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Events for the 2nd week of October

  • Discover USC - Denver

    Sun, Oct 07, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in Denver.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: Embassy Suites by Hilton Denver Downtown

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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  • Discover USC - New York

    Sun, Oct 07, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in New York.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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  • Discover USC - Hong Kong

    Sun, Oct 07, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in Hong Kong.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: Conrad Hong Kong

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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  • GRAMMAR WORKSHOP FOR VITERBI STUDENTS

    Sun, Oct 07, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

    Workshops & Infosessions


    All Viterbi undergraduate and graduate students who need extra assistance with grammar are invited to attend a workshop with WRIT 340E Professors Choi and Schroeder. Students will receive a short grammar lesson, followed by one-on-one help with individual writing questions.
    Students should sign-up in advance here: https://goo.gl/forms/rmMPSezGAtzFJBrY2

    If you have questions, please contact Prof. Choi at helenhch@usc.edu.

    Location: Thomas & Dorothy Leavey Library (LVL) - 16

    Audiences: Currently enrolled WRIT340E students

    Contact: Helen Choi

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  • Repeating EventMeet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, and Engineering Talk

    Mon, Oct 08, 2018

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    University Calendar


    This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen (HS seniors and younger) and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process, a student led walking tour of campus, and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. During the engineering session we will discuss the curriculum, research opportunities, hands-on projects, entrepreneurial support programs, and other aspects of the engineering school. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process, and financial aid.

    Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 8:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m.

    Please make sure to check availability and register online for the session you wish to attend. Also, remember to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!

    RSVP

    Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - USC Admission Office

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

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    Contact: Rebecca Kinnon

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  • Niels Reimers - Keynote Seminar on Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Laboratory to Market: University Technology Licensing, Monday, October 8th at 10:30am in EEB 132

    Mon, Oct 08, 2018 @ 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Niels Reimers, Niels Reimers

    Talk Title: Laboratory to Market: University Technology Licensing

    Abstract: Abstract: A discussion of today's knowledge society, role of universities, specifics of Stanford's experience, cultural and other impediments to innovation, university policies, and elements of a university technology licensing office.

    Biography: Biography: Niels Founded and directed Stanford Office of Technology Licensing, 1968-91. During the 22 years he managed the program at Stanford, he was loaned to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to reform its program, and to the University of California, Berkeley to found its program.
    Cumulative licensing income to Stanford from an outside management firm, from 1954-67, totaled about $4,500. Niels proposed a pilot year-long licensing office with a marketing focus, which pilot year (1968-69) achieved $55,000 in licensing income. A permanent office then was approved, with a staff of Niels and a secretary/office manager. As the work load grew from increasing numbers of technology disclosures from faculty and students, staff were added. Cumulative licensing income from 1968 is expected to top $2 billion in fiscal year 2019.

    Host: Ming Hsieh Institute

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Marilyn Poplawski

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  • Seminars in Biomedical Engineering

    Mon, Oct 08, 2018 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM

    Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Hongqiao Zhang, MD, PhD, USC, Research Assistant Professor of Gerontology

    Talk Title: Nano particle effect on health

    Host: Qifa Zhou

    Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta

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  • Interviews Open Forum

    Mon, Oct 08, 2018 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Increase your career and internship knowledge for interviews by attending this professional development Q&A moderated by Viterbi Career Connections staff or Viterbi employer partners.

    For more information about Labs & Open Forums, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Fall 2018 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series

    Mon, Oct 08, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Murat Arcak, University of California Berkeley

    Talk Title: Scalable Symbolic Control

    Abstract: Finite abstractions of continuous dynamical systems play a central role in synthesizing controllers that enforce complex specifications, such as those expressed in temporal logic, and enable the designer to leverage tools from model checking and reactive synthesis. The resulting controller is symbolic, meaning that it only requires knowledge of quantized states that represent the currently occupied partition of the state space. Existing computational tools for this approach have been limited to small systems because both the abstraction and synthesis steps suffer from severe time and space bottlenecks as the system dimension grows. This talk will present recent results that overcome these bottlenecks by exploiting structural system properties. These results include: (1) taking advantage of monotonicity properties of the dynamical model for efficient reachability computations, (2) using sparsity structures in the dependency graph of state variables for parsimonious abstraction algorithms that dramatically reduce runtime, and (3) dividing the control synthesis task into sub-problems of manageable size with compositional procedures. The results will be illustrated with several practically motivated examples.

    Biography: Murat Arcak is a professor at UC Berkeley with appointments in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and Department of Mechanical Engineering. He received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Bogazici University, Istanbul (1996) and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1997 and 2000). His research is in dynamical systems and control theory with applications to synthetic biology, multi-agent systems, and transportation. He received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2003, the Donald P. Eckman Award from the American Automatic Control Council in 2006, the Control and Systems Theory Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2007, and the Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize from the IEEE Control Systems Society in 2014. He is a member of SIAM and a fellow of IEEE.

    Host: Ketan Savla, ksavla@usc.edu

    More Info: http://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2018Fall/arcak.html

    More Information: 18.10.08_Murat Arcak CSCUSC Seminar.pdf

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Brienne Moore

    Event Link: http://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2018Fall/arcak.html

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  • Discover USC - Las Vegas

    Mon, Oct 08, 2018 @ 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in Las Vegas.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: Embassy Suites by Hilton Convention Center Las Vegas

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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  • Discover USC - Washington, DC

    Mon, Oct 08, 2018 @ 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in Washington, DC.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: Key Bridge Marriott

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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  • Interviews Open Forum

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Increase your career and internship knowledge for interviews by attending this professional development Q&A moderated by Viterbi Career Connections staff or Viterbi employer partners.

    For more information about Labs & Open Forums, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • CS Colloquium: Xinyu Xing (Pennsylvania State University) - Tracking down Software Vulnerabilities from Unexpected Crashes

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 03:40 PM - 04:50 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Xinyu Xing, Pennsylvania State University

    Talk Title: Tracking down Software Vulnerabilities from Unexpected Crashes

    Series: Computer Science Colloquium

    Abstract: Despite the best efforts of developers, software inevitably contains flaws that may be leveraged as security vulnerabilities. Modern operating systems integrate various security mechanisms to prevent software faults from being exploited. To bypass these defenses and hijack program execution, an attacker therefore needs to constantly mutate an exploit and make many attempts. While in their attempts, the exploit triggers a security vulnerability and makes the running process terminate abnormally.

    After a program has crashed and terminated abnormally, it typically leaves behind a snapshot of its crashing state in the form of a core dump. While a core dump carries a large amount of information, which has long been used for software debugging, it barely serves as informative debugging aids in locating software faults, particularly memory corruption vulnerabilities. As such, previous research mainly seeks fully reproducible execution tracing to identify software vulnerabilities in crashes. However, such techniques are usually impractical for complex programs. Even for simple programs, the overhead of fully reproducible tracing may only be acceptable at the time of in-house testing.

    In this talk, I will introduce a reverse execution technique, which takes as input a core dump, reversely executes the corresponding crashing program and automatically pinpoints the root cause of the vulnerable site hidden behind the crash. In the process of performing reverse execution, our technique typically encounters uncertainty (e.g., uncertain control or data flow) which significantly influence the capability of identifying vulnerabilities. Therefore, as part of the talk, I will also briefly discuss how we utilize deep recurrent neural network to tackle this technical challenge.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.


    Biography: Dr. Xinyu Xing is an Assistant Professor at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interest includes exploring, designing and developing tools to automate vulnerability discovery, failure reproduction, vulnerability diagnosis (and triage), exploit and security patch generation. Recently, he is also interested in developing deep learning techniques to perform highly accurate binary and malware analysis. His past research has been featured by many mainstream medium, such as Technology Review, New Scientists and NYTimes etc. Going beyond academic research, he also actively participates and hosts many world-class cybersecurity competitions (such as HITB and XCTF). This year, his team was selected for DEFCON/GeekPwn CAAD challenge grand final at Las Vegas. He led Penn State to finish NSA code breaker competition 2017 and ranked at the top 3 nationwide. In the white-hat hacker community, his research team has contributed many CVEs for the open source community. The tools his team developed have been downloaded by thousands of developers and security researchers.


    Host: Muhammad Naveed

    Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Computer Science Department

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  • Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Seminar - Distinguished Lecture Series

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 04:00 PM - 05:20 PM

    Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Vivian Ferry, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota

    Talk Title: Optical nanomaterials: chirality, refractive index, and applications to solar energy conversion

    Abstract: Optical nanomaterials offer the ability to bend, twist, guide, and confine light in nanoscale dimensions, leading to new applications in photovoltaics, sensing, light emission control, and other optoelectronic devices. The first part of this talk will discuss strategies for capturing and managing incident sunlight effectively for solar energy conversion. I will discuss complementary strategies for managing incident sunlight before it interacts with the solar panel, including luminescent solar concentrators that down shift and concentrate sunlight using a combination of luminescent nanocrystals and nanostructured surfaces, and structures that integrate with photovoltaic modules for thermal management. The second part of the talk will discuss the development of chiral nanomaterials that interact selectively with right and left handed circularly polarized light. I will discuss strategies to tune the chiral optical response of both semiconductor nanocrystals and metamaterials.

    Biography: Vivian Ferry is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. She received her S. B. in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2006, and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2011, working with Prof. Harry Atwater. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Paul Alivisatos in the Materials Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2011 to 2014. Her research focuses on light matter interactions in nanoscale materials, and her specific research interests include light management in solar energy conversion, switchable metamaterials, and nanoscale chirality. She is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, was named as one of Technology Reviews 35 Innovators under 35 in 2016, and holds a McKnight Land Grant Professorship at the University of Minnesota.

    Host: Professor Malancha Gupta

    Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 200

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Karen Woo/Mork Family

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  • NVIDIA Information Session

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 05:30 PM - 08:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Tech Talk & Coding Challenge

    Come hear from an NVIDIAN and explore our career opportunities!

    Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Discover USC - Philadelphia

    Tue, Oct 09, 2018 @ 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in Philadelphia.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: Philadelphia Marriott West

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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  • Repeating EventMeet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, and Engineering Talk

    Wed, Oct 10, 2018

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    University Calendar


    This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen (HS seniors and younger) and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process, a student led walking tour of campus, and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. During the engineering session we will discuss the curriculum, research opportunities, hands-on projects, entrepreneurial support programs, and other aspects of the engineering school. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process, and financial aid.

    Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 8:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m.

    Please make sure to check availability and register online for the session you wish to attend. Also, remember to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!

    RSVP

    Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - USC Admission Office

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

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    Contact: Rebecca Kinnon

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  • Computer Science General Faculty Meeting

    Wed, Oct 10, 2018 @ 12:00 AM - 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: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - 102

    Audiences: By invitation only.

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • CS Colloquium: Simone Silvetti and Laura Nenzi

    Wed, Oct 10, 2018 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Simone Silvetti (Numerical Methods Group) and Laura Nenzi (TU Wien),

    Talk Title: Talk1: Combining Active learning optimization and Temporal logic for parameter synthesis and falsification of Complex Systems Talk 2: System Design of Stochastic Models using Robustness of Temporal Properties

    Series: Computer Science Colloquium jointly with CCI-MHI Cyber-Physical Systems Seminar

    Abstract: We are pleased to announce two talks during this colloquium.

    Talk 1: Combining Active learning optimization and Temporal logic for parameter synthesis and falsification of Complex Systems
    In this talk, we discuss the combination of Active Learning Optimization and temporal logic to the falsification and parameter synthesis of complex dynamical systems. First, we introduce Gaussian Processes and an active learning approach aimed to falsify a black box model with time-dependent functional inputs. Second, we introduce a technique also base on Gaussian Processes, named Smoothed Model Checking, which is able to estimate the probability that a stochastic system satisfies a temporal logic formula. We leverage this estimation ability and an active learning approach to find regions of the parameter space where the model satisfies a temporal logic formula with probability greater (or less) than a given threshold.

    Talk 2: System Design of Stochastic Models using Robustness of Temporal Properties
    In the last years, researchers from the verification community have proposed several notions of robustness for temporal logic providing suitable definitions of distance between a trajectory of a (deterministic) dynamical system and the boundaries of the set of trajectories satisfying the property of interest. In this talk, we present an extension of this notion of robustness to stochastic systems, showing that this naturally leads to a distribution of robustness degrees. Then, we show how to exploit this notion to address the system design problem, where the goal is to optimise some control parameters of a stochastic model in order to maximise robustness of the desired specifications. The key idea is to use a learning algorithm to estimate the dependence of the average robustness of a qualitative formula over the model parameters. A powerful and provably convergent machine learning method, namely the Gaussian Process - Upper Confidence Bound (GP-UCB) algorithm is use to improve the parameter optimisation. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of our method on a number of case studies and ongoing works.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium. Please note, due to limited capacity in OHE 100D, seats will be first come first serve.


    Biography: Talk 1: Simone Silvetti is a researcher and developer at the Numerical Methods Group of Esteco SpA, Italy. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Udine in 2018 and a MSc in Mathematics from the University of Rome in 2012. His research focuses on the application of machine learning to quantitative formal methods and optimization.

    Talk 2: Since 2017, Laura Nenzi is a research assistant at the TU Wien. She received a Ph.D in Computer Science from IMT Lucca, in 2016. In December 2018, she will join the University of Trieste as Assistant Professor. Her research interests include: spatio-temporal logics, statistical verification routines for uncertain models and combination of formal methods with machine learning techniques.


    Host: Jyotirmoy Deshmukh and Paul Bogdan

    Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 100D

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Computer Science Department

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  • Interviews Open Forum

    Wed, Oct 10, 2018 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Increase your career and internship knowledge for interviews by attending this professional development Q&A moderated by Viterbi Career Connections staff or Viterbi employer partners.

    For more information about Labs & Open Forums, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Joint Epstein Institute, ISE 651 & USC CAIS Seminar

    Wed, Oct 10, 2018 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

    Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Pinar Keskinocak, Professor, Georgia Tech

    Talk Title: Quantitative Models for Decision-support in Healthcare Applications

    Host: Dr. Sze-chuan Suen

    More Information: October 10, 2018.pdf

    Location: Mark Taper Hall Of Humanities (THH) - 301

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Grace Owh

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  • Women in Engineering (WIE) MENTOR Program Launch and Match

    Wed, Oct 10, 2018 @ 04:00 PM - 06:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

    University Calendar


    The Women in Engineering (WIE) office is proud to kick-0ff its new WIE MENTOR program. The mentorship program pairs first year and new transfer women (mentees) with upper-class students in Viterbi who will serve as mentors. Mentors and mentees will find out who they are matched with and then convene for a reception, where they will have an opportunity to get to know each other better.

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

    Audiences: invitation only

    Contact: Monica De Los Santos

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  • CAIS Seminar: Dr. Pinar Keskinocak (Georgia Tech) - Quantitative Models for Decision-Support in Healthcare Applications

    Wed, Oct 10, 2018 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Pinar Keskinocak, Georgia Institute of Technology

    Talk Title: Quantitative Models for Decision-Support in Healthcare Applications

    Series: USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (CAIS) Seminar Series

    Abstract: With the goal of improving patient outcomes, efficiency, and effectiveness, quantitative models are increasingly used for decision-support in healthcare. In this presentation Dr. Keskinocak will discuss a few applications from organ transplant, vaccination, screening, and workforce allocation decisions.

    This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium


    Biography: Dr. Pinar Keskinocak is the William W. George Chair and Professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and co-founder and Director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech. She also serves as the College of Engineering ADVANCE Professor. Her research focuses on the applications of quantitative methods to have a positive impact in society, particularly in healthcare and humanitarian systems. She has worked on projects with a variety of governmental and non-governmental organizations, and healthcare providers, including American Red Cross, CDC, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory Healthcare, and Task Force for Global Health.


    Host: Dr. Milind Tambe and Dr. Sze-chuan Suen

    Location: Mark Taper Hall Of Humanities (THH) - 301

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Computer Science Department

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  • Multimodal Emotion Recognition: Quantifying Dynamics and Structure in Audio-Visual Expressive Speech

    Thu, Oct 11, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Yelin (Lynn) Kim, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University at Albany, SUNY

    Talk Title: Multimodal Emotion Recognition: Quantifying Dynamics and Structure in Audio-Visual Expressive Speech

    Abstract: The rise of AI assistant systems, including Google Home, Apple Siri, and Amazon Echo, brings the urgent need for increased and deeper understanding of users. In this talk, I will present algorithmic and statistical methods for analyzing audio-visual human behavior, particularly focusing on emotional and social signals inferred from speech and facial expressions. These methods can provide emotional intelligence to AI systems. However, developing automatic emotion recognition systems is challenging since emotional expressions are complex, dynamic, inherently multimodal, and are entangled with other factors of modulation (e.g. speech generation and emphasis). I will present several algorithms to address these fundamental challenges in emotion recognition: (i) cross-modal modeling methods that capture and control for interactions between individual facial regions and speech using the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle-based segmentation; (ii) localization and prediction of events with salient emotional behaviors using a max-margin optimization and dynamic programming; and (iii) temporal modeling methods to learn co-occurrence patterns between emotional behaviors and emotion label noise. These algorithms have enabled advancements in the modeling of audio-visual emotion recognition systems and increased the understanding of the underlying dynamic and multimodal structure of affective communication (e.g., cross-modal interaction, temporal structure, and inherent perceptual ambiguity).

    Biography: Yelin Kim [http://yelinkim.com] is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY). She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2013 and 2016, respectively, and her B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Seoul National University, South Korea in 2011. Her main research interests are in human-centered and affective computing, multimodal (audio-visual) modeling, and computational behavior analysis. Her work was recognized by several awards, including a Google Faculty Research Award (2018), a SUNY-A Faculty Research Award (2017), and the Best Student Paper Award at ACM Multimedia (2014).

    Host: Dr. Shrikanth Narayanan

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-Systems

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  • Auto-Tuned Threading for OLDI Microservices

    Thu, Oct 11, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Akshitha Sriraman, University of Michigan

    Talk Title: Auto-Tuned Threading for OLDI Microservices

    Abstract: Modern On-Line Data Intensive (OLDI) applications have evolved from monolithic systems to instead comprise numerous, distributed microservices interacting via Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs). Microservices face sub-ms RPC latency goals, much tighter than their monolithic ancestors that must meet >=100ms latency targets. Sub-ms-scale threading and on currency design effects as well as OS and network overheads that were once insignificant for such monoliths, can now come to dominate in the sub-ms-scale microservice regime. It is therefore vital to characterize the influence of threading design, OS, and network effects on microservices. Unfortunately, widely used academic data center benchmark suites are unsuitable to aid this characterization as they use monolithic rather than microservice architectures.

    We first investigate how OS/network overheads impact microservice tail latency by developing a complete suite of microservices called mSuite that we use to facilitate our study. Our characterization reveals that the relationship between optimal OS/network parameters and service load is complex. Our primary finding is that non-optimal OS scheduler decisions can degrade microservice tail latency by up to ~87%.

    Secondly, we investigate how threading design critically impacts microservice tail latency by developing a taxonomy of threading models -“ a structured understanding of the implications of how microservices manage concurrency and interact with RPC interfaces under wide-ranging loads. We develop mTune, a system that has two features: (1) a novel framework that abstracts threading model implementation from application code, and (2) a novel automatic load adaptation system that curtails microservice tail latency by exploiting inherent latency trade-offs revealed in our taxonomy to transition among threading models. We study mTune in the context of mSuite to demonstrate up to 1.9x tail latency improvements over static threading choices and state-of-the-art adaptation techniques.

    Biography: Akshitha is a fourth year Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, where she is advised by Dr. Thomas F. Wenisch. Her primary research interests are in software systems and computer architecture. Her research focuses on developing software and hardware optimizations to improve the performance of large-scale distributed data center system.

    Host: Xuehai Qian, xuehai.qian@usc.edu

    More Information: 18.10.11 Akshitha Sriraman_CENG.pdf

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Brienne Moore

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  • BME seminars

    Thu, Oct 11, 2018 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Abstract: Over the past decade we have been working to develop functional and molecular imaging technologies for a variety of applications. A current focus is technologies capable of functional imaging of picometer scale vibrations in the ear. This collaboration with researchers in otolaryngology has led to several recent papers that contribute new understandings of inner ear function. These were enabled by our development of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) as a highly sensitive spatially resolved vibrometer. Building on this approach, we have begun to develop devices to fill unmet clinical needs for diagnosis and therapeutic guidance in humans. The first of those devices (cochleoscope) is an endoscopic OCT system designed to traverse the human ear canal and peer into the inner ear through the round window. This device would be used clinically to identify endolymphatic hydrops, anomalous vibratory response, and ischemia of the inner ear. We recently demonstrated this device in a porcine model and have IRB approval for a first-in-human trial at USC. A second device attaches to the standard operating microscopes in the hearing clinic, enabling noninvasive imaging of middle ear morphology and function. In vivo human testing of this device has shown that we can achieve a sensitivity to vibrations of of

    More Information: Brian E. Applegate Flyer.pdf

    Location: 145a

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta

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  • Resume Lab - Bring your Laptop!

    Thu, Oct 11, 2018 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Labs are an activity where you can work on your resume in the presence of a career advisor to get tips on the spot.

    Bring your Laptop!

    For more information about Labs & Open Forums, please visit viterbicareers.usc.edu/workshops.

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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  • Discover USC - Shanghai

    Thu, Oct 11, 2018 @ 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in Shanghai.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: Hotel Westin Bund Center

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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  • Repeating EventMeet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, and Engineering Talk

    Fri, Oct 12, 2018

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    University Calendar


    This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen (HS seniors and younger) and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process, a student led walking tour of campus, and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. During the engineering session we will discuss the curriculum, research opportunities, hands-on projects, entrepreneurial support programs, and other aspects of the engineering school. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process, and financial aid.

    Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 8:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m.

    Please make sure to check availability and register online for the session you wish to attend. Also, remember to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!

    RSVP

    Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - USC Admission Office

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    View All Dates

    Contact: Rebecca Kinnon

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  • Viterbi School of Engineering Dean’s Reception

    Fri, Oct 12, 2018 @ 08:30 AM - 10:30 AM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Receptions & Special Events


    During Trojan Family Weekend, Viterbi students and their families are invited to attend the Dean's Reception.

    Breakfast will be provided.

    Location: Epstein Family Plaza

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Amanda McCraven

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  • Research and Design Showcase

    Fri, Oct 12, 2018 @ 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Receptions & Special Events


    After the Viterbi School of Engineering Dean's Reception families are invited to a Research and Design showcase presented by Viterbi students.

    Location: Epstein Family Plaza

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Amanda McCraven

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  • Munushian Seminar - Demetrios Christodoulides, Friday, October 12th at 2PM in EEB 132

    Fri, Oct 12, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Demetrios Christodoulides, CREOL The College of Optics and Photonics

    Talk Title: Optical Thermodynamics of Nonlinear Highly Multimode Systems

    Abstract: The past few years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in multimode waveguide structures, predominantly driven by the ever-increasing demand for higher information capacities. This renaissance, in turn, incited a flurry of activities in the general area of nonlinear multimode fiber optics. The sheer complexity associated with the presence of hundreds or thousands of nonlinearly interacting modes that collectively act as a many-body system, has led to new opportunities in observing a multitude of novel optical effects that would have been otherwise impossible in single-mode settings. In this talk, a thermodynamic theory capable of describing complex, highly multimoded, nonlinear optical systems is presented. It is shown that the mode occupancies in such nonlinear multimode arrangements follow a universal behavior that always tends to maximize the system's entropy at steady-state. This thermodynamic response takes place irrespective of the type of nonlinearities involved and can be utilized to either heat or cool an optical multimode system. Aspects associated with adiabatic compressions and expansions will be discussed along with the possibility for all-optical Carnot cycles.

    Biography: Biography: Demetrios Christodoulides is the Cobb Family Endowed Chair and Pegasus Professor of Optics at CREOL-the College of Optics and Photonics of the University of Central Florida. He received his Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1986 and he subsequently joined Bellcore as a post-doctoral fellow. Between 1988 and 2002 he was with the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Lehigh University. His research interests include linear and nonlinear optical beam interactions, synthetic optical materials, optical solitons, and quantum electronics. He has authored and co-authored more than 350 papers. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the American Physical Society. He is the recipient of the 2011 Wood Prize and 2018 Max Born Award of OSA.

    Host: EE-Electrophysics

    More Info: https://minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian/

    Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Marilyn Poplawski

    Event Link: https://minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian/

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  • Faculty Address: Engineering a Better Society, Dr. Milind Tambe

    Fri, Oct 12, 2018 @ 02:30 PM - 03:20 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Dr. Milind Tambe is Helen N. and Emmett H. Jones Professor in Engineering at the University of Southern California(USC) and the Founding Co-Director of CAIS, the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society, where his research focuses on advancing AI and multiagent systems research for Social Good.

    He will be addressing Viterbi families on "Engineering a Better Society"

    Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Amanda McCraven

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  • Quantum Supremacy and its Applications

    Fri, Oct 12, 2018 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Scott Aaronson, University of Texas at Austin

    Talk Title: Quantum Supremacy and its Applications

    Abstract: In the near future, there will likely be special-purpose quantum computers with 50-70 high-quality qubits and controllable nearest-neighbor couplings. In this talk, I'll discuss general theoretical foundations for how to use such devices to demonstrate quantum supremacy: that is, a clear quantum speedup for some task, motivated by the goal of overturning the Extended Church-Turing Thesis (which says that all physical systems can be efficiently simulated by classical computers) as confidently
    as possible. This part of the talk is based on joint work with Lijie
    Chen. Then, in a second part, I'll discuss new, not-yet-published work on how these experiments could be used to generate cryptographically certified random bits, for use in cryptocurrencies and other applications.


    Biography: Scott Aaronson is David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his bachelor's from Cornell University and his PhD from UC Berkeley, and did postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study as well as the University of Waterloo. Before coming to UT Austin, he spent nine years as a professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Aaronson's research in theoretical computer science has focused mainly on the capabilities and limits of quantum computers. His first book, Quantum Computing Since Democritus, was published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press. He received the National Science Foundation Alan T. Waterman Award, the United States PECASE Award, the Vannevar Bush Fellowship, the Tomassoni-Chisesi Prize in Physics, and MIT's Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching.

    Host: Xuehai Qian, xuehai.qian@usc.edu

    More Information: 18.10.12 Scott Aaronson Seminar .pdf

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 109

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Brienne Moore

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  • NL Seminar-Mapping Functions for Multilingual Word Embeddings

    Fri, Oct 12, 2018 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Information Sciences Institute

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Ndapa Nakashole, UCSD

    Talk Title: Mapping Functions for Multilingual Word Embeddings

    Series: Natural Language Seminar

    Abstract: Inducing multilingual word embeddings by learning a linear map between embedding spaces of different languages achieves remarkable accuracy on related languages. However, accuracy drops substantially when translating between distant languages. Given that languages exhibit differences in vocabulary, grammar, written form, or syntax, one would expect that embedding spaces of different languages have different structures especially for distant languages. I will present our work on understanding the behavior of linear maps learned by word translation methods. Additionally, I will present some initial solutions to the shortcomings of such linear maps.



    Biography: Ndapa Nakashole is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Prior to UCSD, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. She obtained her PhD from Saarland University, Germany, for research carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken. She completed undergraduate studies in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.


    Host: Xusen Yin

    More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/

    Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/s/R09BB/

    Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th Flr Conf Rm # 1135, Marina Del Rey

    WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/s/R09BB/

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Peter Zamar

    Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/

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  • The Job Search Process – Kaitlin Harada

    Fri, Oct 12, 2018 @ 03:30 PM - 04:20 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Kaitlin Harada, Director of Viterbi Career Connections will discuss the job search process.

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Amanda McCraven

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  • Discover USC - Houston

    Sat, Oct 13, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in Houston.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: Houston Marriott West Loop by The Galleria

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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  • Discover USC - Portland

    Sat, Oct 13, 2018 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission

    Receptions & Special Events


    Join the USC Admission Office at the Discover USC admission program in Portland.

    This program provides high school seniors and their families with an opportunity to meet admission counselors, alumni, and other prospective students and their parents.

    RSVP for Discover USC

    Location: Hilton Portland Downtown

    Audiences: Prospective Freshmen & Family Members

    Contact: Viterbi Admission

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