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Events for May 21, 2020
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NL Seminar-Fighting COVID 19 using Linear Time Algorithms from Computational Linguistics
Thu, May 21, 2020 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Liang Huang, Baidu Oregon State University
Talk Title: Fighting COVID 19 using Linear Time Algorithms from Computational Linguistics
Abstract: To defeat the current COVID 19 pandemic, which has already claimed 250,000 deaths as of early May, a messenger RNA mRNA vaccine has emerged as a promising approach thanks to its rapid and scalable production and non infectious and non integrating properties. However, designing an mRNA sequence to achieve high stability and protein yield remains a challenging problem due to the exponentially large search space e.g., there are 10 632 possible mRNA sequence candidates for the spike protein of SARS CoV 2.
We describe two on going efforts at solving this problem, both using linear time algorithms from my group inspired by my earlier work in parsing. On one hand, the Eterna Open Vaccine project from Stanford Medical School takes a crowd sourcing approach to let game players all over the world design stable sequences. To evaluate sequence stability in terms of free energy, they use Linear Fold from my group 2019 since its the only linear time RNA folding algorithm available which makes it the only one fast enough for COVID scale genomes. On the other hand, we take a computational approach to directly search for the optimal sequence in this exponentially large space via dynamic programming. It turns out this problem can be reduced to a classical problem in formal language theory and computational linguistics intersection between CFG and DFA , which can be solved in O n 3 time, just like lattice parsing for speech. In the end, we can design the optimal mRNA vaccine candidate for SARS CoV 2 spike protein in 1 hour with exact search, or just 11 minutes with a beam of 1000 at the cost of only 0.6 percent loss in energy.
Biography: Liang Huang is currently an Assistant Professor of EECS at Oregon State University and Distinguished Scientist part time at Baidu Research USA. Before that he was Assistant Professor for three years at the City University of New York CUNY and a part-time Research Scientist with IBM's Watson Group. He graduated in 2008 from Penn and has worked as a Research Scientist at Google and a Research Assistant Professor at USC ISI. Most of his work develops fast algorithms and provable theory to speedup large-scale natural language processing, structured machine learning, and computational structural biology. He has received a Best Paper Award at ACL 2008 sole author, a Best Paper Honorable Mention at EMNLP 2016, several best paper nominations ACL 2007, EMNLP 2008, and ACL 2010, two Google Faculty Research Awards 2010 and 2013, a Yahoo! Faculty Research Award 2015, and a University Teaching Prize at Penn 2005. He was a keynote speaker at ACL 2019. His recent interest is to apply computational linguistics to computational biology, where he works on RNA folding & design using his earlier work on incremental parsing.
Host: Emily Sheng
More Info: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94526753732Location: Virtual Only
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94526753732
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petet Zamar
Event Link: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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Prospective Students: Chat with a USC Rep
Thu, May 21, 2020 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Graduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions
Interested in Master's or PhD programs in engineering or computer science?
Students who have earned or are in the process of earning a Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, mathematics, or a hard science (such as physics, biology, or chemistry) are welcome to attend to learn more about applying to our graduate programs.
The session will include information on the following topics:
- Master's & PhD programs in engineering and computer science
- How to Apply
- Scholarships and funding
- Student life at USC and in Los Angeles
- DEN@Viterbi, our online delivery platform
- Our newly extended deadline for Fall 2020 applicants!
There will also be sufficient time for questions.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Register here: https://uscviterbi.webex.com/uscviterbi/onstage/g.php?MTID=e89f435616667127c05cbea819f9bbf74
Event Password: Fighton1Location: Webex
WebCast Link: https://uscviterbi.webex.com/uscviterbi/onstage/g.php?MTID=e89f435616667127c05cbea819f9bbf74
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: camila tabar
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Virtual First-Year Admission Information Session
Thu, May 21, 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 high school 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
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The Balance Between Privacy & Keeping Communities Safe
Thu, May 21, 2020 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Alumni
Workshops & Infosessions
As we face the COVID-19 pandemic companies, universities, retail stores and hospitals are facing the need to keep employees and customers safe, while at the same time respect individual privacy. Around the world, a diverse and growing chorus is calling for the use of smartphone proximity technology and computer vision AI to identify infected individuals and prevent them from infecting others. In this webinar we will discuss the different point of views on this topic and challenge each other on achieving a balance between privacy and community health.
More Information: VIP Bay Area Event.png
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kF0P15h7S1KwzbtThp1q2w
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kristy Ly
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Fighting COVID-19 with APIs and Big Data hosted by Bit Project of UC-Davis (RSVP in Advance)
Thu, May 21, 2020 @ 06:00 PM - 07:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Workshops & Infosessions
Fighting COVID-19 with APIs and Big Data hosted by Bit Project of UC-Davis.
Bit Project would like to invite students from University of Southern California to participate in our webinar about applying the power of APIs and Big Data to combat COVID-19. Utilizing data provided by Johns Hopkins University, we will be guiding students through Postman to exhibit how code can influence issues faced at a global scale. In addition, we have speakers from reputable organizations, such as Microsoft and Postman, that will explain the role of distinct computing features in the age of COVID-19.
By the end of the webinar, attendees will have experience with:
1. Finding and accessing public APIs
2. Importing, cleaning, and processing geospatial data
3. Using Jupyter Notebook
4. Using Facebook's Prophet Library to forecast the spread of the disease.
While this webinar is centered around APIs and Big Data, we will also have speaker(s) from the front-lines of COVID-19 to conceptually understand the potential magnitude technologists may have on this pandemic.
We will be hosting the webinar on Thursday, May 21st at 6:00 p.m.
To sign-up for the webinar, please RSVP via the following link:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fighting-covid19-with-apis-and-big-data-tickets-104366926286
Location: Online
WebCast Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fighting-covid19-with-apis-and-big-data-tickets-104366926286
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ryan Rozan
