USC - Viterbi School of Engineering

Apr
27

PhD Defense - Anandi Hira
Mon, Apr 27, 2020 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar

Ph.D. Defense - Anandi Hira
Mon, April 27, 2020
10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Location: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92966727414

Title:
Calibrating COCOMO(R) II for Functional Size Metrics

PhD Candidate: Anandi Hira
Date, Time, and Location: Monday, April 27, 2020 at 10am on https://usc.zoom.us/j/92966727414

Committee: Dr. Barry Boehm, Dr. Shang-hua Teng, Dr. Bherokh Khoshnevis

To date, a generalizable effort estimation model with functional size metrics does not exist. This dissertation provides a generalizable effort estimation model by calibrating the COCOMO II model (a generalizable model that uses lines of code as size input) to use either IFPUG (FPs) or COSMIC Function Points (CFPs) directly as size parameters. The calibrated COCOMO II model estimated within 25% of the actuals 68% of the time for FPs and 70% of the time for CFPs. In comparison, the best of the alternative solutions provided estimates within 25% of the actuals 36% of the time for FPs and 38% of the time for CFPs.

FPs and CFPs have been found to work well in different scenarios: FPs are well-suited for Management Information Systems (MIS) or data-driven applications, while CFPs are also well-suited for embedded, real-time, and web applications. No empirical studies have attempted to characterize software attributes and how FSMs behave differently with respect to them. Five types of software attributes were identified in the datasets used for this dissertation based on the number and complexity of operations and algorithms. The results show that the correlation between FPs/CFPs and effort depends on the amount of complexity operations required with respect to the functional processes.
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92966727414
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Lizsl De Leon
Apr
28

Undergraduate Admission Virtual Information Session
Tue, Apr 28, 2020 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions

Our virtual information session is a live presentation from a USC Viterbi admission counselor designed for prospective first-year students and their family members to learn more about the USC Viterbi undergraduate experience.Our session will cover an overview of our undergraduate engineering programs, the application process, and more on student life.Guests will be able to ask questions and engage in further discussion toward the end of the session.

Register Here!
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Viterbi Admission
Apr
28

USC Viterbi Admitted Student Keynote
Tue, Apr 28, 2020 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions

Learn everything you can to find out if USC and the Viterbi School is right for you by dropping by one of our virtual admitted student keynote sessions. If you only have time for one event, make it this one. We will discuss our curriculum, your four year plan, and our co-curricular programs that will fulfill your experience. Each session will include a USC Viterbi representative as well as a current student panel to answer your questions.

Register Here!
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Viterbi Admission
Apr
28

**CANCELED** ISE 651 - Epstein Seminar
Tue, Apr 28, 2020 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker: Dr. Julie Ivy , Professor, NC State University

Talk Title: TBD

Host: Dr. Sze-chuan Suen

Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Grace Owh
Apr
29

Viterbi Live
Wed, Apr 29, 2020 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Alumni
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker: Dr. Ivan Bermejo-Moreno, Professor

Talk Title: Addressing the Ventilator Shortage and Solutions Discussion

Abstract: Dr. Ivan Bermejo-Moreno, an assistant professor in the USC Viterbi Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, will lead a discussion on the current ventilator shortage due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Join us as he shares his findings on ventilator design from the standpoint of fluid mechanics in this 60-minute webinar. He will define the minimal requirements necessary for ventilator functionality, describe several ongoing open-source emergency ventilator efforts worldwide, and cover supply chain, cost, and how to best scale production. This webinar will feature an introduction from Dr. SK Gupta and a live Q&A session.

This session will be hosted on Zoom. Links and passwords will be sent to all registered participants the morning of April 29.

For any questions, please email us at engalums@usc.edu.

Biography: Dr. Bermejo-Moreno received his Ph.D. in aeronautics (2008) from the California Institute of Technology. Afterwards, he held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University/NASA Ames Research Center (2009-2014). He joined the USC Viterbi Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as an assistant professor in 2015.

His research combines numerical methods, physical modeling and high performance computing for the simulation and analysis of turbulent fluidflows involving multi-physics phenomena.

Host: Viterbi Advancement

More Info: https://viterbi-live-bermejo-moreno.eventbrite.com

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Kristy Ly

Event Link: https://viterbi-live-bermejo-moreno.eventbrite.com
Apr
29

Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Apr 29, 2020 @ 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
Apr
29

Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar
Wed, Apr 29, 2020 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker: Sicun Gao, University of California San Diego

Talk Title: Automated Reasoning for Reliable Autonomy

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

Abstract: We face grand challenges as computer systems start engaging us physically with high levels of autonomy. Their tight integration of computational and mechanical components generates behaviors that have not been well-studied in computer science or control engineering. The AI components in these systems complicate software execution flows with nonlinear functions, probabilistic reasoning, and error-prone numerical computation. I will describe a framework for automating the design and implementation of reliable autonomous systems, and the need for powerful algorithmic approaches that combine the full power of combinatorial search, numerical optimization, and statistical learning. I will discuss challenges and opportunities in these directions and how they affect the practicality of autonomy.

Biography: Sicun Gao is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego. He works on automated reasoning and design automation for autonomous and cyber-physical systems. He received BS from Peking University, PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, and was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. His awards include the Air Force Young Investigator Award, Silver Medal for the Kurt Godel Research Fellowship Prize, and Honorable Mention for the CMU School of Computer Science Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation.

Host: Paul Bogdan, pbogdan@usc.edu

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Talyia White
Apr
30

PhD Defense -
Thu, Apr 30, 2020 @ 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar

Title: Detecting SQL Antipatterns in Mobile Applications

PhD Candidate: Yingjun Lyu

Committee:

William GJ Halfond (Chair)
Neno Medvidovic
Chao Wang
Jyo Deshmukh
Sandeep Gupta

Local databases underpin important features in many mobile applications. However, bad programming practices of using database operations, also called SQL antipatterns, can introduce high resource consumption, affect the responsiveness, and undermine the security of a mobile application.
In my dissertation, I designed and evaluated a framework, called SAND, to detect SQL antipatterns effectively and efficiently in mobile apps. The framework abstracts away the interactions between the application and the database. It provides a language that allows the framework users to query abstractions of application-database relationships and specify SQL antipattern detection tasks. To determine what kinds of application-database relationships should be abstracted, I first conducted a systematic literature review to collect a comprehensive list of SQL antipatterns and their detection approaches. I then analyzed the collected detection approaches and derived the abstractions from them. In order to extract the abstractions from the database access code, I developed a range of static analysis techniques that can analyze the database access code effectively and efficiently. Using experiments on the framework implementation for Android, I showed that SAND can be used to compactly (in 12-74 lines of code) specify SQL antipattern detection tasks previously reported in the literature. These detectors built on top of SAND precisely identified thousands of instances of SQL antipatterns with a precision of at least 99.4%. These detectors were also fast as applying eleven detectors only took an average of forty-one seconds per app. Overall, these results are positive and indicate that my framework can detect all kinds of SQL antipatterns effectively and efficiently in mobile apps.

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94586333967
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Lizsl De Leon
Apr
30

Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar
Thu, Apr 30, 2020 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker: Dr. Rui Huang, University of Texas, Austin

Talk Title: TBA

Host: Dr. Qiming Wang

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Apr
30

Undergraduate Admission Virtual Information Session
Thu, Apr 30, 2020 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions

Our virtual information session is a live presentation from a USC Viterbi admission counselor designed for prospective first-year students and their family members to learn more about the USC Viterbi undergraduate experience.Our session will cover an overview of our undergraduate engineering programs, the application process, and more on student life.Guests will be able to ask questions and engage in further discussion toward the end of the session.

Please register here!
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Viterbi Admission
Apr
30

CAIS++ Spring 2020 Projects Showcase
Thu, Apr 30, 2020 @ 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Student Activity

We are CAIS++, the undergraduate branch of USC's Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (CAIS). Our mission is to advance AI for social good, and our group of 50+ students works with professors, startups, and community organizations to develop cutting-edge AI solutions for societal problems.

We're inviting you to our Spring 2020 Projects Showcase on April 30 from 7-8:00 pm on Zoom (link below). Our student teams will be presenting the AI projects that they have worked on this semester. Some of the projects that will be presented at showcase include developing machine learning approaches for
*Diagnosing Kawasaki disease
*Generalized gene sequencing classification
*Detecting deepfakes and manipulated media
*Improving building security systems

We will be recruiting a new cohort of undergraduates in Fall 2020, so coming to our showcase is a great way to learn about CAIS++ and see the type of work we do!

If you're able to attend, please RSVP to our Facebook event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/356918301922839/

and join us on this Zoom link:
(zoom link was emailed directly to CS community on April 20th)

Best,
The CAIS++ Team
http://caisplusplus.usc.edu/index.html

Location: Zoom
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Ryan Rozan
May
01

A Trojan Webinar
Fri, May 01, 2020 @ 02:30 AM - 03:30 AM
Viterbi School of Engineering Alumni
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker: Gautam Trivdes, Priyanka Mittal, and Sandeep Tandon, Guest Speakers

Talk Title: Challenges and Opportunities in a Post-Covid World

Abstract: For more information on this webinar, please email USCIndia@usc.edu.

Host: USC Viterbi India and USC Alumni Club of Delhi | North India

More Information: Trojan Webinar.jpg
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Kristy Ly
May
01

WEBINAR SERIES: Digital Technologies for COVID-19
Fri, May 01, 2020 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar

Our third webinar will feature a double-header of talks by researchers from USC Viterbi's Information Sciences Institute. The first talk will cover work by Pedro Szekely on a knowledge graph for COVID-19 papers, and the second talk will cover work by Jay Pujara on rapidly responding to COVID-19 using knowledge graphs.

Please find abstracts for these talks as well as the speaker bios below:

Talk 1: A Knowledge Graph Integrating Annotations On 44,000 COVID-19 Scientific Articles

Pedro Szekely

Abstract: The COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19), compiled by the Allen Institute for AI is a free resource of over 44,000 scholarly articles, including over 29,000 with full text, about COVID-19 and the coronavirus family of viruses. At the ISI Center On Knowledge Graphs we are working to enrich this corpus with annotations obtained using multiple state of the art information extraction tools, bioinformatics databases, and multiple graph and network analytics. These tools are difficult to run and produce outputs in different formats, making it difficult for COVID-19 researchers to use them. We are building a knowledge graph that integrates the outputs of these tools and databases in a simple data model that we provide in multiple formats (TAB-separated, RDF/SPARQL and Neo4J) to facilitate use of the corpus annotations. Our current release enriches the CORD-19 corpus with gene, chemical, disease and taxonomic information from Wikidata and CTD databases, as well as entity extractions from Professor's Heng Ji BLENDER lab at UIUC. In the next releases we will also integrate extractions from the Reach project at University of Arizona and others.

Bio: Dr. Pedro Szekely (Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon 1987) is a Principal Scientist and Research Director of the Center on Knowledge Graphs at the USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI), and a Research Associate Professor at the USC Computer Science Department. Dr. Szekely's research focuses on algorithms and tools for rapid construction of domain-specific knowledge graphs. The tools developed in his group have been used in several DARPA and IARPA projects to construct knowledge graphs in cyber security, causal exploration, hypothesis generation and forecasting of geo-political events, and has been used by law enforcement agencies to identify victims of human trafficking and to build legal cases against the traffickers. Dr. Szekely teaches a graduate course at USC on Building Knowledge Graphs, and has given tutorials on knowledge graph construction at KDD, ISWC, AAAI and WWW.

Talk 2: Rapidly Responding to COVID-19 Using Knowledge Graphs

Jay Pujara

Abstract: Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has created a need to navigate vast amounts of information and quickly make decisions. I will describe how knowledge graphs, structured repositories capturing interconnected information, can help quickly adapt to new circumstances. To illustrate the value of these techniques, I will describe two active projects in our research group. The first allows experts to sift through thousands of research papers and identify scientific results that are likely to be reproducible. The second helps manufacturers adapt their supply chains to develop health and safety projects. Both projects are the result of analyzing terabytes of data and developing a succinct representation that can help answer questions with rich information.

Bio: Jay Pujara is a research assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California and a research lead at the Information Sciences Institute whose principal areas of research are machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science. He completed a postdoc at UC Santa Cruz, earned his PhD at the University of Maryland, College Park and received his MS and BS at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to his PhD, Jay spent six years at Yahoo! working on mail spam detection and user trust, and he has also worked at Google, LinkedIn and Oracle. Jay is the author of over thirty peer-reviewed publications and has received four best paper awards for his work. He is a recognized authority on knowledge graphs, and has organized the Automatic Knowledge Base Construction (AKBC) and Statistical Relational AI (StaRAI) workshops, presented tutorials on knowledge graph construction at AAAI and WSDM, and had his work featured in AI Magazine. For more information, visit https://www.jaypujara.org

Series co-hosted by:
Craig Knoblock, Executive Director, USC Information Sciences Institute
Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Director, USC Viterbi Center for CPS and IoT

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SnVYd9ONQgyYeLWiI8qtMA
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Bhaskar Krishnamachari
May
01

ECE PhD Zoom Party
Fri, May 01, 2020 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Student Activity

Tune in EVERY FRIDAY AT 3:30pm to meet and catch up with fellow PhDs for different games every week with prizes! All students receive login instructions in a separate email.
Audiences: All ECE PhD Students
View All Dates
- Fri Apr 17, 2020
- Fri Apr 24, 2020
- Fri May 1, 2020
- Fri May 8, 2020
- Fri May 15, 2020
Contact: Cathy Huang
May
02

Open Alpha Game Premiere
Sat, May 02, 2020 @ 06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Student Activity

Open Alpha: a cycle of testing a game in an early stage, wherein the test group is much larger than that of closed testing and typically open to anyone who is interested.

Wanna know what we've been up to all semester? Come join us for our final release premiere to take a sneak peak at our FIRST EVER GAME about... window washing?!?! Get an in-depth look at the game's trailer, demo, and a Q&A with our project leads about the game development process and how our first semester went as a club (especially after going all virtual)! If you're interested in getting involved with Open Alpha, this is a great way to see just what kind cool stuff you get to do!

Catch the premiere at bit.ly/openalpha on May 2nd, 6PM PST!

Thank you!
The Open Alpha Team

Location: Online
WebCast Link: bit.ly/openalpha
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Ryan Rozan