SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for August
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Thu, Aug 04, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Tina Woolf, Claremont Graduate University
Talk Title: Weighted L1-Minimization for Sparse Recovery under Arbitrary Prior Information
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Weighted L1-minimization has been studied as a technique for the reconstruction of a sparse signal from compressively sampled measurements when prior information about the signal, in the form of a support estimate, is available. In this talk, we present recent results on the recovery conditions and the associated recovery guarantees of weighted L1-minimization when arbitrarily many distinct weights are permitted. For example, such a setup might be used when one has multiple estimates for the support of a signal, and these estimates have varying degrees of accuracy. Our analysis yields an extension to existing works that assume only a single constant weight is used.
Biography: Tina Woolf is pursuing the Ph.D. degree in Mathematics at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Claremont Graduate University. She received her B.S. in Mathematics from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in 2009 and her M.S. in Mathematics from Claremont Graduate University in 2012. Her research interests include compressed sensing, sparse approximation, and stochastic optimization. Since 2009, she has also been a Systems Engineer at Northrop Grumman, primarily involved in modeling, simulation, and payload system performance analysis of infrared systems.
Host: Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Advancing MRI to See Right Through The Way You Move
Fri, Aug 19, 2016 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Daniel Weller, Ph.D., Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia
Talk Title: Advancing MRI to See Right Through The Way You Move
Series: Medical Imaging Seminar Series
Abstract: Motion in different forms remains a major challenge in numerous clinical applications of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), such as assessing cardiac function, diagnosing masses in the liver or abdomen, and tracing neural function while planning and performing brain surgery. To make MRI more competitive alongside ultrasound and CT imaging for these applications, current research aims to make image acquisition faster and more robust to motion artifacts. Like a mash-up of NSYNC and Outkast, this talk will focus on how motion estimation and correction and image reconstruction can be integrated to address these challenges. After summarizing recent collaborative efforts in these areas at the University of Virginia, this talk will explore some of the open questions and unsolved problems that stand in the way of translating state of the art methods to clinical practice. This talk will conclude with a discussion of related questions in imaging and connections beyond MRI.
Biography: Daniel Weller is an assistant professor in the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia (UVA), in Charlottesville, VA, where he leads the Virginia Imaging Theory and Algorithms Laboratory. Previously, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, MI, where he worked on imaging research supported by a US National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellowship. He completed his SM and PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2008 and 2012 at MIT, in Cambridge, MA, preceded by completing his BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2006 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He serves as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging and is a member of the special interest group on Computational Imaging in the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He is also a team leader for UVA CHARGE, an NSF ADVANCE program aimed at recruiting and retaining women faculty in STEM and SBE fields. He is a member of IEEE, ISMRM, AHA, Eta Kappa Nu, and Tau Beta Pi.
Host: Professor Justin Haldar
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
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EE 598 Cyber-Physical Systems Seminar Series
Mon, Aug 22, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hana Koorehdavoudi , University of Southern California
Talk Title: Drawing Inspiration from Collective Motion in Nature
Abstract: Biological systems are frequently categorized as complex systems due to their capabilities of generating spatio-temporal structures from apparent random decisions. In spite of research on analyzing biological systems, we lack a quantifiable framework for measuring their complexity. To fill this gap, we develop a new paradigm to study a collective group of N agents moving and interacting in a three-dimensional space. Our paradigm helps to identify the spatio-temporal states of the motion of the group and their associated transition probabilities. This framework enables the estimation of the free energy landscape corresponding to the identified states. Based on the energy landscape, we quantify missing information, emergence, self-organization and complexity for a collective motion. We show that the collective motion of the group of agents evolves to reach the most probable state with relatively lowest energy level and lowest missing information compared to other possible states. Our analysis demonstrates that the natural group of animals exhibit a higher degree of emergence, self-organization and complexity over time. Consequently, this algorithm can be integrated into new frameworks to engineer collective motions to achieve certain degrees of emergence, self-organization and complexity.
Biography: Hana Koorehdavoudi is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California. She received her BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology in 2010. Her research interests include cellular motility, biological swarm dynamics, applied mathematics to design and modeling of dense networks of bacteria with a potential application for therapeutic purposes (e.g. drug delivery in inaccessible regions of the human body).
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Seminar - From Harmonic Telegraph to Cellular Phones
Tue, Aug 23, 2016 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bishnu S. Atal, University of Washington
Talk Title: From Harmonic Telegraph to Cellular Phones
Abstract: It all started with two patents issued to Alexander Graham Bell in March 1876 and the world changed forever. Vast distances began to shrink. Soon, nobody was isolated. The invention produced a new industrial giant whose research laboratories supported the best in scientific research and engineering leading to major technical advances of the twentieth century. The desire for communication, anytime, anywhere spread fast; stationary phones connected by wires started fading away, replaced by 'cellular phones' ('smart phones') reflecting the cell structure of the wireless medium. This talk will provide a history of the telephones, starting from Alexander Graham Bell's 'harmonic telegraph' in 1876 to modern cellular phones.
Biography: Bishnu S. Atal is an Affiliate Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. He retired in March 2002 after working for more than 40 years at Lucent Bell Labs, and AT&T Labs
Dr. Atal's pioneering research on speech coding for providing natural-sounding speech over digital devices has resulted in standards that lie at the heart of practically every mobile phone in use today. His work has enabled wireless networks to use less spectrum space and fewer towers to aid in the mass deployment of digital cellular systems. He demonstrated during the 1960s that Linear Predictive Coding 'LPC' could represent the varying characteristics of human voice and encode the speech signal at a fraction of conventional bit rates . LPC quickly became the basis for military communication standards. He introduced the CELP method in 1985, and it is now used in practically all digital cellular speech standards as well as standards for digital voice communication over the Internet.
Dr. Atal is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. His many honors include the Thomas Edison Patent Award (1994) , the New Jersey Hall of Fame Inventor of the Year Award (2000), the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Field Award (1986), the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering (2003), and the 2013 IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal.
Bishnu resides in Mukilteo, Washington. He has two daughters, Alka and Namita, two granddaughters, Jyotica and Sonali, and two grandsons, Ananth and Niguel.
Host: Shrikanth Narayanan & Panayiotis Georgiou
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tanya Acevedo-Lam/EE-Systems
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(Network) Massive MIMO – Analysis for a Local Area Scenario
Thu, Aug 25, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Stefan Dierks, Technical University Munich
Talk Title: (Network) Massive MIMO -“ Analysis for a Local Area Scenario
Abstract: The performance of centralized and distributed deployments of massive MIMO in an office building is analyzed both with and without cooperation. It is shown that using twice as many base station antennas as data streams provides most of the massive MIMO benefits. A simple transmission scheme achieves user fairness and operates close to a capacity upper bound. The tradeoff between performance and cost for backhauling is evaluated by comparing cooperation of distributed base stations with a single central deployment. First results on the equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) of massive MIMO arrays are presented.
Biography: Stefan Dierks received the B.Sc. and the M.Sc. equivalent Diplom-Ingenieur degree in Electrical Engineering from Technical University Munich (TUM) in 2009 and 2011 respectively. During his studies he visited Universidad Nacional del Sur in BahÃa Blanca, Argentina for one semester. Since 2011 he is working towards his Ph.D. degree at the Institute for Communications Engineering at TUM under the supervision of Prof. Kramer. His research interests include massive MIMO, LTE, 5G, EIRP of MIMO arrays, and Interference Alignment.
Host: Andreas Molisch, molisch@usc.edu, EEB 530, x04670
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Cyber-Physical Systems Seminar
Mon, Aug 29, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Pierluigi Nuzzo, USC
Talk Title: Cyber-Physical System Design Using Contracts
Series: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)
Abstract: The realization of complex cyber-physical systems is creating design and verification challenges that will soon become insurmountable with today's engineering practices. While model-based design tools are already facilitating several design tasks, harnessing the complexity of the Internet-of-Things scenario is only deemed possible within a unifying methodology. This methodology should help interconnect different tools, possibly operating on different system representations, to enable scalable design space exploration and early detection of requirement inconsistencies.
In this talk, I show how a contract-based approach provides a formal foundation for a cyber-physical system design methodology which can address the above challenges and encompass both horizontal and vertical integration steps. I use assume-guarantee contracts and their algebra (e.g., composition, conjunction, and refinement) to support the entire design process and enable concurrent development of system architectures and control algorithms. In the methodology, the design is carried out as a sequence of refinement steps from a high-level specification to an implementation built out of a library of components at the lower level. Top level system requirements are represented as contracts, by leveraging a set of formal languages, including mixed integer-linear constraints and temporal logic. Contracts are then refined by combining synthesis and optimization-based methods. I propose a set of optimization-based algorithms for efficient selection of cost effective architectures under safety, reliability, and performance constraints over a large, mixed discrete continuous design space. I demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach on industrial design examples, including aircraft electric power distribution and environmental control systems, showing, for instance, that optimal selection of industrial-scale power system architectures can be performed in a few minutes. Finally, I conclude by presenting future research directions towards a full-fledged integrated framework for system design.
Biography: Pierluigi Nuzzo is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from the University of California at Berkeley in 2015. He also holds a M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pisa and the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy. Between August 2015 and August 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at U.C. Berkeley. Before joining U.C. Berkeley, he was a Researcher at IMEC, Leuven, Belgium, and the University of Pisa, working on the design of energy efficient A/D converters, frequency synthesizers for reconfigurable radio, and design methodologies for mixed-signal integrated circuits.
Pierluigi's research interests include: methodologies and tools for the design of cyber-physical systems and mixed-signal systems; contracts, interfaces, and compositional methods for embedded system design and requirement engineering; the application of automated formal methods and optimization theory to problems in embedded and cyber-physical systems and electronic design automation. He was a recipient of the Best Submission in the Design Automation Conference (DAC) and International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Design Competition in 2006, and the Best Paper Award from the International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS) in 2016. His awards and honors also include the U.C. Berkeley EECS Ph.D. Fellowship in 2008, the U.C. Berkeley Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award in 2013, the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship in 2012 and 2014, and the U.C. Berkeley EECS David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize in 2016 for his doctoral research.
Host: Prof. Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Light Modulators-Figures of Merit
Tue, Aug 30, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jacob B Khurgin, Johns Hopkins University
Talk Title: Light Modulators-Figures of Merit
Abstract: We compare characteristics of various modulators of light. Included are semiconductor QW's with band-to-band and intersubband transitions, graphene, two dimensional materials like MoS2 and polymers. The efficiency enhancement using either micro resonators or plasmonic structures is considered as well. The results indicate that the performance of different modulators depends on the very few characteristics of modulator, essentially on the ratio of absorption cross-section of the modulating medium to the waveguide cross-section and none of the currently fashionable 2D materials offer any meaningful improvement over a simple QW modulator. We also show that electro-optic modulators typically offer lower switching energies than all-optical modulators, but still their performance simply cannot match electronic devices.
Biography: Jacob B Khurgin has been a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University since he remembers himself, or, more precisely, since 1988. Prior to that he vaguely recalls being a Senior Member of Research Staff at Philips NV where he developed various useful things such as small kitchen appliances, lighting fixtures, display components and systems including 3-D projection TV. Satiated by things useful, Prof. Khurgin had decamped industry for academia to immerse himself into topics of dubious utility yet higher entertainment value. Prof. Khurgin's main area of expertise is difficult to pinpoint as it falls into the gap between optics and solid state electronics. In his 28 years at JHU Prof. Khurgin had made contributions of various degrees of relevance and importance in the fields of nonlinear optics, semiconductor optoelectronic devices, quantum-cascade lasers, optical communications, THz technology, microwave photonics, slow light, plasmonics, laser cooling, opto-mechanics, condensed matter physics, and to other fields that he can no longer recall. Prof Khurgin had authored over 320 technical papers, 500 Conference presentations, 5 book chapters, and 35 patents. More importantly, he is very fond of dogs and bicycles and he is also a Fellow of American Physical Society and Optical Society of America. Prof. Khurgin holds PhD from Polytechnic University of New York (Now elevated to the status of NYU school of Engineering).
Host: Alan Willner, x04664, willner@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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MHI Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Aug 31, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Felix Krahmer, Technical University of Munich
Talk Title: Blind Demixing and Deconvolution at Near-Optimal Rate
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Consider a communication setup of $r$ devices, each sending a signal $x_i$ to a common receiver. In the transmission process, each signal $x_i$ gets convolved with an unknown vector $w_i$, which represents the channel. The receiver measures only the superposition of these signals. The goal is to recover all signals $x_i$. Of course, this problem is highly underdetermined, but in many practical applications, it is a natural to assume that $x_i$ and $w_i$ are elements of some (known) subspaces.
Ling and Strohmer have proposed a convex recovery program for this problem, which is based on nuclear norm minimization. They were able to prove (probabilistic) recovery guarantees, which scale quadratically in the number of devices $r$. However, their numerical experiments suggest that recovery is still possible when the number of measurements scales linearly in $r$. In this talk, we present a recovery guarantee, which is linear in the number of degrees of freedom $r$ and which is close to the number of degrees of freedom. Similar to the work of Ling and Strohmer, the proof is based on the Golfing Scheme by David Gross. However, using tools on Chaos Processes developed by Krahmer, Mendelson, and Rauhut we are able to prove a certain local isometry property, which is stronger than the one established in the work of Ling and Strohmer. This allows us to construct a different dual certificate.
This is joint work with Peter Jung (TU Berlin) and Dominik Stöger (TU Munich).
Biography: Felix Krahmer received his PhD in Mathematics in 2009 from New York University under the supervision of Percy Deift and Sinan Güntürk. He was a HCM postdoc in the group of Holger Rauhut at the University of Bonn, Germany from 2009-2012. In 2012 he joined the University of Göttingen as an assistant professor for mathematical data analysis, where he has been awarded an Emmy Noether Junior Research Group. Since 2015 he has been tenure track assistant professor for optimization and data analysis in the department of mathematics at the Technical University of Munich.
Host: Prof. Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
More Info: http://ee.usc.edu/~ashutosn/CommNetS2016/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=start
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
Event Link: http://ee.usc.edu/~ashutosn/CommNetS2016/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=start
