing next-generation medical imaging technology for understanding the brain better, diagnosing early-stage cancer, and wearable monitoring of human vital signs. He was selected as a TED fellow in 2021 and a rising star in Engineering in Health by Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University (2021). He received the Charles and Ellen Wilts Prize from Caltech in 2020 and was selected as one of the Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review in 2019. He is also a two-time winner of the Seno Medical Best Paper Award granted by SPIE (2017 and 2020, San Francisco).

    Host: Dr. Justin Haldar, jhaldar@usc.edu

    Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97334155702?pwd=SFlvZ2Y0b3pHMEFxalhNdmxvdU5odz09

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

    WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97334155702?pwd=SFlvZ2Y0b3pHMEFxalhNdmxvdU5odz09

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

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  • CS Colloquium: Sai-Kit Yeung (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).) - Computer Vision and Graphics for Real-World Challenges

    Fri, Mar 04, 2022 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Sai-Kit Yeung, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)

    Talk Title: Computer Vision and Graphics for Real-World Challenges

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: With the recent advancements in sensing technology and pervasive computing devices, the fields of computer vision and graphics are witnessing renewed importance in addressing real-world problems. In this talk, I will be discussing my research relating to 3D reconstruction, scene understanding, content generation, and fabrication. My talk will also overview ways this core research can be used in multidisciplinary projects involving city planning, seafloor surveying, and fishery design. I will conclude my talk by discussing potential collaborative projects between computer vision, graphics, and other disciplines to address challenging issues related to human empowerment and the building of sustainable environments.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium

    Biography: Dr. Sai-Kit Yeung is an Associate Professor at the Division of Integrative Systems and Design (ISD) and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). His research interests include 3D vision and graphics, content generation, fabrication, and novel computational techniques and integrative systems for marine-related problems.

    Dr. Yeung has published extensively in premiere computer vision and graphics venues including numerous full oral papers in CVPR, ICCV, and AAAI. His work has received best paper honorable mention awards at ICCP 2015 and 3DV 2016. He has served as a Senior Program Committee member in IJCAI and AAAI, and as a Course Chair for SIGGRAPH Asia 2019. In addition, he regularly serves as a Technical Papers Committee member for SIGGPAPH & SIGGRAPH Asia and is currently an Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG).


    Host: Jernej Barbic

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • Competitive Programming (ICPC) Workshop

    Competitive Programming (ICPC) Workshop

    Fri, Mar 04, 2022 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Dive into the world of competitive programming with ACM! ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) is a national ACM competition that will be happening later in the semester. In the meantime, we have invited a guest who has previously participated in ICPC to tell us about his experiences!

    Our speaker, Mr. Zhu, is a formerly ranked 62nd and 56th competitive programmer at the International ICPC of 2019 and 2018 respectively, while also winning USC'ss programming contests for multiple years. He did his undergrad at USC in Computer Science and is now completing his Masters in CS here. As a former intern at Google, Mr. Zhu's also worked on the AI team focusing on the translation of documents. He's finishing his last year at USC and wants to leave a few words of wisdom to fellow ICPC hopefuls.

    Come out for some background, tips, and warm up problems to get your feet wet with this competition of algorithmic thinking, and learn how you can get involved.

    Date: Friday, March 4th; 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
    Location: GFS 118
    RSVP: https://forms.gle/c5o35vdWCZUE2af88

    Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 118

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Association for Computing Machinery

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