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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for March 28, 2025
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EiS Communications Hub - Tutoring for Engineering Ph.D. StudentsFri, Mar 28, 2025 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Viterbi Ph.D. students are invited to drop by the Hub for instruction on their writing and speaking tasks! All tutoring is one-on-one and conducted by Viterbi faculty.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 222A
Audiences: Viterbi Ph.D. Students
Contact: Helen Choi
Event Link: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/eishub/home
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Alfred E.Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering - Seminar series
Fri, Mar 28, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ning Wang, Ph.D., Founding Director of Institute for Mechanobiology at Northeastern University, Professor of Bioengineering in Department of Bioengineering in the College of Engineering, affiliate professor at Bouve College of Health Sciences , Northeastern University,
Talk Title: Cytoskeletal Prestress Homeostasis Is A Biological Principle of Living Cells
Abstract: What are the biological principles of living cells is a fundamental question in biology and life sciences. A biological principle is a governing rule that guides structures, functions, and behaviors of living cells. Biological principles are built upon laws of physics and chemistry but go beyond these laws and are unique for living matter. Here we discuss what differentiates a biological principle from a physical principle and discuss candidates for biological principles. We propose the idea of limiting maximum strain on the cell by regulating cytoskeletal prestress (pre-existing tensile stress) and cell modulus (i.e., stiffness). We provide experimental evidence that cytoskeletal prestress homeostasis is a fundamental biological principle of bacteria, single-celled protists, plant cells, and animal cells. We provide strong experimental evidence that regulation of myosin II-mediated cytoskeletal prestress homeostasis is essential for biological structures, functions, and behaviors of animal cells. We reveal that mechanomemory (a biological response long after mechanical perturbations are released) in the cell nucleus is a key in chromatin-stretching dependent rapid gene upregulation. We show evidence that cell softness (the inverse of stiffness) plays a key role in malignant tumor-repopulating cell progression. Leveraging biological principles of the cells (the fire of life-metabolism and the force of life-cytoskeletal prestress homeostasis) may have far-reaching implications in understanding the essence of cell life and designing effective interventions for therapeutics to enhance human health and medicine.
Biography: Professor Ning Wang is the Founding Director of Institute for Mechanobiology at Northeastern University, Professor of Bioengineering in Department of Bioengineering in the College of Engineering, affiliate professor at Bouve College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University. Dr. Wang was the Leonard C and Mary Lou Hoeft Endowed Professor in Engineering from 2014 to 2023 and Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering from 2006 to 2023 at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to that, Dr. Wang was on the faculty at Harvard-Chan School of Public Health (HCSPH) from 1994 to 2006 and a research fellow and then a research associate at HCSPH and Harvard Medical School/Children’s Hospital from 1990 to 1994. Dr. Wang received American Physiological Society Scholander Award in 1991 for his contribution to comparative physiology. Wang received Doctor of Science degree in Physiology from Harvard University in 1990 and M.S. in biomedical engineering in 1984 and B.S. in biomechanics in 1982 from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China.Wang and colleagues invented the Magnetic Twisting Cytometry (MTC) technology for probing a single cell’s mechanical properties and discovered in 1993 that the cell-matrix adhesion molecules-integrins are mechanosensors, spurring the emergence of cellular mechanobiology. Wang and colleagues revealed that E-selectins are mechanosensors in 1996 and E-cadherins are mechanosensors in 2010. Wang lab developed the 3D-MTC that applies mechanical stresses in any direction with varying frequencies in early 2000’s and perfected the technology for anisotropic mechanostimulation, quantification of rheological properties of the cells, and mechanotransduction. He provided first experimental evidence that endogenous cytoskeletal prestress regulates cell shear stiffness and controls gene expression in early 2000’s. Wang’s laboratory discovered stress focusing and the long-distance force propagation in live cells and demonstrated fundamental differences between mechanical force-based signaling and soluble growth factor-based signaling. Professor Wang discovered that an embryonic stem cell differentiates in response to applied forces of physiological magnitudes. Wang’s lab has developed a novel mechanical method that selects and isolates from the general population a small subpopulation of malignant tumor cells (called tumor-repopulating cells) that are highly efficient in metastasis. In recent years Wang’s lab discovered that gene expression can be directly upregulated by stretching the chromatin via applying forces to integrins in a living cell and revealed that the force-induced gene activation depends on histone modifications of the chromatin. Wang lab, working with collaborators, provided experimental evidence that malignant tumor cell softness is critical in cancer malignancy and dormancy. Wang and colleagues developed a rigidified small molecule of synthetic retinoid (a US patent was issued) that efficiently inhibits malignant tumor-repopulating cell metastasis to the lungs in mice models with little toxicity. Wang and colleagues developed a magnetic microrobot probe that can quantify 3D tractions and stiffness in the same location of an embryo or the tumor tissue. Most recently Wang lab revealed chromatin-stretching dependent nuclear basis of mechanomemory (long-term effects after force cessation) in the chromatin and in the nucleoplasm in living cells.
Host: Peter Wang
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 109
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
AI Seminar- Designing Priors for Bayesian Neural Networks to Enhance Probabilistic Predictive Modeling in Engineering Applications
Fri, Mar 28, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Audrey Olivier, USC
Talk Title: Designing Priors for Bayesian Neural Networks to Enhance Probabilistic Predictive Modeling in Engineering Applications
Series: AI Seminar
Abstract: The conjuncton of data mining and physics-based modeling holds great potential to help design, monitor and optimize engineering systems. Efficient ML algorithms can uncover patterns from data to learn missing physics, detect abnormal behaviors and identify damaged systems, or serve as surrogates of complex mechanistic models, enabling real-time analysis or integration within optimization frameworks. However, the use of ML for engineering applications and high-consequence decision-making presents unique challenges. Engineering datasets are often noisy, sparse and imbalanced, due to the inherent randomness of the underlying physical processes and constraints on data collection. Whenever possible, ML predictors must assimilate physics-based knowledge and intuitions to improve accuracy and generalization away from training data. Most importantly, ML models must embed robust and reliable prediction of uncertainties to improve trustworthiness for high-consequence decision-making. Framing ML training within a Bayesian inference framework allows for a robust quantification of both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties that arise from data inadequacies, integration of physics intuitions through prior design, and assessment of the model’s confidence in its predictions. However, due to the high-dimensionality and non-physicality of parameters that characterize typical ML models such as neural networks, application of Bayesian methods in this context raises several technical challenges, from prior and likelihood design to posterior inference. This talk will introduce enhanced algorithms based on ensembling with anchoring for approximate Bayesian learning of neural networks. We will demonstrate the importance of carefully designing the prior, integrating knowledge from low-fidelity models via ensemble pre-training and designing parameter-space prior densities that account for low-rank correlations between neural network weights. The talk will illustrate the benefits of these methods through a variety of example applications in civil engineering, from surrogate training to accelerate materials and structural modeling, contingency analysis in power grid systems, or ambulance travel time prediction in a dense urban network to help optimize emergency medical services.
Biography: Dr. Olivier holds a Diplôme d’Ingénieur from École Centrale de Nantes, France, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University, USA. She held a postdoctoral appointment at Johns Hopkins University before joining the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2021. Dr. Olivier’s research aims to predict and monitor civil infrastructure systems behavior under uncertainty, by combining innovations in probabilistic data analytics and mechanistic modeling. Applications span various scales, from systems to structures to materials, and include development of adaptive Bayesian filters for identification of dynamical structural systems, probabilistic surrogate models to accelerate multi-scale materials simulations or Bayesian graph neural networks for contingency analysis of power grids.
Host: Eric Boxer and Justina Gilleland
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/5453/designing-priors-for-bayesian-neural-networks-to-enhance-probabilistic-predictive-modeling-in-engineering-applications/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94409584905?pwd=Sm5LVkd0bndUdEluM3piK0NWTUQrUT09Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Conf Rm#1135 and Virtual
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94409584905?pwd=Sm5LVkd0bndUdEluM3piK0NWTUQrUT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
CA DREAMS - Technical Seminar Series
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Fri, Mar 28, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mark Rodwell, Professor, University of California at Santa Barbara
Talk Title: The Role of InP Technologies in Next-Generation 50-300 GHz Systems
Abstract: Present InP bipolar transistors attain 1.1 THz fmax; InP field-effect transistors attain 1.5 THz. These can support emerging applications in 100-300 GHz wireless communications and imaging radar, 400-1000 Gb/s wireline and optical communications, and high-frequency instruments. After summarizing the applications and the required circuit and transistor performance, I will review transistor design, present transistor performance, and the design of next-generation THz bipolar and field-effect transistors.
Biography: Mark J. W. Rodwell (Fellow, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University 1988. He holds the Doluca Family Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering with the University of California at Santa Barbara. During 2017-2023, he directed the SRC/DARPA ComSenTer Wireless Research Center. His research group develops high-frequency transistors, ICs, and communication systems. Dr. Rodwell was a recipient of the 1997 IEEE Microwave Prize, the 1998 European Microwave Conference Microwave Prize, the 2009 IEEE IPRM Conference Award, the 2010 IEEE Sarnoff Award, the 2012 Marconi Prize Paper Award, and the 2022 SIA/SRC University Research Award. For 2024-2025, he is serving as an IEEE-MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer.
Host: Dr. Steve Crago
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/5442/the-role-of-inp-technologies-in-next-generation-50-300-ghz-systems/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97017422125?pwd=Dbrt8MNMrmBV3xalKQJcAiNsggFJjJ.1&from=addonWebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97017422125?pwd=Dbrt8MNMrmBV3xalKQJcAiNsggFJjJ.1&from=addon
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Amy Kasmir
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/events/5442/the-role-of-inp-technologies-in-next-generation-50-300-ghz-systems/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ECE Seminar - Tingyi Gu, Friday, March 28th at 2pm in EEB 132 and Zoom
Fri, Mar 28, 2025 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Tingyi Gu, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering University of Delaware
Talk Title: Active meta-components for future dense integration of photonic ICs
Series: ECE Seminar
Abstract: Photonic integrated circuits have found applications across disciplines of quantum computing, point-of-care diagnosis and optical interconnects. However, the efficacy of integrated photonics' system-level functionalities, such as optical interconnect I/O density and energy consumption, hinges on individual components' photon efficiency, performance, and scalability. On the foundry-compatible platform, we re-invent the photonic integrated circuits with sub-wavelength topology tailoring, new material integration and system-specific component designs. These advancements have facilitated control over multi-mode conversion, non-Hermicity, nonreciprocity, mathematical convolution, and hyperspectral image classification. Furthermore, I aim to broaden the horizons of 'heterogeneous integration' by exploring the utilization of layered/2D materials for interfacing with silicon photonics. The combination of versatile semiconductor materials and advanced electromagnetic engineering promises to fundamentally reshape the design concepts of system-on-chip/system-on-panel technology, especially high throughput space communication and active imaging.
Biography: Tingyi Gu is an associate professor in electrical engineering at the University of Delaware. She received Ph.D. degree from Columbia University in EE. She was a PRISM postdoc fellow at Princeton Material Institute. She held positions at Bell Labs and Hewlett Packard Labs. Her group works on foundry-compatible silicon photonic components for optical communication and sensing, with a focus on optoelectronic reconfigurability and high-speed operation. She had served on committees for CLEO, FiO, OFC and IPC. Gu published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, leading efforts published on Light: Science & Applications, eLight, Science Advances, Nature Comm., Advanced Materials, Nature Photon., etc. She has received Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program (AFOSR YIP), the Army Research Office Young Investigator Program (ARO YIP), the Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA YFA) and an Early Career Faculty Award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ECF).
Host: Wei Wu
More Info: Meeting ID: 984 1254 0017 Passcode: 239623
More Information: Tingyi Gu Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: Meeting ID: 984 1254 0017 Passcode: 239623
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
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