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Receptions & Special Events
Events for April
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Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Apr 08, 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: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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VGSA Virtual Happy Hour!
Fri, Apr 10, 2020 @ 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Receptions & Special Events
Come have a drink with the CS department senators at the Viterbi Graduate Student Associate Virtual Happy Hour!
April 10, 2020, 6-7pm PST
Space is limited!
Zoom link will be emailed to those who RSVP at: http://bit.ly/vgsahappyhr
Catch up with your fellow students and join us for an evening of fun!Location: Online
Audiences: Graduate
Contact: Ryan Rozan
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Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Apr 15, 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
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WEBINAR SERIES: Digital Technologies for COVID-19
Fri, Apr 17, 2020 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Receptions & Special Events
The first webinar will feature a double-header of talks by two researchers from USC Viterbi’s Information Sciences Institute: Emilio Ferrara and Kristina Lerman. Their talks will cover tracking COVID-19 on social media, and the network science behind the spread of COVID-19. Please find abstracts for these talks and the speaker bios below:
Talk 1: Charting COVID-19 Chatter on Social Media, by Emilio Ferrara
Abstract: Social Networks have dramatically changed the way we experience the world. Information access and broadcasting have been revolutionized. The Internet, the Web, and online platforms bring us together: our society is experiencing the effects, both positive and negative, of ubiquitous and unparalleled connectivity. In this talk, I will overview the implications of COVID-19 on online platforms for our society, democracy, and public health. Our preliminary work illustrates our data collection, detection of malicious actors, etc.. I'll also overview how conspiracy theories about vaccines, epidemic outbreaks, and other health-related rumors can have adverse effects and contribute toward public health crises. I'll conclude by discussing the tools we developed to understand and combat online misinformation, detect bots and trolls, and characterize their activity, behavior, and strategies, suggesting how they are changing the way researchers and the public study communication networks in the era of automation and artificial intelligence.
Bio: Dr. Emilio Ferrara from USC Viterbi is Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Research Team Leader at the Information Sciences Institute, and Associate Director of Data Science Master and Undergraduate programs. His research focus has been at the intersection between developing theory and methods for network analysis and applying them to study socio-technical systems and information networks. He is concerned with understanding the implications of technology and communication networks on human behavior, and their effects on society at large. His work spans from studying the Web and social networks, to collaboration systems and academic networks, from team science to online crowds. Ferrara has published over 130 articles on social networks, machine learning, and network science appeared in venues like the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, and Communications of the ACM. Ferrara received accolades including the 2016 DARPA Young Faculty Award, the 2016 Complex Systems Society Junior Scientific Award, the 2018 DARPA Director's Fellowship, and the 2019 USC Viterbi Research Award. His research is supported by DARPA, IARPA, Air Force, and Office of Naval Research.
Talk 2: The Network Science of COVID-19, by Kristina Lerman
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic is a social emergency, as much as a medical one. The novel virus that causes the disease is transmitted through social interactions, when individuals come in physical proximity to an infected individual, and since it can linger on surfaces for days, it can also be transmitted through shared public spaces. Halting the spread of the virus requires behavioral interventions that rapidly change how people interact and use shared spaces, as well as monitoring compliance–-in real-time–-and effectiveness of these behavioral interventions. An additional challenge is an accurate surveillance with incomplete data, and how to quantify policy implications of limited observation.
Social distancing has become a near-universal intervention to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Social distancing measures implemented by various states and municipalities include school and business closures and prohibitions on large gatherings. However, the limit on crowds size has varied, ranging from 250 to 2. Does a safe crowd size exist for limiting the spread of the disease? We are creating social networks from mobility data at various levels of granularity. Our results suggest that the many interactions people have maintain the connectivity of the contact network, allowing infections to spread widely.
Bio: Kristina Lerman is a Principal Scientist at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute and holds a joint appointment as a Research Associate Professor in the USC Computer Science Department. Trained as a physicist, she now applies network analysis and machine learning to problems in computational social science, including crowdsourcing, social network and social media analysis. Her recent work on modeling and understanding cognitive biases in social networks has been covered by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and MIT Tech Review.
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
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Computer Science General Faculty Meeting
Wed, Apr 22, 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
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USC Viterbi Webinar Series on Digital Technologies for COVID-19
Fri, Apr 24, 2020 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Receptions & Special Events
The Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California is pleased to invite all members of the public to the USC Viterbi Webinar Series on Digital Technologies for COVID-19
Fridays 11 am - 12 pm Pacific
Our second webinar of this series will take place on April 24, 2020
Please click on the following link to register online:
https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SnVYd9ONQgyYeLWiI8qtMA
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Our second webinar will feature a double-header of talks by researchers from USC Viterbi's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The first talk will cover work by Ajitesh Srivastava and Viktor Prasanna on modeling and forecasting of COVID-19 infection and the second talk by Bhaskar Krishnamachari will be on his work on privacy-sensitive mobile-based contact tracing for COVID-19.
Please find abstracts for these talks as well as the speaker bios below:
Talk 1: Learning to Forecast and Forecasting to Learn from the COVID-19 Pandemic - Ajitesh Srivastava and Viktor K. Prasanna
Abstract: The recent outbreak of COVID-19 and the world-wide panic surrounding it calls for urgent measures to contain the epidemic. Predicting the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19 is essential for preparedness and better management of available resources. It is also essential for simulating scenarios with different policies to reopen the economy. In this talk, the speaker will present heterogeneous infection rate model with human mobility, which is an extension of his DARPA Challenge winning work during the Chikungunya epidemic. The model accounts for variable infection rates, inter-region mobility, and a forgetting factor to accommodate rapidly changing infection trends. The model has demonstrated accurate predictions for US state-level and country-level predictions. Through changing of the parameters over time, the model enables the assessment of how various regions have responded to the epidemic. In future work, city- and neighborhood-level predictions will be performed. Based on the predictions, resource allocation problems will be formulated and solved to identify how to distribute resources (masks, testing kits, potential vaccines) among hospitals. Various social distancing strategies will also be formulated and evaluated, informed by the forecasting model.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Ajitesh Srivastava is Senior Research Associate in Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from USC in 2018, with a thesis titled "Computing Cascades: How to Spread Rumors, Win Campaigns, Stop Violence and Predict Epidemics". His research interests include Social Networks, Algorithms, Parallel Computing, and Machine Learning applied to social good, crime, smart grids, and computer architecture. His prior work on predicting epidemics has earned him the 2014 DARPA Grand Challenge award.
Talk 2: Privacy-Sensitive Mobile-based Contact Tracing for COVID-19
- Bhaskar Krishnamachari
Abstract: Contact tracing offers a way to proactively help individuals know if they may be at higher risk due to exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus so that they can take relevant measures including going into self-quarantine and getting tested. I will describe two protocols for privacy-sensitive contact tracing developed at USC Viterbi that are based on the exchange of anonymous information via short-range Bluetooth contacts. This work and those of other academic researchers are connected to the recent announcement by Apple and Google that they are collaborating on an interoperable API for such contact tracing apps. I will also survey many other ongoing efforts around the world to implement privacy-sensitive contact tracing apps, and some of the challenges they face in terms of adoption and effectiveness.
Speaker Bio: Bhaskar Krishnamachari is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at USC Viterbi. He works on algorithms for the internet of things and distributed systems. He has co-authored more than 300 papers, and 2 textbooks, collectively cited more than 25000 times. He has been a co-recipient of several best paper awards including at ACM MobiCom and ACM/IEEE IPSN. He has received the NSF CAREER Award and the ASEE Terman Award. He has been featured in the MIT Technology Review's TR-35 list, as well as Popular Science magazine's "Brilliant 10".
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: Benjamin Paul
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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
