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Events for March 09, 2017

  • CS Colloquium: David Naylor (CMU) - Privacy in the Internet (Without Giving up Everything Else)

    Thu, Mar 09, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: David Naylor, Carnegie Mellon University

    Talk Title: Privacy in the Internet (Without Giving up Everything Else)

    Series: CS Colloquium

    Abstract: This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Computer Science Research Colloquium.

    Using the Internet inherently entails privacy risks. Each packet, potentially carrying information that users would rather keep private, is exposed to a network infrastructure operated by a number of third parties the user may not trust and likely cannot even identify. In some cases, the user may not even trust the recipient.

    Techniques exist to protect user privacy, but they typically do so at the expense of other desirable properties. For example, anonymity services like Tor hide a packet's true sender, but weaken accountability by making it difficult for network administrators or law enforcement to track down malicious senders. Similarly, encryption hides application data from third parties, but prevents the use of middleboxes---devices that process packets in the network to improve performance (like caches) or security (like intrusion detection systems).

    In this talk, I'll present techniques for managing these "Privacy vs. X" conflicts, including a new network architecture that re-thinks basic networking building blocks like packet source addresses and new secure communication protocols that explicitly balance data privacy with the benefits of middleboxes.

    Biography: David is a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is advised by Peter Steenkiste. His primary research interests are computer networking, security, and privacy, but he is also interested in Web measurement and performance (http://isthewebhttp2yet.com and https://eyeorg.net). David received his B.S. from the University of Iowa in 2011, where he created the DDR inspired "Scrub Scrub Revolution," a handwashing training game for healthcare professionals. He is an NDSEG fellow and received an ACM SIGCOMM best paper award.

    Host: CS Department

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 217

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Assistant to CS chair

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  • Seminar

    Thu, Mar 09, 2017 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Hung-Wei Tseng, NC State University

    Talk Title: Modernizing Storage Systems for Big Data Applications

    Abstract: Existing high-speed non-volatile storage systems leverage entrenched system stack developed for magnetic hard disk drive, leading to suboptimal performance and under-utilized system resources. As data set sizes of applications keep increasing, using conventional system stack for modern storage devices becomes a new performance bottleneck. For example, a database system can spend 80% of time in just fetching data from the storage system, leaving precious computing resource idle at the same time.

    To improve the performance of serving data from storage systems, we need to revisit the block-based storage interface designed for slower, magnetic disk drives. In this talk, Hung-Wei will share his experience in modernizing the hardware/software interface for storage systems and achieve performance gain in computer systems. Hung-Wei will introduce his research projects including: (1) HippogriffDB, a GPU-based database system that balances the huge gap between the throughputs of the GPU and the SSD. (2) Morpheus-SSD that utilizes computing resources inside storage devices to create more efficient applications. (3) KAML that modernizes the conventional block-based I/O with a keyvalue-like interface.


    Biography: Hung-Wei is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NC State University where he is now leading the Extreme Storage & Computer Architecture Laboratory. Prior to joining NCSU, Hung-Wei was a postdoctoral scholar of the Non-volatile Systems Laboratory with Professor Steven Swanson and a lecturer of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego. His thesis work with Professor Dean Tullsen, data-triggered threads, was selected by IEEE Micro "Top Picks from Computer Architecture" in 2012.

    Host: Murali Annavaram

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Estela Lopez

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  • Lyman L. Handy Colloquia

    Thu, Mar 09, 2017 @ 12:45 PM - 01:50 PM

    Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Ronnie Borja , Stanford University

    Talk Title: A constitutive framework for double-porosity materials with evolving internal structure

    Series: Lyman Handy Colloquia

    Host: Professor Birendra Jha

    Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Martin Olekszyk

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  • PhD Defense - Lian Liu

    Thu, Mar 09, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    University Calendar


    PhD Candidate: Lian Liu

    Committee: Ming-Deh Huang (CS, chair), Sheldon Ross (ISE), Shang-Hua Teng (CS)

    Title: Expander Cayley Graphs over Finite Strings and Pseudorandomness

    Time: March 9 (Thursday) 2:00 - 3:30 pm.

    Room: SAL 322 (i.e. the conference room on the 3rd floor of SAL)


    Abstract:

    We present an explicit construction of expander Cayley graphs over the direct sum of multiple copies of Z/pZ, where p is a prime number. So far as we know, our work is the first expander Cayley graph construction over such groups. Our construction consists of two phases. In the first phase, we consider Cayley graphs over the multiplicative groups of algebras over finite fields. We prove that for some well-chosen small generating sets which can be computed in polynomial time, the induced Cayley graphs are expanding. In the second phase, we construct an new Cayley graph by projecting the graph created in the first phase onto a direct component of the underlying group. We showed that the component on which the graph is projected is isomorphic to the direct sum of multiple copies of Z/pZ, and the resulting Cayley graph is a good expander. Interestingly, we found that many expander graphs whose degrees are not of any special forms can be explicitly constructed under this framework, which could be regarded as a tiny progress towards the open problem of constructing infinite families of Ramanujan graphs of every degree.

    An special case of particular interest is when p equals 2. In this situation, the vertices of such a graph naturally correspond to bit strings of a fixed length, and each edge represents a transition between two bit strings under standard exclusive-or operation. As an application, we then propose a simple pseudorandom generator based on random walks on the graph. An important question is whether our pseudorandom generator is indistinguishable from a truly random source under probabilistic polynomial time attacks, which, however, remains open. In fact, constructing a secure and efficient pseudorandom generator has been an open problem since the birth of modern cryptography, whose solution may lead to huge breakthroughs in computer science. Therefore, our goal here is not addressing this problem, even partially. Instead, along with our discussion, we demonstrate that our expander Cayley graphs have some appealing features that all previous constructions do not have. These new features might bring a lot of potential topics for future research.

    Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 322

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Lizsl De Leon

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  • Viterbi Distinguished Lecture

    Thu, Mar 09, 2017 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Professor Peter Shor, MIT

    Talk Title: Capacities for Quantum Communication Channels

    Series: Viterbi Lecture

    Abstract: In 1948, Shannon discovered his famous formula for the capacity of a communication channel. This formula does not apply, however, to channels with significant quantum effects. For quantum channels, the question of capacity is much more complicated, as there are different capacities for sending classical information and for sending quantum information. We will discuss the capacities of quantum channels, and survey the historical development of the subject.

    Biography: Peter Shor received a B.S. in Mathematics from Caltech in 1981, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from M.I.T. After a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, he took a job at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and stayed at AT&T until 2003. In 2003, he went to M.I.T., where he is the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics.

    Until 1994, he worked on algorithms for conventional computers and did research in probability and combinatorics. In 1994, after thinking about the problem on and off for nearly a year, he discovered an algorithm for factoring large integers into primes on a quantum computer (still hypothetical, but steadily becoming less so). Since then, he has mainly been investigating quantum computing and quantum information theory.

    Among other awards, he has received the Nevanlinna Prize, the Goedel prize, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Host: Professor Sandeep K. Gupta

    Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/547084462

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

    WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/547084462

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

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  • Interviewing Strategies and Techniques

    Thu, Mar 09, 2017 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

    Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections

    Workshops & Infosessions


    Discover tips on how to prepare for both technical and behavioral interviews, as well as the proper steps for follow-up!

    To join the workshop, go to https://bluejeans.com/269138699 at the workshop start time and login with your USC netID and password at the workshop start time and login with your USC netID and password.

    WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/269138699

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Connections

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