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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for July

  • Photonics Seminar - Miguel Gonzalez Herraez, Tuesday, July 2nd at 9:30am in EEB 248

    Tue, Jul 02, 2024 @ 09:30 AM - 11:00 AM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Miguel Gonzalez Herraez, University of Alcala, Madrid, Spain

    Talk Title: Observing the deep oceans using submarine optical fibre cables

    Series: Photonics Seminar Series

    Abstract: Currently, submarine fibre-optic cables carry more than 98% of the international data traffic, dwarfing the amount carried by satellites. In this talk I will show that these essential infrastructures for communications also show potential for geophysical monitoring in the bottom of the oceans, where the sparsity of geophysical instrumentation is nowadays hampering efforts to quantify extremely important phenomena in our planet and climate change such as e.g. water mixing and stratification. The deployment and maintenance of a larger and denser network of traditional offshore sensors, which would be needed to produce more accurate estimations of climate change models, poses an important economic barrier that has so far proved unsurmountable. I will show that submarine optical fiber cables can be used, with no essential modification, to monitor sea currents across large distances, and also to obtain more accurate observations of water mixing phenomena occurring over tens of kilometers. Among other things, I will show that internal waves, a large-scale phenomenon generated by the interaction of barotropic tides with bathymetric changes in the sea-bottom, can be very accurately observed by deploying chirped-pulse Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) technology over these cables. I will also explain the prospects for using some of these cables for early warning of tsunamis in exposed countries.

    Biography: Miguel González-Herráez received the M.Eng. and D.Eng. degrees from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. In October 2004, he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronics, University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in June 2006 and later to Full Professor in January 2018. He is the author or coauthor of >150 papers in international refereed journals and >160 conference contributions, and has given >30 invited/plenary talks at prestigious international conferences. His research interests cover the wide field of nonlinear interactions in optical fibers, with particular focus on distributed optical fiber sensing. Prof. González-Herráez has received several important recognitions to his research career, including two European Research Council Grants, the "Miguel Catalan" prize for young scientists given by the Comunidad de Madrid and the "Agustin de Betancourt" prize of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering.

    Host: Mercedeh Khajavikhan, Michelle Povinelli, Constantine Sideris; Hossein Hashemi; Wade Hsu; Mengjie Yu; Wei Wu; Tony Levi; Alan E. Willner; Andrea Martin Armani

    More Information: Miguel Gonzalez Herraez Seminar Flyer.pdf

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Marilyn Poplawski

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  • CS Seminar: Michael Pradel (University of Stuttgart) - Neuro-Symbolic Developer Tools for Analyzing, Executing, and Repairing Code

    Fri, Jul 12, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Michael Pradel, University of Stuttgart

    Talk Title: Neuro-Symbolic Developer Tools for Analyzing, Executing, and Repairing Code

    Abstract: Developer productivity and software quality critically depend on effective software development tools. Traditional, symbolic program analysis tools are often limited in their ability to understand developer intention and rely on various hand-crafted heuristics. Neural software analysis addresses these limitations, but remains unaware of the formal semantics of a program and hence easily misses facts and rules that are actually well known. This talk argues that carefully combining neural and symbolic reasoning provides an effective means to address various challenging software development problems. To illustrate this point, I will describe our 8-year long journey of creating neuro-symbolic developer tools, ranging from learning-based bug detectors and type predictors, to our most recent work on learning-guided execution and program repair based on an autonomous LLM-based agent. I will discuss lessons learned on this journey and conclude with an outline of open challenges waiting to be addressed in order to close the gap between symbolic and neural software developer tools.The talk is based (mostly) on these papers:https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.02343 https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.17134

    Biography: Michael Pradel is a full professor at the University of Stuttgart, which he joined after a PhD at ETH Zurich, a post-doc at UC Berkeley, an assistant professorship at TU Darmstadt, and a sabbatical at Facebook. His research interests span software engineering, programming languages, security, and machine learning, with a focus on tools and techniques for building reliable, efficient, and secure software. In particular, he is interested in neural software analysis, analyzing web applications, dynamic analysis, and test generation. Michael has been recognized through the Ernst-Denert Software Engineering Award, an Emmy Noether grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG), an ERC Starting Grant, best/distinguished paper awards at FSE (3x), ISSTA, ASE, and ASPLOS, and by being named an ACM Distinguished Member.

    Host: Chao Wang

    Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 115

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: CS Faculty Affairs

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  • AI Seminar- Nexa AI – Functional Tokens for On-device Multimodal Models

    Fri, Jul 12, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Information Sciences Institute

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Alex Chen, CEO + Founder of Nexa AI and Zack Li, CTO + Co-Founder of Nexa AI, Nexa AI

    Talk Title: Nexa AI -“ Functional Tokens for On-device Multimodal Models

    Abstract: Zoom meeting ID: 944 0958 4905Passcode: 822247 Tokenizing corpora into semantic tokens has proven effective for large language models. However, this approach encounters challenges when applied to function calls, leading to inaccuracies and hallucinations. To address this issue, we have pioneered a new training methodology using functional tokens, transforming complex function calling tasks into language completion tasks. We also released Octopus-series models using functional tokens and achieved GPT4 level function calling accuracy with 2B parameter size. Our Octopus-V2 model achieved 35 times faster inference speed up and 70 times more energy efficiency compared to the RAG plus Llama3 solution, and is four times faster than OpenAI’s GPT-4O. The functional token is then applied to Octopus-V3, a sub-billion multimodal model, adept at both text and images, and fluent in English and Mandarin. Furthermore, Octopus-V4 extends these capabilities into a graph network structure, with Octopus-V2 as the master node and integration with other open-source models as worker nodes, Octopus-V4 achieved 74.8 MMLU and outperforms GPT3.5, and applied for cloud and edge collaboration. Nexa’s Octopus-V2 models ranked 2nd place among half a million models on HuggingFace between Apr 2 and Apr 15, surpassing XAI grok and Databrick DBRX model during that period, and was mentioned by Google Gemma team during the 2024 Google IO. Nexa’s Octopus models have also attracted industrial collaboration interest from AWS, Google, Volkswagen US, Qualcomm, ByteDance, Stellantis, Zoom, and more.

    Biography: Alex Chen is the CEO and founder of Nexa AI, with PhD in Mechanics and Computation from Stanford University. His research interests lie in AI agent development empowered by large language models. He is a serial entrepreneur and served as President of the Chinese Entrepreneur Organization before. He is also a gold medalist in the Mathematics Olympiad. Zack Li is the CTO and co-founder of Nexa AI. Before this, he accumulated four years of industrial experience in on-device AI at Google and Amazon Lab126, focusing on model deployment, performance optimization, and edge-cloud collaboration. He received an MS in Operation Research from Stanford University. Alex and Zack are founders of Nexa AI and have authored Octopus series models. Nexa AI builds lightweight but powerful multimodal models for AI agents and provides on-device SDK infra to make models run fast and energy-efficiently. For more information, visit https://www.nexa4ai.com/ If speaker approves to be recorded for this AI Seminar talk, it will be posted on our USC/ISI YouTube page within 1-2 business days: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCISI. Subscribe here to learn more about upcoming seminars: https://www.isi.edu/events/

    Host: Abel Salinas and Justina Gilleland

    More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/5009/nexa-ai-functional-tokens-for-on-device-multimodal-models/

    Webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxAiFHSRrwQ

    Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Virtual Only

    WebCast Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxAiFHSRrwQ

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Pete Zamar

    Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/events/5009/nexa-ai-functional-tokens-for-on-device-multimodal-models/

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  • Photonics Seminar - Shirin Mozaffari, Thursday, July 18th at 2pm in EEB 248

    Thu, Jul 18, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM

    Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Shirin Mozaffari, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

    Talk Title: A tunable charge density wave in the kagome metal ScV6Sn6

    Series: Photonics Seminar Series

    Abstract: ScV6Sn6 is a newly discovered vanadium kagome metal which hosts a charge density wave (CDW) below a temperature of 92 K. I will present detailed electrical transport results on ScV6Sn6 and its isostructural counterpart, LuV6Sn66, which lacks CDW order. By comparing the electrical properties of these two materials, several important features about the CDW state that forms in ScV6Sn6 are unraveled. Three points stand out from the comparison between the Sc and Lu compounds. First, applying a magnetic field to ScV6Sn6 changes the resistivity vs temperature from metal-like to insulator-like. Next, a observe behavior akin to the anomalous Hall effect in the CDW phase of ScV6Sn6 is seen even without magnetic order. Lastly, the temperature dependence of the resistivity scales as T3/5 in ScV6Sn6, KV3Sb5, RbV3Sb5, and CsV3Sb5, suggesting that this sublinear behavior is universal among the vanadium kagome compounds which exhibit CDW. By contrast, resistivity in the non-CDW compound LuV6Sn6 has a linear temperature dependence in the same temperature region.

    Biography: Shirin Mozaffari is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She works at the group of Prof. David Mandrus at the Materials Science and Engineering Department. Shirin synthesizes single crystals of quantum materials and studies the electronic and magnetic properties of them by methods such as magnetotransport and torque magnetometry.

    Host: Mercedeh Khajavikhan

    More Information: Shirin Mozaffari Seminar Flyer.pdf

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

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Marilyn Poplawski

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  • Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Mon, Jul 29, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars


    Speaker: Dr. Dean Ho, Ph.D., Provost, Chair Professor, Head of Department of Biomedical Engineering

    Talk Title: Stories Over Snapshots: Optimizing Health with Digital Platforms

    Abstract: This talk will highlight our human trial programs at the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. Our platforms do not use population-based Big Data to train algorithms to treat individuals. Instead, we use only a subject’s own data to manage only their own care - longitudinally. Importantly, we have also developed implementation strategies that span user engagement through co-design that have empowered the scale-up of our platforms.
    Our platforms have led to lifesaving outcomes and are among the only approaches globally that have been prospectively used for treatment applications. We have also harnessed our approaches to address health optimization, understanding how a combination of health interventions can be used to drive changes in biomarkers to drive and sustain behavior change.
    Implications of this platform can potentially be applied to fields such as population health, healthy aging, digital longevity medicine, athletic performance optimization, and other domains. 
     

    Biography: Prof. Ho and collaborators manage a portfolio of over 10 prospective, interventional human clinical trials. His team successfully developed and validated CURATE.AI, a powerful artificial intelligence platform that personalizes human treatment for a broad spectrum of indications ranging from oncology to digital therapeutics and infectious diseases, among others. Prof. Ho is an elected Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors (NAI), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was also named to the HIMSS Future50 Class of 2021 for his internationally recognized leadership in digital health. Prof. Ho is a Co-Chair of the World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group for the regulation of AI for Health.
     

    Host: Peter Wang

    Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - 145

    Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

    Contact: Carla Stanard

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