USC - Viterbi School of Engineering

Apr
07

Viterbi Student Council Funding Board Meeting
Fri, Apr 07, 2006
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity

Viterbi Student Council's Funding Board weekly meeting to discuss applications for funding.
Audiences: Funding Board only

Contact: Viterbi Student Council Funding Board
Apr
07

Apply now for VSC funding Board!
Fri, Apr 07, 2006
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity

Apply now for VSC Funding Board. You can find more information online at:http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/vsc/
Audiences: Undergraduate

Contact: Viterbi Student Council
Apr
07

Robotics Research Symposium
Fri, Apr 07, 2006 @ 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

You are cordially invited to a one-day symposium of robotics research featuring talks by leading experts from all over the world. The symposium will be held in HNB 100 on the USC main campus. It is open to all. No registration is required.Symposium of Robotics Research
Venue: HNB 100
Time: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Organizers: Gaurav Sukhatme & Stefan Schaal (gaurav|sschaal@usc.edu)[Details and updates at http://robotics.usc.edu/~gaurav/symp.html]
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien
Apr
07

Getting the Big Picture: Cyberinfrastructure and its Role in System-Oriented Science
Fri, Apr 07, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Carl Kesselman
USC - Information Science Institute
April 7th, 2006 Cyberinfrastructure offers the promise of enabling scientific discovery at a scale not otherwise possible. By leveraging these infrastructure advances, it is not only possible to model phenomena with more detail then previously possible, but also to understand the behavior of increasingly more complex systems. For example, in the Southern California Earthquake Center, we combine models for rupture dynamics, fault systems, and wave propagation to determine what surface motion we are likely to see at various points in Southern California. The goal is to not only model the response of the earth, but also to couple it with the bridges and buildings on the surface to create a complete system model of Los Angeles from the perspective of understanding earthquake response. The potential of such systems-oriented science is one of the biggest benefits that cyberinfrastructure can bring. These complex models for system-level science draw on many aspects of our information technology infrastructure, including numerical simulation on high-performance computers, data bases, access to sensor networks, knowledge-based systems, and data mining to name but a few. Hence the issues facing the scientist are more then simply "writing a program" but rather on how components and resources can be flexibly integrated to a computational system that addresses the scientific problem being explored. This flexible integration is one of the primary objectives behind the creation of cyberinfrastructure in general, and the motivation behind Grid infrastructure in particular. In this talk, I will describe the creation of a large-scale cyberinfrastructure and illustrate with the Globus Toolkit, which is a widely deployed Grid infrastructure. I will discuss a range of different applications that are currently leveraging this infrastructure. Finally, I will identify some of the future directions and challenges that remain in order to achieve the potential from systems-level science from the perspective of core computer science research as well as domain-specific advances.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall, Room 203
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Apr
07

Information Theory and Probability Estimation: From Shannon to Shakespeare via...
Fri, Apr 07, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Title: "Information Theory and Probability Estimation: From Shannon to Shakespeare via Laplace, Good, Turing, Hardy, Ramanujan, and Fisher"Speaker: Prof. Alon Orlitsky, UCSDAbstract: Standard information-theoretic results show that data over small, typically binary, alphabets can be compressed to Shannon's entropy limit. Yet most practical sources, such as text, audio, or video, have essentially infinite support. Compressing such sources requires estimating probabilities of unlikely, even unseen, events, a problem considered by Laplace. Of existing estimators, an ingenious if cryptic one derived by Good and Turing while deciphering the Enigma code works best yet not optimally. Hardy and Ramanujan's celebrated results on the number of integer partitions yield an asymptotically optimal estimator that compresses arbitrary-alphabet data patterns to their entropy. The same approach generalizes Fisher's seminal work estimating the number of butterfly species and its extension authenticating a poem purportedly written by The Bard. The talk covers these topics and is self-contained.Joint work with Prasad Santhanam, Krishna Viswanathan, and Junan ZhangBio: Alon Orlitsky received B.Sc. degrees in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering from Ben Gurion University in 1980 and 1981, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1982 and 1986. From 1986 to 1996 he was with the Communications Analysis Research Department of Bell Laboratories. He spent the following year as a quantitative analyst at D.E. Shaw and Company, an investment firm in New York city. In 1997 he joined the University of California, San Diego, where he is currently a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of Computer Science and Engineering. Alon's research concerns information theory, learning, and speech recognition. He is a recipient of the 1981 ITT International Fellowship and of the 1992 IEEE W.R.G. Baker Paper Award.Host: Professor Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Apr
07

An overview of current air pollution control strategy on in-use light and medium duty vehicle in Ca
Fri, Apr 07, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Speaker: Dr. Jerry Ho, Staff Air Pollution Specialist and
Air Resources Engineer
El Monte, CAABSTRACT: The State of California use different air pollution control strategies between newer and older vehicles. Since most of the new vehicles for sale in California with On Board Diagnostic (OBD) generate very low emissions from tailpipe, the emission impact from the older vehicles become more significant over time. ARB estimated that evaporative emissions will soon surpass tailpipe emissions from all vehicle source in 2010. New effort will be focused on evaporative emissions control for the older vehicles in California.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall 156
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Apr
07

The Supermassive Black Hole
Fri, Apr 07, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Engineering Honors Colloquium Lecture given by Jessica Lu of the Division of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UCLA.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Faculty and Honors Program Students

Contact: Erika Chua
Apr
07

Meet USC (PM session)
Fri, Apr 07, 2006 @ 01:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions

This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process; a student led walking tour of campus and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process and financial aid.Reservations are required for Meet USC. Please call the USC Admission Center at (213) 740-6616 to check availability and to make an appointment. Be sure to tell them you are interested in Engineering!

Location: USC Admission Center
Audiences: Prospective Freshman and Family Members - RESERVATIONS REQUIRED

Contact: Viterbi Admission
Apr
07

From Micro to Nano Robotics
Fri, Apr 07, 2006 @ 01:30 PM - 02:05 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Brad Nelson
Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH-AurichDirector of IRISRobots are currently exploring many environments that are difficult if not impossible for humans to reach, such as the edge of the solar system, the planet Mars, volcanoes on Earth, and the undersea world. The goal of these robotic explorers is to obtain knowledge about our universe and to answer fundamental questions about life and human origins. Microrobotics has entered this field by exploring life at a much smaller scale and more fundamental level. Microrobotic systems for physically exploring the structures of biological cells are being developed, and robotic motion planning strategies are being used to investigate protein folding. Microrobotic mechanisms have been used to investigate organism behaviors, such as the flight dynamics of fruit flies as well as the neurophysiology that govern many other biologically interesting behaviors. These recent research efforts and others like them illustrate how several areas of robotics research are rapidly converging to create this new discipline I refer to as BioMicroRobotics. These new directions in robotics represent only a beginning and indicate that robotics research, and biomicrorobotics in particular, has the capability of making significant contributions in the understanding of life. In moving from the micro domain to nanometric scales, completely different issues in developing nanorobotic systems and in their application arise. The second part of the talk will present recent efforts at the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH-Zurich in fabricating nanometer scale robotic components. Biography:Brad Nelson is the Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH-Zürich and is the director of IRIS.
His primary research direction lies in extending robotics research into emerging areas of science and engineering. His most recent scientific contributions have been in the area of microrobotics, biomicrorobotics, and nanorobotics, including efforts in robotic micromanipulation, microassembly, MEMS (sensors and actuators), mechanical manipulation of biological cells and tissue, and NanoElectroMechanical Systems (NEMS). He has also contributed to the fields of visual servoing, force control, sensor integration, and web-based control and programming of robots.
Prof. Nelson received a B.S. (Mechanical Engineering) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984, an M.S. (Mechanical Engineering) from the University of Minnesota in 1987, and the Ph.D. degree in Robotics (School of Computer Science) from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995. During these years he also worked as an engineer at Honeywell and Motorola, and served as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana, Africa. In 1995 he became Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota in 1998, and Professor at ETH in 2002.
He has been awarded a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship and is a recipient of the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the McKnight Presidential Fellows Award, and the Bronze Tablet. He was elected as a Robotics and Automation Society Distinguished Lecturer in 2003 and received the Best Conference Paper Award at the IEEE 2004 International Conference on Robotics and Automation. He was named to the 2005 "Scientific American 50," Scientific American magazine's annual list recognizing outstanding acts of leadership in science and technology from the past year.
Professor Nelson serves on or has been a member of the editorial boards of the IEEE Transaction on Robotics, the Journal of Micromechatronics and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine. He has chaired several international workshops and conferences.
He is currently the head of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT).
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien
Apr
07

Materials Science Seminar - SCALING PROPERTIES OF FRACTURE SURFACES by Elisabeth Bouchaud
Fri, Apr 07, 2006 @ 02:45 PM - 04:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

SCALING PROPERTIES OF FRACTURE SURFACESElisabeth Bouchaud,
Fracture Group, Division of Physics & Chemistry of Surfaces and Interfaces
CEA-Saclay, FranceFor materials as different as metallic alloys and silicate glasses, the morphology of fracture surfaces has revealed anisotropic scale invariance properties which can be described with two sets of parameters: roughness exponents and characteristic length scales, measured either along the direction of crack propagation, or perpendicularly to it. If characteristic length scales depend on the material, its microstructure, and the external loading, roughness exponents, on the contrary, are "universal". The same roughness exponents are indeed observed for metallic alloys and for glasses, for example, albeit at length scales three orders of magnitude smaller in the latter case.Statistical models describing the quasi-static propagation of an elastic line (the crack front) through an array of randomly distributed obstacles (the microstructure) can reproduce qualitatively these observations. We conjecture that the lack of quantitative agreement is due to the fact that these models do not take damage into account.Damage formation at the crack tip is however a general phenomenon, which is well documented for metallic materials. More recently, our Atomic Force Microscopy experiments on silicate glasses show that damage also forms ahead of a stress corrosion crack tip in glass. This mechanism has several implications at the macro-scale, in terms of nonlinear elastic deformation and sample lifetime.The extension of the process zone is estimated, and it is shown that fracture surface roughness is evaluated within this region. It is argued that the observed exponents reflect in fact damage screening occurring at length scales smaller than the process zone size. "Line models", however, lead to good predictions when measurements are performed at length scales larger than the process zone size.Dr. Elisabeth Bouchaud is the Director of the Division of Physics and Chemistry of Surfaces and Interfaces at CEA-Saclay, France and currently a visiting professor at Caltech. Dr. Bouchaud has started a whole new research area involving the study of the scaling properties of fracture surfaces. Her group has performed seminal experiments on crack propagation and damage evolution in glasses. For her pioneering work on fracture, Dr. Bouchaud recently received the prestigious Ancel award for Condensed Matter Physics from the French Physical Society, and in 1997, she was awarded the European Materials Science Society's Lecturer Award.First Year MASC students are required to attend.

Location: Vivian Hall of Engineering (VHE) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Petra Pearce