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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for February 26, 2009
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Mars, Venus, and Beyond: Enabling Technologies for Cruise, Entry, Descent and Landing
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Astronautical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Astronautical Engineering SeminarSpeaker:
Anita Sengupta,
NASA-JPL,
EDL and Advanced TechnologiesAbstract:
Technologies for near term NASA missions in the areas of cruise, entry, descent and landing will be discussed. The NSTAR ion thruster, first flown on Deep Space 1, was the subject of extensive research to improve its plasma production efficiency and understand wear and degradation processes. The result of our research enabled the 2007 Dawn Mission which is currently flying a suite of three ion thrusters on a journey to the Main Asteroid Belt. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will deliver a 950 kg rover, requiring the use of a supersonic aerodynamic decelerator and a novel propulsive-tethered landing approach. Our research into supersonic fluid structure interaction enabled the
qualification of a 21.5 meter parachute system, the largest ever built for an off-Earth application. The MSL terminal descent engines create a plume impingement induced landing site alteration. Our research into underexpanded supersonic jet interaction with
Martian media has yielded new experimental measurements of bearing capacity failure, entrainment, and saltation. Finally, we are developing an entry system for a Venus lander
that will see heat flux and peak deceleration levels ten times above Mars entry and experience surface pressure and temperature up to 100 times that of Earth. We are developing an ablative thermal protection system that must accommodate high levels of convective
and radiative heating during atmospheric entry. The research in each of these areas will be discussed including new findings, flight implementation, and future work.
Location: Robert Glen Rapp Engineering Research Building (RRB) - 227
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Dan Erwin
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Interviewing Strategies and Techniques
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Discover tips on how to prepare for both technical and behavioral interviews, as well as the proper steps for follow-up!
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall 211
Audiences: Current Engineering Undergraduate/Graduate Students
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
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Richard D. James presents Objective molecular dynamics
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 12:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Distinguished Lecture SeriesRichard D. James
Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics
University of MinnesotaAbstractPerhaps the most important deformations in elasticity are those that represent the bending, twisting and extension of beams. The most important flows in fluid mechanics are viscometric flows. In both cases these are the motions that, when compared with the corresponding experiments, are used to measure the material constants. We give a universal (i.e., independent of the material) molecular level interpretation of these motions. From this viewpoint the bending and twisting of beams and the viscometric flows of fluids are parts of the same subject: in both cases these motions are associated at molecular level with a time-dependent invariant manifold of the equations of molecular dynamics. The presence of this manifold can be used to simplify molecular-level computations. Its presence also suggests a modification of the laws of macroscopic physics. Interesting links to theories of turbulence, to the Boltzmann equation, to the dynamics of nanostructures, and to the Langevin equation will be discussed. Lecturer's Webpage:http://aem.umn.edu/people/faculty/bio/james.shtmlLocation: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Hydrodynamic Modeling for the State of California Ports and Harbors: Past, Present and Future
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:Dr. Aggeliki Barberopoulou,
Postdoctoral Research Associate,
Sony Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, USCAbstract:
Following the global impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, California faced a challenging tsunami warning (June 14, 2005) and a relatively small tsunami that caused extensive damage in Crescent City harbor (November 15, 2006) that served as a wake-up call that the tsunami threat is not well understood for many coastal communities. These incidents attracted new attention to tsunami scientists and emergency managers who demanded a more systematic, consistent, and efficient response system (Synolakis and Bernard, 2006; Bernard et al., 2006).
The present mapping collaboration between the USC-Tsunami Research Center (TRC), Office of Emergency Services, and the California Geological Survey includes 35 separate areas that cover the most important ports, harbors, coastal urban centers, and popular recreational areas in California. This new tsunami inundation mapping effort is in its final phase with inundation map production to be completed by summer of 2009. We note that the first generation of inundation maps for California State emergency management was based on more conservative "worst case but realistic scenarios" (Synolakis et al, 2002), which reflected the understanding of offshore hazards pervasive ten years ago. New local tsunami sources previously unaccounted for, add complexity to hazard studies for California. Further developments in tsunami modeling made it possible to investigate the effect of a wider variety of far field tsunami sources on different parts of the State.
The availability of high-resolution bathymetric and topographic data allows for further insight into the vulnerability of ports, harbors, and other open water bodies significant for the state economy. Recent field work and numerical simulations show that using higher resolution relief data may also help evacuation plans to become more efficient when time is very limited. Additional work remains in high-risk areas of the State with large populations and limited evacuation options to help identify "safer" areas for emergency planning.
The latter are some examples of what can be done to improve tsunami preparedness for California. Following a brief look into the past and an introduction to the work currently carried out by TRC, potential projects are presented that are of interest to the authors. This may also set the ground for new collaborations within the department and beyond.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Viterbi Keynote Lecture
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 03:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Workshops & Infosessions
RECEPTION: 3:00 - 4:00PMLECTURE: 4:00 - 5:00PM"CODES AND COIN FLIPS: COMPRESSION AND MODELING"SPEAKER: Dr. Robert M. Gray, Stanford UniversityABSTRACT: In the middle of the last century, Claude Shannon developed mathematical models of communication systems and quantified the best possible performance achievable when information sources --- models of real-world signals such as speech, audio, images, and video --- are communicated or stored. Shannon's work lies at the core of modern digital communications, both theory and practice. Many of the fundamental ideas in Shannon information theory --- including random processes, entropy, and coding --- have parallel roles in ergodic theory, a branch of mathematics which arose in physics and which was also profoundly influenced by Shannon's work. A few of these parallel ideas are sketched in hindsight via the deceptively simple example of coding coin flips to generate suprisingly general statistical models of information sources. The example highlights deep connections between the Shannon theory of source coding or data compression and the problem of simple modeling or simulating complicated processes. Unsuprisingly, the Viterbi algorithm makes a cameo appearance at a critical point.BIO: Robert M. Gray is the Lucent Technologies Professor of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he has been teaching for almost 40 years. His research interests are in information theory and signal processing, especially in the theory and practice of quantization, compression, and classification.Gray was a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Group (1974-1980, 1985-1988) and of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (1998-2001). He was Associate Editor for Source Coding (1977-1980) and Editor-in-Chief (1980-1983) of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Signal Processing. He was Co-Chair of the 1993 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory and Program Co-Chair of the 1997 and 2004 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing.He is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the IEEE and has held fellowships from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at the University of Osaka (1981), the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation at the University of Paris XI (1982), and NATO/Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche at the University of Naples (1990). During spring 1995 he was a Vinton Hayes Visiting Scholar at the Division of Applied Sciences of Harvard University. He is a Faculty Affiliate of the Clayman Institute for Gender Studies at Stanford University, where he will be a Faculty Research Fellow during the 2008-2009 academic year.He was corecipient of the 1976 IEEE Information Theory Group Paper Award and the 1983 IEEE ASSP Senior Award. He was awarded an IEEE Centennial medal (1984) and an IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000). He received the 1993 Society Award, the 1998 Technical Achievement Award, and the 2005 Meritorious Service Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He received a Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation (1998) and the 2008 Shannon Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society. He received the 2008 IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal. He received a 2002 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) and the 2003 Distinguished Alumni in Academia Award from the University of Southern California. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2007).Robert M. Gray was born in San Diego, Calif., on November 1, 1943. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from M.I.T. in 1966 and the Ph.D. degree from U.S.C. in 1969, all in Electrical Engineering.
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - ontology Courtyard and Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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Teaching OR/MS with Spreadsheets: Monte Carlo Simulation, Evolutionary Algorithms, and ...
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
University Calendar
ISE 650 SEMINARTitle: "Teaching OR/MS with Spreadsheets: Monte Carlo Simulation, Evolutionary Algorithms, and Cool Excel 2007 Features"Speaker: Wayne Winston, Professor of Decision Sciences, Indiana UniversityABSTRACT: For 10 years my spreadsheet modeling electives have been the most popular courses in Indiana University's 15th ranked MBA program. Over 300 people a year take my basic spreadsheet modeling class. I will discuss my methods of teaching optimization and Monte Carlo modeling, including the use of evolutionary methods in optimization and simulation. Also I will give a quick overview of some of the exciting new features in Excel 2007.THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2009, GERONTOLOGY BUILDING (GER) ROOM 309, 3:30-4:50 PM
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 309
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Computational Study Of Nonverbal Social Communication
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Louis-Philippe Morency, ICT, USC
Host: Prof. Stefan SchaalAbstract:
The goal of this emerging research field is to recognize, model and predict human nonverbal behavior in the context of interaction with virtual humans, robots and other human participants. At the core of this research field is the need for new computational models of human interaction emphasizing the multi-modal, multi-participant and multi-behavior aspects of human behavior. This multi-disciplinary research topic overlaps the fields of multi-modal interaction, social psychology, computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and has many applications in areas as diverse as medicine, robotics and education. During my talk, I will focus on three novel approaches to achieve efficient and robust nonverbal behavior modeling and recognition: (1) a new visual tracking framework (GAVAM) with automatic initialization and bounded drift which acquires online the view-based appearance of the object, (2) the use of latent-state models in discriminative sequence classification (Latent-Dynamic CRF) to capture the influence of unobservable factors on nonverbal behavior and (3) the integration of contextual information (specifically dialogue context) to improve nonverbal prediction and recognition.Biography:
Dr. Louis-Philippe Morency is currently research scientist at USC Institute for Creative Technologies where he leads the Nonverbal Behaviors Understanding project (ICT-NVREC). He received his Ph.D. from MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 2006. His main research interest is computational study of nonverbal social communication, a multi-disciplinary research topic that overlays the fields of multi-modal interaction, computer vision, machine learning, social psychology and artificial intelligence. He developed "Watson", a real-time library for nonverbal behavior recognition and which became the de-facto standard for adding perception to embodied agent interfaces. He received many awards for his work on nonverbal behavior computation including three best-paper awards in 2008 (at various IEEE and ACM conferences). He was recently selected by IEEE Intelligent Systems as one of the "Ten to Watch" for the future of AI research.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Yahoo! Inc. Information Session
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Join representatives of this company as they share general company information and available opportunities.
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori (GFS) 106
Audiences: Current Engineering Undergraduate/Graduate Students
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
