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Events for the 5th week of March
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CS Colloquium: David Held (UC Berkeley) - Robots in Clutter: Learning to Understand Environmental Changes
Mon, Mar 27, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: David Held, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Robots in Clutter: Learning to Understand Environmental Changes
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.
Robots today are confined to operate in relatively simple, controlled environments. One reason for this is that current methods for processing visual data tend to break down when faced with occlusions, viewpoint changes, poor lighting, and other challenging but common situations that occur when robots are placed in the real world. I will show that we can train robots to handle these variations by modeling the causes behind visual appearance changes. If robots can learn how the world changes over time, they can be robust to the types of changes that objects often undergo. I demonstrate this idea in the context of autonomous driving, and I will show how we can use this idea to improve performance for every step of the robotic perception pipeline: object segmentation, tracking, and velocity estimation. I will also present some recent work on learning to manipulate objects, using a similar framework of learning environmental changes. By learning how the environment can change over time, we can enable robots to operate in the complex, cluttered environments of our daily lives.
Biography: David Held is a post-doctoral researcher at U.C. Berkeley working with Pieter Abbeel on deep reinforcement learning for robotics. He recently completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University with Sebastian Thrun and Silvio Savarese, where he developed methods for perception for autonomous vehicles. David has also worked as an intern on Google's self-driving car team. Before Stanford, David was a researcher at the Weizmann Institute, where he worked on building a robotic octopus. He received a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at MIT and an M.S. in Computer Science at Stanford, for which he was awarded the Best Master's Thesis Award from the Computer Science Department.
Host: CS Department
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Mar 27, 2017 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jean-Michel Maarek, PhD, Professor of Engineering Practice, USC Biomedical Engineering
Talk Title: Flexible Devices
Host: Qifa Zhou
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Mon, Mar 27, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Massimo Franceschetti, Professor, University of California San Diego
Talk Title: The value of information in event triggering: can we beat the data-rate theorem?
Abstract: In networked control, data-rate theorems relate the amount of information that the feedback channel between estimator and controller must be able to supply to guarantee stability, to the amount of information requested by the plant. They represent a cornerstone of the theory of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and have been studied for more than a decade. On the other hand, the need to use distributed resources efficiently in CPS has led to event-triggering control techniques based on the idea of sending information in an opportunistic manner between the controller and the plant. After reviewing the basics of the data rate theorems, we illustrate how these are to be modified in the presence of an event-triggered implementation. The main observation is that the act of triggering reveals information about the system's state and can be exploited for stabilization, thus effectively invalidating "classic" formulations of the theorem. An extended formulation reveals a phase transition behavior of the transmission rate required for stabilization as a function of the communication delay. It is shown that for low values of the delay the timing information carried by the triggering events is large and the system can be stabilized with any positive rate. On the other hand, when the delay exceeds a certain threshold that depends on the given triggering strategy, the timing information alone is not enough to achieve stabilization and the rate must begin to grow, eventually becoming larger than what required by the classic data-rate theorem. The critical point where the transmission rate equals the one imposed by the data-rate theorem occurs when the delay equals the inverse of the entropy rate of the plant, representing the intrinsic rate at which the system generates information. At this critical point, the timing information supplied by event triggering is completely balanced by the information loss due to the communication delay.
Biography: Massimo Franceschetti received the Laurea degree (with highest honors) in computer engineering from the University of Naples, Naples, Italy, in 1997, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, in 1999, and 2003, respectively. He is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). Before joining UCSD, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California at Berkeley for two years. He has held visiting positions at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, and the University of Trento. His research interests are in physical and information-based foundations of communication and control systems. He is co-author of the book "Random Networks for Communication" published by Cambridge University Press. Dr. Franceschetti served as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (2009-2012) and for the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems (2013-16) and as Guest Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (2008, 2009). He is currently serving as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering. He was awarded the C. H. Wilts Prize in 2003 for best doctoral thesis in electrical engineering at Caltech, the S.A. Schelkunoff Award in 2005 for best paper in the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award in 2006, an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award in 2007, the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award in 2010, and the IEEE Control theory society Ruberti young researcher award in 2012.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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NL Seminar - ANALYZING THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Mon, Mar 27, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Stephen Kobourov , University of Arizona
Talk Title: ANALYZING THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: We investigate the predictive power behind the language of food on social media. We collect a corpus of over three million food-related posts from Twitter and demonstrate that many latent population characteristics can be directly predicted from this data: overweight rate, diabetes rate, political leaning, and home geographical location of authors. For all tasks, our language-based models significantly outperform the majority class baselines. Performance is further improved with more complex natural language processing, such as topic modeling. We analyze which textual features have most predictive power for these datasets, providing insight into the connections between the language of food, geographic locale, and community characteristics. Lastly, we design and implement an online system for real-time query and visualization of the dataset. Visualization tools, such as geo referenced heatmaps, semantics-preserving wordclouds and temporal histograms, allow us to discover more complex, global patterns mirrored in the language of food.
Biography: Stephen Kobourov is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Arizona. He completed BS degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science at Dartmouth College in 1995, and a PhD in Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University in 2000. He has worked as a Research Scientist at AT&T Research Labs, a Hulmboldt Fellow at the University of Tubingen in Germany, and a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at Charles University in Prague.
Host: Marjan Ghazvininejad and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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USC Stem Cell Seminar: Hongkui Deng, Peking University
Tue, Mar 28, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hongkui Deng, Peking University
Talk Title: TBD
Series: Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC Distinguished Speakers Series
Host: USC Stem Cell
More Info: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events
Webcast: http://keckmedia.usc.edu/stem-cell-seminarWebCast Link: http://keckmedia.usc.edu/stem-cell-seminar
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Cristy Lytal/USC Stem Cell
Event Link: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events
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CS Colloquium: Yeongjin Jang (Georgia Tech) - Protecting Computing System Interactions
Tue, Mar 28, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yeongjin Jang, Georgia Tech
Talk Title: Protecting Computing System Interactions
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.
Computing platforms are evolving from desktops to Smartphones to the Internet of things (IoT) devices. In this change, computer systems have started embedding an amazing variety of interaction points in both software and hardware forms. While such changes have made everyday life easier by enabling various convenient features, protecting these systems has become much more difficult. This is not only because system complexity has increased with the integration of more interactions and often conflicts with the existing security mechanisms, but also because improper security practices or incomplete security checks result from faster production cycles that generally lead to more security holes.
In this talk, Yeongjin will present his research on protection of computing system interactions. First, he will present Gyrus, a user interaction monitoring system that reflects user's intention to network traffic monitoring. Gyrus can protect user-to-network interactions such as sending message online and online banking. Next, he will present a result of security analysis on user I/O in operating systems,
in which he discovered computer accessibility as a new attack vector. The analysis found 12 new attacks in popular operating systems, and he discusses countermeasures against the vulnerabilities to keep the affected systems secure.
Biography: Yeongjin Jang is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on security and privacy problems of computing systems, which include operating systems, mobile systems, and computing hardware.
His research results are recognized for their highly practical impact, as noted by one award and two nominations for the CSAW best applied research paper. Moreover, his research has been widely covered in popular media including Forbes, Wired, MIT Technology Review, and more.
Yeongjin received his M.S. from Georgia Tech in 2016 and B.S. from KAIST in 2010.
Host: CS Department
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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PhD Defense - Christopher Wienberg
Tue, Mar 28, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Title: Demographic Bias Correction for Social Media Data
PhD Candidate: Christopher Wienberg
Date and Time: Tuesday, March 28th, 11:00am
Location: Zumberge Hall (ZHS) 360
Abstract:
For generations, people have been keeping records of their everyday lives. The web is now a popular place for people to document their personal lives, replacing journals and diaries popular decades ago. The popularity of weblogs and social media has provided an unique opportunity to study people at a massive scale. Social media researchers have seized this chance to use social media data to predict and measure social phenomena, such as elections, economic activity, and public health. While these researchers' work has shown promise, they frequently highlight a challenge with web data: web users, as a group, are dissimilar (e.g. younger, wealthier) from most offline populations.
Demographic representativity is an issue that economists and other social scientists deal with regularly. They have found that re-weighting survey samples based on demographic variables like age and gender can improve the accuracy of survey results. They directly account for this need by asking survey respondents to provide their demographic background. In contrast, social media analysts do not have immediate access to these demographic variables.
This dissertation proposes and evaluates a practical approach for making social predictions from social media data while contending with demographic representativity issues. It describes the collection and analysis of reliable data describing a population of web users. Social predictions are drawn from this population, with various bias correction techniques evaluated by comparing to gold standard data from traditionally collected surveys. Special attention is paid to important practical considerations, such as errors introduced by automated methods to characterize the demographic and other attributes of individual users and their impact on predictions for the broader population.
Committee:
Andrew S. Gordon (chair)
Ellis Horowitz
Arie Kapteyn
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 360
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Lizsl De Leon
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Illumina Office Hours
Tue, Mar 28, 2017 @ 01:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Receptions & Special Events
Walk-in office hours with representatives from Illumina.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 218
Audiences: All Viterbi
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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Epstein Seminar, ISE 651
Tue, Mar 28, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Ilan Adler, Professor, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Incentive Compatible Mechanisms for the Secretary Problem
Host: Prof. Sheldon Ross
More Information: March 28, 2017_Adler.pdf
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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Illumina Information Session
Tue, Mar 28, 2017 @ 05:30 PM - 07:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Calling all undergraduates, grad and post-docs interested in solving problems that really matter - we want to meet you! Our team from different parts of the business will be hosting a panel discussion event with networking to follow. Come and hear what it's really like to work at Illumina and please bring your questions. Dinner is on us - see you there!
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: All Viterbi
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections
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MHI CommNetS seminar
Wed, Mar 29, 2017 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Cédric Josz, Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture (LAAS CNRS)
Talk Title: Application of Polynomial Optimization to Electricity Transmission Networks
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Multivariate polynomial optimization where variables and data are complex numbers is a non-deterministic polynomial-time hard problem that arises in various applications such as electric power systems, signal processing, imaging science, automatic control, and quantum mechanics. Complex numbers are typically used to model oscillatory phenomena which are omnipresent in physical systems. We propose a complex moment/sum-of-squares hierarchy of semidefinite programs to find global solutions with reduced computational burden compared with the Lasserre hierarchy for real polynomial optimization. We apply the approach to large-scale sections of the European high-voltage electricity transmission grid. Thanks to an algorithm for exploiting sparsity, instances with several thousand variables and constraints can be solved to global optimality.
Biography: Cédric Josz is currently pursuing a postdoctoral project under the supervision of Jean Bernard Lasserre in the Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture (LAAS CNRS) in Toulouse, France. His work is funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant and deals with non-convexity in optimization. He received a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Paris VI in 2016 in collaboration with the French transmission system operator (Rte) and the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA).
Host: Prof. Rahul Jain
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Amgen Seminar: Chawita (Jelly) Netirojjanakul
Wed, Mar 29, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Chawita (Jelly) Netirojjanakul, Amgen
Talk Title: Structure guided engineering of antibody-small molecule hybrids
Series: USC/Amgen Seminar Series
Host: USC/Amgen
More Info: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events
Location: TBD
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Cristy Lytal/USC Stem Cell
Event Link: http://stemcell.usc.edu/events
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Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Mar 29, 2017 @ 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: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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MHI CommNetS seminar
Wed, Mar 29, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Scott Moura, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Increasing Battery Potential: Estimation & Control of Electrochemical Models
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Batteries are ubiquitous. However, today's batteries are expensive, range-limited, power-restricted, die too quickly, and charge too slowly. Batteries are conservatively operated because their control systems treat the internal electrochemical dynamics as a black-box. Given real-time estimates of the electrochemical states, however, one can safely operate batteries near their physical limits, thus significantly enhancing performance beyond current state-of-art battery management systems. This talk reviews recent advancements in enhanced battery performance via estimation and control of PDE electrochemical models.
First, we review battery electrochemistry. Second, we discuss canonical state-of-charge (SOC), state-of-health (SOH), and other so-called SOx estimation algorithms. Third, we present recent theoretical results in state estimation and optimal control with PDE models. Finally, we close with exciting new opportunities for next-generation battery management systems.
Biography: Scott Moura is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in Civil & Environmental Engineering and Director of eCAL. He received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 2011, the M.S. degree from the University of Michigan in 2008, and the B.S. degree from the UC Berkeley, in 2006 - all in Mechanical Engineering. He was a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Diego in the Cymer Center for Control Systems and Dynamics, and a visiting researcher in the Centre Automatique et Systemes at MINES ParisTech in Paris, France. He is a recipient of the O. Hugo Shuck Best Paper Award, Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award, Hellman Faculty Fellows Award, UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, University of Michigan Distinguished ProQuest Dissertation Honorable Mention, University of Michigan Rackham Merit Fellowship, and Distinguished Leadership Award. He has received multiple conference best paper awards, as an advisor & student. His research interests include control & estimation theory for PDEs, optimization, machine learning, batteries, electric vehicles, and the smart grid.
Host: Prof. Insoon Yang
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Gianluca Lazzi - Thursday, March 30th at 10:30am in EEB 132
Thu, Mar 30, 2017 @ 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Gianluca Lazzi, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Utah
Talk Title: Bioelectromagnetics for Neuroimplants: from Wireless Power and Data Transfer to Direct Neurostimulation
Abstract: During the past decade, we have witnessed remarkable progress in neural implants, and more generally in the development of systems that interface with the human body for recording neural activity or vital signs or stimulating the neural system. The challenges toward the development of true biomimetic systems are daunting: nonetheless, electrical or magnetic systems that can partially restore neural functions or offer therapeutic solutions have recently shown tremendous progress and potential. Prospects for electroneural interfaces to further evolve and offer a viable solution to various disorders are high.
In this talk, we will utilize examples of electric and magnetic neurostimulators, such as the artificial retina to restore partial vision to the blind, cortical neurostimulators, and magnetic peripheral neurostimulators, to introduce advances in computational bioelectromagnetics and physical neurointerfaces that enabled the progress of neurostimulating and neurorecording systems, with particular emphasis on coil-based systems for wireless power and data transfer, direct magnetic neurostimulation, multiscale computational models and methods, and liquid metal based stretchable systems.
Biography: Gianluca Lazzi, PhD, MBA, is a USTAR Professor and the Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Utah.
Gianluca is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the AIMBE. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the IEEE Wheeler Award, a R&D100 Award, a URSI Young Scientist Award, the BEMS "Curtis Carl Johnson Award," a NSF CAREER Award and a Whitaker Foundation Young Investigator Award. His research interests are in the fields of bioelectromagnetics, liquid metal electronics, antennas, wireless electromagnetics, and electric and magnetic neurostimulation. He has published over 200 papers in journals, conference proceedings, and books. Gianluca's research work has been featured in publications such as Forbes, the Economist, MSNBC, MIT Technology Review, and several others. Gianluca has been the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) from 2008 to 2013 of one of the leading journals in the field of antennas and propagation, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters (AWPL), which reached nearly 2,000 submissions in 2013 during his tenure - a growth of 400% in submissions. He serves or served IEEE in numerous other roles, including being the Chair of the IEEE Sensors Technical Achievement Award Committee (2011-2012), Chair of the IEEE Sensors Council Fellow Committee (2013-2015), Chair of Publications of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (2013-Present), a member of AdCom of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (2014-Present), and a member of the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the IEEE (2011-Present). He was one of the speakers at a recent Grand Challenges in Life Science Symposium, held at the National Academies, which resulted in the position paper "Grand Challenges in Interfacing Engineering With Life Sciences and Medicine" published in IEEE TBME. He was the General Co-Chair of the 2014 IEEE Microwave Symposium on RF and Wireless Technologies for Biomedical Applications (London, UK).
In 2015, Dr. Lazzi cofounded the company Bend LLC with a private equity firm. Bend LLC is focused on the commercialization of liquid metal technology for sensor integration in athletic apparel and consumer electronics.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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CS Colloquium: Kevin Jamieson (UC Berkeley) - Efficient scalable algorithms for adaptive data collection
Thu, Mar 30, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kevin Jamieson, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Efficient scalable algorithms for adaptive data collection
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.
In many applications, data-driven discovery is limited by the rate of data collection: the skilled labor it takes to operate a pipette, the time to execute a long-running physics simulation, the patience of an infant to remain still in an MRI, or the cost of labeling large corpuses of complex images. A powerful paradigm to extract the most information with such limited resources is active learning, or adaptive data collection, which leverages already-collected data to guide future measurements in a closed loop. But being convinced that data-collection should be adaptive is not the same thing as knowing how to adapt in a way that is both sample efficient and reliable. In this talk, I will present several examples of my provably reliable -- and practical -- adaptive data collection algorithms being applied in the real-world. In particular, I will show how my adaptive algorithms are used each week to crowd-source the winner of the New Yorker Magazine Cartoon Caption Contest. I will also discuss my application of adaptive learning concepts at Google to accelerate the tuning of deep networks in a highly parallelized environment of thousands of GPUs.
Biography: Kevin Jamieson is a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Benjamin Recht in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He is interested in the theory and practice of machine learning algorithms that sequentially collect data using an adaptive strategy. This includes active learning, multi-armed bandit problems, and stochastic optimization. Kevin received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin - Madison under the advisement of Robert Nowak. Prior to his doctoral work, Kevin received his B.S. from the University of Washington, and an M.S. from Columbia University, both in electrical engineering.
Host: CS Department
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Why Don't they Understand Me? Pronunciation in a U.S. Business Setting
Thu, Mar 30, 2017 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
While English is the lingua-franca in U.S. business settings, the variety of English accents can cause communication breakdowns. This workshop, presented by American Language Institute Master Lecturer Barry Griner, focuses on areas of pronunciation that you can adjust so that your accent is more easily understood by colleagues and employers.
Click here to RSVP.Location: Mark Taper Hall Of Humanities (THH) - 201
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Lilian Barajas
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CS Colloquium: Jyotirmoy V. Deshmukh (Toyota Technical Center) -Ninja Temporal Logic: Making formal methods relevant in engineering practice
Thu, Mar 30, 2017 @ 04:00 PM - 05:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jyotirmoy V. Deshmukh, Toyota Technical Center
Talk Title: Ninja Temporal Logic: Making formal methods relevant in engineering practice
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.
The software that controls the operation of critical systems such as vehicles, medical devices, buildings, and transportation infrastructures is getting smarter due to the increased demands for autonomy. The push for increased automation is a worthy goal, but can we do so without compromising the safety and reliability of such systems?
Furthermore, can formal methods truly improve a design engineer's productivity? In this talk, I will introduce some of the most important questions facing academic and industrial development of software for the cyber-physical systems of tomorrow. We will consider solutions based on the use of formal logics, that, on one hand allow rigorous reasoning about system designs, while on the other, do not place an undue burden on the engineer. In particular, I will explain how formal requirements using real-time temporal logics have had an impact in the development of cutting-edge alternate-energy vehicles and advanced control problems within Toyota. I will guide the audience through an ecosystem built around temporal logic that permits automatic testing, efficient monitoring, requirement engineering and controller synthesis for highly complex automotive systems. The talk covers topics from what I consider the trifecta for designing reliable cyber-physical systems: formal logic, machine learning, and control theory, and will lay out my vision for future research and open problems within this domain.
Biography: Jyotirmoy V. Deshmukh is a Principal Engineer at Toyota R&D. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of E. Allen Emerson on topics including tree automata, verifying data structure libraries, static analysis for concurrent programs and program repair. He worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania with Rajeev Alur's research group, investigating theoretical models of streaming computation and program synthesis techniques. For the last five years at Toyota, Jyo's research has focused on the design and analysis of industrial cyber-physical systems. Drawing on areas such as hybrid systems, real-time temporal logics, control theory, machine learning and dynamical systems theory, Jyo has been attempting to bridge the gap between academic research and its applicability to industrial-scale systems.
Host: CS Department
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program Colloquium
Fri, Mar 31, 2017 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
University Calendar
Join us for a presentation by Prof. Neil G. Siegel, IBM Professor of Engineering Management, Daniel J. Epstein Dept. of Industrial and Systems Engineering, titled "An Engineering Career in Private Industry."
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ramon Borunda/Academic Services
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Munushian Speaker - Mark Horowitz, Friday, March 31st at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Fri, Mar 31, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mark Horowitz, Yahoo! Founders Professor at Stanford University
Talk Title: Innovation in a Post-Moore's Law World
Abstract: For the past half century the world has enjoyed the benefits of many innovations enabled by Moore's Law scaling of silicon technology. While Intel claims that scaling is still healthy, most other organization see issues today, and many more issues ahead. Regardless of whether it has started to happen already, it will eventually stop, and that point is that that far away.
This talk will quickly review the basics behind silicon scaling, the current power problem, and current approaches to continue Moore's Law after scaling slows (think 3-D and new technologies). I will then describe why I am not optimistic about any of the new technologies rescuing Moore's Law (though there has been some interesting progress on the quantum side), and why I think that computing will be CMOS based for the foreseeable future. The net effect, which already exists today, is that the value of electronic technology has moved from being technology driven to be application driven. In an application driven world, successful products include many "cupholders", small low cost additions that improve the user experience, so enabling them is essential.
The rest of the talk is my view of how the design process and the industry must adapt if it wants to continue to create high-value products. In application driven value scenarios, the technologies that win are those that have low development costs, since most ideas fail. This has profound ramifications for both how we design chips, and how we design systems using chips. In both areas we need to enable people to try to create new innovative hardware solutions and to do that requires create enough design scaffolding to enable the equivalents of Apple's IStore/Google Play for hardware design.
Biography: Mark Horowitz is the Yahoo! Founders Professor at Stanford University and was chair of the Electrical Engineering Department from 2008 to 2012. He co-founded Rambus, Inc. in 1990 and is a fellow of the IEEE and the ACM and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Science. Dr. Horowitz's research interests are quite broad and span using EE and CS analysis methods to problems in molecular biology to creating new design methodologies for analog and digital VLSI circuits.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
More Info: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures
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Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Fri, Mar 31, 2017 @ 02:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Shankar Subramaniam, PhD, Professor, Departments of Bioengineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and Nano Engineering University of California, San Diego
Talk Title: TBA
Series: Seminars in BME (Lab Rotations)
Biography: Shankar Subramaniam is a Professor of Bioengineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Nano Engineering. He is currently the Chair of the Bioengineering Department at the University of California at San Diego. He holds the inaugural Joan and Irwin Jacobs Endowed Chair in Bioengineering and Systems Biology. He was the Founding Director of the Bioinformatics Graduate Program at the University of California at San Diego. He also has adjunct Professorships at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. He is also a Guest Professor at the Center for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience at the University of Oslo in Norway and Professor at the Center for Cardiovascular Bioinformatics and Modeling at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to moving to UC San Diego, Dr. Subramaniam was a Professor of Biophysics, Biochemistry, Molecular and Integrative Physiology, Chemical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He was the Director of the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Co-Director of the W.M. Keck Center for Comparative and Functional Genomics at UIUC. He is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and is a recipient of Smithsonian Foundation and Association of Laboratory Automation Awards and his research work is described below. In 2002 he received the Genome Technology All Star Award. In 2008 he was awarded the Faculty Excellence in Research Award at the University of California at San Diego. His research spans several areas of bioinformatics and systems biology.
Dr. Subramaniam has played a key role in raising national awareness for training and research in bioinformatics. He served as a member of the National Institute for Health (NIH) Director's Advisory Committee on Bioinformatics, which resulted in the Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative (BISTI) report. The report recognized the dire need for trained professionals in Bioinformatics and recommended the launching of a strong NIH funding initiative. Dr. Subramaniam served as the Chair of a NIH BISTI Study Section. Dr. Subramaniam has also served on Bioinformatics and Biotechnology Advisory Councils for Virginia Tech, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of several Biotech and Bioinformatics Companies. Dr. Subramaniam has served as a member of the State of Illinois Governor's initiative in Biotechnology and an advisor and reviewer of the State of North Carolina initiative in Biotechnology. He is currently an overseas advisor for the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India, and a member of a European Science Foundation Panel.
Host: Stacey Finley, PhD
Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - 146
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Mar 31, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Christopher Higgins, Colorado School of Mines
Talk Title: Passive technologies for treatment of urban stormwater: Biochar-amemnded bioinfiltration systems and biohydrochemically enhanced stream-water treatment
Abstract: Despite substantial water quality challenges associated with urban stormwater, stormwater managers typically prioritize storm flow reduction rather than pollutant removal. Common stormwater pollutants of concern can vary greatly by region, but often include nutrients, metals, pathogens, and trace organic chemicals. In this seminar, two novel technologies for removal of chemical contaminants from stormwater will be discussed. Bioinfiltration systems have shown potential to afford dual benefits of preventing contamination of urban receiving waters while augmenting urban water storage. The addition of a black carbon sorbent (biochar) to these systems may be especially effective for enhanced removal of traceorganic chemicals (TOrCs). Efforts to calibrate and verify a forward model for intraparticle diffusion-limited TOrC transport will be discussed, as well as the potential for transformation product generation in these systems. Further, a novel approach for treating stormwater while conveying it will be presented. This approach, termed Biohydrochemical Enhancement structures for Streamwater Treatment, BEST, relies on subsurface modifications to streambed hydraulic conductivity to drive efficient hyporheic exchange. When coupled with subsurface geomedia enhancements, BEST modules show significant promise for treating urban stormwater contaminants with minimal impacts to other stream functions. Together, these passive technologies suggest that the enhancement of natural processes in urban water infrastructure may have significant benefits to urban water quality.
Biography: Dr. Christopher P. Higgins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Higgins earned his PhD and MS from Stanford in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and his BA from Harvard in Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Before joining the faculty of CSM in 2009, he completed a postdoctoral appointment at Johns Hopkins. His research focuses on the movement of contaminants in the environment. In particular, he studies chemical fate and transport in natural and engineered systems as well as bioaccumulation in plants and animals. Contaminants under study in his laboratory include poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances used in stain-repellent fabrics and firefighting foams, nanoparticles, wastewater-derived pharmaceuticals and personal care products, trace organic chemicals in urban stormwater, and trace metals.
Host: Dr. Daniel McCurry
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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NL Seminar Towards the Machine Comprehension of Text
Fri, Mar 31, 2017 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Danqi Chen, Stanford Univ.
Talk Title: Towards the Machine Comprehension of Text
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: In this talk, I will first present how we advance this line of research. I will show how simple models can achieve nearly state of the art performance on recent benchmarks, including the CNN Daily Mail datasets and the Stanford Question Answering Dataset. I will focus on explaining the logical structure behind these neural architectures and discussing advantage as well as limits of current approaches. Lastly I will talk about our recent work on scaling up machine comprehension systems, which attempt to answer open domain questions at the full Wikipedia scale. We demonstrate the promise of our system, as well as set up new benchmarks by evaluating on multiple existing QA datasets.
Biography: Danqi Chen is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Stanford University, advised by Professor Christopher Manning. Her main research interests lie in deep learning for natural language processing and understanding, and she is particularly interested in the intersection between text understanding and knowledge reasoning. She has been working on machine comprehension, question answering, knowledge base population and dependency parsing. She is a recipient of Facebook fellowship and Microsoft Research Womens Fellowship and an outstanding paper award in ACL 16. Prior to Stanford, she received her BS from Tsinghua University.
Host: Marjan Ghazvininejad and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/