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Events for the 5th week of March
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CS Colloquium: David Fouhey (CMU) -Towards A Physical and Human-Centric Understanding of Images
Mon, Mar 28, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: David Fouhey, CMU
Talk Title: Towards A Physical and Human-Centric Understanding of Images
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
One primary goal of AI from its very beginning has been to develop systems that can understand an image in a meaningful way. While we have seen tremendous progress in recent years on naming-style tasks like image classification or object detection, a meaningful understanding requires going beyond this paradigm. Scenes are inherently 3D, so our understanding must also capture the underlying 3D and physical properties. Additionally, our understanding must be human-centric since any man-made scene has been built with humans in mind. Despite the importance of obtaining a 3D and human-centric understanding, we are only beginning to scratch the surface on both fronts: many fundamental questions, in terms of how to both frame and solve the problem, remain unanswered.
In this talk, I will discuss my efforts towards building a physical and human-centric understanding of images. I will present work addressing the questions: (1) what 3D properties should we model and predict from images, and do we actually need explicit 3D training data to do this? (2) how can we reconcile data-driven learning techniques with the physical constraints that exist in the world? and (3) how can understanding humans improve traditional 3D and object recognition tasks?
Biography: David Fouhey is a Ph.D. student at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, where he is advised by Abhinav Gupta and Martial Hebert. His research interests include computer vision and machine learning with a particular focus on scene understanding. David's work has been supported by both NSF and NDSEG fellowships. He has spent time at Microsoft Research and University of Oxford's Visual Geometry Group.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Seminars in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Mar 28, 2016 @ 12:30 PM - 01:49 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Huizhong Tao, PhD, Associate Professor of Cell & Neurobiology Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute
Talk Title: Dissecting Neural Circuits for Visual Processing and
Abstract: The long-term goal of my lab is to understand the neural circuits underlying cortical processing of sensory information and sensory evoked behaviors. We have combined a set of cutting-edge techniques, including in vivo whole-cell patch-clamp recording, two-photon imaging guided recording and optogenetics, to dissect local and long-range synaptic circuits for specific visual cortical processing functions. I will present our recent data on the circuits underlying the auditory modulation of orientation selectivity of visual cortical neurons, and those underlying the visual cortical modulation of an innate visual behavior.
Host: K. Kirk Shung, PhD
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EE 598 Cyber-Physical Systems Seminar Series
Mon, Mar 28, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Krishnendu Chakrabarty, Professor, Duke University
Talk Title: Digital Microfluidic Biochips: From Manipulating Droplets to A Cyberphysical System for Quantitative Gene-Expression Analysis
Abstract: Advances in microfluidics have led to the emergence of biochips for automating laboratory procedures in molecular biology. These devices enable the precise control of nanoliter volumes of biochemical samples and reagents. As a result, non-traditional biomedical applications and markets (e.g., high-throughout DNA sequencing, portable and point-of-care clinical diagnostics, protein crystallization for drug discovery), and fundamentally new uses are opening up for ICs and systems. This lecture will first introduce electrowetting-based digital microfludic biochips and provide an overview of market drivers such as immunoassays and DNA sequencing. The audience will next learn about design automation and reconfiguration aspects of microfluidic biochips. Synthesis tools will be described to map assay protocols from the lab bench to a droplet-based microfluidic platform and generate an optimized schedule of bioassay operations, the binding of assay operations to functional units, and the layout and droplet-flow paths for the biochip. The role of the digital microfluidic platform as a "programmable and reconfigurable processor" for biochemical applications will be highlighted. The speaker will describe dynamic adaptation of bioassays through cyberphysical system integration and sensor-driven on-chip error recovery.
Finally, the speaker will highlight recent advances in utilizing cyberphysical integration for quantitative gene-expression analysis. This framework is based on a real-time resource-allocation algorithm that responds promptly to decisions about the protocol flow received from a firmware layer. Results will be presented on how this adaptive framework efficiently utilizes on-chip resources to reduce time-to-result without sacrificing the chip's lifetime.
Biography: Krishnendu Chakrabarty received the B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1990, and the M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1992 and 1995, respectively. He is now the William H. Younger Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Computer Science at Duke University. He also serves as Director of Graduate Studies for Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prof. Chakrabarty is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Early Faculty (CAREER) award, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award, the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, the IEEE Transactions on CAD Donald O. Pederson Best Paper award (2015), and 11 best paper awards at major IEEE conferences. He is also a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award (2015) and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (2014). He is a Research Ambassador of the University of Bremen, Germany. He has been a Visiting Professor at University of Tokyo, Japan (2013), a Chair Professor at Tsinghua University, China (2009-2014), and a Visiting Chair Professor at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan (2012-2013).
Prof. Chakrabarty's current research projects include: testing and design-for-testability of integrated circuits; digital microfluidics, biochips, and cyberphysical systems; optimization of enterprise systems and smart manufacturing. He is a Fellow of ACM, a Fellow of IEEE, and a Golden Core Member of the IEEE Computer Society. He holds seven US patents, with several patents pending. He was a 2009 Invitational Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). He is a recipient of the 2008 Duke University Graduate School Dean's Award for excellence in mentoring, and the 2010 Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University. He served as a Distinguished Visitor of the IEEE Computer Society during 2005-2007 and 2010-2012, and as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society during 2006-2007 and 2012-2013. Currently he serves as an ACM Distinguished Speaker.
Prof. Chakrabarty served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Design & Test of Computers (2010-2012) and ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems (2010-2015). Currently he serves as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems. He is also an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on Multiscale Computing Systems, and ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CS Colloquium: Tuo Zhao (Johns Hopkins University) - Compute Faster and Learn Better: Machine Learning via Nonconvex Model-based Optimization
Mon, Mar 28, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Tuo Zhao , Johns Hopkins University
Talk Title: Compute Faster and Learn Better: Machine Learning via Nonconvex Model-based Optimization
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Nonconvex optimization naturally arises in many machine learning problems (e.g. sparse learning, matrix factorization, and tensor decomposition). Machine learning researchers exploit various nonconvex formulations to gain modeling flexibility, estimation robustness, adaptivity, and computational scalability. Although classical computational complexity theory has shown that solving nonconvex optimization is generally NP-hard in the worst case, practitioners have proposed numerous heuristic optimization algorithms, which achieve outstanding empirical performance in real-world applications.
To bridge this gap between practice and theory, we propose a new generation of model-based optimization algorithms and theory, which incorporate the statistical thinking into modern optimization. Particularly, when designing practical computational algorithms, we take the underlying statistical models into consideration (e.g. sparsity, low rankness). Our novel algorithms exploit hidden geometric structures behind many nonconvex optimization problems, and can obtain global optima with the desired statistics properties in polynomial time with high probability.
Biography: Tuo Zhao is a PhD student in Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University (http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~tour). His research focuses on high dimensional parametric and semiparametric learning, large-scale optimization, and applications to computational genomics and neuroimaging. He was the core member of the JHU team winning the INDI ADHD 200 global competition on fMRI imaging-based diagnosis classification in 2011. He received Siebel scholarship in 2014 and Baidu's research fellowship in 2015
Host: CS Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/741584974
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/741584974
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CS Colloquium: Bogdan Vasilescu (UC Davis) - Lessons in Social Coding: Software Analytics in the Age of GitHub
Mon, Mar 28, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bogdan Vasilescu, UC Davis
Talk Title: Lessons in Social Coding: Software Analytics in the Age of GitHub
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Social media has forever changed the ways in which we communicate and work, programming included. This "social coding" movement (code is meant to be shared!) made popular by GitHub has come to represent a paradigm shift in software development, especially in the open-source world. For example, the "pull request" model has made it easier than ever before for newcomers to submit contributions to a project. As a result, teams are becoming increasingly larger, more distributed, and more diverse. At the same time, the incentives for contributing have evolved. For example, one's social coding activity is starting to replace one's resume, and directly influence their hourly wage. Today, GitHub reports 12 million users and over 30 million repositories, with popular projects having communities the size of small cities. These numbers are unprecedented in open-source!
This new, social way of developing software opens a great many questions. How do people choose which projects to contribute to? Does prior technical experience matter, or do people learn on the job? Is it efficient to work on many projects in parallel? How does diversity in software teams affect productivity and code quality? What are the main factors that slow down pull request reviews? How does automation help developers do more with less? Does continuous integration help to ensure higher quality code? I will try to answer some of these questions in this talk.
Biography: Bogdan Vasilescu is currently a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Davis (USA), where he is a member of the Davis Eclectic Computational Analytics Lab (DECAL). He received his PhD and MSc in Computer Science at Eindhoven University of Technology, both with cum laude distinction. His PhD dissertation won the best dissertation award from the Dutch Institute for Programming Research and Algorithmics in 2015. Follow him on Twitter @b_vasilescu
Host: CS Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/958446198
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/958446198
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CS Colloquium: David Levin (Disney Research Boston) - Physically-Based Simulation for Animation and Fabrication
Tue, Mar 29, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: David Levin, Disney Research Boston
Talk Title: Physically-Based Simulation for Animation and Fabrication
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
Physics-based simulation has become a transformative tool for solving problems in computer animation and computational fabrication. In this talk I will discuss how leveraging unique abstractions, new discretizations and data-driven techniques can allow us to animate and fabricate a wide-range of phenomena with improved performance, robustness and accuracy. I'll show how layered discretizations can enable photoshop like editing of physically-based animations, how Eulerian methods can be used to robustly simulate deforming objects in close contact, how 3D printing and simulation can produce new musical instruments, and more. I'll conclude by discussing the important challenges facing physics-based animation and fabrication now and in the future.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
USC Stem Cell Seminar: Ali H. Brivanlou, The Rockefeller University
Tue, Mar 29, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ali H. Brivanlou, The Rockefeller University
Talk Title: Self-understanding of self-organization
Series: Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC Distinguished Speakers Series
Abstract: The earliest aspects of human embryogenesis remain a complete mystery. Using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), we have recently developed an in vitro platform that provides, for the first time, a window into early human development. We use this platform to study the physical and molecular mechanisms underlying human gastrulation. We integrate this information to develop a quantitative model of human fate determination.
Host: Neil Segil
More Info: https://calendar.usc.edu/event/speaker_ali_h_brivanlou_the_rockefeller_university?utm_campaign=widget&utm_medium=widget&utm_source=USC+Event+Calendar%3A+Beta#.Vtj6NynFl04
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Cristy Lytal/USC Stem Cell
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
RECRUITING SEMINAR
Tue, Mar 29, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mayank Kejriwal, University of Texas at Austin
Talk Title: Populating a Linked Data Entity Name System
Series: Recruitng Seminar
Abstract: Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a graph-based data model used to publish data as a Web of Linked Data. RDF is an emergent foundation for large-scale data integration. An Entity Name System (ENS) is a thesaurus for entities, and is a crucial component in a data integration architecture. Populating a Linked Data ENS is equivalent to solving an Artificial Intelligence problem called instance matching, which concerns identifying pairs of entities referring to the same underlying entity.
This talk describes a system that automatically populates an ENS in a domain-independent fashion. Automation is addressed through inexpensive but well-performing heuristics that are used to generate a training set, which is employed by other machine learning algorithms in the pipeline. Data-driven alignment algorithms are adapted to deal with structural heterogeneity in RDF graphs. The full system is scaled by implementing it on cloud infrastructure using MapReduce algorithms.
Biography: Mayank Kejriwal is finishing up his Ph.D in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Daniel P. Miranker. His research focuses on instance-level information integration in the Semantic Web, and has been published in the International Conference on Data Mining, the Journal of Web Semantics, the International Semantic Web Conference, and the Extended Semantic Web Conference, where he won a best paper award at the 4th annual Know@LOD workshop. Prior to joining UT Austin in 2012, he obtained a dual undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering and Engineering Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Host: Craig Knoblock
Webcast: Webcast:http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=cd1440ac1ea54794b12eab29e42d60ee1dLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th floor Large CR
WebCast Link: Webcast:http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=cd1440ac1ea54794b12eab29e42d60ee1d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alma Nava / Information Sciences Institute
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Cisco: Stream Processing in Practice
Tue, Mar 29, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Debojyoti Dutta, Cisco: Office of the CTO
Talk Title: Cisco: Stream Processing in Practice
Abstract: Networking is an example of a streaming paradigm in systems. We revisit the basics of networking and networked processing in particular and show how the same basic principles can be used to design real-world scalable streaming systems. We will touch upon streaming computations, frameworks, and event processing, via real world examples. We will cover what it takes to build streaming engines (e.g. a network switch or a data platform like http://ciscozeus.io). In addition we will also cover applied algorithms that work well for such streaming models.
Biography: Dr. Dutta is actively developing streaming analytics solutions for operational insight and actions including optimizing infrastructure for I/O(/data) intensive applications on Openstack, and other scalable platforms for cloud computing and software defined networks. His work has spanned social collaboration techniques, software defined networks, applied algorithms for data mining, IoT platforms, and Cloud Ops. Dr. Dutta is a USC alum and graduated with his PhD from USC in 2004.
Host: Alefiya Hussain
Location: Mark Taper Hall Of Humanities (THH) - 210
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alefiya Hussain
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EE-EP Seminar - Renjie Zhou, Tuesday, March 29th at 2:00pm in EEB 132
Tue, Mar 29, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Renjie Zhou, George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory at MIT
Talk Title: Quantitative Phase Microscopy: a label-free platform for material metrology and biological imaging
Abstract: Advances in imaging sensors and computer chips have enabled us to record holograms on cameras and reconstruct objects information with high fidelity and fast speed. The marriage of digital holography and optical microscopy gave birth to quantitative phase imaging (QPI). QPI precisely maps the amplitude and phase information associated with the electromagnetic field scattered by an object. Recent efforts have pushed QPI instruments to achieve sensitivity better than 10-3, corresponding to less than 1 nm surface height changes, or conversely 10-4 refractive index variations in transparent biological structures. Importantly, QPI is a label-free method, without using fluorescence markers, which has opened many noninvasive imaging applications.
This talk will focus on the instrumentation and image formation of novel QPI systems and highlight their applications in two important domains, namely material metrology and biological imaging. First, I will outline the QPI potential in material characterization and wafer defect inspection. In particular, I will show our wafer metrology instrument development and its capability for densely patterned semiconductor wafer defect inspection, detecting deep sub-wavelength patterning defects in 22nm and 9nm node silicon wafers. After that, I will move my focal point to the development of QPI-based biological imaging techniques. Especially, I will talk about solving the inverse scattering problem for determining the structure of cells in 3D, which led to the invention of white-light diffraction tomography (WDT). WDT is compatible with most exiting phase contrast microscopes, thus, it can potentially complement fluorescence imaging by providing additional biophysical markers. At the end, I will discuss some potential research areas along the QPI direction, including neuron activity imaging, stem cell identification, and cell mechanics characterization.
Biography: Renjie Zhou is a postdoctoral associate at George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory at MIT, where his research centers on developing ultra-sensitive interferometric microscopy systems and high throughput 3D imaging methods for biomedical applications. Dr. Zhou received PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2014. His dissertation focused on developing wafer defect inspection instruments and solving 3D inverse scattering problems for cell imaging. Dr. Zhou has co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and filed 4 US patent applications. He has received a number of research awards including the Arnold Beckman Fellowship from the Beckman Foundation, Scholarship in Optics & Photonics and Newport Spectra - Physics Research Excellence Travel Grant from SPIE; Jean Bennett Memorial Student Travel Grant finalist from OSA; P. D. Coleman Outstanding Research Award, Yuen T. Lo Outstanding Graduate Research Award, and Sundaram Seshu International Student Fellowship from UIUC. In addition, Dr. Zhou's research work was featured in Nature, NSF, OSA, and SPIE news.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Eberhardt Rechtin Keynote Lecture
Tue, Mar 29, 2016 @ 03:30 PM - 06:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Receptions & Special Events
The Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering presents the annual Eberhard Rechtin Keynote Lecture featuring Dr. Radhika Kulkarni from the SAS Institute.
More Information: 2016 Announcement-Kulkarni.pdf
Location: Charlotte S. & Davre R. Davidson Continuing Education Conference Center (DCC) - The Vineyard Room
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Michele ISE
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CS Colloquium: Nisarg Shah (CMU) - Optimal Social Decision Making
Tue, Mar 29, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Nisarg Shah, Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Optimal Social Decision Making
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
How can computers help ordinary people make collective decisions about real-life dilemmas, like which restaurant to go to with friends, or even how to divide an inheritance? I will present an optimization-driven approach that draws on ideas from AI, theoretical computer science, and economic theory, and illustrate it through my research in computational social choice and computational fair division. In both areas, I will make a special effort to demonstrate how fundamental theoretical questions underlie the design and implementation of deployed services that are already used by tens of thousands of people (spliddit.org), as well as upcoming services (robovote.org).
Biography: Nisarg Shah is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Ariel Procaccia. His broad research agenda in algorithmic economics includes topics such as computational social choice, fair division, game theory (both cooperative and noncooperative), and prediction markets. He focuses on designing theoretically grounded methods that have practical implications. Shah is the winner of the 2013-2014 Hima and Jive Graduate Fellowship and the 2014-2015 Facebook Fellowship.
Host: CS Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/246853239
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/246853239
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Continuous Mobile Vision Systems for Efficiency and Privacy
Wed, Mar 30, 2016 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Robert LiKamWa, Rice University
Talk Title: Continuous Mobile Vision Systems for Efficiency and Privacy
Abstract: The future of computing is in allowing our devices to see what we see. I envision wearable systems that continuously interpret vision data for real-time analytics. Today's system software and imaging hardware are ill-suited for this goal of "continuous mobile vision." Current systems, highly optimized for photography, fail to achieve sufficient energy efficiency or privacy preservation. This talk provides a rethinking of the vision system stack that includes application frameworks, operating system and sensor hardware to improve efficiency by two orders of magnitude. This cross layer rethinking contributes: (1) a split-process application framework that eliminates redundancy in data movement and processing across multiple concurrent applications, (2) operating system optimizations for energy proportional image capture, and (3) a mixed-signal image sensor architecture that processes data in the analog domain to eliminate the efficiency bottleneck of analog-digital conversion. The talk will briefly share future plans to further continuous mobile vision by exploiting the hardware/software boundary for improved energy efficiency and effective privacy preservation, opening the door to integrate our devices with our real world-environments and ultimately, our own lives.
Biography: Robert LiKamWa is a final-year PhD Student at Rice University. As a Mobile Systems researcher, he operates at the intersection of Operating Systems and Computer Architecture. His dissertation research focuses on system support for continuous mobile vision. He has interned and collaborated with Microsoft Research and Samsung Mobile Processor Innovation Lab on various projects related to vision systems. LiKamWa is supported by a Texas Instruments Graduate Fellowship, and received best paper awards from ACM MobiSys 2013 and PhoneSense 2011.
Host: Konstantinos Psounis
Location: 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Suzanne Wong
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
AI SEMINAR
Wed, Mar 30, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Oren Etzioni, Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute for AI
Talk Title: Myths and Facts about the Future of AI
Series: AI Seminar
Abstract: AI recent success has led to excess. We see headlines like : Artificial Intelligence is Coming, and it Could Wipe Us Out if We are Not Careful, Professor Warns. While some successes are real (for example, AlphaGos amazing Go playing), many challenges remain. My talk will put AlphaGo (and related learning systems) in context, and attempt to debunk some of the popular myths about AI. I will conclude by talking about AI2s mission of AI for the Common Good-”as illustrated by our AI-based scientific search engine: Semantic Scholar (www.semanticscholar.org).
Biography: Dr. Oren Etzioni is Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He has been a Professor at the University of Washington's Computer Science department since 1991, receiving several awards including Seattle's Geek of the Year (2013), the Robert Engelmore Memorial Award (2007), the IJCAI Distinguished Paper Award (2005), AAAI Fellow (2003), and a National Young Investigator Award (1993). He was also the founder or co-founder of several companies including Farecast (sold to Microsoft in 2008) and Decide (sold to eBay in 2013), and the author of over 100 technical papers that have garnered over 25,000 citations. The goal of Oren's research is to solve fundamental problems in AI, particularly the automatic learning of knowledge from text. Oren received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991, and his B.A. from Harvard in 1986.
Host: Craig Knoblock
Webcast: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=2d841545cb9d4a61bfc960a713d84e821dLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 1135 - 11th fl Large CR
WebCast Link: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=2d841545cb9d4a61bfc960a713d84e821d
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alma Nava / Information Sciences Institute
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Mar 30, 2016 @ 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: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Wed, Mar 30, 2016 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ran Gabai, Dynamics and Mechatronics Laboratory, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion IIT, Haifa, Israel
Talk Title: Acoustic Levitation and Propulsion Based on Traveling Waves Control
Series: Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series
Abstract: Acoustic levitation is generated by inducing ultrasonic vibrations to a surface above which a levitated object is held by elevated pressure. A thin film of gas separating the vibrating surface and the levitated body exhibits both rapid fluctuations and a rise in the average pressure. An application being researched currently involves the handling of silicon wafers in clean rooms with no mechanical contact thus eliminating a significant contamination sources. The elevated pressure is capable of levitating objects weighting several kg by a vibrating surface 100mm in diameter. By creating a traveling pressure wave, it is possible to add propelling forces to the levitating component thus creating a contactless transportation system. By sensing the position of the levitated object one can control, in a closed loop feedback scheme, the levitation height and the planar position and orientation.
The dynamics of the mechanical structure has to be carefully tailored to enhance the electromechanical efficiency leading to sufficient amplitudes of the ultrasonic vibrations to provide appropriate levels of acoustic levitation and traveling waves. Ultrasonic structural traveling waves are generated by exciting two modes of vibrations that are tuned, in real time, to generate the required traveling wave direction and amplitude. Small structural uncertainties spoil the symmetry of the structure and detune the conditions for traveling waves. Therefore, an optimization process is introduced to experimentally map the exact traveling wave excitation conditions.
This work presents the analytical background, numerical simulations, and several experimental set-ups validating the applicability of acoustic levitation and propulsion.
Biography: Ran Gabai is a post-doctoral researcher at the Dynamics and Mechatronics Laboratory at the Technion working with Prof. Izhak Bucher. He earned his PhD (2008) at the Faculty of Mechanical engineering at the Technion as well as his M.S. (2003) and B.S. (2000). His research focuses on dynamic and vibrations, mechatronics, signal processing, control, and embedding digital brains in dynamical systems. Dr. Gabai is the co-founder and CTO of a start-up company developing a Coriolis-based mass flow meter.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ASBME GM 9: Technical Skills Info Session
Wed, Mar 30, 2016 @ 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity
The jack of all trades, the master of... All! Join ASBME at GM 9: Technical Skills Info Session to find out what technical skills employers seek in a biomedical engineer. How much is learned on the job and what should you come to the interview already knowing how to do? Sara Voisin, an R&D Product Engineer at Medtronic, will be discussing the ideal/necessary skills with which we biomedical engineers should become equipped. Additionally, she will be covering topics including: the technical skills needed as BMEs; how we can learn said skills; the practical uses of these various software; how they impact the BME field; and demonstrations of solidworks, minitab, and/or matlab. If time permits, there will be a Q&A session at the end, so come prepared with questions. As always, food will be provided!
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 156
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
USC WiC: Tech talk - Gavin Doughtie
Wed, Mar 30, 2016 @ 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity
USC Women in Computing will be hosting Gavin Doughtie. Gavin is currently an employee at Google, working out of the Los Angeles office. He has worked at companies such as DreamWorks Animation, Idealab and ArsDigita as well as other companies! Gavin is also a USC alum, who graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Come excited and with questions, Gavin will be giving us a great talk!
More InfoLocation: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Sanskriti
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Seminar-Algorithms for detecting atypical language use in autism spectrum disorders
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 11:20 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jan van Santen, Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Institute on Development and Disability, Oregon Health & Science University
Talk Title: Algorithms for detecting atypical language use in autism spectrum disorders
Abstract: The DSM-5 lists repetitiveness and impaired reciprocal social interaction as core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but does not list language impairment. Yet, language use is often atypical in ASD, being a natural modality for core symptoms to manifest. Standard language measures are not optimal for capturing these characteristics because they are too structured: Analysis of natural language samples is needed. However, such analysis is time consuming and inexact when conducted manually. Computational methods are needed.
We developed and applied algorithms to transcripts of Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) sessions with children ages 4-8 with high-functioning ASD, Specific Language Impairment (SLI), or Typical Development (TD). The ASD group was divided into children with SLI (ALI) and without (ALN). Results showed ASD-specific atypicalities in verbatim and topical repetitiveness, discourse marker use, type of disfluencies, and other features of language use. These results attest to the feasibility of computing ASD-specific characteristics from natural language samples, tapping into multiple aspects of core ASD symptoms. Their usefulness is demonstrated by the intricate pattern of differences and similarities between the ASD and SLI groups and the ALI and ALN groups.
Biography: Jan van Santen obtained his PhD in Mathematical Psychology at the University of Michigan in 1979. He worked initially on visual perception and image processing at New York University and Bell Labs, and then switched to speech technology in 1985. He developed the prosody generation components of the Bell Labs text-to-speech system. In 2000 he became the Director of the Center for Spoken Language Understanding, now part of the Oregon Health & Science University. Here, he became one of the pioneers of a growing new field: the application of Natural Language Processing algorithms to neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders for diagnostics, remediation, and assistive communication, with special emphasis on autism spectrum disorders. In his spare time, he runs a startup, BioSpeech, that works on algorithms for processing biological sounds, including not only speech but also snoring and rodent calls.
He has written over 100 peer-reviewed papers, was an editor of Speech Communication and of the Journal of Mathematical Psychology, was the editor of a book, Progress in Speech Synthesis, and has seven patents.
Host: Shrikanth Narayanan & Daniel Bone
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-Systems
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Cyber-Physical System Design Using Contracts
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Pierluigi Nuzzo, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Cyber-Physical System Design Using Contracts
Abstract: The realization of complex cyber-physical systems is creating design and verification challenges that will soon become insurmountable with today's engineering practices. While model-based design tools are already facilitating several design tasks, harnessing the complexity of the Internet-of-Things scenario is only deemed possible within a unifying methodology. This methodology should help interconnect different tools, possibly operating on different system representations, to enable scalable design space exploration and early detection of requirement inconsistencies.
In this talk, I show how a contract-based approach provides a formal foundation for a compositional and hierarchical methodology for cyber-physical system design, which can address the above challenges, and encompass both horizontal and vertical integration steps. I use assume guarantee contracts and their algebra (e.g. composition, conjunction, and refinement) to support the entire design process and enable concurrent development of system architectures and control algorithms. In the methodology, the design is carried out as a sequence of refinement steps from a high-level specification to an implementation built out of a library of components at the lower level. Top-level system requirements are represented as contracts, by leveraging a set of formal languages, including mixed integer-linear constraints and temporal logic. Contracts are then refined by combining synthesis and optimization-based methods. I propose a set of optimization-based algorithms for efficient selection of cost-effective architectures under safety, reliability, and performance constraints over a large, mixed discrete-continuous design space. I demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach on industrial design examples, including aircraft electric power distribution and environmental control systems, showing, for instance, that optimal selection of industrial-scale power system architectures can be performed in a few minutes. Finally, I conclude by presenting future research directions towards a full-fledged integrated framework for system design.
Biography: Pierluigi Nuzzo is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences of the University of California, Berkeley. He received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley in 2015. He also holds the Laurea (M.Sc.) degree in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) from the University of Pisa and the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy. Before joining U.C. Berkeley, he was a Researcher at IMEC, Leuven, Belgium, and the University of Pisa, working on the design of energy-efficient A/D converters, frequency synthesizers for reconfigurable radio, and design methodologies for mixed-signal integrated circuits. His research interests include: methodologies and tools for cyber-physical system and mixed-signal system design; contracts, interfaces, and compositional methods for embedded system design; energy-efficient analog and mixed-signal circuit design. Pierluigi received First Place in the operational category and Best Overall Submission in the 2006 DAC/ISSCC Design Competition, a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Union in 2006, the University of California at Berkeley EECS departmental fellowship in 2008, the U.C. Berkeley Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award in 2013, and the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship in 2012 and 2014.
Host: Dr. Massoud Pedram
Location: 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Suzanne Wong
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CS Colloquium: Baris Kasikci (EPFL) - Stamping Out Concurrency Bugs
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Baris Kasikci, EPFL
Talk Title: Stamping Out Concurrency Bugs
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
The shift to multi-core architectures in the past ten years pushed developers to write concurrent software to leverage hardware parallelism. The transition to multi-core hardware happened at a more rapid pace than the evolution of associated programming techniques and tools, which made it difficult to write concurrent programs that are both efficient and correct. Failures due to concurrency bugs are often hard to reproduce and fix, and can cause significant losses.
In this talk, I will first give an overview of the techniques we developed for the detection, root cause diagnosis, and classification of concurrency bugs. Then, I will discuss how the techniques we developed have been adopted at Microsoft and Intel. I will then discuss in detail Gist, a technique for the root cause diagnosis of failures. Gist uses hybrid static-dynamic program analysis and gathers information from real user executions to isolate root causes of failures. Gist is highly accurate and efficient, even for failures that rarely occur in production. Finally, I will close by describing future work I plan to do toward solving the challenges posed to software systems by emerging technology trends.
Biography: Baris Kasikci completed his Ph.D. in the Dependable Systems Laboratory (DSLAB) at EPFL, advised by George Candea. His research is centered around developing techniques, tools, and environments that help developers build more reliable and secure software. He is interested in finding solutions that allow programmers to better reason about their code, and that efficiently detect bugs, classify them, and diagnose their root cause. He especially focuses on bugs that manifest in production, because they are hard and time-consuming. He is also interested in efficient runtime instrumentation, hardware and runtime support for enhancing system security, and program analysis under various memory models.
Baris is one of the four recipients of the VMware 2014-2015 Graduate Fellowship. During his Ph.D., he interned at Microsoft Research, VMware, and Intel. Before starting his Ph.D., he worked as a software engineer for four years, mainly developing real-time embedded systems software. Before joining EPFL, he was working for Siemens Corporate Technology. More details can be found at http://www.bariskasikci.org/.
Host: CS Department
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering Annual Pie and Burger Day
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 11:30 AM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Receptions & Special Events
Electrical Engineering Students, Staff, and Faculty join us for our annual Pie and Burger Day! Must have the EE Sticker on your ID to attend. Inquire at EEB 102.
More Information: 20161 Student Event (Pie 'n Burger) flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - Courtyard
Audiences: EE Students, Faculty, & Staff
Contact: Gloria Halfacre
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
MFD - Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Distinguished Lecture: Nathan Price
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Nathan Price, Univ. of California, San Diego
Talk Title: Harnessing big data for biological and medical discovery
Series: MFD Distinguished Lecture
Host: Prof. Nicholas Graham
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jason Ordonez
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CS Colloquium: Konrad Kording (Northwestern University) - Neural Cryptography
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Konrad Kording, Northwestern University
Talk Title: Neural Cryptography
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Neuroscience is slowly transitioning into a data rich discipline and large data sets allow new approaches. Brain decoders use neural recordings to infer what someone is thinking, viewing, or their intended movement. The problem has always been phrased as a supervised learning problem. Here we introduce a new method for brain decoding that does not require supervised data, i.e. the knowledge of the intended movement while the neural activity is recorded. Our approach is inspired by code breaking techniques used in cryptography where it is asked which mapping from from encrypted to decrypted text leads to text that most resembles the known structure of language. Analogously, we find a transformation of neural data (decoder) that aligns the distribution of the decoder output with the distribution of the user's intended movement. On a standard primate center-out reaching task, we demonstrate that we can obtain similar performance with that of a decoder with access to supervised data. However, current datasets are still too small to ask many relevant questions about neural computation and I am collaborating with neuroengineers to change that.
Host: CS Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/942986114
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/942986114
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CS Colloquium: Cynthia Sung (MIT CSAIL) - Computational Tools for Robot Design: A Composition Approach
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Cynthia Sung, MIT CSAIL
Talk Title: Computational Tools for Robot Design: A Composition Approach
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium
As robots become more prevalent in society, they must develop an ability to deal with more diverse situations. This ability entails customizability of not only software intelligence, but also of hardware. However, designing a functional robot remains challenging and often involves many iterations of design and testing even for skilled designers. My goal is to create computational tools for making functional machines, allowing future designers to quickly improvise new hardware.
In this talk, I will discuss one possible approach to automated design using composition. I will describe our origami-inspired print-and-fold process that allows entire robots to be fabricated within a few hours, and I will demonstrate how foldable modules can be composed together to create foldable mechanisms and robots. The modules are represented parametrically, enabling a small set of modules to describe a wide range of geometries and also allowing geometries to be optimized in a straightforward manner. I will also introduce a tool that we have developed that combines this composition approach with simulations to help human designers of all skill levels to design and fabricate custom functional robots.
Biography: Cynthia Sung is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University in 2011 and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2013. Her research interests include computational design, folding theory, and rapid fabrication, and her current work focuses on algorithms for synthesis and analysis of engineering designs.
Host: CS Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/727861390
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/727861390
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ISE Graduate School Information Session
Thu, Mar 31, 2016 @ 05:30 PM - 06:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Workshops & Infosessions
Considering majoring in Industrial and Systems Engineering for graduate school? Want to learn more about more about what it would entail? The USC student chapter of the Institute of Industrial Engineers will be hosting a panel of professors and students from the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, who will tell you why one should consider ISE for graduate school, details about specific ISE programs, graduation outcomes, and more! The event currently will be held Thursday March 31, 5:30-6:30PM in LVL 17. Please RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/hvzafku if you're interested in coming!
Location: Thomas & Dorothy Leavey Library (LVL) - 17
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: USC Institute of Industrial Engineers
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
USC WiC: Visa Data Science Hackathon
Fri, Apr 01, 2016
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity
***It is a 2 day Event - Apr 1 at 3 PM to Apr 2 at 3 PM***
USC Women in Computing is hosting a hackathon sponsored by Visa! Visa will be providing food, swag, prizes, and mentors during the hackathon. The event will last 24 hours starting Friday, April 1st at 3pm in VKC 100 and finishing Saturday, April 2nd at 3pm in VKC 261. Your hack can be anything data science related: data collection, processing, analysis, visualization, etc. Your teams can be 1-3 people. Winners will receive Beats headphones and an interview with Visa! We look forward to seeing you there :).
This event is open to all students.
More InfoLocation: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 100 & 261
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Sanskriti
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
AI SEMINAR
Fri, Apr 01, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mahdi Soltanolkotabi, Assistant Professor at USC
Talk Title: Finding low-complexity models without the shackles of convexity
Series: AI Seminar
Abstract: In many applications, one wishes to estimate a large number of parameters from highly incomplete data samples. Low-dimensional models such as sparsity, low-rank, etc provide a principled approach for addressing the challenges posed by such high-dimensional data. The last decade has witnessed a flurry of activity in understanding when and how it is possible to find low complexity models via convex relaxations. However, the computational cost of such convex schemes can be prohibitive. In fact, in this talk I will argue that over insistence on convex methods has stymied progress in many application domains. I will discuss my ongoing research efforts to unshackle such problems from the confines of convexity opening the door for new applications.
I will discuss three concrete problems characterized by incomplete information about a low-complexity object of interest. The first is the century-old phase retrieval problem where one wishes to recover a signal from magnitude only measurements--phase information is completely missing. The second is a problem in data analysis, where we observe only a few incomplete linear measurements from a data matrix (e.g. a few entries) and wish to reliably infer all of the entries of the matrix. The third problem involves the recovery of a structured image from highly compressed information--most measurements are missing. To retrieve seemingly lost information I will present novel non-convex algorithms for these problems. Surprisingly, despite the lack of convexity these algorithms can provably converge to the global optimum and hence impute the missing information precisely.
Biography: Mahdi Soltanolkotabi completed his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University in 2014. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Algorithms, Machines, and People AMP lab and the EECS and Statistics departments at UC Berkeley during the 2014-2015 academic year. His research focuses on design and mathematical understanding of computationally efficient algorithms for optimization, high dimensional statistics, machine learning, signal processing and computational imaging. Recently, a main focus of his research has been on developing and analyzing algorithms for non-convex optimization with provable guarantees of convergence to the global optimum.
WILL NOT BE WEBCASTED
Host: Emilio Ferrara
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 1135 - 11th fl Large CR
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alma Nava / Information Sciences Institute
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program Colloquium
Fri, Apr 01, 2016 @ 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 Helen Park, from WET Design, titled "When Engineering Meets Design."
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 123
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ramon Borunda/Academic Services
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
NL Seminar-Harnessing reviews to build richer models of opinions
Fri, Apr 01, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Julian McAuley , UCSD
Talk Title: Harnessing reviews to build richer models of opinions
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: Online reviews are often our first port of call when considering products and purchases online. Yet navigating huge volumes of reviews (many of which we might disagree with) is laborious, especially when we are interested in some niche aspect of a product. This suggests a need to build models that are capable of capturing the complex and idiosyncratic semantics of reviews, in order to build richer and more personalized recommender systems. In this talk I'll discuss three such directions: First, how can reviews be harnessed to better understand the dimensions (or facets) of people's opinions? Second, how can reviews be used to answer targeted questions, that may be subjective or require personalized responses? And third, how can reviews themselves be synthesized, so as to predict what a reviewer would say, even for products they haven't seen yet?
Biography: Dr. McAuley has been an Assistant Professer in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, San Diego since 2014. Previously he was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University after receiving his PhD from the Australian National University in 2011. His research is concerned with developing predictive models of human behavior using large volumes of online activity data.
Host: Xing Shi 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/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
