Select a calendar:
Filter November Events by Event Type:
SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for November
-
Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Nov 05, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Hongsheng Zhong, United Parcel Service
Talk Title: TBD
Host: Dr. John Carlsson
Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - B2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Casi Jones/ ISE
-
Shifting the Frame: The Labors of ImageNet and AI Data
Wed, Nov 06, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Alex Hanna, Director of Research, Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)
Talk Title: Shifting the Frame: The Labors of ImageNet and AI Data
Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and LaMDA have led a multi-billion dollar industry in generative AI, and a potentially much larger industry in AI more generally. However, these technologies would not exist were it not for the immense amount of data mined to make them run, low-paid and exploited annotation labor required for labeling and content moderation, and questionable arrangements around consent to use these data. Although datasets used to train and evaluate commercial models are often obscured from view under the shroud of trade secrecy, we can learn a great deal about these systems by interrogating certain publicly available datasets which are considered foundational in academic AI research.
In this talk, I investigate a single dataset, ImageNet. It is not an understatement to say that without ImageNet, we may not have the current wave of deep learning techniques which power nearly all modern AI technologies. I begin from three vantage points: the histories of ImageNet from the perspective of its curators and its linguistic predecessor WordNet, the testimony of the data annotators which labeled millions of ImageNet images, and the data subjects and the creators of the images within ImageNet. Academically, I situate this analysis within a larger theory and practice of infrastructure studies. Practically, I point to a vision for technology which is not based on practices of unrestricted data mining, exploited labor, and the use of images without meaningful consent.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
Biography: Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Hanna has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS. Dr. Hanna serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, and sits on the advisory board for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group and the Scholars Council for the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.
She is a recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Forward Award, has been included on FastCompany’s Queer 50 and Go Magazine’s Women We Love lists, and has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color.
With Emily M. Bender, Dr. Hanna runs the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, playfully and wickedly tearing apart AI hype for a live audience online on Twitch and on their podcast.
Host: CAIS
More Info: https://cais.usc.edu/events/usc-cais-webinar-with-dr-alex-hanna/
Location: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Event Link: https://cais.usc.edu/events/usc-cais-webinar-with-dr-alex-hanna/
-
NL Seminar-Title TBA
Thu, Nov 07, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jaspreet Ranjit, USC
Talk Title: TBA
Series: NL Seminar
Abstract: REMINDER: Meeting hosts only admit on-line guests that they know to the Zoom meeting. Hence, you’re highly encouraged to use your USC account to sign into Zoom. If you’re an outside visitor, please inform us at (nlg-seminar-host(at)isi.edu) to make us aware of your attendance so we can admit you. Specify if you will attend remotely or in person at least one business day prior to the event Provide your: full name, job title and professional affiliation and arrive at least 10 minutes before the seminar begins. If you do not have access to the 6th Floor for in-person attendance, please check in at the 10th floor main reception desk to register as a visitor and someone will escort you to the conference room location. ZOOM INFO: ADD Meeting ID: TBA#/ Passcode: TBA#
Biography: TBA
Host: Jonathan May and Katy Felkner
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/research-groups-nlg/nlg-seminars/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Conf Rm#689
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/research-groups-nlg/nlg-seminars/
-
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Fri, Nov 08, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: John Rogers, Ph.D., Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Mterials Science and Engineering, Biomedical and Neurological Surgery
Talk Title: Soft, Skin-Interfaced Electronic and Microfluidic Systems for Health Monitoring
Abstract: Over the last decade, a convergence of new concepts in materials science, biomedical engineering, electrical engineering and advanced manufacturing has led to the emergence of diverse, classes of 'biocompatible' electronic and microfluidic systems with skin-like physical properties and wireless operational capabilities. A broad range of clinical-grade sensors of physiological health can be deployed into these platforms. The resulting technologies address health care challenges from the earliest to the latest stages of life, with demonstrated uses in both high and low resource settings, at the hospital and in the home. This talk presents an overview of the most recent fundamental and translational activities in this area, currently in progress at the Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics at Northwestern University and at several associated companies.
Biography: Professor John A. Rogers began his career at Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff in the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department in 1997 and served as Director from the end of 2000 to 2002. He then spent thirteen years at the University of Illinois, as the Swanlund Chair Professor and Director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory. In 2016, he joined Northwestern University as the Simpson/Querrey Professor, where he is also Director of the Institute for Bioelectronics. He has co-authored more than 900 papers and he is co-inventor on more than 100 patents. His research has been recognized by many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship (2009), the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2011), the Smithsonian Award for American Ingenuity in the Physical Sciences (2013), the Benjamin Franklin Medal (2019), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021), the NAS James Prize for Science and Technology Integration (2022) and the IEEE Biomedical Engineering Medal (2024). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Host: Maral Mousavi
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 109
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
-
Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Nov 12, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Jeff Shamma, Professor, Department Head, and Jerry S. Dobrovolny Chair, Department of Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana
Talk Title: Multi-Agent Higher-Order Learning VS Nash Equilibrium
Host: Dr. Maged Dessouky
More Information: FLYER 651 Dr. Jeff Shamma 11.12.24.png
Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - B2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Casi Jones/ ISE
-
AME Seminar
Wed, Nov 13, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Robert Kohn, New York University
Talk Title: TBD
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 202
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
-
Startup Stories- Matt Petros
Wed, Nov 13, 2024 @ 12:30 PM - 02:00 PM
Viterbi Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Every startup has a story. Uncover the blueprint of success in the words of our very own Viterbi Alumni, Matt Petros and hear about resources available to you start a business while at USC.
Alex Lee, USC Viterbi School of Engineering alumnus, is the Co-founder 3DEO to help companies launch better products, faster - and Reimagine Manufacturing® with 3D printing. Co-invented and designed numerous metal additive manufacturing, including binder jetting processes, and worked hand-in-hand with various Fortune 500 companies.Location: Sign into EngageSC to View Location
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jashan Dhami
Event Link: https://engage.usc.edu/Viterbitie/rsvp?id=399387
-
Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Nov 19, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Fatma Kilinc-Karzan, Associate Professor of Operations Research & Associate Professor of Computer Science Carnegie Melon University
Talk Title: TBD
Host: Dr. Meisam Razaviyayn
Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - B2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Casi Jones/ ISE
-
Algorithmic Tools for Redistricting: Fairness via Analytics
Wed, Nov 20, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. David Shmoys, Laibe/Acheson Professor and Director of the Center for Data Science for Enterprise & Society - Cornell University
Talk Title: Algorithmic Tools for Redistricting: Fairness via Analytics
Abstract: The American winner-take-all congressional district system empowers politicians to engineer electoral outcomes by manipulating district boundaries. To date, most computational solutions focus on drawing unbiased maps by ignoring political and demographic input, and instead simply optimize for compactness and other related metrics. However, we maintain that this is a flawed approach because compactness and fairness are orthogonal qualities; to achieve a meaningful notion of fairness, one needs to model political and demographic considerations, using historical data. We will discuss a series of papers that explore and develop this perspective. We first present a scalable approach to explicitly optimize for arbitrary piecewise-linear definitions of fairness; this employs a stochastic hierarchical decomposition approach to produce an exponential number of distinct district plans that can be optimized via a standard set partitioning integer programming formulation. This enables a large-scale ensemble study of congressional districts, providing insights into the range of possible expected outcomes and the implications of this range on potential definitions of fairness. Further work extending this shows that many additional real-world constraints can be easily adapted in this framework (such as minimal county splits as was recently required in Alabama legislation in response to the US Supreme Court decision Milligan v. Alabama). In addition, one can adapt the same framework to heuristically optimize for other fairness-related objectives, such achieving a targeted number of majority minority districts (and in taking this approach, achieving stronger results than obtained by a prominent randomized local search approach known as “short bursts”).
We also show that our optimization infrastructure facilitates the study of the design of multi-member districts (MMDs) in which each district elects multiple representatives, potentially through a non-winner-takes-all voting rule (as was proposed in H.R. 4000 in an earlier session of Congress). We carry out large-scale analyses for the U.S. House of Representatives under MMDs with different social choice functions, under algorithmically generated maps optimized for either partisan benefit or proportionality. We find that with three-member districts using Single Transferable Vote, fairness-minded independent commissions can achieve proportional outcomes in every state (up to rounding), and this would significantly curtail the power of advantage-seeking partisans to gerrymander.
This is joint work with Wes Gurnee, Nikhil Garg, David Rothschild, Julia Allen, Cole Gaines, David Domanski, Rares-Stefan Bucsa, and Daniel Brous.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
Biography: David Shmoys is the Laibe/Acheson Professor and Director of the Center for Data Science for Enterprise & Society at Cornell University. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984, and held postdoctoral positions at MSRI in Berkeley and Harvard University, and a faculty position at MIT before joining the faculty at Cornell University. He was Chair of the Cornell Provost’s “Radical Collaborations” Task Force on Data Science and was co-Chair of the Academic Planning Committee for Cornell Tech. His research has focused on the design and analysis of efficient algorithms for discrete optimization problems, with applications including scheduling, inventory theory, computational biology, computational sustainability, and data-driven decision-making in the sharing economy. His work has highlighted the central role that linear programming plays in the design of approximation algorithms for NP-hard problems. He was awarded the 2022 INFORMS Optimization Society Khachiyan Prize, the 2023 INFORMS Morse Lectureship, and the 2024 INFORMS Kimball Medal. His book (co-authored with David Williamson), The Design of Approximation Algorithms, was awarded the 2013 INFORMS Lanchester Prize and his work on bike-sharing (joint with Daniel Freund, Shane Henderson, and Eoin O’Mahony) was awarded the 2018 INFORMS Wagner Prize. David is a Fellow of the ACM, INFORMS, and SIAM, and was an NSF Presidential Young Investigator.
Host: CAIS
More Info: https://cais.usc.edu/events/usc-cais-seminar-with-dr-david-shmoys/
Location: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hailey Winetrobe Nadel, MPH, CHES
Event Link: https://cais.usc.edu/events/usc-cais-seminar-with-dr-david-shmoys/
-
Semiconductors & Microelectronics Technology Seminar - Azadeh Ansari, Thursday, Nov. 21st at 2:15pm in EEB 248
Thu, Nov 21, 2024 @ 02:15 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Azadeh Ansari, Georgia Institute of Technology
Talk Title: MEMS for Next Generation Radio Frequency and Biomedical Applications
Series: Semiconductors & Microelectronics Technology
Abstract: With the ever-increasing number of wireless devices, the frequency spectrum is getting more crowded and the need for signal filtering at emerging wireless bands is ever more critical. Recent advances in thickness downscaling of piezoelectric transducers have opened up new horizons for resonator operation at the millimeter wave frequencies; and enabled the use of nonlinearities in nanomechanical devices. I will present my group's work on developing novel Aluminum Scandium Nitride acoustic resonators, as well as nanomechanical frequency combs. In the second part of the talk, I will present my group's work on the fabrication, actuation and control of micro robotics systems. The recent advances in the nanofabrication and 3D printing at the nanoscale offer robotic solutions at exceedingly small scales that are instrumental for biomedical applications.
Biography: Azadeh Ansari is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on resonant MEMS, acoustics, micromachined integrated sensors, and micro-robotics. She earned the M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2013 and 2016. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she was a postdoctoral scholar in the Physics Department at Caltech. She is the recipient of the 2023 IEEE Transducers Early Career Award, 2021 Roger Webb Outstanding Junior Faculty Award from Georgia Tech, 2020 NSF CAREER award, 2017 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award from the University of Michigan, as well as 2016 University of Michigan Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for outstanding Ph.D. research.
Host: J Yang, C Zhou, S Cronin, W Wu
More Information: Azadeh Ansari Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
-
**No Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class - Thanksgiving Recess**
Tue, Nov 26, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - B2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Casi Jones/ ISE
