SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for March 23, 2023
-
ECE-S Seminar - Dr Stephen Xia
Thu, Mar 23, 2023 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr Stephen Xia, Postdoctoral Scholar | University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Embedded Intelligence Towards Smarter, Healthier and Safer Environments
Abstract: We have seen remarkable growth in smart devices and artificial intelligence in all aspects of our lives. Despite the ever-growing amount of AI around us, our environments are still far from truly intelligent. At the touch of a button, we have access to powerful AI that can easily outperform any human in complex tasks, yet our environments still cannot alert us to dangerous approaching vehicles, nor help us find our lost child in a busy grocery store, something all of us do regularly and intuitively. In this talk, I will present two lines of work that bridge the gap between AI and truly intelligent environments.
First, I will introduce my work on embedded acoustic intelligence. I will start by presenting my work on embedding acoustic intelligence into wearables we commonly carry, such as headphones and helmets, to create safer cities. These low-cost and long-lasting wearables leverage novel architectures that utilize a combination of physics-based models and machine learning techniques to alert pedestrians and construction workers of dangers from oncoming vehicles, ultimately acting as a second pair of ears that create a sphere of safety around us. Next, I will discuss how we can take lessons learned from urban safety to realize a generalized selective audio filtering architecture that allows us to embed robust acoustic intelligence into a diverse set of real-time and resource-constrained applications and platforms. This architecture dynamically leverages the physics of audio and a wide range of data-driven machine learning models to allow engineers and developers to enhance and suppress custom sounds in their applications.
Second, I will present my work on creating more configurable, adaptive, and evolving environments, which are three critical characteristics we need to realize to create truly intelligent environments. I will first touch on several works that allow anyone, regardless of their technical background, to easily deploy and configure complex sensing solutions, such as camera networks for indoor occupant tracking, without needing any domain or expert knowledge. Second, I will introduce my work on adaptive smart home systems that jointly consider human preferences and available resources within the environment to improve home automation and greatly reduce the barrier of entry for smart home technologies. Finally, I will present several works where we realize new dormant sensing and compute capabilities in several platforms, such as drones, by only leveraging processes already present, thereby "evolving" new capabilities completely for free.
Biography: Stephen Xia is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, advised by Dr. Prabal Dutta and Dr. Xiaofan (Fred) Jiang. Stephen received his Ph.D. in 2022 from Columbia University and his B.S. in 2016 from Rice University, all in Electrical Engineering. His research lies at the intersection between systems, embedded machine learning, and signal processing, spanning areas in mobile and embedded systems, Internet-of-Things, cyber-physical systems, artificial intelligence, and smart health. His work takes a joint physics-based and data-driven approach to realize truly intelligent and autonomous environments by embedding and dynamically utilizing compute, sensing, actuation, storage, and networking resources all around us. Stephen's research has been highlighted by many popular media outlets, including Mashable, Fast Company, and Gizmodo, and has received various distinctions, including Best Demo Awards at ACM SenSys 2021, ACM/IEEE IPSN 2020, ACM/IEEE IoTDI 2018, and the Best Presentation Award at IEEE VNC 2018.
Host: Dr Murali Annavaram, annavara@usc.edu
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93387896454?pwd=MVdwL2NHS1hqSXFlaFhPaE91WHVGUT09More Information: ECE Seminar Announcement 03.23.2023 - Stephen Xia.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 248
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93387896454?pwd=MVdwL2NHS1hqSXFlaFhPaE91WHVGUT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Miki Arlen
-
Semiconductors & Microelectronics Technology Seminar - Heng Wang, Thursday, March 23 at 11am in EEB 132
Thu, Mar 23, 2023 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Heng Wang, Illinois Institute of Technology
Talk Title: The Thermoelectric Effect under Photon Excitation
Series: Semiconductors & Microelectronics Technology
Abstract: Thermoelectric phenomena allow energy conversion between heat and electricity, which can be used in energy harvesting, solid state refrigeration, and temperature regulation. The physical origin of these phenomena are well understood with semi-classic theories such as the Boltzmann transport theory. Carefully conducted experiments often reveal results as predicted by such theories. Nonetheless, carrier transport not only happens when the system is near thermal equilibrium, as for the case of thermoelectric phenomena, but also happens in excited systems with electrons far from thermal equilibrium. And this draws our interest over the past a few years. In this talk we will discuss the characteristic, the physical origin, and measurement strategies of the thermoelectric effect under photon excitation (which is one version of the photo-thermoelectric phenomena). We will discuss a few case studies, what can these results tell us about the materials, and potential applications. There are still much to understand with this effect and we hope this discussion could stimulate more interest and applications as well.
Biography: Heng Wang is an assistant professor at department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology. He received his B.S. in materials science and engineering from Tsinghua University, China, and his PhD in materials science from California Institute of Technology. Before joining IIT he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He has over ten years of research experience in thermoelectric materials, physics, and devices, with more than 13000 citations. His current research interests include high-performance thermoelectric materials, as well as device design, manufacturing, and new applications. In addition, he is particularly interested in the interplay of photoelectric and thermoelectric phenomena.
Host: J Yang, H Wang, C Zhou, S Cronin, W Wu, J. Ravichandran
More Information: HengWang_0323.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
