USC - Viterbi School of Engineering

Feb
22

5th Annual EGSA Banquet - TICKET SALE!!!
Thu, Feb 22, 2007
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Receptions & Special Events

When : March 4, 2007, 6:00 p.m. - 12:00 a.m.Where: Radisson Hotel, FigueroaYou are invited to the 5th Annual EGSA Banquet!It's the biggest event of the year with unlimited food, live music, performances, cash bar, live DJ, dancing, and amazing prizes!!! Menu items include Chicken Cacciatore, Roasted Leg of Lamb, Vegetarian Fried Rice, Fresh Pasta, Salad(s), Chocolate Cake, Cheese Cake and much more...Tickets are just $15! But hurry, as tickets are sold on a first come first serve basis, and space is limited. Please contact your EGSA department senator or egsa@usc.edu for tickets.They will also be sold on Wednesday, February 21, from 12-1 pm on the RTH Patio and at our E-week events. Please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/egsa for the most updated information.***Event is open to everyone (including your family and friends). Limit 3 tickets per person. Please bring your student ID to the ticket sale to reserve your ticket. Tickets are non-refundable.Supported by: GPSS & VSoE Office of Master's & Professional Programs
Audiences: Graduate

Contact: MEGA
Feb
22

SPRING ENGINEERING CAREER FAIR
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 10:00 AM - 03:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Student Activity

The Engineering Career Fair is free and open to all students in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Students do not need to register for this event…just show up! This casual, yet professional, environment allows students the opportunity to have brief conversations with recruiters about full-time employment, internships, and co-ops. Don't forget your resume!
Location: E-QUAD
Audiences: ALL CURRENT ENGINEERING STUDENTS!

Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
Feb
22

Harnessing Vacuum Fluctuations: Exotic Physics and Micromechanics of the Casimir effect
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Federico CapassoHarvad UniversityAbstract
The Casimir effect is the attraction between uncharged metals in vacuum due to quantum mechanical fluctuations of the electromagnetic field (zero point energy). A similar force, but weaker, exists between dielectrics. From a physical point of view these forces are interesting because they represent macroscopic manifestations of quantum mechanics and because they can be designed by altering the shape and nature of the interacting materials. Interestingly these forces have enabled new functionalities in suitably scaled MEMS (nanometric position sensors) and will need to be accounted for in future generations of MEMS technology. The talk will also discuss on going experiments aiming at measuring repulsive Casimir forces, which could be used in frictionless bearings based on the phenomenon of "quantum floatation" and the search for the predicted "vacuum torque" between suitable birefringent materials.Bio
Federico Capasso received the doctor of Physics degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Rome, Italy, in 1973 and after doing research in fiber optics at Fondazione Bordoni in Rome, joined Bell Labs in 1976. In 1984 he was made a distinguished Member of Technical Staff and in 1997 a Bell Labs Fellow. In addition to his research activity Capasso has held several management positions at Bell Labs including Head of the Quantum Phenomena and Device Research Department and the Semiconductor Physics Research Department and Vice President of Physical Research. His current research in quantum electronics deals with the design of new light sources based on giant optical nonlinearities in quantum wells such as Raman injection lasers, inversioless injetcion lasers and widely tunable sources of TeraHertz radiation based on difference frequency generation and Raman lasers. He has also carried out research on quantum chaos in deformed microlasers which led he and his collaborators to invent microlasers opearting on bow-tie modes. More recently his research has expanded to high-precision measurements of Casimir forces using MEMS (MicroElectroMechanicalSystems)
and other quantum electrodynamical effects such as the torque between birefringent materials due to vacumm fluctuations. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics (UK), the Optical Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, IEEE and SPIE. He holds an honorary doctorate in Electronic Engineering form the University of Bologna, Italy. Capasso has co-authored over 300 papers, edited four volumes, and holds over 50 US patents.Website: ee.usc.edu/munushian
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Ericka Lieberknecht
Feb
22

MECHANISMS OF TRANSPORT ACROSS THE ALVEOLAR EPITHELIAL BARRIER: FROM IONS TO NANOPARTICLES
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 12:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Mork Family Department of Chemical Enginering and Materials SciencePresents a Distinguished Lecture by Professor Edward CrandallMECHANISMS OF TRANSPORT ACROSS THE ALVEOLAR EPITHELIAL BARRIER: FROM IONS TO NANOPARTICLESAbstract Interest in nanotechnology has greatly expanded in recent years, driven in part by growth in manufacturing and applications that range widely from fabrication of useful nanoscale circuitry and robotics to biological applications of nanomaterials in imaging and transduction at the cellular and molecular levels. Nanoparticles promise to be useful for many biomedicine-related applications, yet their toxicity, trafficking characteristics across cells, and specific pathways and mechanisms of uptake into pneumocytes are not well known. The lung can serve as a portal for entry for nanomaterials (ambient and/or manufactured) into the systemic circulation. Inhaled nanoparticles can be found in heart, bone marrow, blood vessels and other organs, and their most likely route of entry into the circulation is across the epithelia of the lung, especially the alveolar epithelium with its very large surface area and thin barrier thickness. Further knowledge about the mechanisms by which particles injure, interact with and/or are transported across the alveolar epithelium is thus of considerable importance for understanding health effects related to inhalation of nanoparticles in ambient air. Nevertheless, nanoparticle-based drug/gene delivery and other biological applications may be important to pursue, even though biocompatibility and toxicity of such nanomaterials are not yet well defined. To explore interactions with the air-blood barrier of distal lung, nanoparticle injury of, uptake into and trafficking across alveolar epithelial cells were investigated. Polystyrene nanoparticles (PNP) of different surface charge and size were utilized as models of defined manufactured nanomaterials. Results indicate that (1) all PNP are non-toxic to the cells, (2) PNP translocate transcellularly across rat alveolar epithelial cell monolayers, and (3) transepithelial trafficking of PNP is markedly influenced by nanoparticle surface charge density and size. Specific mechanisms underlying these interactions remain to be fully determined.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Petra Pearce
Feb
22

Optimal Computation with Noisy Quantum Walks
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

SPEAKER: Dr. Viv Kendon, University of LeedsABSTRACT: Quantum versions of random walks on the line and cycle show a quadratic improvement in their spreading rate and mixing times respectively. The addition of decoherence to the quantum walk produces a more uniform distribution on the line, and even faster mixing on the cycle by removing the need for time-averaging to obtain a uniform distribution. By calculating the entanglement between the coin and the position of the quantum walker, the optimal decoherence rates are found to be such that all the entanglement is just removed by the time the final measurement is made. This requires only O(log T) random bits for a quantum walk of T steps.Bio: Viv Kendon works in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds, funded by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, in the new Quantum Information group headed by Vlatko Vedral. Before this she was part of Peter Knight's Quantum Information and Quantum Optics Theory Group at Imperial College, and prior to Imperial (April 2000), was in the Computational Nonlinear & Quantum Optics group at Strathclyde University working on quantum measurement with Steven Barnett. Viv Kendon finished her PhD at Edinburgh in July 1999, in the Soft Condensed Matter group. Before her PhD, she used to work for GreenNet, a non-profit Internet service provider (now TWENTY years old!) and member the Association for Progressive Communications. She has also done work for Oxfam and Amnesty International. Prior to joining GreenNet she lived in Glasgow and was an active campaigner for Scottish Campagin for Nuclear Disarmament. Her first degree is from Oxford University, in Physics, and she has a Masters in Physics from UC Berkeley.Host: Todd Brun, tbrun@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Feb
22

How Do You Count Individual Biological Bonds
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Todd Sulchek Staff ScientistBiosecurity and Nanosciences LaboratoryLawrence Livermore National Laboratory My research program focuses on the measurement and prediction of how multiple individual biological bonds produce a coordinated function within molecular and cellular systems. In particular I focus on two complementary goals. The first is to understand the kinetics of multivalent pharmaceuticals during their targeting of disease markers. The second is to quantify the host cell signal transduction resulting from pathogen invasion. We develop and employ several tools to accomplish these goals. The primary platform for study is the atomic force microscope (AFM), which controls the 3D positioning of biologically functionalized micro- and nanoscale mechanical probes. This talk will describe our method of using single molecule dynamic force spectroscopy to determine the binding strength of antibody- protein complexes as a function of binding valency in a direct and simple measurement. We used the atomic force microscope to measure the force required to rupture a single complex formed by the MUC1 protein, a cancer indicator, and therapeutic antibodies that target MUC1. We will show that nanomechanical polymer tethers can be used in a completely novel manner to count the number of biological bonds formed. Mechanical work (on the scale of a few kBT!) will disrupt these bonds and can quantify the overall kinetics. This ability to form, count and dissociate biological bonds with nanomechanical forces provides a powerful method to study the physical laws governing the interactions of the biological molecules.
Location: Troyland Apartments (TAP) - er Hall of Humanities, (THH) Rm 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: April Mundy
Feb
22

CS Colloquium- Julia Chuzhoy
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Dr. Julie ChuzhoySchool of MathematicsThe Institute for Advanced StudyTitle: Cuts and Flows in Directed GraphsAbstract:Cuts and flows are among the most basic graph theoretic notions.
Applications that require solving graph cut or flow problems arise in almost every area of computer science. The study of the connection between flows and cuts dates back to the late fifties when Ford and Fulkerson proved that in the single-commodity environment, minimum cut equals maximum flow in any graph. A natural generalization of this result would be establishing the relationship between flows and cuts in the presence of multiple commodities. This relationship is usually expressed via the notion of flow-cut gap:
the maximum ratio, achievable for any graph, between the maximum multi-commodity flow and the corresponding cut value, called minimum multicut.Flow-cut gaps have been extensively studied for more than five decades now, and they are widely used in the design and the analysis of algorithms. One of the major breakthroughs in this area is a complete understanding of the flow-cut gap in undirected graphs, which was proved to be logarithmic. In spite of this success, the flow-cut gaps have remained poorly understood in directed graphs. In particular, it has remained an open question whether the flow-cut gap in directed graphs is also logarithmic. In this talk we will answer this question in the negative by showing that, in sharp contrast to the undirected case, the flow-cut gap in directed graphs is polynomial.Bio:Julia Chuzhoy is a member in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Technion, Israel, and spent two years as a postdoctoral associate at MIT and University of Pennsylvania. Chuzhoy's research area is theoretical computer science, with the main emphasis on design and analysis of algorithms, approximation of NP-hard problems and hardness of approximation proofs.Hosted by David KempeSnacks will be served

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien
Feb
22

Everything You Wanted to Know About Innovation at USC Krisztina Holly, Vice Provost and Executive D
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 04:30 PM - 06:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Where does innovation begin?
With an idea.
Your idea.Have an idea and don't know what to do? Interested in the "do's and don'ts" of innovation? Want to know more about the innovation resources available from the USC? Many inventors fail to realize how important it is to protect their work in order to receive funding as a start up. Protecting ideas is usually a requirement to successfully moving an innovation to market. Krisztina Holly provides an overview on USC Stevens, hosts an interactive discussion on innovation programs and answers your questions on starting your own company or licensing your innovation. Bring all your questions!Did you know?
University start-ups are 100 times more likely to go public than the average U.S. start-up. Over the last 10 years, USC has produced 63 start-ups from technology licenses alone!
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 200
Audiences: Graduate

Contact: EGSA
Feb
22

SWE Date Auction
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 05:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity

Get ready for the 3rd Annual SWE Date Auction! Last year, we auctioned off 11 beautiful ladies and 12 handsome gentlemen, with some bids exceeding $150! All proceeds go to charity.Applications to be an auctionee are now being accepted. If you're hot, smart, and an engineer, make sure you sign up! Apply TODAY: http://www-scf.usc.edu/~sweusc/auction/index.htm . All applications must be submitted by Monday, November 27th at 5:00pm.
Location: E-Quad
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Society of Women Engineers
Feb
22

USC Mega Second General Body Meeting
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity

Graduation, Thesis, and "Dessert"ation Preparation
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211
Audiences: Graduate

Contact: MEGA