SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for January 13, 2016
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EE-EP Seminar, Ashwin Seshia, January 13th, EEB 132 @ 11:00am
Wed, Jan 13, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ashwin A. Seshia, University of Cambridge
Talk Title: Dynamics-Enhanced Sensory Processing
Abstract: Instruments based on resonant and oscillatory elements have historically been employed to conduct some of the most accurate physical measurements. This talk describes research to enable miniaturized electromechanical sensor systems wherein precise engineering of the dynamical response is instrumental in enabling new modes of transduction, energy conversion and sensing. A series of research results from my group will be provided to illustrate the approach. First, seismic-grade accelerometers based on resonant output principles will be described where the interaction of mechanical nonlinearities and noise processes sets limits on the achievable resolution. Further, by engineering the principle of vibration mode localization in weakly coupled resonators, passive immunity to environmental drift is achieved by recording eigenstate variations as a measure of differential structural perturbations. Next, net-zero power strain sensors for structural health monitoring applications are enabled by integrating vibration energy harvesters together with low-power temperature compensated resonant strain gauges. By engineering the principle of parametric resonance for vibration energy harvesting it is possible to engineer vibration energy harvesters with multi-frequency responsivity and substantially larger recoverable electrical power as compared to classical approaches based on direct (linear) resonance under specified conditions. Finally, with a view towards future application of engineered non-linearity in micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems, I will describe results from electro-acoustic biosensors utilizing noise and non-linear response as readout modalities, and the mutual synchronization of non-linear microelectromechanical oscillators demonstrating significantly improved frequency stability and potentially enabling fundamentally new energy-efficient approaches to sensory information processing. Micro- and nanofabricated devices engineered using these and similar approaches are now being integrated into monitoring tools and sensor systems for a variety of application scenarios.
Biography: Ashwin A. Seshia received the B. Tech. degree in engineering physics from IIT Bombay, India, in 1996; the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA, in 1999 and 2002, respectively; and the M.A. degree from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., in 2008. He joined the faculty of the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, in 2002, where he is currently a Reader in Microsystems Technology and a Fellow of Queens' College. His Research interests are in the domain of micro- and nano-engineered dynamical systems. He serves on the editorial boards of the IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, IOP Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, and the IEEE Transactions of Nanotechnology.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Jan 13, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Emrah Akyol, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: "Communication in Strategic Environments: Crawford-Sobel Meet Shannon"
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Over thirty years ago, economists Vincent Crawford and Joel Sobel introduced the concepts of strategic information transmission (SIT) and cheap talk in their seminal Econometrica paper, as a way of understanding how information is strategically revealed (or not) by agents whose interests are only partially aligned. This theory has had tremendous success in explaining situations ranging from advertising to expert advice sharing, and many extensions of the original SIT model and the broader "principal-agent" class of problems have been extensively studied in the economics literature since. However, despite its name and even superficially obvious connection with information theory (IT), SIT has so far received very little attention from the IT community.
In this talk, I will present approaches to address such strategic communication problems from the lens of information and game theories. Specifically, I will focus on a strategic communication paradigm where the better-informed transmitter communicates with a receiver who makes the ultimate decision concerning both agents. While the economists have extensively studied the Nash equilibrium variant of this problem, the more relevant Stackelberg equilibrium enables the use of Shannon theoretic tools. I will present the fundamental limits of strategic compression and communication problems in the SIT context. Particularly, three problem settings will be considered, focusing on the quadratic distortion measures and jointly Gaussian variables: compression, communication, and the simple equilibrium conditions without any compression or communication. The analysis will then be extended to the receiver side information setting, where the strategic aspect of the problem yields rather surprising results regarding optimality of uncoded communication. Finally, several applications of the results within the broader context of decision theory will be presented.
Biography: Emrah Akyol received the Ph.D. degree in 2011 from the University of California at Santa Barbara. From 2006 to 2007, he held positions at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and NTT Docomo Laboratories, both in Palo Alto, CA where he worked on topics in video compression and streaming. From 2013 to 2014, Dr. Akyol was a postdoctoral researcher in the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Southern California. Currently, Dr. Akyol is a postdoctoral research associate in the Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His current research is on the interplay of networked information theory, game theory, communications, sensing and control. Dr. Akyol received the 2010 UCSB Dissertation Fellowship, the 2014 USC Postdoctoral Training Award and was an invited participant of the 2015 NSF Early-Career Investigators Workshop on CPS and Smart City.
Host: Prof. Ashutosh Nayyar
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
