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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for the 4th week of March
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Advanced System Safety Analysis ADVSS 24-1Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
This course is a continuation of the <a href="https://aviationsafety.usc.edu/courses/system-safety/">System Safety</a> course focused on engineering aspects of the course. The objective is to address advanced issues in system safety analysis and broaden the trainees’ perspective on system safety issues. Engineering methods addressed in the System Safety course are reviewed, and special advanced topics are addressed. Additional methods for system safety analysis are addressed, focusing on the application of these methods.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AADVSS1
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Human Factors in Aviation Safety HFH 24-3
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
Humans design, build, operate, and maintain the aviation system. It is no wonder that the majority of aviation accidents and incidents have roots in human factors. With this realization comes the conclusion that quality human factors training is effective in improving safety. This course presents information on human factors in a manner that can be readily understood and applied by aviation practitioners. Emphasis is placed on identifying the causes of human error, predicting how human error can affect performance, and applying countermeasures to reduce or eliminate its effects. The course content follows the subjects recommended in FAA Advisory Circular 120-51E. The course also addresses topics recommended in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Human Factors Digest No. 3: Training Operational Personnel in Human Factors. The emphasis is from the pilot’s perspective but applies to all phases of aviation operations. The course relies heavily on participation, case studies, demonstrations, self-assessment, and practical exercises.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AHFH3
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EiS Communications Hub Drop-In Hours
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Engineering in Society Program
Student Activity
Drop-in hours for writing and speaking support for Viterbi Ph.D. students
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
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EiS Communications Hub Drop-In Hours
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to stop by the EiS Communications Hub for one-on-one instruction for their academic and professional communications tasks. All instruction is provided by Viterbi faculty at the Engineering in Society Program.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home?authuser=0
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CS Colloquium: TBA
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: TBA, TBA
Talk Title: TBA
Series: Computer Science Colloquium
Host: Heather Culbertson
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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ECE Seminar: Marcelo Orenes-Vera, "Navigating Heterogeneity and Scalability in Modern Chip Design"
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Marcelo Orenes-Vera, PhD Candidate, Dept of CS, Princeton University
Talk Title: Navigating Heterogeneity and Scalability in Modern Chip Design
Abstract: Abstract: The pursuit of continued improvements in performance and energy efficiency, following the end of Moore's Law and Dennard scaling, marks a pivotal moment in system architecture. As modern systems leverage parallelism and hardware specialization to achieve these goals, new challenges arise:
(1) The complexity of the system grows with the number of distinct hardware components, making it difficult to verify that it will behave correctly and securely;
(2) Parallelizing applications across more processing elements increases the pressure on the memory hierarchy and the network to supply data, which results in severe bottlenecks for data-and communication-intensive applications such as graph analytics and sparse linear algebra.
These challenges call for re-thinking our software abstractions and hardware designs to achieve scalable and efficient systems, as well as introducing robust methodologies to ensure their correctness and security. This talk presents my work on scalable data-centric architectures that co-design the hardware with a migrate-compute-to-the-data programming model to outperform the best results from the Graph500 list. Moreover, this architecture offers a chiplet-based design that enables post-silicon re-configuration of critical resources like the memory hierarchy or network-on-chip for a cost-efficient integration based on different deployment targets. In addition, this talk also introduces two formal-verification-based tools that assist the design of verifiably correct and secure hardware RTL by leveraging high-level abstraction primitives. In addition to facilitating the design process, my verification work also identified and fixed security vulnerabilities and correctness bugs in widely used open-source hardware projects.
Biography: Marcelo is a PhD candidate at Princeton University advised by Margaret Martonosi and David Wentzlaff. His research focuses on Computer Architecture, from hardware RTL design and verification to software programming models of novel architectures. He has previously worked in the hardware industry at Arm, contributing to the design and verification of three GPU projects; at Cerebras Systems, creating high-performance kernels for the Wafer-Scale Engine; and at AMD Research, contributing to design next-generation data centers optimized for large graph structure traversal. At Princeton, he has contributed in two chip tapeouts that aims to improve the performance, power and programmability of ML and Graph workloads. His contributions to scalable data-centric architectures were recognized with the gold medal at the ACM/SIGMICRO 2022 SRC and with an honorable mention at the IEEE Top Picks of 2023.
Host: Dr. Massoud Pedram, pedram@usc.edu
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98003769115?pwd=Sm5JU2RUN1N4Qnd6UkZSOTFEdFpzZz09Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98003769115?pwd=Sm5JU2RUN1N4Qnd6UkZSOTFEdFpzZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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NL Seminar-Do Androids Know They're Only Dreaming of Electric Sheep?
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sky Wang, Columbia University
Talk Title: Do Androids Know They're Only Dreaming of Electric Sheep?
Series: NL Seminar
Abstract: REMINDER: This talk will be a live presentation only, it will not be recorded. Meeting hosts only admit guests that they know to the Zoom meeting. Hence, you’re highly encouraged to use your USC account to sign into Zoom. If you’re an outside visitor, please provide your: Full Name, Title and Name of Workplace to (nlg-seminar-host(at)isi.edu) beforehand so we’ll be aware of your attendance. Also, let us know if you plan to attend in-person or virtually. More Info for NL Seminars can be found at: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/ We design probes trained on the internal representations of a transformer language model that are predictive of its hallucinatory behavior on in-context generation tasks. To facilitate this detection, we create a span-annotated dataset of organic and synthetic hallucinations over several tasks. We find that probes trained on the force-decoded states of synthetic hallucinations are generally ecologically invalid in organic hallucination detection. Furthermore, hidden state information about hallucination appears to be task and distribution-dependent. Intrinsic and extrinsic hallucination saliency varies across layers, hidden state types, and tasks; notably, extrinsic hallucinations tend to be more salient in a transformer's internal representations. Outperforming multiple contemporary baselines, we show that probing is a feasible and efficient alternative to language model hallucination evaluation when model states are available.
Biography: If speaker approves to be recorded for this NL Seminar talk, it will be posted on our USC/ISI YouTube page within 1-2 business days: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCISI. Subscribe here to learn more about upcoming seminars: https://www.isi.edu/events/ Sky is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Columbia University advised by Zhou Yu and Smaranda Muresan. His research primarily revolves around Natural Language Processing (NLP), with broad interests in the area where NLP meets Computational Social Science (CSS). Here, his research primarily revolves around three major areas: (1) revealing and designing for social difference and inequality, (2) cross-cultural NLP, and (3) mechanistic interpretability. His research is supported by a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and has received two outstanding paper awards at EMNLP. He has previously been an intern at Microsoft Semantic Machines, Google Research, and Amazon AWS AI.
Host: Jon May and Justin Cho
More Info: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm0ljFMg0cwLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Virtual and ISI-Conf Rm#689
WebCast Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm0ljFMg0cw
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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Machine Learning Center Seminar: Lily Weng (UC San Diego) - Towards Interpretable Deep Learning
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Lily Weng, UC San Diego
Talk Title: Towards Interpretable Deep Learning
Series: Machine Learning Center Seminar Series
Abstract: Deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved unprecedented success across many scientific and engineering fields in the last decades. Despite its empirical success, however, they are notoriously black-box models that are difficult to understand their decision process. Lacking interpretability is one critical issue that may seriously hinder the deployment of DNNs in high-stake applications, which need interpretability to trust the prediction, to understand potential failures, and to be able to mitigate harms and eliminate biases in the model.
In this talk, I'll share some exciting results in my lab on advancing explainable AI and interpretable machine learning. Specifically, I will show how we could bring interpretability into deep learning by leveraging recent advances in multi-modal models. I'll present two recent works [1,2] in our group on demystifying neural networks and interpretability-guided neural network design, which are the important first steps to enable Trustworthy AI and Trustworthy Machine Learning. I will also briefly overview our other recent efforts on Trustworthy Machine Learning and automated explanations for LLMs [3].
[1] Oikarinen and Weng, CLIP-Dissect: Automatic Description of Neuron Representations in Deep Vision Networks, ICLR 23 (spotlight)
[2] Oikarinen, Das, Nguyen and Weng, Label-Free Concept Bottleneck Models, ICLR 23
[3] Lee, Oikarinen etal, The Importance of Prompt Tuning for Automated Neuron Explanations, NeurIPS 23 ATTRIB workshop
Biography: Lily Weng is an Assistant Professor in the Halicioglu Data Science Institute at UC San Diego. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from MIT in August 2020, and her Bachelor and Master degree both in Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University. Prior to UCSD, she spent 1 year in MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and several research internships in Google DeepMind, IBM Research and Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab. Her research interest is in machine learning and deep learning, with primary focus on trustworthy AI. Her vision is to make the next generation AI systems and deep learning algorithms more robust, reliable, explainable, trustworthy and safer. For more details, please see https://lilywenglab.github.io/.
Host: Yan Liu
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 306
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Events
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AME Seminar
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 01:30 PM - 02:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rachel Holladay, MIT
Talk Title: Dexterous Decision-Making for Real-World Robotic Manipulation
Abstract: For a robot to prepare a meal or clean a room, it must make a large array of decisions, such as what objects to clean first, where to grasp each ingredient and tool, how to open a heavy, overstuffed cabinet, and so on. To enable robots to tackle these tasks, I decompose the problem into two interdependent layers: generating a series of subgoals (i.e., a strategy) and solving for the robot behavior that achieves each of these subgoals. Critically, to accomplish a rich set of manipulation tasks, these subgoal solvers must account for force, motion, deformation, contact, uncertainty and partial observability.My research contributes models and algorithms that enable robots to reason over both the geometry and physics of the world in order to solve long-horizon manipulation tasks. In this talk, I will first discuss how this approach has enabled robots to perform tasks that require reasoning over and exerting force, like opening a childproof medicine bottle with a single arm. Next, I will present an abstraction for the complex physics of frictional pushing and demonstrate its application within the context of in-hand manipulation. Finally, I will illustrate how robots can make robust choices in the face of uncertainty. For example, this empowers robots to reliably chop up fruit of unknown ripeness!
Biography: Rachel Holladay is a Ph.D. student in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on developing algorithms and models that enable robots to robustly perform long-horizon, contact-rich manipulation tasks in everyday environments. She received her B.S. in Computer Science and Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.
Host: AME Department
More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 406
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
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CSC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar: Nickolay Atanasov
Mon, Mar 18, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Nickolay Atanasov, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering | University of California, San Diego
Talk Title: Elements of generalizable mobile robot autonomy
Abstract: This seminar will discuss mobile robot autonomy in novel, unstructured, changing environments. It will argue that successful generalization requires motion, environment, and task models that can be constructed and adapted from streaming sensor observations and interaction among multiple robots. Four elements of generalizable mobile robot autonomy will be presented: 1) physics-informed motion-model learning using neural ordinary differential equations, 2) online mapping using object and semantic information, 3) multi-robot coordination using distributed optimization, and 4) task modeling and planning using automata labeled with object semantics.
Biography: Nikolay Atanasov is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA. He obtained a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA in 2008, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Systems Engineering from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA in 2012 and 2015, respectively. Dr. Atanasov's research focuses on robotics, control theory, and machine learning with emphasis on active perception problems for autonomous mobile robots. He works on probabilistic models and inference techniques for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and on optimal control and reinforcement learning techniques for autonomous navigation and uncertainty minimization. Dr. Atanasov's work has been recognized by the Joseph and Rosaline Wolf award for the best Ph.D. dissertation in Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015, the Best Conference Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in 2017, the NSF CAREER Award in 2021, and the IEEE RAS Early Academic Career Award in Robotics and Automation in 2023.
Host: Dr. Lars Lindemann, llindema@usc.edu
More Info: https://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2024Spring/atanasov.html
More Information: 2024.03.18 CSC Seminar - Nikolay Atanasov.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Miki Arlen
Event Link: https://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2024Spring/atanasov.html
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Human Factors in Aviation Safety HFH 24-3
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
Humans design, build, operate, and maintain the aviation system. It is no wonder that the majority of aviation accidents and incidents have roots in human factors. With this realization comes the conclusion that quality human factors training is effective in improving safety. This course presents information on human factors in a manner that can be readily understood and applied by aviation practitioners. Emphasis is placed on identifying the causes of human error, predicting how human error can affect performance, and applying countermeasures to reduce or eliminate its effects. The course content follows the subjects recommended in FAA Advisory Circular 120-51E. The course also addresses topics recommended in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Human Factors Digest No. 3: Training Operational Personnel in Human Factors. The emphasis is from the pilot’s perspective but applies to all phases of aviation operations. The course relies heavily on participation, case studies, demonstrations, self-assessment, and practical exercises.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AHFH3
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Advanced System Safety Analysis ADVSS 24-1
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
This course is a continuation of the <a href="https://aviationsafety.usc.edu/courses/system-safety/">System Safety</a> course focused on engineering aspects of the course. The objective is to address advanced issues in system safety analysis and broaden the trainees’ perspective on system safety issues. Engineering methods addressed in the System Safety course are reviewed, and special advanced topics are addressed. Additional methods for system safety analysis are addressed, focusing on the application of these methods.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AADVSS1
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CS Colloquium: Sherry Yang - Decision Making with Internet-Scale Knowledge
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sherry Yang, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Decision Making with Internet-Scale Knowledge
Abstract: Machine learning models pretrained on internet data have acquired broad knowledge about the world but struggle to solve complex tasks that require extended reasoning and planning. Sequential decision making, on the other hand, has empowered AlphaGo’s superhuman performance, but lacks visual, language, and physical knowledge about the world. In this talk, I will present my research towards enabling decision making with internet-scale knowledge. First, I will illustrate how language models and video generation are unified interfaces that can integrate internet knowledge and represent diverse tasks, enabling the creation of a generative simulator to support real-world decision-making. Second, I will discuss my work on designing decision making algorithms that can take advantage of generative language and video models as agents and environments. Combining pretrained models with decision making algorithms can effectively enable a wide range of applications such as developing chatbots, learning robot policies, and discovering novel materials. This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Sherry is a final year PhD student at UC Berkeley advised by Pieter Abbeel and a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind. Her research aims to develop machine learning models with internet-scale knowledge to make better-than-human decisions. To this end, she has developed techniques for generative modeling and representation learning from large-scale vision, language, and structured data, coupled with developing algorithms for sequential decision making such as imitation learning, planning, and reinforcement learning. Sherry initiated and led the Foundation Models for Decision Making workshop at NeurIPS 2022 and 2023, bringing together research communities in vision, language, planning, and reinforcement learning to solve complex decision making tasks at scale. Before her current role, Sherry received her Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree from MIT advised by Patrick Winston and Julian Shun.
Host: Dani Yogatama
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Wilson Wong, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering an Allen Distinguished Investigator
Talk Title: Engineering Vaccines, Cell and GeneTherapies using Synthetic Biology
Abstract: In this seminar, I will share with you some of the work that my trainees and colleagues have done on using synthetic biology in various areas, such as foundational circuit engineering, cellular immunotherapy, and vaccines. I will discuss our work on improving the specificity and safety of CAR T cell therapy against cancer using synthetic biology and biomaterials. I will also share our recent discovery on engineering self-amplifying RNA with reduced innate immune response and improved protein expression, leading to a highly potent COVID-19 vaccine as demonstrated in a lethal live virus challenge in mice.
Biography: Dr. Wilson Wong is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and an Allen Distinguished Investigator at Boston University. He is an expert in immune cell engineering and synthetic biology for therapeutic applications. Dr. Wong’s research has been published in numerous high-impact journals, including Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Cell, and PNAS. Dr. Wong has been recognized with multiple academic career awards, including the NIH New Innovator Award, the ACS Synthetic Biology Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Allen Distinguished Investigator Award. He has co-founded three companies, with one in the clinical stage. Dr. Wong has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Wong completed his postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Professor Wendell Lim at the University of California, San Francisco.
Host: Peter Wang
Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - 145
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
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PhD Thesis Proposal - Yuzhong Huang
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Committee Members: Fred Morstatter (Chair), Yue Wang, Aiichiro Nakano, & Antonio Ortega
Date & Time: Tuesday, March 19, 2024, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. (PST) - PHE 325
Title: Explicit Control in the Understanding and Generation of 3D world
Abstract: Understanding and recreating our living environment has been a key topic in scientific research, ranging from virtual reality, autonomous driving, and generative AI tools. Recent advancements have significantly improved machine model’s capability to recognize and generate visually similar 3D objects. However, existing approaches often lack explicit control mechanisms, limiting their adaptability and interpretability. This thesis proposal addresses this gap by focusing on three crucial aspects: (1) Explicit control in understanding 3D worlds, achieved through the imposition of planar priors and plane-splatting volume rendering method. (2) Explicit control in generating 3D worlds, enabled by an orientation-conditioned diffusion model. (3) Explicit control in modifying 3D objects, enabled by projecting text-guided 2D segmentation map onto 3D models. These advancements pave the way for more intuitive and precise manipulation of 3D environments.
Zoom Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99330288526Location: Charles Lee Powell Hall (PHE) - 325
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99330288526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99330288526
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PhD Thesis Proposal- Yuzhong Huang
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Student Activity
PhD Thesis Proposal- Yuzhong Huang
Title: Explicit Control in the Understanding and Generation of 3D world
Committee Members: Fred Morstatter (Chair), Yue Wang, Aiichiro Nakano, Antonio Ortega
Abstract:
Understanding and recreating our living environment has been a key topic in scientific research, ranging from virtual reality, autonomous driving, and generative AI tools. Recent advancements have significantly improved machine model’s capability to recognize and generate visually similar 3D objects.
However, existing approaches often lack explicit control mechanisms, limiting their adaptability and interpretability. This thesis proposal addresses this gap by focusing on three crucial aspects: (1) Explicit control in understanding 3D worlds, achieved through the imposition of planar priors and plane-splatting volume rendering method. (2) Explicit control in generating 3D worlds, enabled by an orientation-conditioned diffusion model. (3) Explicit control in modifying 3D objects, enabled by projecting text-guided 2D segmentation map onto 3D models.
These advancements pave the way for more intuitive and precise manipulation of 3D environments.
Location: Charles Lee Powell Hall (PHE) - 325
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Yuzhong Huang
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99330288526
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DEN@Viterbi: How to Apply Virtual Info Session
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
DEN@Viterbi, Viterbi School of Engineering Graduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions
Join USC Viterbi representatives for a step-by-step guide and tips for how to apply for formal admission into a Master's degree or Graduate Certificate program. The session is intended for individuals who wish to pursue a graduate degree program completely online via USC Viterbi's flexible online DEN@Viterbi delivery method. Attendees will have the opportunity to connect directly with USC Viterbi representatives and ask questions about the admission process throughout the session.
WebCast Link: https://uscviterbi.webex.com/weblink/register/r7a895a38201c8efe49db7ed6e881f7f2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Corporate & Professional Programs
Event Link: https://uscviterbi.webex.com/weblink/register/r7a895a38201c8efe49db7ed6e881f7f2
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ECE-S Seminar - Dr. Peipei Zhou
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Peipei Zhou, Assistant Professor | Department of Electrical Computer Engineering | University of Pittsburgh
Talk Title: Efficient Programming on Heterogeneous Accelerators for Sustainable Computing
Abstract: There is a growing call for increasingly agile computational power for edge and cloud infrastructure to serve the computationally complex needs of ubiquitous computing devices. One important challenge is addressing the holistic environmental impacts of these computing systems. A life-cycle view of sustainability for computing systems is necessary to reduce environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions from these computing systems in different phases: manufacturing, operational, and disposal/recycling. My research investigates how to efficiently program and map widely used workloads on heterogeneous accelerators and seamlessly integrate them with existing computing systems towards sustainable computing.
In this talk, I will first discuss how new mapping solutions, i.e., composing heterogeneous accelerators within system-on-chip with both FPGAs and AI tensor cores, achieve orders of magnitude energy efficiency gains when compared to monolithic accelerator mapping designs for various applications, including deep learning, security, and others. Then, I will apply such novel mapping solutions to show how design space explorations are performed when composing heterogeneous accelerators in latency-through tradeoff analysis. I will further discuss how such mapping and scheduling can be applied to other computing systems, such as GPUs, to improve energy efficiency and, therefore, reduce the operational carbon cost. Finally, I will introduce the REFRESH FPGA chiplets, explain why REFRESH chiplets help reduce the embodied carbon cost, and discuss the challenges and opportunities.
Biography: Peipei Zhou is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Computer Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science (2019) and M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (2014) from UCLA, and her B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (2012) from Southeast University. Her research investigates architecture, programming abstraction, and design automation tools for reconfigurable computing and heterogeneous computing. She has published 30 papers in IEEE/ACM computer system and design automation conferences and journals including FPGA, FCCM, DAC, ICCAD, ISPASS, TCAD, TODAES, TECS, IEEE Micro, etc. Her work has won the 2019 IEEE TCAD Donald O. Pederson Best Paper Award. Other awards include the 2023 ACM/IEEE IGSC Best Viewpoint Paper Finalist, the 2018 IEEE ISPASS Best Paper Nominee, and the 2018 IEEE/ACM ICCAD Best Paper Nominee.
Host: Dr. Peter Beerel, pabeerel@usc.edu
More Info: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92387554175?pwd=ZmFRL0NnZE1sLy82dzBiSXYzbUFVdz09
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92387554175?pwd=ZmFRL0NnZE1sLy82dzBiSXYzbUFVdz09More Information: 2024.03.19 ECE-S Seminar - Peipei Zhou.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92387554175?pwd=ZmFRL0NnZE1sLy82dzBiSXYzbUFVdz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Miki Arlen
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92387554175?pwd=ZmFRL0NnZE1sLy82dzBiSXYzbUFVdz09
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ECE-EP Seminar - Yue (Joyce) Jiang, Tuesday, March 19th at 2pm in EEB 248
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yue (Joyce) Jiang, JILA, University of Colorado Boulder
Talk Title: Exploring Quantum Harmony between Superconducting Circuits & Cold Atoms
Series: ECE-EP Seminar
Abstract: Join me in this talk as I share my research journey in quantum information science, transitioning from cold atoms to superconducting circuits and exploring their harmonious collaboration in advancing quantum science and technology. In the first part, I will discuss the demonstration of a quantum-enhanced sensing technique at microwave frequencies using superconducting circuits to accelerate the search for weak signals arising from physics beyond the Standard Model, with a specific focus on axion dark matter searches. Shifting gears in the second part, we will delve into quantum optics experiments that utilize the nonlinear interaction between the cold atomic ensemble and optical photons, unveiling the fascinating realm of non- Hermitian quantum optics. Wrapping up, we will explore the exciting science that leverages the strengths of both systems, utilizing superconducting-atomic hybrid systems to bridge the gap between quantum information science in microwave and optical frequencies.
Biography: Yue (Joyce) Jiang is a postdoctoral research associate at JILA. She earned her Ph.D. in Physics from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the guidance of Prof. Shengwang Du in 2020, focusing on studying the nonlinear interaction between photons and laser-cooled atomic ensembles. Currently at JILA, she works with Prof. Konrad Lehnert on developing quantum-enhanced sensing techniques for weak signal detection using superconducting circuits.
Host: ECE-EP
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93212540080?pwd=ODI5cXJ2N0RQQW9CNE9MQW5Ea3A0dz09More Information: Yue (Joyce) Jiang Seminar Announcement.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93212540080?pwd=ODI5cXJ2N0RQQW9CNE9MQW5Ea3A0dz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Gokce Dayanikli, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Finding Optimal Policies for Large Populations: An Application to Epidemic Control
Host: Dr. Renyuan Xu
More Information: March 19, 2024.pdf
Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - SOS Building, B2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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Clune Construction Trojan Talk
Tue, Mar 19, 2024 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Come meet us and learn how to build your career in construction!
Clune Construction is a national, employee-owned general contractor, with more than 700 talented professionals located in seven offices across the U.S. We employ some of the most talented people in the construction industry to meet our clients expectations of the highest level of service. It is Clune's mission to provide exceptional construction services to our clients and business partners and deliver results which always exceed expectations.
Tuesday, March 19th
5-6 pm
Ronald Tutor Hall (RTH) Room 211
Please click on the links below to learn more about our company and careers in construction.
What We Build
Capabilities
Careers
Internship Program
Target majors: Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, Information Technology, ConstructionLocation: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Human Factors in Aviation Safety HFH 24-3
Wed, Mar 20, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
Humans design, build, operate, and maintain the aviation system. It is no wonder that the majority of aviation accidents and incidents have roots in human factors. With this realization comes the conclusion that quality human factors training is effective in improving safety. This course presents information on human factors in a manner that can be readily understood and applied by aviation practitioners. Emphasis is placed on identifying the causes of human error, predicting how human error can affect performance, and applying countermeasures to reduce or eliminate its effects. The course content follows the subjects recommended in FAA Advisory Circular 120-51E. The course also addresses topics recommended in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Human Factors Digest No. 3: Training Operational Personnel in Human Factors. The emphasis is from the pilot’s perspective but applies to all phases of aviation operations. The course relies heavily on participation, case studies, demonstrations, self-assessment, and practical exercises.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AHFH3
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Advanced System Safety Analysis ADVSS 24-1
Wed, Mar 20, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
This course is a continuation of the <a href="https://aviationsafety.usc.edu/courses/system-safety/">System Safety</a> course focused on engineering aspects of the course. The objective is to address advanced issues in system safety analysis and broaden the trainees’ perspective on system safety issues. Engineering methods addressed in the System Safety course are reviewed, and special advanced topics are addressed. Additional methods for system safety analysis are addressed, focusing on the application of these methods.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AADVSS1
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EiS Communications Hub Drop-In Hours
Wed, Mar 20, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Engineering in Society Program
Student Activity
Drop-in hours for writing and speaking support for Viterbi Ph.D. students
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
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EiS Communications Hub Drop-In Hours
Wed, Mar 20, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to stop by the EiS Communications Hub for one-on-one instruction for their academic and professional communications tasks. All instruction is provided by Viterbi faculty at the Engineering in Society Program.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home?authuser=0
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CS Colloquium: Mengyuan Li - Confidential Computing and Trusted Execution Environment: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Future
Wed, Mar 20, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mengyuan Li, MIT
Talk Title: Confidential Computing and Trusted Execution Environment: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Future
Abstract: Confidential Computing, or Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), represents a cutting-edge design in server-grade CPUs. This technology acts as a protective shield for cloud tasks, safeguarding the confidentiality and integrity of cloud workloads against a range of threats, including attacks from privileged software, physical attackers, and untrustworthy hypervisors. As the demand for secure private data handling continues to rise, the adoption of Confidential Computing has become widespread across various industries. Evidence of this includes the adoption of TEE in server-grade CPUs from major vendors like Intel, AMD, and ARM. Furthermore, leading cloud service providers, such as AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud, now offer commercial Confidential Computing services. In this talk, I will outline my contributions to the study of complex, heterogeneous Confidential Computing systems. I will share my insights into two real-world vulnerabilities we uncovered within commercial Confidential Computing systems, along with our joint efforts with CPU manufacturers to address these issues in the latest server-grade CPUs. At the hardware design level, I will discuss a novel ciphertext side-channel attack targeting hardware-accelerated memory encryption, which is a crucial hardware feature to protect the memory of cloud workloads. Moving to the software system design level, I will illustrate how inadequately designed TEE operating systems can pose a threat to the security of Confidential VMs. Finally, I will outline my ongoing efforts and future directions in enhancing the security and effectiveness of Confidential Computing and my research vision towards building secure and performant hardware systems. This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Mengyuan Li is a postdoctoral researcher at CSAIL, MIT, under the guidance of Prof. Mengjia Yan. His research focuses on bringing security and trust to hardware systems, with a recent concentration in Confidential Cloud Computing and Trusted Execution Environments. To this end, he has identified real-world hardware vulnerabilities in commodity CPUs, which have been acknowledged by manufacturers through hardware CVEs and several security bulletins. Additionally, he has collaborated closely with industry teams such as AMD, Intel, WolfSSL, and Alibaba Cloud to develop mitigations and design commercial trustworthy hardware systems. His research findings have been published in top security and privacy venues, including S&P, Usenix Security, and CCS, and have been recognized by the CCS 2021 Best Paper Runner-up Award. Before MIT, Mengyuan earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University (OSU) in 2022.
Host: Seo Jin Park
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Mar 20, 2024 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Receptions & Special Events
Bi-Weekly regular faculty meeting for invited full-time Computer Science faculty only. Event details emailed directly to attendees.
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 107
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Assistant to CS Chair
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AME Seminar
Wed, Mar 20, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Pedro Saenz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Host: AME Department
More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 252
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
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Human Factors in Aviation Safety HFH 24-3
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
Humans design, build, operate, and maintain the aviation system. It is no wonder that the majority of aviation accidents and incidents have roots in human factors. With this realization comes the conclusion that quality human factors training is effective in improving safety. This course presents information on human factors in a manner that can be readily understood and applied by aviation practitioners. Emphasis is placed on identifying the causes of human error, predicting how human error can affect performance, and applying countermeasures to reduce or eliminate its effects. The course content follows the subjects recommended in FAA Advisory Circular 120-51E. The course also addresses topics recommended in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Human Factors Digest No. 3: Training Operational Personnel in Human Factors. The emphasis is from the pilot’s perspective but applies to all phases of aviation operations. The course relies heavily on participation, case studies, demonstrations, self-assessment, and practical exercises.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AHFH3
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Advanced System Safety Analysis ADVSS 24-1
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
This course is a continuation of the <a href="https://aviationsafety.usc.edu/courses/system-safety/">System Safety</a> course focused on engineering aspects of the course. The objective is to address advanced issues in system safety analysis and broaden the trainees’ perspective on system safety issues. Engineering methods addressed in the System Safety course are reviewed, and special advanced topics are addressed. Additional methods for system safety analysis are addressed, focusing on the application of these methods.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AADVSS1
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CS Colloquium: Andrew Ilyas - Making machine learning predictably reliable
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Andrew Ilyas, MIT
Talk Title: Making machine learning predictably reliable
Abstract: Despite ML models' impressive performance, training and deploying them is currently a somewhat messy endeavor. But does it have to be? In this talk, I overview my work on making ML “predictably reliable”---enabling developers to know when their models will work, when they will fail, and why.To begin, we use a case study of adversarial inputs to show that human intuition can be a poor predictor of how ML models operate. Motivated by this, we present a line of work that aims to develop a precise understanding of the ML pipeline, combining statistical tools with large-scale experiments to characterize the role of each individual design choice: from how to collect data, to what dataset to train on, to what learning algorithm to use. This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Andrew Ilyas is a PhD student in Computer Science at MIT, where he is advised by Aleksander Madry and Constantinos Daskalakis. His research aims to improve the reliability and predictability of machine learning systems. He was previously supported by an Open Philanthropy AI Fellowship.
Host: Vatsal Sharan
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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NL Seminar -The Data Provenance Initiative: A Large Scale Audit of Dataset Licensing & Attribution in AI
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Anthony Chen and Shayne Longpre, MIT
Talk Title: The Data Provenance Initiative: A Large Scale Audit of Dataset Licensing & Attribution in AI
Abstract: REMINDER: This talk will be a live presentation only, it will not be recorded. Meeting hosts only admit guests that they know to the Zoom meeting. Hence, you’re highly encouraged to use your USC account to sign into Zoom. If you’re an outside visitor, please provide your: Full Name, Title and Name of Workplace to (nlg-seminar-host(at)isi.edu) beforehand so we’ll be aware of your attendance. Also, let us know if you plan to attend in-person or virtually. More Info for NL Seminars can be found at: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/ The arms race to train language models on vast, diverse, and inconsistently documented datasets has raised pressing concerns about the legal and ethical risks for practitioners. To remedy these practices threatening data transparency and understanding, we introduce the Data Provenance Initiative, a multi-disciplinary effort between legal and machine learning experts to systematically audit and trace 1800+ text datasets. We develop tools and standards to trace the lineage of these datasets, from their source, creators, series of license conditions, properties, and subsequent use. Our landscape analysis highlights the sharp divides in composition and focus of commercially open vs closed datasets, with closed datasets monopolizing important categories: lower resource languages, more creative tasks, richer topic variety, newer and more synthetic training data.
Biography: Bio 1:Anthony Chen is an engineer at Google DeepMind doing research on factuality and long-context language models. He received his PhD from UC Irvine last year where he focused on generative evaluation and factuality in language models. Bio 2: Shayne Longpre is a PhD candidate at MIT with a focus on data-centric AI, language models, and their societal impact. If speakers approve to be recorded for this NL Seminar talk, it will be posted on our USC/ISI YouTube page within 1-2 business days: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCISI. Subscribe here to learn more about upcoming seminars: https://www.isi.edu/events/
Host: Jon May and Justin Cho
More Info: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np9HeJN6miwLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Virtual and ISI-Conf Rm#689
WebCast Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np9HeJN6miw
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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Virtual Trojan Talk with Enterprise Mobility
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Trojans, come learn about Enterprise Mobility and the amazing career opportunities we have offer. You’ll learn about the origins of the company, our founding values, philanthropy and our award winning business management trainee program.
This information session will take place on Thursday, March 21st at 12pm (PST) via Zoom.
RSVP in connectSC events by clicking the “Attend” button and through the employer link:
Please register for the event HERE
If you have any questions, please email me at karen.gerstenacker@em.comLocation: Virtual Event
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
Event Link: http://tinyurl.com/yu7uv3az
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USC SleepHuB Special Seminar
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rebecca Spencer, Ph.D., Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Director of the Sleep Lab Core Facility -University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Talk Title: Cognitive benefits of sleep in spite of sleep loss in older adults
Abstract: Sleep benefits memory consolidation in young adults. Evidence suggests that this benefit reflects the active reorganization of memories, moving them from short-term hippocampal storage which is susceptible to interference to long-term more stable storage in the neocortex. Synchronized oscillations in the hippocampus and neocortex during slow wave sleep underlie this memory stabilization. Older adults have reduced slow wave sleep and yet, in many cases, sleep-dependent memory consolidation is preserved. It is important to understand this resilience as it may speak to ways to prevent or intervene in age-related memory loss. In my talk, I will present studies demonstrating the benefits of sleep on memories in older adults as well as the limitations of this process. I will also present some evidence of possible mechanisms supporting memory consolidation in the face of reduced slow wave sleep with aging. These studies hold relevance for those studying aging from a clinical and cognitive perspective.
Biography: Rebecca Spencer, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Director of the Sleep Lab Core Facility in the Institute of Applied Life Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research focuses on the role of sleep in cognition and brain changes, specifically lifespan changes in sleep-dependent cognitive processing. In young children, she is interested in how the high levels of sleep during development relate to the massive amount of learning and brain development at this age. In old adults, she studies how age-related changes in sleep contribute to changes in memory and emotion processing. After graduating from Purdue with a PhD in neuroscience in 2002, she went to UC Berkeley where she was a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute until 2008. She was the recipient of a NIH Pathways to Independence Award (K99/R00). Her work is currently funded by 3 NIH R01 awards and an NSF grant. She chairs the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) Program Committee.
Host: Dr. Michael Khoo
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 224
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
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PhD Thesis Defense - Kushal Chawla
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 01:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
PhD Defense - Kushal Chawla
Title: Computational Foundations for Mixed-Motive Human-Machine Dialogue
Committee Members: Gale Lucas (Chair), Jonathan Gratch, Jonathan May, Peter Kim, Maja Mataric
Abstract: Success in a mixed-motive interaction demands a balance between self-serving and other-serving behaviors. For instance, in a typical negotiation, a player must balance maximizing their own goals with the goals of their partner so as to come to an agreement. If the player asks for too much, this can push the partner to walk away without an agreement, hence, hurting the outcomes for all the parties involved. Such interactions are ubiquitous in everyday life, from deciding who performs household chores to customer support and high-stakes business deals. Consequently, AI tools capable of comprehending and participating in such mixed-motive or other social influence interactions (such as argumentation or therapy) find broad applications in pedagogy and conversational AI.
In this thesis, we present our foundational work for enabling mixed-motive human-machine dialogue. I will discuss our progress in three key areas: 1) The design of a novel task and dataset of grounded human-human negotiations that has fueled our investigations into the impact of emotion expression and linguistic strategies, 2) Techniques for mixed motive dialogue systems that learn to strike a balance between self and partner interests, and 3) Promoting a research community for dedicated efforts and discussion in this area.
https://usc.zoom.us/j/96411089883?pwd=WDNuMjF1NDNTTXV5cDdGaWJzOG9Gdz09Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 110
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Events
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/96411089883?pwd=WDNuMjF1NDNTTXV5cDdGaWJzOG9Gdz09
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ECE-EP seminar - Saransh Sharma, Thursday, March 21st at 2pm in EEB 248
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Saransh Sharma, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Miniaturized Biomedical Devices for Navigation, Sensing and Stimulation
Series: ECE-EP Seminar
Abstract: Medical electronic devices are an integral part of the healthcare system today and are used in a variety of applications around us. The design of such devices has several stringent requirements, the key being miniaturization, low-power operation, and wireless functionality. In this talk, I will present CMOS-based miniaturized, low-power and wireless biomedical devices in three broad domains: (a) in-vivo navigation and tracking, (b) in-vivo sensing of biomarkers and physiological signals, and (c) in-vivo stimulation and drug delivery. For the first part, I will talk about ingestible and implantable devices that can be used to achieve sub-mm tracking accuracy in 3D and in real time inside the human body, which is very useful for localizing devices in the GI tract, during precision surgeries and minimally invasive procedures. In the second part, I will present the design of a novel on-chip 3D magnetic sensor that is highly miniaturized and low- power, thus making it suitable for many biomedical applications. In the last part, I will briefly talk about my recent work on a wearable device for multi-modal sensing from sweat, followed by ongoing work on devices for stimulation and drug-delivery. I will end the talk with a glimpse of my future research direction.
Biography: Saransh Sharma received the B.Tech. degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, India, in 2017 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA, in 2018 and 2023 respectively. He is currently a post- doctoral scholar at MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA. His research is on integrated circuits and systems design, with special emphasis on low-power biomedical applications. He was a recipient of the Demetriades-Tsafka-Kokkalis award for best PhD thesis at Caltech in biotechnology and related fields, the Jakob van Zyl Predoctoral Research award at Caltech, Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper at ISSCC 2024, Charles Lee Powell Fellowship at Caltech, and Excellence in Mentorship award at Caltech for mentoring undergraduate and graduate research students.
Host: ECE-EP
Webcast: WldndTF6ZGZPbHFJUT09More Information: Saransh Sharma Seminar Announcement.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
WebCast Link: WldndTF6ZGZPbHFJUT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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PhD Dissertation Defense - Arvin Hekmati
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 02:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
PhD Dissertation Defense - Arvin Hekmati
Committee: Prof. Bhaskar Krishnamachari (Chair), Prof. Cauligi Raghavendra, and Prof. Aiichiro Nakano
Title: AI-Enabled DDoS Attack Detection in IoT Systems
Abstract:
"In this thesis, we develop AI-enabled mechanisms for detecting Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in Internet of Things (IoT) systems. We introduce a novel, tunable DDoS attack model that emulates benign IoT device behavior using a truncated Cauchy distribution. We investigate these futuristic DDoS attacks that use large numbers of IoT devices and camouflage their attack by having each node transmit at a volume typical of benign traffic. We propose innovative correlation-aware, learning-based frameworks that leverage IoT node correlation data for enhanced detection accuracy. We extensively analyze the proposed architectures by evaluating five different neural network models trained on a dataset derived from a 4060-node real-world IoT system. We observe that long short-term memory (LSTM) and a transformer-based model, in conjunction with the architectures that use correlation information of the IoT nodes, provide higher detection performance than the other models and architectures, especially when the attacker camouflages itself by following benign traffic distribution on each IoT node. We evaluated our findings through practical implementation on a Raspberry Pi-based testbed. In order to address the challenge of leveraging massive IoT device arrays for DDoS attacks, we introduce heuristic solutions for selective correlation information sharing among IoT devices. To overcome the challenge of fixed input limitations in conventional machine learning, we propose a model based on the Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) to manage incomplete data in IoT devices caused by network losses. We introduce various IoT device graph topologies, including Network, Peer-to-Peer, and Hybrid topologies with scenarios of both directed and undirected edges. Our simulations reveal that the Hybrid topology, employing correlation-based peer-to-peer undirected edges, achieves the highest detection performance with at most 2% drop in the performance despite a 50% network connection loss, highlighting the proposed GCN-based model's effectiveness in detecting DDoS attacks under lossy network conditions. Finally, we explore the application of Large Language Models (LLMs) for detecting DDoS attacks and explaining the detection rationale, demonstrating the potential of fine-tuning and few-shot prompt engineering methods to achieve high accuracy and provide insightful detection reasoning."Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ellecia Williams
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/4677088430
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Boost Your Interview - Presented by Viterbi Alumni Lorenzo Laxamana
Thu, Mar 21, 2024 @ 06:00 PM - 07:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Date: Thursday, March 21st
Time: 6-7:30 pm
Location: RTH 211
RSVP Required - Pizza will be served!
This workshop is intended to give aspiring engineering professionals a bit of insight on the interview process and everything adjacent; We’ll also go over some tips and tricks you can use to boost your presence in an interview.
In this workshop, we’ll cover topics like: warm-up, body language, scheduling tactics, resume narrative, vocal exercises, post-interview insight, etc!This workshop’s inspiration pulls from a myriad of both personal experiences from being an alum of USC’s AME department, Toastmasters, winter sliding sports, a passion for car review writing, etc
About Lorenzo: View him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenzolaxamana/
-He graduated from Viterbi with a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 2020
-He is a Software Systems Engineer at Supernal
-He worked previously as a systems engineer at RaytheonLocation: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Human Factors in Aviation Safety HFH 24-3
Fri, Mar 22, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
Humans design, build, operate, and maintain the aviation system. It is no wonder that the majority of aviation accidents and incidents have roots in human factors. With this realization comes the conclusion that quality human factors training is effective in improving safety. This course presents information on human factors in a manner that can be readily understood and applied by aviation practitioners. Emphasis is placed on identifying the causes of human error, predicting how human error can affect performance, and applying countermeasures to reduce or eliminate its effects. The course content follows the subjects recommended in FAA Advisory Circular 120-51E. The course also addresses topics recommended in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Human Factors Digest No. 3: Training Operational Personnel in Human Factors. The emphasis is from the pilot’s perspective but applies to all phases of aviation operations. The course relies heavily on participation, case studies, demonstrations, self-assessment, and practical exercises.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AHFH3
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Advanced System Safety Analysis ADVSS 24-1
Fri, Mar 22, 2024 @ 08:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Aviation Safety and Security Program
University Calendar
This course is a continuation of the System Safety course focused on engineering aspects of the course. The objective is to address advanced issues in system safety analysis and broaden the trainees’ perspective on system safety issues. Engineering methods addressed in the System Safety course are reviewed, and special advanced topics are addressed. Additional methods for system safety analysis are addressed, focusing on the application of these methods.
Location: Century Boulevard Building (CBB) - 960
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Scalese
Event Link: https://avsafe.usc.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=24AADVSS1
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EiS Communications Hub Drop-In Hours
Fri, Mar 22, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to stop by the EiS Communications Hub for one-on-one instruction for their academic and professional communications tasks. All instruction is provided by Viterbi faculty at the Engineering in Society Program.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home?authuser=0
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EiS Communications Hub Drop-In Hours
Fri, Mar 22, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Engineering in Society Program
Student Activity
Drop-in hours for writing and speaking support for Viterbi Ph.D. students
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
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Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Fri, Mar 22, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Tejal Desai, Ph.D., The Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering Brown University
Talk Title: Therapeutic Biomaterials: Engineering Material Structure to Modulate Biologic Delivery
Abstract: The ability to deliver therapeutics within and across biologic barriers is a much sought after goal. In this talk, I will discuss our recent work in developing nanostructured materials for biologic delivery as well as injectable micro/nanoscale materials for the reduction of fibrosis and immune activation. By incorporating micro and nanoscale features into biomaterials, one can modulate properties such as tissue permeability, matrix production, and cell activation. The understanding of how small-scale topographies can influence the biological microenvironment allows us to design platforms for applications in therapeutic delivery and tissue regeneration. Micro and nanostructured materials can add functionality to current drug delivery platforms while becoming an enabling technology leading to new basic discoveries in the pharmaceutical and biological sciences
Biography: Tejal A. Desai assumed the role of Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering at Brown University, effective September 1, 2022. An accomplished biomedical engineer and academic leader, Desai’s research spans multiple disciplines including materials engineering, cell biology, tissue engineering, and pharmacological delivery systems to develop new therapeutic interventions for disease. She seeks to design new platforms, enabled by advances in micro and nanotechnology, to overcome challenges in therapeutic delivery. With more than 260 peer-reviewed articles and patents, Desai’s research has earned her numerous recognitions including Technology Review’s Top 100 Young Innovators, Popular Science’s Brilliant 10 and the Dawson Biotechnology Award. She served as president of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering from 2020 to 2022 and is a fellow of AIMBE, IAMBE, CRS, and BMES. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2015, the National Academy of Inventors in 2019, and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2024. Desai was also awarded the 2023 Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Lecture Award at the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting — the highest honor the organization can bestow upon an individual who has demonstrated impactful leadership and accomplishments in biomedical engineering science and practice. Prior to coming to Brown, she was the Deborah Cowan Endowed Professor of the Department of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF); and Professor in Residence, Department of Bioengineering, UC Berkeley (UCB). She served as director of the NIH training grant for the Joint UCSF/UCB Graduate Program in Bioengineering for over 15 years and founding director of the UCSF/UCB Master’s Program in Translational Medicine. She was also chair of the department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at UCSF from 2014-2021 and the Inaugural Director of the UCSF Engineering and Applied Sciences Initiative known as HIVE (Health Innovation Via Engineering). A vocal advocate for education and outreach to historically underrepresented groups in STEM, Desai’s work to break down institutional barriers to equity and cultivate a climate of inclusion has earned numerous honors and awards, including the AWIS Judith Poole Award in Mentorship, the 2021 UCSF Chancellors Award for the Advancement of Women, and the 2022 Controlled Release Woman in Science Award. As president of AIMBE (2020-2022), she led advocacy efforts for increased scientific funding and addressing workforce disparities in science/engineering. To foster the next generation of scientists, she was involved in the SF Science Education partnership and has worked with outreach organizations such as the Lawrence Hall of Science, PBS, and the UN Women’s council to develop hand-on exhibits and videos related to nanotechnology and women in engineering.
Host: Eunji Chung
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 100B
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
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AME and ASTE Mixer @ VLP
Fri, Mar 22, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Student Activity
Join us with your Aerospace, Mechanical, and Astronautical Engineering classmates in this study space & mixer! Network and mingle with each other with some good music and pizza at the Viterbi Learning Program.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alex Bronz
Event Link: https://cglink.me/2nB/r396256
