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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for April
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ECE Seminar: Ultra-High-Throughput Computational Imaging: Towards A Trillion Voxels Per Second
Mon, Apr 01, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Kevin C. Zhou, Postdoctoral Scholar | Schmidt Science Fellow | Department of EECS | UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Ultra-High-Throughput Computational Imaging: Towards A Trillion Voxels Per Second
Abstract: Traditional biomedical imaging techniques face throughput bottlenecks that limit our ability to study complex dynamic samples like cells, organoids, tissues, and organisms. In particular, hardware-only systems have inherent physical limitations preventing the simultaneous improvement of resolution, field of view, and frame rate. In this seminar, I propose that large-scale, machine learning-accelerated computational imaging will be the key to overcoming these throughput bottlenecks. I demonstrate a variety of examples from my research, ranging from resolution-enhanced, speckle-free tissue imaging with optical coherence refraction tomography, to camera array-based gigapixel microscopy and 4D fluorescence tomography of freely-behaving zebrafish and fruit flies. Critical to the computational scalability is the integration of physics-supervised deep learning into my reconstruction algorithms. Combined with scalable hardware designs, these high-performance computational imaging systems will continue the trend of my research towards ultra-high imaging throughputs, even approaching 1 trillion voxels per second, which will accelerate scientific discovery, big data generation, and tool development across a broad range of biomedical applications.
Biography: Kevin C. Zhou is a Schmidt Science Fellow and postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley, developing high-throughput computational imaging systems with Laura Waller and Hillel Adesnik. Before that, he received his PhD in biomedical engineering at Duke University, where he worked with Joseph Izatt, Warren Warren, Sina Farsiu, and Roarke Horstmeyer, and was supported by the NSF GRFP. He received his BS in biomedical engineering at Yale University, where he was supported by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Kevin's interdisciplinary research focuses on developing both the optical instrumentation and machine learning-driven algorithms for scalable, high-throughput computational optical imaging systems to advance discovery in biology and medicine.
Host: Dr. Justin Haldar, jhaldar@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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CSC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar: Prashant Mehta
Mon, Apr 01, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Prashant Mehta, Professor, Coordinated Science Laboratory | Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Variational principles in control and the arrow of time
Series: CSC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: There is a certain magic in writing the variational form of the equations in physics and engineering. The most magical of these is Lagrange’s formulation of the Newtonian mechanics. An accessible modern take on this and more appears in the Feb 2019 Issue of The New YorkerI describe a new variational (optimal control-type) formulation of the nonlinear filtering problem, an important feature of which is that the arrow of time reverses. The reversal of time brings about all sorts of paradoxes involving causality. Scenes from Christopher Nolan's sci-fi movie Tenet may be shown for entertainment and educational purposes.
Apart from movie snippets, the talk will also include technical content. Specifically, I argue that certain foundational aspects of Control Theory – duality between estimation and control – are less than well- understood for nonlinear stochastic systems (hidden Markov models), in part because of the issue of time reversal. Based on the optimal control formulation, I will also discuss some new results on the asymptotic stability of the nonlinear filter.
Biography:
Prashant Mehta is a Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) and the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University in 2004. He was the co-founder and the Chief Science Officer of the startup Rithmio whose gesture recognition technology was acquired by Bosch Sensortec in 2017. Prior to his academic appointment at UIUC in 2005, he worked at United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) where he co-invented the symmetry-breaking solution to
suppress combustion instabilities. This solution — which helped solve a sixty-year old open problem — has since become an industry standard and is widely deployed in jet engines and afterburners sold by Pratt and Whitney.Prashant Mehta received the Outstanding Achievement Award at UTRC for his contributions to modeling and control of combustion instabilities in jet-engines. His students have received the Best Student Paper Awards at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in 2007, 2009, and most recently in 2019; and have been finalists for these awards in 2010 and 2012. He serves as a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) Awards Board and as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (2019-present). He is a Fellow of IEEE.
Host: Dr. Ketan Savla
More Info: https://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2024Spring/mehta.html
More Information: 2024.04.01 CSC Seminar - Prashant Mehta.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Miki Arlen
Event Link: https://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2024Spring/mehta.html
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The Bekey Distinguished Lecture & Munushian Distinguished Lecture Present: Gordon Bell, Microsoft Researcher Emeritus
Mon, Apr 01, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Gordon Bell, Microsoft Researcher Emeritus
Talk Title: Bell's Law of Computer Classes. Why We Have All Kinds of Computers
Abstract: In 1951, a person could walk inside a computer and by 2010 a single computer (or “cluster’) with millions of processors has expanded to building size. Alternatively, computers are “walking” inside of us. These ends illustrate the vast dynamic range in computing power, size, cost, etc. for early 21st century computer classes. A computer class is a set of computers in a particular price range with unique or similar programming environments (e.g. Linux, OS/360, Palm, Symbian, Windows) that support a variety of applications that communicate with people and/or other systems. A new computer class forms roughly each decade establishing a new industry. A class may be the consequence and combination of a new platform with a new programming environment, a new network, and new interface with people and/or other information processing systems. Bell’s Law accounts for the formation, evolution, and death of computer classes based on logic technology evolution beginning with the invention of the computer and the computer industry in the first generation, vacuum tube computers (1950-1960), second generation, transistor computers (1958-1970), through the invention and evolutions of the third generation TTL and ECL bipolar Integrated Circuits (1965-1985), and the fourth generation bipolar, MOS and CMOS ICs enabling the microprocessor, (1971) represents a “break point” in the theory because it eliminated the other early, more slowly evolving technologies. Moore’s Law (Moore 1965, revised in 1975) is an observation about integrated circuit evolution. In summary, Moore’s Law and Bell’s effectively predict the ensuing fifty years of the computer. This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium. To register visit: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe6If3BkOATE8onTmrYZNSr0pzWF47TedNKMrwnukr0Ue_k8w/viewform
Biography: Gordon Bell is a Microsoft Researcher Emeritus He spent 23 years at Digital Equipment Corporation as Vice President of R&D, responsible for the first mini- and time-sharing computers and DEC's VAX, with a 6 year sabbatical at Carnegie Mellon. In 1987, as NSF's first, Ass't Director for Computing (CISE), he led the National Research and Education Network panel that became the Internet. In 1987 he established the Gordon Bell Prize to recognize the extraordinary efforts to exploit modern highly parallel computers. Bell maintains three interests: computers: their evolution and use, technology-based startup companies, and lifelogging. He is a member or Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Association of Computing Machinery, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Science, the Australia Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and received The 1991 National Medal of Technology. He is a founding trustee of the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA. and lives in San Francisco. http://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net
Host: Cyrus Shahabi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Events
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CS Colloquium: Jane E. - Artistic Vision: Interactive Computational Guidance for Developing Expertise
Tue, Apr 02, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jane E., UC San Diego
Talk Title: Artistic Vision: Interactive Computational Guidance for Developing Expertise
Series: Computer Science Colloquium
Abstract: Computer scientists have long worked towards the vision of human-AI collaboration for augmenting human capabilities and intellect. My work contributes to this vision by asking: How can computational tools not only help a user complete a task, but also help them develop their own domain expertise while doing so?
I investigate this question by designing new interactive tools for domains of artistic creativity. My work is inspired by the fact that expert artists have trained their eyes to “see” in ways that embed their expert domain knowledge—in this case, core artistic concepts. As instructors, experts have also designed approaches to intentionally communicate their vision to their students. My work designs creativity tools that leverage these expert structures to help novices develop this expert-like "artistic vision"—specifically through providing guidance to scaffold their design processes. In this talk, I will demonstrate my approach for designing tools that embed such guidance for photography and visual design that embed the underlying design principles. I will show that these tools are able to scaffold novices’ to be more aware of these artistic concepts during their creative process.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Jane E is Postdoctoral Fellow at The Design Lab at UCSD under the guidance of mentors Steven Dow and Haijun Xia. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University, where she was co-advised by James Landay and Pat Hanrahan. Her research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction and computer graphics with a focus on designing computational guidance to support novices in developing their own creative expertise. Her work takes inspiration from cognitive science and education theory to design computational tools that scaffold novices’ creative processes. Jane is grateful to have been selected as a Rising Star in EECS and to have been supported by a Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant, Hasso Plattner Institute’s Design Thinking Research Program, Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and UCSD CSE’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. She previously worked on the Microsoft Photos app as a software engineer after receiving her BSE from Princeton University. For more information, see her website: ejane.me
Host: Souti Chattopadhyay
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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ECE-S Seminar - Francisco Romero
Tue, Apr 02, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Francisco Romero, PhD, Electrical Engineering | Stanford University
Talk Title: General Purpose and Interactive Video Analytics
Abstract: The availability of vast video datasets and the increasing accuracy of machine learning models have made exploration of video data an exciting opportunity. Asking complex questions like “Find cases where a car takes a left turn while a pedestrian is crossing the road on a rainy night” over terabytes of videos should be possible. Recent video analytics research expects users will manually reason about their query, combine optimizations, and occasionally train models to meet their performance and accuracy goals. This is a long way from the experience users have when exploring structured data. In this talk, I will present the design of a general purpose and interactive video analytics system. First, I will present how to automatically optimize multi-model, multi-predicate video queries with the VIVA video analytics system. VIVA allows users to express domain knowledge about model relationships. VIVA uses this knowledge to automate complex query optimization by deciding how and when it should be applied. Second, I will present how to efficiently execute video queries across heterogeneous hardware resources with INFaaS. INFaaS exposes a "model-less" interface that enables users to simply specify the performance and accuracy requirements for their applications without needing to specify a specific model-variant for each query. INFaaS efficiently navigates the large trade-off space of model-variants on behalf of users to meet application-specific objectives: (a) for each query, it selects a model, hardware architecture, and model optimizations, (b) it combines VM-level horizontal autoscaling with model-level autoscaling to reduce cost as query load varies. I will also briefly discuss how I extended INFaaS across DAGs of machine learning models with Llama: a serverless video processing framework. I will close by outlining future directions in multi-modal data analysis across heterogeneous hardware resources.
Biography: Francisco Romero works at the intersection of computer systems and architecture, databases, and machine learning, where his goal is to design systems that automatically make decisions on users’ behalf to optimize for their goals like cost, performance, accuracy, and resource efficiency. He recently received his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where his research spanned general machine learning inference, serverless computing, data systems, and datacenter scheduling. He has several publications in top-tier conferences, including a best paper at USENIX ATC 2021. His work has been deployed in production Microsoft Azure Functions and is being used for automated video analysis at a stealth company.
Host: Dr. Murali Annavaram, annavara@usc.edu
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92881411147?pwd=SXNBdm9oa3ljYi9sdTNsR2puWmRrQT09More Information: 2024.04.02 ECE Seminar - Francisco Romero.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 248
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92881411147?pwd=SXNBdm9oa3ljYi9sdTNsR2puWmRrQT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Miki Arlen
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Photonics Seminar - A. Douglas Stone, Tuesday, April 2nd at 2pm in EEB 248
Tue, Apr 02, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: A. Douglas Stone, Yale University
Talk Title: Time-reversing a laser: What it means and why it's important.
Series: Photonics Seminar Series
Abstract: Over a decade ago an overlooked symmetry of Maxwell's equations coupled to matter was recognized, a relationship between a laser at threshold and a perfectly absorbing resonator. The threshold condition for lasing is the point at which gain balances loss, and the system self-organizes to oscillate coherently at a specific frequency in the highest Q electromagnetic mode. At this special point the system supports a purely outgoing solution of the Maxwell wave equation at a real frequency but with negligible amplitude, heralding the turn-on of a steady-state source of coherent radiation. Time-reversing this threshold lasing equation maps the laser system to another physical realizable electromagnetic system, one in which the time-reflected lasing mode is incident on an identical resonator, except that absorption loss replaces gain, and the purely incoming wave is perfectly trapped by interference and eventually absorbed without scattering. This mapping implies that under very general conditions, any complex structure can be made to absorb perfectly at a specific frequency, if a specific adapted input wavefront is imposed and the loss is appropriately tuned, a phenomenon now known as Coherent Perfect Absorption (CPA). While CPA was proposed for classical electromagnetic waves, the effect occurs for all of the linear classical wave equations of physics, and has nonlinear generalizations as well. Moreover, while CPA describes perfect capture and transduction of waves, the theory pointed the way to an even more general theory of reflectionless scattering of appropriate adapted wavefronts ("reflectionless scattering modes", RSMs). This theory applies to quantum waves as well, and provides a new framework to explore the control and routing of waves via interference in guided and even open geometries. I will review a few dramatic experimental and technologically interesting applications of CPA and RSM.
Biography: A. Douglas Stone is Carl A. Morse Professor of Applied Physics, and Professor of Physics at Yale University, where he joined the faculty in 1986. Since becoming a full professor in 1990, he has served as Chair of Applied Physics (1997-2003, 2009-2015), Director of Yale's Division of Physical Sciences (2004-2009), and Deputy Director of the Yale Quantum Institute (2015-present).Stone is a theoretical physicist with research interests in condensed matter and optical physics. He has co-authored over 165 research publications, which have been cited over 28,000 times, with an h-index of 74 and holds four patents for optical devices. He was a pioneer in the field of mesoscopic physics, describing systems intermediate between bulk solids and individual atoms or molecules, where novel quantum effects appear. Subsequently he worked on problems relating to the effects of chaos in quantum and electromagnetic systems, and was the first to introduce and study lasers with ray-chaotic resonators. His current work continues to focus on lasers, and other photonic systems with complex geometry and gain and loss. He is a recipient of the McMillan Award of the University of Illinois at Urbana for "outstanding contributions to condensed matter physics" for his research demonstrating "universal conductance fluctuations" in mesoscopic conductors. He was awarded the 2015 Willis Lamb Medal for Laser Science for his work on random and chaotic lasers, in collaboration with his colleague Hui Cao. His group developed Steady-state Ab initio Laser Theory (SALT), which is the first general formulation of laser theory set up to deal with arbitrary spatial complexity in a lasing structure efficiently, assuming steady-state operation. In 2010 he pioneered the concept of the Coherent Perfect Absorber (the time-reversed or "anti-laser"), and has recently generalized this framework to encompass a general theory reflectionless scattering of all linear waves. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Optical Society of America, and is an Honorary General Member of the Aspen Center for Physics. Stone earned his BA from Harvard in 1976, an MA from Balliol College, Oxford in 1978 (where he was a Rhodes Scholar), and a PhD from MIT in 1983 under the supervision of John Joannopoulos. He was a postdoc at IBM before coming to Yale.
Host: Mercedeh Khajavikhan, Michelle Povinelli, Constantine Sideris; Hossein Hashemi; Wade Hsu; Mengjie Yu; Wei Wu; Tony Levi; Alan E. Willner; Andrea Martin Armani
More Information: Douglas Stone Seminar Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Apr 02, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Reha Uzsoy, Program Director, Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation, National Science Foundation
Talk Title: Funding Perspectives from the National Science Foundation
Host: Prof. Qiang Huang
More Information: April 2, 2024.pdf
Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - SOS Building, B2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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CS Colloquium: Sai Praneeth Karimireddy - Building Planetary-Scale Collaborative Intelligence
Wed, Apr 03, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sai Praneeth Karimireddy, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Building Planetary-Scale Collaborative Intelligence
Abstract: Today, access to high-quality data has become the key bottleneck to deploying machine learning. Often, the data that is most valuable is locked away in inaccessible silos due to unfavorable incentives and ethical or legal restrictions. This is starkly evident in health care, where such barriers have led to highly biased and underperforming tools. Using my collaborations with Doctors Without Borders and the Cancer Registry of Norway as case studies, I will describe how collaborative learning systems, such as federated learning, provide a natural solution; they can remove barriers to data sharing by respecting the privacy and interests of the data providers. Yet for these systems to truly succeed, three fundamental challenges must be confronted: These systems need to 1) be efficient and scale to massive networks, 2) manage the divergent goals of the participants, and 3) provide resilient training and trustworthy predictions. I will discuss how tools from optimization, statistics, and economics can be leveraged to address these challenges. This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Sai Praneeth Karimireddy is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley with Mike I. Jordan. Karimireddy obtained his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and his PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) with Martin Jaggi. His research builds large-scale machine learning systems for equitable and collaborative intelligence and designs novel algorithms that can robustly and privately learn over distributed data (i.e., edge, federated, and decentralized learning). His work has seen widespread real-world adoption through close collaborations with public health organizations (e.g., Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, the Cancer Registry of Norway) and with industries such as Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Owkin. Karimireddy's research has been recognized by the EPFL Patrick Denantes Memorial Prize for the best computer science thesis, the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Award for exceptional applied research, an EPFL thesis distinction award, a Swiss National Science Foundation fellowship, and best paper awards at the International Workshop on Federated Learning for User Privacy and Data Confidentiality at ICML 2021 and the International Workshop on Federated Learning: Recent Advances and New Challenges at NeurIPS 2022.
Host: Jiapeng Zhang / Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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AME Seminar
Wed, Apr 03, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Julio Chirinos, University of Pennsylvania
Talk Title: Role of Arterial Stiffness and Pulsatile Hemodynamics in Target Organ Damage: Implications for Human Health
Abstract: The normal aorta exerts a powerful cushioning function, which limits arterial pulsatility and protects the microvasculature from excessive fluctuations in pressure and blood flow. Large-artery stiffening, which occurs with aging and various pathologic states, impairs this cushioning function, and has important consequences on target organs, including the brain, the heart, the kidneys and the placenta. Arterial stiffness also appears to be implicated in the pathogenesis of cardiometabolic disease. Large-artery stiffness represents a high-priority therapeutic target to ameliorate the global burden of cardiovascular disease in the next several decades. We will discuss key physiologic and biophysical principles related to arterial stiffness and the impact of aortic stiffening on target organs and associated disease states.
Biography: Julio A. Chirinos, MD, PhD is a Professor of Medicine in the Cardiovascular Division, Co-Director of the Clinical Research T32 Training Program in Cardiovascular Biology and Medicine, and Adjunct Faculty at the Center for Magnetic Resonance and Optical Imaging, at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He is a specialist in cardiac imaging (echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging). He is also adjunct Faculty at the University of Ghent in Belgium, where he maintains an active collaboration with the Asklepios Investigators. His PhD was focused on the non-invasive assessment of arterial hemodynamics. He is the President of the North American Artery Society. He directs an NIH-funded research program focused on the role of arterial stiffness and pulsatile hemodynamics in cardiovascular disease, mechanisms of human heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and the use of proteomics to discern mechanisms of human heart failure. He currently leads clinical studies designed to therapeutically target the arterial tree in order to reduce maladaptive cardiac remodeling, diastolic dysfunction, and to treat patients with HFpEF, an epidemic condition for which limited effective proven pharmacologic therapies are currently available. He also leads various cohort studies with deep cardiovascular phenotyping aimed at characterizing phenotypic profiles in humans. He co-leads a Global Heart Failure biomarker consortium, an industry-academic collaboration investigating proteomics and genomics in human heart failure. He is the University of Pennsylvania Principal Investigator and a Steering Committee member of Heart Share, a multicenter research consortium funded by the NHLBI aimed at discerning mechanisms of disease in human Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction. Dr. Chirinos has published >250 papers in high-impact journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine Evidence, The Lancet, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Circulation, Hypertension, and Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC). He has received awards or honorary fellowships from the American Heart Association, the Inter-American Society of Cardiology, the American Society of Hypertension and the European Society of Cardiology. He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and an honorary member of the Korean Society of Cardiology. He has also received multiple research grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the National Institutes for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), the American College of Radiology (ACR), and the American Heart Association (AHA), among others. He was one of 20 global members of the Lancet Commission for Hypertension, in charge of developing strategies and recommendations to reduce the global burden of hypertension. He has participated in various clinical expert committees for the American Heart Association, American Society of Echocardiography, European Society of Cardiology, American Society of Hypertension and European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Chirinos led 2 international multicenter trials testing therapeutic strategies related to the intersection of COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease. He is also the co-PI of ongoing cohort studies to study the long-term cardiovascular consequences of COVID-19, co-chair of the Global Heart Failure Biomarker Consortium, and a Steering Committee Member of HeartShare. Both of these multicenter consortia are focused on the study of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). He is currently the President of the North American Artery society, which promotes the study of arterial function as a determinant of cardiovascular disease. He was also an Associate Editor of the American Heart Association Journal Circulation: Heart Failure, The Journal of Clinical Hypertension, Editor of the Cochrane Group (Cochrane Collaboration), Senior Consulting Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the American Heart Association, Pulse and the Journal of Geriatric Cardiology. He is the editor of a textbook on Arterial Stiffness and Pulsatile Hemodynamics (Arterial Stiffness and Pulsatile Hemodynamics in Health and Disease; Elsevier, 2022). Dr. Chirinos also directs a core analysis laboratory for assessments of cardiac and arterial structure and function with non-invasive imaging, which has served as the core lab for various multicenter studies, including population studies, American College of Radiology Network studies and industry-funded studies. He has been an invited speaker in >160 scientific sessions.
Host: AME Department
More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 252
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
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USC SleepHuB Special Seminar
Wed, Apr 03, 2024 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jerone A. Dempsey, Ph.D., Professor at University of Wisconsin, Madison
Talk Title: Sleep Apnea Pathogenesis and Cardiovascular Consequences
Abstract: Sleep apnea prevalence continues to expand throughout the world, even within general, non-clinical populations. We will examine two aspects of the problem. First we will present evidence to support the concept that obstructive sleep apnea is as much attributable to neurochemical control of the stability of central respiratory motor output as it is to upper airway collapsibility. Secondly we will explore the complex, controversial question of the cardiovascular sequelae of sleep apnea through examination of evidence in both humans and animal models supporting the sustained “after-effects” of chronic , intermittent hypoxemia on both sympathetic, vasoconstrictor activity and on the vascular endothelium.
Biography: Jerry Dempsey, Ph.D., is a world-renowned respiratory physiologist, who is currently Professor Emeritus of Population Health Sciences, Physiology and Kinesiology, and previously, Director of the John Rankin Laboratory of Pulmonary Medicine, at University of Wisconsin (UW), Madison. He has made many invaluable contributions towards unraveling the biological mechanisms underlying a diverse set of problems in respiratory physiology. These include: the time-dependent sensitization of carotid chemoreceptors in acclimatization to altitude; the limits of the healthy and diseased human pulmonary system for gas transport, respiratory muscle function and ventilatory output during exercise; and the role of chemical and non-chemical influences on the regulation of breathing and autonomic cardiovascular function during sleep, particularly in the pathogenesis of sleep apnea and the effects of novel treatments on these factors. His research has been funded continuously for over 45 years with grants from NIH, AHA, VA, DOD and UW. Dr. Dempsey was past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Physiology and Cross Talk Editor for the Journal of Physiology.
Host: BME Professor Michael Khoo, Co-Host CHLA Pulmonology & Sleep Medicine
More Info: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/363758496 (passcode: learn)
Location: Childrens Hospital (CHL) - Stauffer Conference Room A
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
Event Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/363758496 (passcode: learn)
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ECE-S Seminar - Dr. Stuart Oberman
Wed, Apr 03, 2024 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Stuart Oberman, Vice President, GPU ASIC Engineering | NVIDIA
Talk Title: GPU Computing and the Rise of Generative AI
Abstract:
Generative AI is transforming industries, with its powerful ability to create text, images, videos, computer code, and more. The advent and growth of GenAI have been driven by the evolution of GPU computing. Innovations in NVIDIA's GPU architectures over the last two decades have transformed GPUs from 3D graphics accelerators to also powerful AI accelerators. This talk will present this GPU computing journey of hardware and architectural advances, and it will discuss current and future technology challenges and opportunities. It will also discuss strategies for deploying GenAI networks in large GPU datacenters, where hardware and software advancements are combined to meet the real-time requirements of various industries.
Biography:
Stuart Oberman is Vice President of GPU ASIC Engineering at NVIDIA. Since 2002, he has contributed to the design and verification of 12 GPU architectures. He currently directs multiple GPU design and verification teams. Stuart earned the BS degree in electrical engineering from the University of Iowa, and the MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, where he performed research in the Stanford Architecture and Arithmetic Group. He has coauthored one book and more than 20 technical papers. He holds more than 55 granted US patents.
Zoom Meeting ID: 955 2860 0978
Passcode: 988471
Host: Dr. Arash Saifhashemi
More Information: 2024.04.03 ECE Seminar - Stuart Oberman.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Miki Arlen
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CS Colloquium: Jason Wu - Computational Understanding of User Interfaces
Thu, Apr 04, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jason Wu, CMU
Talk Title: Computational Understanding of User Interfaces
Series: Computer Science Colloquium
Abstract: A grand challenge in human-computer interaction (HCI) is constructing user interfaces (UIs) that make computers useful for all users across all contexts. Today, most UIs are manually designed for a rigid set of assumptions and are unable to dynamically accommodate the diversity of user abilities, usage contexts, or computing technologies. The goal of my research is to build a machine that can understand and operate any UI then dynamically convert it into a new personalized, context-dependent representation. In this talk, I focus on three areas that define this approach for enhancing human-computer interaction. First, I describe approaches for understanding user ability and context embodied by a recommendation system that recommends device settings (e.g., accessibility features) based on sensed usage behaviors and user interaction logs. Next, I introduce several machine learning models that reliably understand the semantics (content and functionality) of any graphical UI from its visual appearance, unlocking new possibilities for many existing systems such as assistive technology, software testing, and UI automation. Finally, I present systems that incorporate both user and UI understanding to synthesize improved interfaces using a novel fine-tuned large language model (LLM) for UI generation. Improved machine understanding of UIs has the potential to redefine how we use computers in the future and drive advances in many fields such as HCI, machine learning and software engineering.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Jason Wu is a PhD candidate in the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University advised by Jeffrey Bigham. In his research, Jason builds data-driven and computational systems that understand, manipulate, and synthesize user interfaces to maximize the usability and accessibility of computers . His research has been published in top venues for human-computer interaction, user interface technology, accessibility, and machine learning, where he has received several best paper awards (CHI 2021, W4A 2021) and honorable mention awards (CHI 2020, CHI 2023). His work has also been recognized outside of academic conferences by a Fast Company Innovation by Design Student Finalist Award, press coverage in major outlets such as TechCrunch and AppleInsider, and by the FCC Chair Awards for Advancements in Accessibility. Jason is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and selected as a Heidelberg Laureate Forum Young Researcher.
Host: Souti Chattopadhyay
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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NL Seminar - 30 Years of Perplexity
Thu, Apr 04, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kevin Knight, Threeven Labs
Talk Title: 30 Years of Perplexity
Abstract: REMINDER: If you’re an outside visitor who wishes to attend in person, kindly send a message to nlg DASH seminar DASH host AT isi.edu at least 1 business day prior with your full name, job title and professional affiliation. Please arrive to ISI at least 15 minutes prior to the start of the seminar. If you do not have access to the 11th Floor, please check in at the 10th floor main reception desk to register as a visitor and someone will escort you to the conference room location. For more information on the NL Seminar series and upcoming talks, please visit: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/ NLP scientists have been trying for decades to accurately predict the next word in running text. Why were we so determined to succeed at this strange task? How did we track our successes (and failures)? Why was word prediction at the center of early statistical work in text compression, machine translation, and speech recognition? Will it lead to artificial general intelligence (AGI) in the 2020s? I’ll attempt to answer these questions with anecdotes drawn from three decades of research in NLP, text compression, and code-breaking.
Biography: Dr. Kevin Knight served on the faculty of the University of Southern California (26 years), as Chief Scientist at Language Weaver, Inc. (9 years), and as Chief Scientist for Natural Language Processing at Didi Global (4 years). He received a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor's degree from Harvard University. Dr. Knight's research interests include machine translation, natural language generation, automata theory, decipherment of historical documents, and number theory. He has co-authored over 150 research papers on natural language processing, as well as the widely adopted textbook "Artificial Intelligence" (McGraw-Hill). Dr. Knight served as President of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) in 2011, as General Chair for ACL in 2005, as General Chair for the North American ACL (NAACL) in 2016, and as co-program chair for the inaugural Asia-Pacific ACL (2020). He received an Outstanding Paper Award at NAACL 2018, and Test-of-Time awards at ACL 2022 and ACL 2023. He is a Fellow of the ACL, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and the USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI). Subscribe here to learn more about upcoming seminars: https://www.isi.edu/events/
Host: Jonathan May and Justin Cho
More Info: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Live Only at ISI-Conf Rms #1135-37
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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ECE-EP Faculty Candidate - Liran Zheng, Thursday, April 4th at 3pm in EEB 248
Thu, Apr 04, 2024 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Liran Zheng, Tesla
Talk Title: Power Electronics for a Net-Zero Energy Future
Series: ECE-EP Seminar
Abstract: One of the most significant challenges that human society faces is producing and distributing clean and affordable energy. Electricity and transportation sectors are dominant sectors for US greenhouse gas emissions and account for 25% and 28% of total emissions in 2021, respectively. To enable a net-zero energy future, renewable energy and energy storage need to be integrated into smart power grids. A paradigm shift from fossil fuel to clean electricity as the energy source of land, sea, and air transportation is also necessary. Power electronics serve as the electronic interfaces between the smart power grids and resources including but not limited to renewable energy, energy storage, and electrified transportation. Recently, the advancement in wide-bandgap semiconductors ignited significant interests in emerging medium-voltage (MV) power electronics, especially solid-state transformers (SSTs). I will discuss my Ph.D. work on new current-source single-stage SST circuits and model-predictive priority-shifting control methods for new stacked low-inertia SSTs. The advantages include significantly reduced size, improved efficiency and reliability, and universality for different net-zero applications. Based on the proposed concepts and customized 3.3 kV silicon carbide reverse-blocking MOSFET modules, a 5 kV DC SST and a 7.2 kV AC SST have been built and tested for MV DC renewable-energy collector and MV AC electric vehicle fast-charging applications, respectively. It is the first time that current-source MV SSTs have been demonstrated and reported, which led to an IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics First Prize Paper Award. My patents from this work have been licensed under the GridBlock startup company for grid-connected transportation electrification and renewable energy products. Finally, I will discuss future research directions for a net-zero energy future.
Biography: Liran Zheng received the B.S. degree in control engineering from Tsinghua University in 2016, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees with the Center for Distributed Energy in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2018 and 2022, respectively.Liran is currently a Senior Engineer with Tesla. He previously held visiting positions with The University of Texas at Austin, the NSF ERC Center for Power Electronics Systems at Virginia Tech, the General Electric Global Research Center, and the Electric Power Research Institute. His research interests include power electronics and energy systems. Liran is the recipient of 4 IEEE Prize Paper Awards including an IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics First Prize Paper Award and Georgia Tech Best Ph.D. Thesis Award. He holds patents commercialized by GridBlock, a startup company out of Georgia Tech, for grid-connected transportation electrification and renewable energy products. He serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications.
Host: ECE-EP
More Information: Liran Zheng Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Fri, Apr 05, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Huimin Zhao, Ph.D., Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Biophysics and computational Biology, University of Illinois, IL
Talk Title: Synthetic Biology 2.0: the Dawn of a New Era
Abstract: Synthetic biology aims to design novel or improved biological systems using engineering principles, which has broad applications in medical, chemical, food, and agricultural industries. Thanks to the rapid advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis, genome editing, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), and laboratory automation in the past two decades, synthetic biology has entered a new phase of exponential growth. In this talk, I will highlight our recent work on the development of a self-driving biofoundry and AI/ML tools for synthetic biology applications and next-generation genome editing tools. Examples include but are not limited to: (1) BioAutomata: a self-driving biofoundry for pathway engineering and protein engineering, (2) ECNet: an AI tool for enzyme engineering, (3) CLEAN: an AI tool for enzyme function prediction, (4) FAST-RiPP & FAST-NPS: an automated and scalable platform for rapid discovery of bioactive natural products, and (5) zCRISPR-Cas12: a new tool for precise gene knock-in and highly efficient multiplex genome editing.
Biography: Dr. Huimin Zhao is the Steven L. Miller Chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), director of NSF AI Institute for Molecule Synthesis (moleculemaker.org), and Editor in Chief of ACS Synthetic Biology. He received his B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1992 and his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1998 under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Dr. Frances Arnold. Prior to joining UIUC in 2000, he was a project leader at the Industrial Biotechnology Laboratory of the Dow Chemical Company. He was promoted to full professor in 2008. Dr. Zhao has authored and co-authored over 430 research articles and over 30 issued and pending patent applications. In addition, he has given over 490 plenary, keynote, or invited lectures. Thirty-seven (37) of his former graduate students and postdocs became professors or principal investigators around the world. Dr. Zhao received numerous research and teaching awards and honors such as AIChE Daniel I.C. Wang Award, AIChE FP&B Division Award, ECI Enzyme Engineering Award, ACS Marvin Johnson Award, and SIMB Charles Thom Award. His primary research interests are in the development and applications of synthetic biology, machine learning, and laboratory automation tools to address society’s most daunting challenges in health, energy, and sustainability.
Host: Peter Wang
Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - DRB 146
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
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Munushian Seminar - Kwabena Boahen, Friday, April 5th at 3:30pm in EEB 132
Fri, Apr 05, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kwabena Boahen, Stanford University
Talk Title: Scaling Knowledge Processing: 2D Chips versus 3D Brains
Series: Munushian Visiting Seminar Series
Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) now advances by performing twice as many multiplications every two months, but the semiconductor industry tiles twice as many multipliers on a chip every two years. Moreover, the returns from tiling these multipliers ever more densely in two dimensions (2D) now diminish because signals must travel relatively farther and farther. Although travel can be shortened by stacking multipliers to process knowledge in three dimensions (3D), such a solution acutely reduces the available surface area for dissipating heat. My recent dendrocentric reconception of the biological brain's fundamental units of computation and communication removes this 3D thermal roadblock. Current AI uses dot-products to emulate synaptic weighting. This six-decade-old synaptocentric conception posits that the brain weights inputs across an entire dendrite to detect a spatial pattern of activations. The dendrocentric conception posits that the brain orders inputs meticulously along a short stretch of dendrite to detect a spatiotemporal pattern of spikes. My group has now realized this dendrocentric conception of the learning brain with a string of ferroelectric transistors. Moving away from synaptocentric to dendrocentric learning would enable AI to run not with megawatts in the cloud but rather with watts on a phone.
Biography: Kwabena Boahen is a Professor of Bioengineering, Electrical Engineering, and by courtesy Computer Science at Stanford University; an investigator in Stanford's Bio-X Institute, System X Alliance, and Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute; and the founding director of Stanford's Brains in Silicon Lab. His group models the nervous system computationally to elucidate principles of neural design at the cellular, circuit, and systems levels; and synthesizes neuromorphic electronic systems that scale energy-use with size as efficiently as the brain does. His interest in neural networks developed soon after he left his native Ghana to pursue undergraduate studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in 1985. He went on to earn a doctorate in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology in 1997. From 1997 to 2005 he was on the faculty of University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA, where he was the inaugural holder of the Skirkanich Term Junior Chair. His research has resulted in over a hundred publications, including a cover story in Scientific American featuring his lab's work on a silicon retina and a silicon tectum that "wire together" automatically (May 2005). He has been invited to give over a hundred seminar, plenary, and keynote talks, including a 2007 TED talk, "A computer that works like the brain", with over seven hundred thousand views. He has received several distinguished honors, including a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering (1999) and a National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award (2006). He was elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2016) and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (2016) in recognition of his lab's work on Neurogrid, an iPad-size platform that emulates the cerebral cortex in biophysical detail and at functional scale, a combination that hitherto required a supercomputer. He has led several multi-university, multi-investigator research efforts, including one that raised the level of abstraction at which neuromorphic chips are 'programmed' by co-designing hardware and software (Brainstorm Project). A spin-out from his Stanford lab, Femtosense Inc (2018), is commercializing this breakthrough. He teaches graduate courses in computational neuroscience and neuromorphic computing, has trained over twenty graduate students, and mentored four postdoctoral researchers, including the designer of NeuraLink's first implantable chip.
Host: J Yang, H Wang, C Zhou, S Cronin, W Wu
More Information: Kwabena Boahen Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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CS Colloquium: Xuhai Orson Xu - How Do We Get There?: Toward Intelligent Behavior Intervention
Mon, Apr 08, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Xuhai Orson Xu, MIT
Talk Title: How Do We Get There?: Toward Intelligent Behavior Intervention
Abstract: As the intelligence of everyday smart devices continues to evolve, they can already monitor basic health behaviors such as physical activities and heart rates. The vision of an intelligent behavior change intervention pipeline for health -- combining behavior modeling & interaction design -- seems to be within reach. How do we get there?In this talk, I will introduce a comprehensive intervention pipeline that bridges behavior science theory-driven designs and generalizable behavior models. I will also introduce my efforts on passive sensing datasets, human-centered algorithms, and a benchmark platform that drives the community toward more robust and deployable intervention systems for health and well-being. This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Xuhai "Orson" Xu is a postdoc at MIT EECS. He received his PhD at the University of Washington. Specializing in human-computer interaction, applied machine learning, and health, Xu develops intelligent behavior intervention systems to promote human health and well-being. His research covers two aspects -- 1) building deployable human-centered behavior models and 2) designing interactive user experiences -- to establish a complete system to improve end-users' well-being. Moreover, his research also goes beyond end-users and supports health experts by designing new human-AI collaboration paradigms in clinical settings. Xu has earned several awards, including 9 Best Paper, Best Paper Honorable Mention, and Best Artifact awards. His research has been covered by media outlets such as the Washington Post and ACM News. He was recognized as the Outstanding Student Award Winner at UbiComp 2022, the 2023 UW Distinguished Dissertation Award, and the 2024 Innovation and Technology Award at the Western Association of Graduate Schools.
Host: Stefanos Nikolaidis
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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CS Colloquium: Niloufar Salehi - Designing Reliable Human-AI Interactions: Translating Languages and Matching Students
Tue, Apr 09, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Niloufar Salehi, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Designing Reliable Human-AI Interactions: Translating Languages and Matching Students
Abstract: How can users trust an AI system that fails in unpredictable ways? Machine learning models, while powerful, can produce unpredictable results. This uncertainty becomes even more pronounced in areas where verification is challenging, such as in machine translation, and where reliance depends on adherence to community values, such as student assignment algorithms. Providing users with guidance on when to rely on a system is challenging because models can create a wide range of outputs (e.g. text), error boundaries are highly stochastic, and automated explanations themselves may be incorrect. In this talk, I will first focus on the case of health-care communication to share approaches to improving the reliability of ML-based systems by guiding users to gauge reliability and recover from potential errors. Next, I will focus on the case of student assignment algorithms to examine modeling assumptions and perceptions of fairness in AI systems. This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Niloufar Salehi is an assistant professor in the School of Information at UC, Berkeley where she is a member of Berkeley AI Research (BAIR). She studies human-computer interaction, with her research spanning education to healthcare to restorative justice. Her research interests are social computing, human-centered AI, and more broadly, human-computer interaction (HCI). Her work has been published and received awards in premier venues including ACM CHI, CSCW, and EMNLP and has been covered in VentureBeat, Wired, and the Guardian. She is a W. T. Grant Foundation scholar for her work on promoting equity in student assignment algorithms. She received her PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2018.
Host: Souti Chattopadhyay
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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ECE Seminar: White-Box Computational Imaging: Measurements to Images to Insights
Tue, Apr 09, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Sara Fridovich-Keil, Postdoctoral Fellow | Department of Electrical Engineering | Stanford University
Talk Title: White-Box Computational Imaging: Measurements to Images to Insights
Abstract: Computation and machine learning hold tremendous potential to improve the quality and capabilities of imaging methods used across science, medicine, engineering, and art. Despite their impressive performance on benchmark datasets, however, deep learning methods are known to behave unpredictably on some real-world data, which limits their trusted adoption in safety-critical domains. Accordingly, in this talk I will describe white-box, interpretable methods for photorealistic volumetric reconstruction that match or exceed the performance of black-box neural alternatives. I will also present recent theoretical results that guarantee correct and efficient reconstruction using our white-box approach in nonlinear computed tomography.
Biography: Sara Fridovich-Keil is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, where she works with Mert Pilanci and Gordon Wetzstein on foundations and applications of machine learning and signal processing in computational imaging. She is currently supported by an NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Sara received her PhD in electrical engineering and computer sciences in May 2023 from UC Berkeley, where she was advised by Ben Recht and supported by an NSF GRFP fellowship. Sara received her BSE in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 2018, where she was advised by Peter Ramadge and supported, in part, by a Barry Goldwater Scholarship.
Host: Drs. Antonio Ortega (aortega@usc.edu) and Mihailo Jovanovic (mihailo@usc.edu)
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93797502146?pwd=UzZWRjJieFdIMVU2b3VlckFtQUd3QT09 - (USC NetID Login Required)Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/93797502146?pwd=UzZWRjJieFdIMVU2b3VlckFtQUd3QT09 - (USC NetID Login Required)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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UG-WIE Connection and Community- Investing in Balancing Your Life
Tue, Apr 09, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
WIE is excited to bring to you Michelle D. Katz MS, RD, MPH, CHES | Registered Dietitian & Certified Health Education Specialist for our last Connection and Community for the Spring semester. We will be making overnight oats, don't miss out on important guidance from Michelle on learning to balance your life.
2-3 PM Undergrads
3-4 PM Masters
4-5 PM PhD
Join at the best time that works with your schedule!Location: Sign into EngageSC to View Location
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Thelma Federico Zaragoza
Event Link: https://engage.usc.edu/WIE/rsvp?id=396470
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Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Apr 09, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Zijun Gao, Assistant Professor, Department of Data Sciences and Operations, USC Marshall School of Business
Talk Title: Selective Randomization Inference for Adaptive Studies
Host: Dr. Renyuan Xu
More Information: April 9, 2024.pdf
Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - SOS Building, B2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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AAI-CCI-MHI Seminar on CPS, Wed., April. 10, 2:00 pm, EEB 248: Gioele Zardini
Wed, Apr 10, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Gioele Zardini, Postdoctoral Researcher
Talk Title: Co-Design of Complex Systems: From Autonomy to Future Mobility
Series: EE598 Seminar Series
Abstract: When designing complex systems, we need to consider multiple trade-offs at various abstraction levels and scales, and choices of single components need to be studied jointly. For instance, the design of future mobility solutions (e.g., autonomous vehicles, micromobility) and the design of the mobility systems they enable are closely coupled. Indeed, knowledge about the intended service of novel mobility solutions would impact their design and deployment process, while insights about their technological development could significantly affect transportation management policies. Optimally co-designing sociotechnical systems is a complex task for at least two reasons. On one hand, the co-design of interconnected systems (e.g., large networks of cyber-physical systems) involves the simultaneous choice of components arising from heterogeneous natures (e.g., hardware vs. software parts) and fields, while satisfying systemic constraints and accounting for multiple objectives. On the other hand, components are connected via collaborative and conflicting interactions between different stakeholders (e.g., within an intermodal mobility system). In this talk, I will present a framework to co-design complex systems, leveraging a monotone theory of co-design and tools from game theory. The framework will be instantiated in the task of designing future mobility systems, all the way from the policies that a city can design, to the autonomy of vehicles as part of an autonomous mobility-on-demand service. Through various case studies, I will show how the proposed approaches allow one to efficiently answer heterogeneous questions, unifying different modeling techniques and promoting interdisciplinarity, modularity, and compositionality. I will then discuss open challenges for compositional systems design optimization, and present my agenda to tackle them.
Biography: Gioele Zardini is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and an incoming faculty at MIT in Fall 2024.
He received his BSc., MSc., and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Robotics, Systems, and Control from ETH Zurich in 2017, 2019, and 2023 respectively. He spent time in Singapore as a researcher at nuTonomy (then Aptiv, now Motional), at Stanford University (working with Marco Pavone), and at MIT (in 2020 working with David Spivak, and in 2023 with Munther Dahleh).
Driven by societal challenges, the goal of his research is to develop efficient computational tools and algorithmic approaches to formulate and solve complex, interconnected system design and autonomous decision-making problems. His research interests include the co-design of sociotechnical systems, compositionality in engineering, applied category theory, decision and control, optimization, and game theory, with applications to intelligent transportation systems, autonomy, and complex networks and infrastructures. He is the creator of Autonomy Talks (an International seminar series promoting a diverse research exchange on autonomy), as well as a lead organizer for the seminal workshops “Compositional Robotics: Mathematics and Tools”, and “Co-Design and Coordination of Future Mobility Systems” at IEEE ICRA and ITSC, respectively. He is the recipient of a paper award at the 4th Applied Category Theory Conference and of the Best Paper Award (1st Place) at the 24th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC). For more details, check out his webpage: https://gioele.science
Host: Pierluigi Nuzzo
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ariana Perez
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AAI-CCI-MHI Seminar on CPS, Wed., April. 10, 2:00 pm, EEB 248: Gioele Zardini
Wed, Apr 10, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Gioele Zardini, Postdoctoral Researcher
Talk Title: Co-Design of Complex Systems: From Autonomy to Future Mobility
Abstract: When designing complex systems, we need to consider multiple trade-offs at various abstraction levels and scales, and choices of single components need to be studied jointly. For instance, the design of future mobility solutions (e.g., autonomous vehicles, micromobility) and the design of the mobility systems they enable are closely coupled. Indeed, knowledge about the intended service of novel mobility solutions would impact their design and deployment process, while insights about their technological development could significantly affect transportation management policies. Optimally co-designing sociotechnical systems is a complex task for at least two reasons. On one hand, the co-design of interconnected systems (e.g., large networks of cyber-physical systems) involves the simultaneous choice of components arising from heterogeneous natures (e.g., hardware vs. software parts) and fields, while satisfying systemic constraints and accounting for multiple objectives. On the other hand, components are connected via collaborative and conflicting interactions between different stakeholders (e.g., within an intermodal mobility system). In this talk, I will present a framework to co-design complex systems, leveraging a monotone theory of co-design and tools from game theory. The framework will be instantiated in the task of designing future mobility systems, all the way from the policies that a city can design, to the autonomy of vehicles as part of an autonomous mobility-on-demand service. Through various case studies, I will show how the proposed approaches allow one to efficiently answer heterogeneous questions, unifying different modeling techniques and promoting interdisciplinarity, modularity, and compositionality. I will then discuss open challenges for compositional systems design optimization, and present my agenda to tackle them.
Biography: Gioele Zardini is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and an incoming faculty at MIT in Fall 2024. He received his BSc., MSc., and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Robotics, Systems, and Control from ETH Zurich in 2017, 2019, and 2023 respectively. He spent time in Singapore as a researcher at nuTonomy (then Aptiv, now Motional), at Stanford University (working with Marco Pavone), and at MIT (in 2020 working with David Spivak, and in 2023 with Munther Dahleh). Driven by societal challenges, the goal of his research is to develop efficient computational tools and algorithmic approaches to formulate and solve complex, interconnected system design and autonomous decision-making problems. His research interests include the co-design of sociotechnical systems, compositionality in engineering, applied category theory, decision and control, optimization, and game theory, with applications to intelligent transportation systems, autonomy, and complex networks and infrastructures. He is the creator of Autonomy Talks (an International seminar series promoting a diverse research exchange on autonomy), as well as a lead organizer for the seminal workshops “Compositional Robotics: Mathematics and Tools”, and “Co-Design and Coordination of Future Mobility Systems” at IEEE ICRA and ITSC, respectively. He is the recipient of a paper award at the 4th Applied Category Theory Conference and of the Best Paper Award (1st Place) at the 24th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC). For more details, check out his webpage: https://gioele.science
Host: Pierluigi Nuzzo
Location: 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ariana Perez
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CAIS Seminar: Nowcasting Temporal Trends Using Indirect Surveys
Wed, Apr 10, 2024 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Ajitesh Srivastava, USC CAIS Associate Director & Research Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Talk Title: CAIS Seminar: Nowcasting Temporal Trends Using Indirect Surveys
Abstract: Indirect surveys, in which respondents provide information about other people they know, have been proposed for estimating (nowcasting) the size of a hidden population where privacy is important or the hidden population is hard to reach. Examples include estimating casualties in an earthquake, conditions among female sex workers, and the prevalence of drug use and infectious diseases. The Network Scaleup Method (NSUM) is the classical approach to developing estimates from indirect surveys, but it was designed for one-shot surveys. Further, it requires certain assumptions and asking for or estimating the number of individuals in each respondent’s network. In recent years, surveys have been increasingly deployed online and can collect data continuously (e.g., COVID-19 surveys on Facebook during much of the pandemic). Conventional NSUM can be applied to these scenarios by analyzing the data independently at each point in time, but this misses the opportunity of leveraging the temporal dimension. We propose to use the responses from indirect surveys collected over time and develop analytical tools (i) to prove that indirect surveys can provide better estimates for the trends of the hidden population over time, as compared to direct surveys and (ii) to identify appropriate temporal aggregations to improve the estimates. We demonstrate through extensive simulations that our approach outperforms traditional NSUM and direct surveying methods. We also empirically demonstrate the superiority of our approach on a real indirect survey dataset of COVID-19 cases.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
RSVP/Register for the Zoom webinar here: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LkSI20EOQPm5npI_d8w5HA
Biography: Dr. Ajitesh Srivastava is a USC CAIS associate director and Research Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He earned his PhD in computer science from USC. Dr. Srivastava’s research interests include social networks, algorithms, parallel computing, and machine learning applied to social good, crime, smart grids, and computer architecture.
Host: CAIS
More Info: https://cais.usc.edu/events/nowcasting-temporal-trends-using-indirect-surveys/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LkSI20EOQPm5npI_d8w5HALocation: HYBRID: CPA 156 & Zoom
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LkSI20EOQPm5npI_d8w5HA
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Events
Event Link: https://cais.usc.edu/events/nowcasting-temporal-trends-using-indirect-surveys/
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AME Seminar
Wed, Apr 10, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Michael Posa, University of Pennsylvania
Talk Title: Do we really need all that data? Learning and control for contact-rich manipulation
Abstract: For all the promise of big-data machine learning, what will happen when robots deploy to our homes and workplaces and inevitably encounter new objects, new tasks, and new environments? If a solution to every problem cannot be pre-trained, then robots will need to adapt to this novelty. Can a robot, instead, spend a few seconds to a few minutes gathering information and then accomplish a complex task? Why does it seem that so much data is required, anyway? I will first argue that the hybrid or contact-driven aspects of manipulation clashes with the inductive biases inherent in standard learning methods, driving this current need for large data. I will then show how contact-inspired implicit learning, embedding convex optimization, can reshape the loss landscape and enable more accurate training, better generalization, and ultimately data efficiency. Finally, I will present our latest results on how these learned models can be deployed via real-time multi-contact MPC for dexterous robotic manipulation, where the robot must autonomously make and break contact and initiate stick-slip transitions.
Biography: Michael Posa is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania. He leads the Dynamic Autonomy and Intelligent Robotics (DAIR) lab, a group within the Penn GRASP laboratory. His group focuses on developing computationally tractable algorithms to enable robots to operate both dynamically and safely as they interact with their environments. Michael received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2017 and received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2007. Before his doctoral studies, he worked as an engineer at Vecna Robotics. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2023, the RSS Early Career Spotlight in 2023, a Google Faculty Research Award, and a Young Faculty Researcher Award from the Toyota Research Institute. His work has also received awards recognition at TRO, ICRA, Humanoids, and HSCC.
Host: AME Department
More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 252
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
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CS Colloquium: Z. Morley Mao - Staying Ahead of the Arms Race in Cybersecurity: Realizing Effective Attack Prevention, Detection, and Mitigation for Legacy and Future Networked Systems.
Thu, Apr 11, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Z. Morley Mao, University of Michigan
Talk Title: Staying Ahead of the Arms Race in Cybersecurity: Realizing Effective Attack Prevention, Detection, and Mitigation for Legacy and Future Networked Systems.
Abstract: The landscape of cybersecurity is a dynamic arena, characterized by an ongoing arms race between malicious actors exploiting vulnerabilities and defenders striving to safeguard systems against potential devastation. With the increasing integration of cyberphysical systems like autonomous vehicles and AI/ML technologies into our daily lives, the reactive nature of our security measures poses significant risks. In this talk, I will articulate a forward-looking vision for cybersecurity research. Drawing upon the collective efforts of my team, I will delve into innovative approaches aimed at addressingsecurity challenges across diverse fronts. From enhancing the resilience of the time-honored DNS system to fortifying the security of ubiquitous mobile platforms, and extending to safeguarding ML-based systems within the burgeoning realms of IoT and autonomous vehicles, our focus is proactive. Our strategy entails the construction of inherently secure systems designed to systematically eliminate vulnerabilities. We advocate for the integration of formalisms derived from disciplines such as programming languages, coupled with the provision of robust security guarantees within the very fabric of the platform architecture. Through this proactive paradigm shift, we endeavor to usher in a new era of cybersecurity resilience and reliability. This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Z. Morley Mao is a Professor at the University of Michigan, having completed her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley on robust Internet routing protocol design and effective network measurement techniques to uncover network properties with security and performance implications. She is an ACM and IEEE Fellow, a recipient of the Sloan Fellowship, the NSF CAREER Award, the ARMY YIP Award, and an IBM Faculty Award. Her other honors include the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Professor, EECS Achievement Award, College of Engineering George J. Huebner Research Excellence Award at University of Michigan. Her recent research focus encompasses adversarial machine learning, AV security, and next generation wireless networks.
Host: Harsha V. Madhyastha
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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ECE-S Seminar - Dr. Raghavendra Pothukuchi
Thu, Apr 11, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Raghavendra Pothukuchi, Associate Research Scientist, Department of Computer Science, Yale University
Talk Title: Building the Infinite Brain
Abstract: Interfacing brains and computers helps advance our understanding of the brain and mind, treat their disorders, and when combined with artificial cognitive frameworks, can push the frontier of human ability. Realizing this goal requires new computer architectures—both close to the brain to process and stimulate neural activity, and far from the brain, to run more complex cognitive frameworks, working together. In this talk, I will present my research on the first distributed brain-computer interfacing architecture, SCALO, which processes neural activity from multiple regions of the brain in real time, while being safe for implantation. SCALO is a template for distributed multi-accelerator systems that must meet extreme design constraints. I will also describe the research into accelerating computationally hard models of human cognition, how this might require leveraging novel accelerators like quantum computers, and outline an end-to-end design connecting these with brain interfaces. Meeting the challenging constraints of brain interfacing and complex cognitive modeling required novel system design, leading to fundamental contributions to computer architecture, and sparking a virtuous cycle of innovation between computer architecture and the brain sciences.
Biography: Raghavendra (Raghav) Pothukuchi is an Associate Research Scientist at Yale University. He is an NSF/CRA Computing Innovation Fellow with Profs. Abhishek Bhattacharjee and Jonathan D. Cohen (Princeton, neuroscience). He received his Ph. D. in Computer Science (CS) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with Prof. Josep Torrellas. His research is on brain-computer interfaces, quantum and classical frameworks to accelerate cognitive models, and biologically inspired computer architectures. He also has interdisciplinary work on building intelligent and secure computer systems using control theory and machine learning. Raghav has been selected as a young researcher at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, rising star in computer architecture, and his work has been recognized with a best paper award at ISCA, two IEEE Micro Top Picks selection, a best paper nomination at PACT, and other honors.
Host: Dr. Massoud Pedram
More Info: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98497384750?pwd=TE5kS1JBWklIcFIwYjdkeThUYkcrQT09
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98497384750?pwd=TE5kS1JBWklIcFIwYjdkeThUYkcrQT09More Information: 2024.04.11 ECE Seminar - Raghavendra Pothukuchi.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 248
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98497384750?pwd=TE5kS1JBWklIcFIwYjdkeThUYkcrQT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Miki Arlen
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98497384750?pwd=TE5kS1JBWklIcFIwYjdkeThUYkcrQT09
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Robotics as an Eco-Effective Contingency for Weakened Ecosystems?
Thu, Apr 11, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Thomas Schmickl , Professor - Institute of Biology at the University of Graz, Austria
Talk Title: Robotics as an Eco-Effective Contingency for Weakened Ecosystems?
Abstract: Our planet is on the brink of the 6th mass extinction, as our ecosystems are rapidly losing both diversity and biomass. As intra- and inter-specific interaction networks weaken, ecosystems become increasingly unstable, setting off on a downward trajectory along a deadly spiral. In my keynote, I will explore how robotic systems can play a crucial role in supporting ecosystems and communities. I will show three levels of agency how a „tech for good“ approach might be helpful to fight ecosystem decay: Monitoring, intervention and restoration. By mitigating ecosystem decay, robots may buy us precious time to address the root causes of environmental crises. I will show innovative systems that we’ve developed over recent years — the initial strides toward going beyond mere animal-interaction systems by establishing eco-effective robotics.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
Biography: Thomas Schmickl (https://www.thomasschmickl.eu) is full professor at the Institute of Biology at the University of Graz, Austria. There he also supervises the Artificial Life Lab (https://alife.uni-graz.at), which he founded in 2007 after returning from a HHMI visiting professorship in the USA. In 2012, he was appointed the Basler Chair of Excellence at the East Tennessee State University (ETSU). His research focuses on the biology of social insects and on ecological modeling, as well as on bio-inspired engineering including swarm-, modular-, hormone-, and evolutionary- robotics. He was/is a partner in the EU-funded projects I- Swarm, Symbrion, Replicator, FloraRobotica, RoboRoyale and serves as the leading scientist and consortium coordinator of the EU grants CoCoRo, ASSISIbf, subCULTron, Atempgrad and Hiveopolis. His research seeks to improve the current state-of-the-art in robotics to allow robotic agents to be more like animals or plants, by being more adaptive, resilient, and flexible. Living organisms are parts of his targeted bio-hybrid robotic systems, with the goal to form sustainable organism-technology symbioses. In 2018, he founded the Field of Excellence COLIBRI (Complexity of Life in Basic Research & Innovation, https://colibri.uni-graz.at) at University of Graz, a network of full professors researching complexity with a focus on living systems, joining forces across various disciplines.
Host: Prof. Wei-Min Shen, Associate Professor of Computer Science Practice
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 126
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
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Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Thu, Apr 11, 2024 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Michel Sadelain, MD, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Cell Engineering at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Talk Title: CD 19 CAR T cells: A paradigm for the living Drug Concept
Abstract: Natural immune responses fall short of eradicating tumors in most cancer patients. The genetic engineering of T cells offers a means to repurpose immune cells to remedy these limitations. The first successful embodiment of engineered immunity is chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy targeting CD19. CARs are synthetic receptors that redirect and reprogram T cells to engage and eliminate cancer cells. CARs that target CD19, a cell surface molecule found in most leukemias and lymphomas, have produced remarkable responses in patients with refractory B cell malignancies. Four CD19 CAR therapies are currently approved by the US FDA. Over 1000 CAR therapy trials are currently listed on the clinicaltrials.gov website. Despite high complete remission rates obtained following a single CAR T cell infusion in patients with relapsed hematological malignancies, a number of patients will eventually relapse, pointing to the need to further improve CAR design and T cell engineering strategies to increase the antigen sensitivity and functional persistence of CAR T cells. Recent studies on the antigen sensitivity of CAR T cells have yielded valuable insights into the antigen density requirements and the role of scFv affinity and costimulatory structures incorporated into CARs to enhance tumor recognition and limit antigen escape. A novel family of CARs, termed HIT receptors, provides greater sensitivity, allowing to target tumors that escape conventional CARs. Logic-gated CAR T cells offer the prospect of more selective tumor targeting, exemplified by IF-BETTER gating. Novel CAR designs, such as 1XX, aim to reconcile the effector potency of CD28-based CARs with the greater T cell persistence afforded by 4-1BB based CARs. Genome editing is emerging as a valuable tool to transcriptionally control CAR expression, remodel the T cell receptor (TCR) and enable epigenetic programming to extend the functional persistence of immune effector cells. CAR T cells thus embody a novel paradigm for immunotherapy, providing “living drugs” for patients who fail to generate effective tumor immunity through active immunization or checkpoint blockade. The success of CD19 CAR therapy in cancer further provides a foundation for evaluating CAR T cells in other pathologies such as senescence-associated disorders and autoimmunity.
Biography: Michel Sadelain, MD, PhD, is the Director of the Center for Cell Engineering and the incumbent of the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Sadelain’s research focuses on human cell engineering and cell therapy to treat cancer and hereditary blood disorders. His laboratory has made several seminal contributions to the field of chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), from design to clinical translation. His group was the first to publish dramatic molecular remissions in patients with chemorefractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia following treatment with CD19 CAR T cells.
Host: Peter Wang, Dr. Lerman, Dr. C. Meltzer
More Info: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91924460032
Location: Harlyne J. Norris Research Tower (NRT) - Aresty Auditprium HSC
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91924460032
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Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Fri, Apr 12, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 11:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Tim Swager, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry, MIT
Talk Title: Optical and Electronic Biosensors from Chemistry on Dynamic Colloids
Abstract: This lecture will focus on the design of systems that make use of colloidal materials to create sensors. In one theme, we make use of the reconfiguration of complex liquid emulsions (droplets) and related materials can be triggered chemically, biochemically, or with magnetic fields. Complex liquid droplets behave as optical lens systems and small changes in surface tensions can change focal lengths or cause systems to switch between optically transmissive or scattering states. Central to this scheme is that the fluids in the droplets have different densities and hence are aligned by the earth’s gravity. The induced optical changes can be triggered with chemical, photochemical, or biochemical stimuli and thereby create new generations of sensors. Demonstrations of these methods for the detection of enzyme concentrations, pathogens, and antibodies will be presented. In other efforts, we have used complex colloids to create functionalized versions of polymers that would ordinarily be insoluble and impossible to uniformly functionalize and create high quality nanocomposites. Thiol-Michael reactions were found to be highly efficient on different forms of poly(aniline) and poly(pyrrole). Functionalized poly(pyrrole)s can be deposited on porous cellulosic materials and we have used bioconjugated variants to create new generations of electronic lateral flow assays that are intrinsically quantitative and highly sensitive. These assays can be smart phone readable and promise to greatly expand the utility of this class of biosensors.
Biography: Timothy M. Swager is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A native of Montana, he received a BS from Montana State University in 1983 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1988. After a postdoctoral appointment at MIT he joined University of Pennsylvania 1990-1996 and returned to MIT in 1996 as a Professor of Chemistry and served as the Head of Chemistry from 2005-2010. He has published more than 550 peer-reviewed papers and more than 120 issued/pending patents. Swager’s honors include: Election to the National Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Doctorate from Montana State University, National Academy of Inventors Fellow, The Pauling Medal, The Lemelson-MIT Award for Invention and Innovation, and Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research interests are in design, synthesis, and study of organic-based electronic, sensory, energy storage, membranes, liquid crystals, and colloids. He has founded five companies (DyNuPol, Iptyx, PolyJoule, C¬2 Sense and Xibus Systems).
Host: Maral Mousavi
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 100 B
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
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AI Seminar- Human and Machine Conditions Favoring Innovation in Science
Fri, Apr 12, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Brian Uzzi, Northwestern University.
Talk Title: Human and Machine Conditions Favoring Innovation in Science
Series: AI Seminar
Abstract: Innovation involves recombining past knowledge. The increasing rate at which scientific knowledge is expanding should bode well for innovation. Nevertheless, problems related to creating replicable science and appraising the merits of new ideas threaten innovation. In study 1, we use artificial intelligence to examine the replication problem in science. We estimate a paper’s replicability using ground truth, manual replication data, and then test the model’s accuracy on an extensive set of out-of-sample studies. The model’s accuracy is better than reviewer base rates and on par with prediction markets. We then conduct a discipline-wide census of replicability in psychology for the past 20 years. Replicability failures varies widely by subfield and is highest for experimental studies and papers receiving media coverage. In study 2, we investigate how the merits of innovative ideas communicated in science. Here we conduct semantic analyses of grant application success with a focus on scientific promotional language, which purportedly helps to convey an innovative idea’s originality. Our analysis examines the full text of tens of thousands of both funded and unfunded grants from three leading public and private funding agencies. We find promotional language in a grant proposal is associated with up to a doubling in its probability of being funded, with a grant’s intrinsic innovativeness, and with its predicted citation impact and productivity. Lastly, a computer experiments that substitute a grant’s promotional language with neutral synonyms indicates that promotional language may communicate the merits of ideas through cognitive activation.
Biography: Brian Uzzi the Richard L. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Leadership at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He also is Co-Director of the Northwestern University Institute on Complex Systems and Data Science (NICO), holds professorship in sociology and the McCormick School of Engineering, and writes a column on AI and business for Forbes. Brian’s work focuses on the link between social networks and human achievement and the role of AI in mind + machine partnerships. Brian has been awarded over 30 teaching and research prizes worldwide, including the Euler Award. He has been on the faculties of Harvard, INSEAD, University of Chicago, and Berkeley, and is a Fellow of the Network Science Society. His work has been funded by DARPA, NSF, and other foundations, is widely cited, and appears frequently in major media outlets worldwide. Before entering science, Brian worked as a carpenter and a musician. His PhD is from Stony Brook University in sociology.
Host: Zhuoyu Shi and Karen Lake
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/4641/ai-seminar-human-and-machine-conditions-favoring-innovation-in-science/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95888595423?pwd=VHBLa041dUJWcWx0NEhuYmQrV29ZQT09Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Virtual Only
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95888595423?pwd=VHBLa041dUJWcWx0NEhuYmQrV29ZQT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/events/4641/ai-seminar-human-and-machine-conditions-favoring-innovation-in-science/
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Revolutionizing Digital Infrastructure: The Beckn Protocol and the Era of Digital Public Goods
Fri, Apr 12, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sujith Nair, CEO & Co-Founder, FIDE
Talk Title: Revolutionizing Digital Infrastructure: The Beckn Protocol and the Era of Digital Public Goods
Series: USC Viterbi Speaker Event
Abstract: The digital age has brought about unprecedented opportunities for innovation and connectivity, transforming the way societies function and interact. In this landscape, the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and Digital Public Goods (DPG) concept has emerged as a crucial framework for leveraging technology to address societal challenges and empower communities.
This talk explores the groundbreaking potential of DPI and DPG and highlights the pivotal role played by the Beckn Protocol in catalyzing a new wave of innovation in this domain. The Beckn Protocol, an open protocol for decentralized service marketplaces, is reshaping traditional approaches to public infrastructure by fostering collaboration, interoperability, and accessibility.
By enabling seamless interaction between service providers and consumers, the Beckn Protocol facilitates the creation of vibrant digital ecosystems that empower individuals and communities to access essential services efficiently and affordably. Moreover, its decentralized architecture ensures transparency, security, and resilience, laying the foundation for a more equitable and inclusive digital economy.
Through real-world examples and case studies, this talk will illustrate how the Beckn Protocol is driving transformative change across various sectors, including transportation, healthcare, education, and commerce. From enabling decentralized ride-sharing platforms to facilitating seamless access to healthcare services, the Beckn Protocol exemplifies the potential of DPI and DPG to address pressing societal needs and foster sustainable development.
Furthermore, the talk will delve into the broader implications of the Beckn Protocol's approach, exploring how it aligns with principles of open innovation, data sovereignty, and digital rights. By promoting collaboration and co-creation, the Beckn Protocol embodies a paradigm shift towards a more participatory and democratic model of governance, where individuals and communities are empowered to shape the digital infrastructure that underpins their daily lives.
In conclusion, this talk will highlight the transformative potential of the Beckn Protocol and its role in catalyzing a new era of Digital Public Infrastructure and Digital Public Goods. By embracing openness, collaboration, and inclusivity, the Beckn Protocol offers a compelling vision for harnessing the power of technology to build a more equitable and sustainable future for all.
Biography: Sujith Nair is the CEO and Co-founder of FIDE – Foundation for Interoperability in Digital Economy. This not-for-profit organisation is the genesis author and angel donor to an open-source initiative called the Beckn Protocol. Beckn enables the creation of decentralised digital economy ecosystems. Co-founded along with Nandan Nilekani and Dr Pramod Varma, FIDE has been helping Beckn Protocol evolve as an independent and large-scale open-source community effort focusing on its adoption and sustenance as a digital public good.
Sujith conceptualised and helped set up the world’s first decentralised open mobility network using the Beckn Protocol in Kochi called the Kochi Open Mobility Network (KOMN), which was launched in July 2021. Sujith co-conceptualised the idea of ONDC and onboarded the first set of market participants on ONDC, co-authored the ONDC Strategy Pape, and was instrumental in the setup of ONDC Ltd in Dec 2021.
Sujith continues volunteering for KOMN, ONDC, and other open network initiatives and is a global advocate for interoperable and decentralized digital ecosystems. Before FIDE, Sujith headed Management Consulting practices and Internet businesses in urban mobility and digital payments. Sujith has contributed to many key interventions in the Aadhaar program between 2010-2012. Sujith also designed India’s national transit open payments interoperability (One Nation, One Card) in 2014 to integrate ticketing and payments across public transport systems in the country.
Host: Vice Dean Cauligi Raghavendra
More Information: beckn_flyer 4.12.24 EEB 248 2pm.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
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ECE Seminar: Computational Imaging with Photon Streams
Mon, Apr 15, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Sotiris Nousias, Postdoctoral Fellow | Department of Computer Science | University of Toronto
Talk Title: Computational Imaging with Photon Streams
Abstract: Among the yearly iterations on smartphone cameras and advances in sensor design, a key question emerges: what does the future's ultimate camera look like? In this presentation, I will explore the advanced capabilities of single-photon cameras, which have evolved from specialized scientific tools to being integral components in consumer devices like the iPhone. These cameras are not just sensitive; they are exceptionally precise, capable of detecting individual photons and their arrival times to the trillionth of a second. Traditionally, research in this field has focused on simple methods like counting or creating histograms of photons. My work, however, focuses on the raw 'photon stream' output – a sequence of photon arrival times that offers a rich, yet underexplored, source of data. By developing innovative mathematical models and algorithms, I open up exciting new possibilities, such as capturing high-speed videos at standard (30 Hz) and extremely high frame rates (>200 GHz), unveiling hidden 3D structures using multiply scattered light, and achieving micrometer-scale 3D imaging. I will discuss the remarkable capabilities of single-photon cameras and their potential to revolutionize various fields.
Biography: Sotiris Nousias is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, advised by Kyros Kutulakos. His research interests lie in the fields of computational imaging, computer vision, and signal processing, with a focus on single-photon imaging. His aim is to push the boundaries of imaging, developing novel systems and algorithms that can reveal the world in entirely new ways. He earned his PhD from University College London, advised by Christos Bergeles. His research has been recognized with best paper awards at two of the leading computer vision conferences: CVPR in 2019 and ICCV in 2023.
Host: Dr. Justin Haldar, jhaldar@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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ECE-S Seminar - Dr. Zili Meng
Mon, Apr 15, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Zili Meng, Assistant Professor, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)
Talk Title: Transport Layer Innovations in Ultra-Low Latency Video Streaming
Abstract: In the post-pandemic era, ultra-low latency video streaming is increasingly popular nowadays. Numerous applications like videoconferencing, cloud gaming, virtual reality, remote driving are coming or have come to our daily life. However, these interactive video streaming applications require ultra-low and consistent latency to ensure the interactive experience, which challenges how the sender is transmitting packets and reacting to fluctuations nowadays.
My research rethinks the latency in interactive video streaming in an end-to-end way and tries to share some preliminary thoughts on what the network and related communities should do to enable the wide deployment of these applications. In this talk, I will present our work on how to achieve a consistent low latency for interactive video streaming. Specifically, I will talk about how we control the tail latency on the transport layer from the perspective of congestion control (Zhuge, SIGCOMM'22) and loss recovery (Hairpin, NSDI'24).
Biography: Zili Meng is an assistant professor at HKUST. He received his B.Eng. (Hons) and Ph.D. (Hons) from Tsinghua University. His current research interest focuses on ultra-low latency interactive streaming from all layers. He is the recipient of the Doctoral Dissertation Awards from ACM China and China Institute of Electronics. a Microsoft PhD Fellowship (Asia), the Gold Medal of SIGCOMM 2018 SRC, and some best paper awards. His research has been used in many industry companies.
Host: Dr. Feng Qian
More Info: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95686725906?pwd=elFld2ZQZXM4a3ZjTkR0MTZoSDV4QT09
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95686725906?pwd=elFld2ZQZXM4a3ZjTkR0MTZoSDV4QT09More Information: 2024.04.15 ECE Seminar - Zili Meng.pdf
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - KAP 209
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95686725906?pwd=elFld2ZQZXM4a3ZjTkR0MTZoSDV4QT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Miki Arlen
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95686725906?pwd=elFld2ZQZXM4a3ZjTkR0MTZoSDV4QT09
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CS Colloquium: TBA
Tue, Apr 16, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: TBA, TBA
Talk Title: TBA
Series: Computer Science Colloquium
Abstract: TBA
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: TBA
Host: Ruishan Liu
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 136
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Apr 16, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Madeleine Udell, Assistant Professor, Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University
Talk Title: AI and the Future of Optimization Modeling
Host: Dr. Meisam Razaviyayn
More Information: April 16, 2024.pdf
Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - SOS Building, B2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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CS Colloquium: Julia Len - Designing secure-by-default cryptography for computer systems
Wed, Apr 17, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Julia Len, Cornell University
Talk Title: Designing secure-by-default cryptography for computer systems
Series: Computer Science Colloquium
Abstract: Designing cryptography that protects against all the threats seen in deployment can be surprisingly hard to do. This frequently translates into mitigations which offload important security decisions onto practitioners or even end users. The end result is subtle vulnerabilities in our most important cryptographic protocols. In this talk, I will present an overview of my work in two major areas on designing cryptography for real-world applications that targets security by default: (1) symmetric encryption and (2) key transparency for end-to-end encrypted systems. I will describe my approach of understanding real-world threats to provide robust, principled defenses with strong assurance against these threats in practice. My work includes introducing a new class of attacks exploiting symmetric encryption in applications, developing new theory to act as guidance in building better schemes, and designing practical cryptographic protocols. This work has seen impact through updates in popular encryption tools and IETF draft standards and through the development of protocols under consideration for deployment.
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium
Biography: Julia Len is a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University where she is advised by Thomas Ristenpart and is based in New York City at Cornell Tech. Her research interests are broadly in the areas of applied cryptography and computer security. Julia has been named a 2023 Rising Star in EECS and has received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She has also worked at Zoom and Microsoft on cryptographic protocol designs which are being considered for deployment in their video calling products.
Host: Jiapeng Zhang / Konstantinos Psounis
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Faculty Affairs
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Center of Autonomy and AI, Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things, and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical & Computer Engineering Joint Seminar Series
Wed, Apr 17, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mauricio Castillo-Effen, Fellow at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories
Talk Title: New Vistas in Autonomy Assurance
Series: EE598 Seminar Series
Abstract: Achieving trustworthiness is a major challenge preventing autonomous technologies from realizing their full potential in applications without an "undo" option for undesirable consequences. This talk argues that some obstacles to attaining assurance in autonomy result from applying traditional engineering and safety-critical system certification views and practices that are incompatible with the unique nature and potential use cases of modern autonomous systems. These systems are typically deployed in highly variable environments, which easily lead to violations of design assumptions. Additionally, autonomous systems consist of components that use hard-to-assure technologies, such as machine learning, and are also often built from components sourced from complex supply chains. This talk introduces assurance as an epistemic endeavor, emphasizing its value in designing and developing systems that are fit for purpose and use. We will then discuss the concept of agility and its role in reinterpreting the use and application of assurance cases for continuous assurance. This discussion will include the interpretation of context and operational domains. We will also describe a socio-technical solution, potentially enhanced by generative AI, to introduce assurance early in the system's lifecycle. Real-world examples from autonomous systems and applications studied at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories will be used to illustrate these concepts throughout the presentation. Finally, we will highlight promising assurance technologies and identify gaps that require attention from the research community. By acknowledging these gaps, we hope to encourage further research and collaboration to address the challenges of assuring autonomous systems.
Biography: Mauricio Castillo-Effen is a Fellow at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (LM ATL), where he leads the research area in Trustworthy AI and Autonomy (TAA). His team focuses on developing solutions for deploying complex decision-making technologies such as autonomy and artificial intelligence in high criticality applications. He collaborates closely with Lockheed Martin’s Business Areas to address challenges related to verification, validation, testing, evaluation, and certification. Previously, at General Electric, he led R&D efforts in aviation, aerial autonomy, and mining robotics, which led to the establishment of the robotics research laboratory and a spin-off company focused on robotic inspection, repair, and replacement. He has served as Principal Investigator and contributor for multiple R&D programs funded by DARPA, AFRL, NASA, and DHS, advancing the fields of autonomy, assurance, and certification in the aerospace industry. He has a background in systems theory, control and estimation, cyber-physical systems, embedded systems, and robotics. He has also taught controls and mechatronics at multiple universities worldwide. He holds more than twenty patents in robotics, autonomy, and aviation. Mauricio received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of South Florida
Host: Pierluigi Nuzzo
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ariana Perez
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Munushian Keynote Lecture, Nobel Laureate (2023 Physics) - Ferenc Krausz, Wednesday, April 17th at 2:30pm in EEB 132 & Zoom
Wed, Apr 17, 2024 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ferenc Krausz, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany
Talk Title: SUB-ATOMIC MOTIONS From capturing electrons to probing human health
Series: Munushian Visiting Seminar Series
Abstract: Born at the dawn of the new millennium, attosecond "photography" has opened the door for capturing sub-atomic motions as they evolve in time. Control of the oscillating electric field of light has permitted the attosecond control of electrons with unprecedented precision in space and time. Fundamental quantum phenomena, such as electron tunnelling and dipole oscillations in atoms or light-electron energy exchange in solids as well as fundamental classical phenomena, such as the field oscillations of visible light, became accessible to human observation in slow-motion replay. These capabilities open new avenues for 21st-century science, technology and medicine. Some of them emerge from the ability to sample light fields with attosecond precision. Possible implications of these advances include hundred thousand times faster electronics and cost-effective monitoring of human health.
Biography: Ferenc Krausz graduated in electrical engineering from the Budapest University of Technology and completed his studies in theoretical physics at the Eötvös Loránd University in 1985. He earned his doctorate in laser physics from the Technische Universität Wien (1991), where he became professor in 1998. In 2003-2004, he was appointed director at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching and chair of experimental physics - laser physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and established "Attoworld" at these two sites (attoworld.de).In a series of experiments performed between 2001 and 2004 his team succeeded in producing and measuring isolated attosecond pulses of light and applying them to observe sub-atomic motions. Attoworld has been fostering the proliferation of the emerging field, attosecond science, and - since 2015 - exploring its utility for probing human health. For his contributions to establishing the field of Attosecond Science, Ferenc Krausz has been awarded the King-Faisal International Prize for Science (2013), the Wolf-Prize in Physics (2022), the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2023) and the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Host: ECE-EP
More Information: Ferenc Krausz Keynote Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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AME Seminar
Wed, Apr 17, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 12:00 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jasna Brujic, NYU
Talk Title: Colloidal protein analogs
Abstract: Our group is inspired by Nature’s strategy of folding biopolymers into specific protein and RNA structures to build a toy model of polymeric chains of droplets, i.e. “colloidomers”, that are designed via DNA interactions to fold into well-defined architectures. Indeed, simple alternating chains (up to 14 droplets long) with only two droplet flavors (ABABAB…) are sufficient to uniquely encode a dozen “foldamers”, constituting 1% of all possible rigid structures in 2D. Subsequently, these 2D foldamers can self-assemble into larger nets that, upon density-matching, are able to further fold into unique 3D geometries, for example viral capsids. These hierarchical protocols circumvent the vast phase space of the nominal folding landscape, in which a random cluster of 12 particles has tens of thousands or rigid folds to choose from. Once the colloidal protein analog is formed, it can then be further programmed by the polymerase-exonuclease-nickase (PEN) toolbox of enzymes that interact with droplet-droplet DNA bonds, to produce highly non-linear dynamical systems. These "mayonnaise robots” promise to offer a bright and functional future on the colloidal length scale.
Biography:
Jasna Brujic is a Professor of Physics at New York University. She is one of the core faculty in the Center for Soft Matter Research. Brujic is an experimental physicist, who received her Ph.D. for work on the statistical mechanics of granular matter at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, UK. She then conducted post-doctoral research at Columbia University in the area of single molecule proteins. Since 2007, Brujic has led a research group at the interface between soft matter physics and biophysics. The group uses biomimetic emulsion systems to study jammed matter, cellular organization in tissues in 3D, protein-protein adhesion, and programmable self-assembly of materials with custom designs.
https://wp.nyu.edu/brujiclab/
Host: AME Department
More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 252
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
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ISSS - Dr. Shanthi Pavan, Thursday, April 18th at 10am in EEB 132
Thu, Apr 18, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Shanthi Pavan, IIT Madras
Talk Title: Continuous-Time Pipelined Analog-to-Digital Converters -“ Where Filtering Meets Analog-to-Digital Conversion
Series: Integrated Systems
Abstract: If someone told you that the power, noise, distortion, and area of a mixed-signal block could be reduced all at the same time, you'd probably think that this was a lie. It turns out that it is indeed possible sometimes - and this talk will present an example called the continuous-time pipeline (CTP) ADC. The CTP is an emerging technique that combines filtering with analog-to-digital conversion. Like a continuous-time delta-sigma modulator (CTDSM), a CTP has a "nice" input impedance that is easy to drive and has inherent anti-aliasing. However, unlike a CTDSM, a CTP does not require a high-speed feedback loop to be closed. As a result, it can achieve significantly higher bandwidth (like a Nyquist ADC). After discussing the operating principles behind the CTP, we describe the fundamental benefits of the CTP over a conventional signal chain that incorporates an anti-alias filter and a Nyquist-rate converter. We will then show design details and measurement results from a 100MHz 800MS/s CTP designed in a 65nm CMOS process.
Biography: Shanthi Pavan received the B.Tech. degree in electronics and communication engineering from IIT Madras, Chennai, India, in 1995, and the M.S. and D.Sc. degrees from Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, in 1997 and 1999, respectively. From 1997 to 2000, he was with Texas Instruments, Warren, NJ, USA, where he worked on high-speed analog filters and data converters. From 2000 to June 2002, he worked on microwave ICs for data communication at Bigbear Networks, Sunnyvale, CA, USA. Since July 2002, he has been with IIT Madras, where he is currently the NT Alexander Institute Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering. He is the author of Understanding Delta-Sigma Data Converters (second edition, with Richard Schreier and Gabor Temes), which received the Wiley-IEEE Press Professional Book Award for the year 2020. His research interests are in the areas of high-speed analog circuit design and signal processing. Dr. Pavan is a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, and the recipient of several awards, including the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Darlington Best Paper Award in 2009. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-I: Regular Papers. He has been a Distinguished Lecturer of the Solid-State Circuits and Circuits-and-Systems Societies. He currently serves as the Vice-President of Publications of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, on the Technical Program Committee of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), and on the editorial board of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. He is an IEEE Fellow.
Host: MHI - ISSS, Hashemi, Chen and Sideris
More Information: Shanthi Pavan Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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NL Seminar - DeLLMa: A Framework for Decision Making Under Uncertainty with Large Language Models
Thu, Apr 18, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ollie Liu, USC, USC
Talk Title: DeLLMa: A Framework for Decision Making Under Uncertainty with Large Language Models
Abstract: REMINDER: Meeting hosts only admit on-line guests that they know to the Zoom meeting. Hence, you’re highly encouraged to use your USC account to sign into Zoom. If you’re an outside visitor, please inform us at (nlg-seminar-host(at)isi.edu) to make us aware of your attendance so we can admit you. Specify if you will attend remotely or in person at least one business day prior to the event Provide your: full name, job title and professional affiliation and arrive at least 10 minutes before the seminar begins. If you do not have access to the 6th Floor for in-person attendance, please check in at the 10th floor main reception desk to register as a visitor and someone will escort you to the conference room location. Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used across society, including in domains like business, engineering, and medicine. These fields often grapple with decision-making under uncertainty, a critical yet challenging task. In this paper, we show that directly prompting LLMs on these types of decision-making problems yields poor results, especially as the problem complexity increases. To overcome this limitation, we propose DeLLMa (Decision-making Large Language Model assistant), a framework designed to enhance decision-making accuracy in uncertain environments. DeLLMa involves a multi-step scaffolding procedure, drawing upon principles from decision theory and utility theory, to provide an optimal and human-auditable decision-making process. We validate our framework on decision-making environments involving real agriculture and finance data. Our results show that DeLLMa can significantly improve LLM decision-making performance, achieving up to a 40% increase in accuracy over competing methods.
Biography: Ollie Liu is second-year Ph.D student in Computer Science at University of Southern California, co-advised by Prof. Dani Yogatama and Prof. Willie Neiswanger. In life, I usually go by Oliver. My current research interests lie in (multimodal) foundation models, especially their algorithmic reasoning capabilities and applications in sciences.
Host: Jonathan May and Justin Cho
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/research-groups-nlg/nlg-seminars/
Webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSTIFr9J0koLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Conf Rm#689
WebCast Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSTIFr9J0ko
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/research-groups-nlg/nlg-seminars/
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Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science: Distinguished Lecture Series feat. Dr. Mohit Bansal
Thu, Apr 18, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 04:15 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Mohit Bansal, John R. & Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor, UNC Chapel Hill
Talk Title: Multimodal Generative LLMs: Unification, Interpretability, Evaluation
Abstract: In this talk, I will present our journey of large-scale multimodal pretrained (generative) models across various modalities (text, images, videos, audio, layouts, etc.) and enhancing their important aspects such as unification (for generalizability, shared knowledge, and efficiency), interpretable programming/planning (for controllability and faithfulness), and evaluation (of fine-grained skills, faithfulness, and social biases). We will start by discussing early cross-modal vision-and-language pretraining models (LXMERT). We will then look at early unified models (VL-T5) to combine several multimodal tasks (such as visual QA, referring expression comprehension, visual entailment, visual commonsense reasoning, captioning, and multimodal translation) by treating all tasks as text generation. We will next look at recent, progressively more unified models (with joint objectives and architecture, as well as newer unified modalities during encoding and decoding) such as textless video-audio transformers (TVLT), vision-text-layout transformers for universal document processing (UDOP), and interactive, interleaved, composable any-to-any text-audio-image-video multimodal generation (CoDi, CoDi-2). Second, we will discuss interpretable and controllable multimodal generation (to improve faithfulness) via LLM-based planning and programming, such as layout-controllable image generation via visual programming (VPGen), consistent multi-scene video generation via LLM-guided planning (VideoDirectorGPT), open-domain, open-platform diagram generation (DiagrammerGPT), and LLM-based adaptive environment generation for training embodied agents (EnvGen). I will conclude with important faithfulness and bias evaluation aspects of multimodal generation models, based on fine-grained skill and social bias evaluation (DALL-Eval), interpretable and explainable visual programs (VPEval), as well as reliable fine-grained evaluation via Davidsonian semantics based scene graphs (DSG).
Please RSVP by Monday, April 15, 2024 (5:00 p.m., PST): https://forms.gle/shymnJc87y5fHFJaA
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.
Biography: Dr. Mohit Bansal is the John R. & Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor and the Director of the MURGe-Lab (UNC-NLP Group) in the Computer Science department at UNC Chapel Hill. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2013 and his BTech from IIT Kanpur in 2008. His research expertise is in natural language processing and multimodal machine learning, with a particular focus on multimodal generative models, grounded and embodied semantics, faithful language generation, and interpretable, efficient, and generalizable deep learning. He is a recipient of IIT Kanpur Young Alumnus Award, DARPA Director's Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, Google Focused Research Award, Microsoft Investigator Fellowship, Army Young Investigator Award (YIP), DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA), and outstanding paper awards at ACL, CVPR, EACL, COLING, and CoNLL. He has been a keynote speaker for the AACL 2023, CoNLL 2023, and INLG 2022 conferences. His service includes EMNLP and CoNLL Program Co-Chair, and ACL Executive Committee, ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Committee, ACL Americas Sponsorship Co-Chair, and Associate/Action Editor for TACL, CL, IEEE/ACM TASLP, and CSL journals. Webpage: https://www.cs.unc.edu/~mbansal/
Host: USC Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
More Info: https://forms.gle/shymnJc87y5fHFJaA
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 124
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Event Link: https://forms.gle/shymnJc87y5fHFJaA
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ShowCAIS Symposium 2024
Fri, Apr 19, 2024 @ 08:45 AM - 04:15 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bistra Dilkina, Eric Rice, and Phebe Vayanos, USC CAIS Co-Directors
Talk Title: ShowCAIS Symposium 2024
Abstract: ShowCAIS is the USC Center for AI in Society's annual symposium highlighting research by USC students, faculty, and alumni. The event provides an opportunity for scholars and experts from all disciplines to share their findings around AI for social good.
WEBSITE: https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/showcais-2024/
EVENTBRITE REGISTRATION: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/showcais-2024-tickets-850982841587
Host: USC Center for AI in Society
More Info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/showcais-2024-tickets-850982841587
Location: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - 101 & 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Event Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/showcais-2024-tickets-850982841587
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CREATE 20th Anniversary Symposium
Fri, Apr 19, 2024 @ 09:45 AM - 02:45 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Michael Chertoff and others,
Talk Title: CREATE's Work in the Context of Future Threats to Homeland Security
Abstract: CREATE’s 20th Anniversary Symposium commemorates the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security’s first University Center of Excellence in 2004. Over the last two decades, CREATE has served our nation through creation of advanced models and tools for the evaluation of the risks, costs and consequences of threats to human livelihood and through assessment of strategies to mitigate risks and respond to emergencies.The symposium will discuss CREATE’s work in the context of future threats to homeland security, including terrorism, climate induced disasters, pandemics, and threats to infrastructure and supply chains. Event begins at 9:45AM. RSVP is required to attend. If you would like to attend, please contact Jeff Countryman at jcountry@usc.edu.
Host: Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies
More Information: CREATE 20th Anniversary Symposium Program.pdf
Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - Rosen Room (TCC 227)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jeffrey Countryman
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AI in Structural Biology: Roots of Success
Fri, Apr 19, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Helen Berman, USC
Talk Title: AI in Structural Biology: Roots of Success
Abstract: The successful prediction of protein structures competitive with experimentally determined models was announced in 2020. The achievement by by AlphaFold 2 using AI methods was the culmination of years of effort to solve the protein folding problem. In this talk I will describe the history of this effort and the unique characteristics of the training data that were derived from the Protein Data Bank. I will also discuss how this breakthrough will open the doors to new research in structural and cell biology.
Zoom meeting ID: 944 0958 4905Passcode: 822247
It will be posted on our USC/ISI YouTube page within 1-2 business days: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCISI.
Biography: Dr. Berman received her AB from Barnard College in 1964. She trained in crystallography with George Jeffrey at the University of Pittsburgh where she received her Ph.D. in 1967. After her postdoctoral training, she went to the Institute for Cancer Research, Fox Chase Cancer Center where she rose through the ranks from Research Associate to Senior Member. In 1989, she joined the faculty of Rutgers University and is currently a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor Emerita of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. She is also an Research Professor at the University of Southern California. Her research has focused on nucleic acids, protein-nucleic acid interactions, and collagen. She has published more than 300 scholarly articles.
Helen was a co-founder of the Protein Data Bank (PDB) archive that was launched in 1971 and has been committed to the continued development and maintenance of this community resource. Major accomplishments on this journey include taking leadership roles in establishing the Nucleic Acid Database, the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank, the worldwide Protein Data Bank, the Structural Biology Knowledgebase, and the Unified Data Resource for 3D Electron Microscopy.
She is also working on ways to use film and digital arts to communicate to a broader audience about the importance of structural biology in medicine and health. She was the Executive Producer of Target Zero – a documentary about HIV prevention in which high-quality molecular animations illustrate how the anti-HIV drugs work. As part of ongoing collaborations between the USC Bridge Institute and USC School of Cinematic Arts, she is working on the World in a Cell VR experience that provides a view of the inside of a pancreatic beta cell.
Helen is a member of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy for Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the Biophysical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Crystallographic Association, and the International Society for Computational Biology. She is the recipient of several awards including the Benjamin Franklin Award for Open Access in the Life Sciences, the DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences, the ACA Martin Buerger and David Rognlie Awards, the Distinguished Service Award from the Biophysical Society, and the Carl Brändén Award from the Protein Society.
Visit links below to subscribe and for details on upcoming seminars:
https://www.isi.edu/isi-seminar-series/
https://www.isi.edu/events/
Host: Hosted by: Fred Morstatter POC: Justina Gilleland
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/4648/ai-in-structural-biology-roots-of-success/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94409584905?pwd=Sm5LVkd0bndUdEluM3piK0NWTUQrUT09Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - CR#1014
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94409584905?pwd=Sm5LVkd0bndUdEluM3piK0NWTUQrUT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/events/4648/ai-in-structural-biology-roots-of-success/
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ITEMS Seminar - Claudia Cea, Tuesday, April 23rd at 11:15am in EEB 132 & Zoom
Tue, Apr 23, 2024 @ 11:15 AM - 12:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Claudia Cea, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Conformable Neuroelectronics
Abstract: The diversity of network disruptions that occur in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders creates a strong demand for personalized medicine. Such approaches often take the form of implantable bioelectronic devices that are capable of monitoring pathophysiological activity for identifying biomarkers to allow for local and responsive delivery of intervention. They are also required to transmit this data outside of the body for evaluation of the treatment's efficacy. However, the ability to perform these demanding electronic functions in the complex physiological environment with minimum disruption to the biological tissue remains a big challenge. An optimal fully implantable bioelectronic device would require each component from the front-end to the data transmission to be conformable and biocompatible. For this reason, organic material-based conformable electronics are ideal candidates for components of bioelectronic circuits due to their inherent flexibility, and soft nature. Throughout her research, Claudia pioneered the development of the first all-flexible, standalone neural recording device, composed entirely of soft, biocompatible components. This device enabled recordings at the level of individual neurons and facilitated real-time detection of epileptic discharges in vivo. The wireless data and power transfer system operated on an innovative ion-based communication method, allowing for wireless operation in freely moving animals. Unlike conventional silicon-based devices, every component of this system is soft, conformable, and biocompatible, ensuring long-term performance stability and low-voltage operation to prevent tissue damage. This fully soft and conformable implant enabled recording and transmission of high- resolution neural activity from both the cortical surface and deep within the brain.
Biography: Claudia Cea earned her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pisa and completed her M.Sc. in Bioengineering in San Diego, where she focused on developing innovative origami-based neural probes for both epidural and intradural recording and neurotransmitter detection. She then pursued a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, specializing in the creation of fast and sensitive soft bioelectronics that that interact with signals generated by the neural tissue. Notably, she developed the first fully-flexible, standalone neuroelectronic devices using organic electrochemical transistors, composed entirely of soft, biocompatible materials-including integrated power supply and data transmission-for high- resolution recordings. Currently, she is a postdoctoral associate in the Bioelectronics group under Professor Polina Anikeeva at MIT, working on developing novel soft bioelectronic devices to explore electrophysiology in the gut-brain axis.
Host: Keck - Gianluca Lazzi
More Information: Claudia Cea Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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Epstein Institute, ISE 651 Seminar Class
Tue, Apr 23, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Aida Khajavirad, Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Lehigh University
Talk Title: Binary Polynomial Optimization Through a Hypergraph Theoretic Lens
Host: Dr. Giacomo Nannicini
More Information: April 23, 2024.pdf
Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - SOS Building, B2
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Grace Owh
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AME532A AIRCRAFT DYNAMICS AND CONTROLS STUDENT PRESENTATIONS
Tue, Apr 23, 2024 @ 06:00 PM - 08:40 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: AME 532A students, USC AME
Talk Title: AME532A AIRCRAFT DYNAMICS AND CONTROLS STUDENT PRESENTATIONS
Abstract: THE AEROSPACE AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT INVITES YOU TO A SERIESOF PRESENTATIONS FROM OUR GRADUATE STUDENTS WHO HAVE STUDIED AIRCRAFTSIMULATION, DYNAMICS, AND CONTROLS IN THE SPRING OF 2024.PLEASE RSVP AT THE EMAIL BELOW FOR DETAILS ON ATTENDANCE, INCLUDING THE WEBEXLINK FOR REMOTE ATTENDANCE OPTIONS.TOPICS TO INCLUDE: TAKEOFF/LANDING, CAMERA CONTROLS, MONTE CARLO SIMS,LEAVING THE ATMOSPHERE, DYNASTAT, AIRSPACE MANAGEMENT, AND MORE
AGENDA
4:30PM – Pizza/Drinks at USC (South West Part of Campus)
6:00PM – Presentations Begin (In Person and On Webex)
8:40PM – Presentations End
Host: Prof. John McArthur of AME
More Information: StudentPresentations_Invitation_2024_v1.pdf
Location: TBD
Audiences: Please RSVP to JMCARTHU@USC.EDU
Contact: Tessa Yao
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ECE Seminar: Dr. Yuejie Chi, "Solving Inverse Problems with Generative Priors: From Low-rank to Diffusion Models"
Wed, Apr 24, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Yuejie Chi, Sense of Wonder Group Endowed Professor in AI Systems | Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering | Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Solving Inverse Problems with Generative Priors: From Low-rank to Diffusion Models
Abstract: Generative priors are effective countermeasures to combat the curse of dimensionality, and enable efficient learning and inversion that otherwise are ill-posed, in data science. This talk begins with the classical low-rank prior, and introduces scaled gradient descent (ScaledGD), a simple iterative approach to directly recover the low-rank factors for a wide range of matrix and tensor estimation tasks. ScaledGD provably converges linearly at a constant rate independent of the condition number at near-optimal sample complexities, while maintaining the low per-iteration cost of vanilla gradient descent, even when the rank is overspecified and the initialization is random. Going beyond low rank, the talk discusses diffusion models as an expressive data prior in inverse problems, and introduces a plug-and-play posterior sampling method (Diffusion PnP) that alternatively calls two samplers, a proximal consistency sampler solely based on the forward model, and a denoising diffusion sampler solely based on the score functions of data prior. Performance guarantees and numerical examples will be demonstrated to illustrate the promise.
Biography: Dr. Yuejie Chi is the Sense of Wonder Group Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in AI Systems at Carnegie Mellon University, with courtesy appointments in the Machine Learning department and CyLab. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University, and B. Eng. (Hon.) from Tsinghua University, all in Electrical Engineering. Her research interests lie in the theoretical and algorithmic foundations of data science, signal processing, machine learning and inverse problems, with applications in sensing, imaging, decision making, and generative AI. Among others, Dr. Chi is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the inaugural IEEE Signal Processing Society Early Career Technical Achievement Award for contributions to high-dimensional structured signal processing, and multiple paper awards including the SIAM Activity Group on Imaging Science Best Paper Prize and IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award. She is an IEEE Fellow (Class of 2023) for contributions to statistical signal processing with low-dimensional structures.
Host: Dr. Richard Leahy, leahy@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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AAI-CCI-MHI Seminar on CPS
Wed, Apr 24, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rose Faghih, Associate Professor New York University
Talk Title: Smartwatch-Brain Interface Architectures for Mental Well-Being and Productivity
Series: EE598 Seminar Series
Abstract: Smartwatch-like wearables have enabled seamless tracking of vital signs and physical activities. An unexploited capability is that the pulsatile physiological time series collected by wrist-worn wearable devices can be used for recovering internal brain dynamics. We design algorithms for a closed-loop brain-aware wearable architecture called MINDWATCH for tracking and regulating neurobehavioral states of arousal and performance. This closed-loop smartwatch-brain interface framework includes (1) an inference engine for recovering arousal-related autonomic nervous system (ANS) activations, (2) Bayesian state-space decoders for tracking cognitive arousal and performance states, (3) control algorithms for maintaining these neurobehavioral states within desired ranges, and (4) neurofeedback experiments for closing the loop via safe actuation. The methods are validated by analyzing experimental data as well as simulation studies. Results demonstrate a promising approach for tracking and regulating neurocognitive arousal and performance states through wearable devices. Since smartwatches can be used conveniently in one’s daily life, smartwatch-brain interface architectures have a great potential to monitor and regulate one’s neurocognitive stress seamlessly in real-world situations.
Biography: Rose T. Faghih is an associate professor of Biomedical Engineering at the New York University (NYU) where she directs the Computational Medicine Laboratory within the NYU Langone Health's Tech4Health Institute. She received a bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude) in Electrical Engineering (Honors Program Citation) from the University of Maryland, and S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She completed her postdoctoral training at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT as well as the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Rose is the recipient of various awards including a 2023 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Maximizing Investigators' Research Award for Early-Stage Investigators, a 2020 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a 2020 MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 award, and a 2016 IEEE-USA New Face of Engineering award. In 2020, she was featured by the IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine as a “Woman to Watch”. She is on the editorial board of PNAS Nexus by the National Academy of Sciences and IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering. Her research interests include wearable technologies, and medical cyber-physical systems, as well as neural and biomedical signal processing.
Host: Pierluigi Nuzzo
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ariana Perez
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AME Seminar
Wed, Apr 24, 2024 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Adam Fincham, USC
Talk Title: The Effect of Reef Geometry On Breaking Wave Shape. Computational and Field Data Comparative Study
Abstract: With growing demand for inland surfing and interest in artificial surf reefs, CFD methods supplemented with field data constitute an effective tool that allows for analysis, optimization, and verification of the design performance of surfing waves. Bringing surfing to non-coastal areas provides big opportunities for a new market. This led to the formation of a new sub-genre of hydrodynamics engineering, where one is looking at transformation of shallow-water waves through a slightly different lens. In classical coastal engineering, wave characteristics can affect various design conditions of certain structures – however, in the following case, one is looking specifically into analysis, optimization, and verification of design performance of the surf-zone wave itself, i.e. its surfability aspect. This presentation provides a high-level overview of the scientific process behind the creation of the Kelly Slater Wave Company basin in Lemoore, CA. Some details of the new and much larger wave basin opening in Abu Dhabi, where excess energy from the main wave is reformed and broken again providing a secondary surfing experience will also be discussed.
Biography: Adam Fincham is a Scientist, Engineer and an Entrepreneur. Dr. Fincham is currently the Chief Scientist and Engineer for the World Surf League’s (WSL) Kelly Slater Wave Company (KSWC). He is a Research Associate Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at USC. He has successfully founded two technology companies and is the primary named inventor on dozens of US and International Patents.
Fincham’s research interests include; Geophysical Fluid dynamics, turbulence and vortex structures in stratified and/or rotating flows, advanced algorithms for Digital Particle Imaging Velocimetry, particle dynamics in turbulent flows with application to oceanic plankton ecosystems, sonic boom interactions with the ocean surface, turbulent combustions at high Reynolds numbers, surfing wave dynamics, wave erosion and Computational Fluid Mechanics approaches to resolving breaking waves.
Fincham is from the island of Jamaica, he obtained his PhD in 1994 at the University of Southern California and was Chargé de Recherche at the Laboratoire des Ecoulements Geophysiques et Industriels, CNRS-INPG, Universite Joseph-Fourier, Grenoble, France. From 1995-2004. He has close ties to the University of the West Indies in Kingston Jamaica and interacts with scientists there.
Host: AME Department
More Info: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 252
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95892885119?pwd=QXZOZUhrcTJRYk5qZzZwVThrTytVZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tessa Yao
Event Link: https://ame.usc.edu/seminars/
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NL Seminar-How to Steal ChatGPTs Embedding Size, and Other Low-rank Logit Tricks
Thu, Apr 25, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Matt Finlayson, USC
Talk Title: How to Steal ChatGPTs Embedding Size, and Other Low-rank Logit Tricks
Series: NL Seminar
Abstract: The commercialization of large language models (LLMs) has led to the common practice of restricting access to proprietary models via a limited API. In this work we show that, with only a conservative assumption about the model architecture, it is possible to learn a surprisingly large amount of non-public information about an API-protected LLM from a relatively small number of API queries (e.g., costing under $1000 USD for OpenAI’s gpt-3.5-turbo). Our findings are centered on one key observation: most modern LLMs suffer from a softmax bottleneck, which restricts the model outputs to a linear subspace of the full output space. We exploit this fact to unlock several capabilities, including (but not limited to) obtaining cheap full-vocabulary outputs, auditing for specific types of model updates, identifying the source LLM given a single full LLM output, and even efficiently discovering the LLM’s hidden size. Our empirical investigations show the effectiveness of our methods, which allow us to estimate the embedding size of OpenAI’s gpt-3.5-turbo to be about 4096. Lastly, we discuss ways that LLM providers can guard against these attacks, as well as how these capabilities can be viewed as a feature (rather than a bug) by allowing for greater transparency and accountability. *Meeting hosts only admit on-line guests that they know to the Zoom meeting. Hence, you’re highly encouraged to use your USC account to sign into Zoom. If you’re an outside visitor, please inform us at (nlg-seminar-host(at)isi.edu) to make us aware of your attendance so we can admit you. Specify if you will attend remotely or in person at least one business day prior to the event Provide your: full name, job title and professional affiliation and arrive at least 10 minutes before the seminar begins. If you do not have access to the 6th Floor for in-person attendance, please check in at the 10th floor main reception desk to register as a visitor and someone will escort you to the conference room location.
Biography: Matthew Finlayson is a PhD student studying NLP at the University of Southern California. Previously he was a predoctoral researcher at the Allen Institute for AI (AI2) after completing his bachelors degree in computer science and linguistics at Harvard University. Matthew is interested in the practical consequences of the architectural design of language models, from security to generation, as well as understanding how language models learn and generalize from data.
Host: Jon May and Justin Cho
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/research-groups-nlg/nlg-seminars/
Webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U9nA-l2YAsLocation: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Conf Rm#689
WebCast Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U9nA-l2YAs
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/research-groups-nlg/nlg-seminars/
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School of Advanced Computing: Computational Science Distinguished Seminar Series- Towards large scale quantum accuracy materials simulations.
Thu, Apr 25, 2024 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
USC School of Advanced Computing, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Vikram Gavini, University of Michigan
Talk Title: Towards large scale quantum accuracy materials simulations
Series: Computational Science Distinguished Seminar Series
Abstract: Electronic structure calculations, especially those using density functional theory (DFT), have been very useful in understanding and predicting a wide range of materials properties. Despite the wide adoption of DFT, and the tremendous progress in theory and numerical methods over the decades, the following challenges remain. Firstly, many widely used implementations of DFT suffer from domain-size and geometry restrictions, limiting the complexity of materials systems that can be treated using DFT calculations. Secondly, there are many materials systems (such as strongly-correlated systems) where the widely used model exchange-correlation functionals in DFT, which account for the many-body quantum mechanical interactions between electrons, are not sufficiently accurate. This talk will discuss the recent advances towards addressing the aforementioned challenges, which provides a path for large-scale quantum accuracy materials simulations. In particular, the development of computational methods and numerical algorithms for conducting fast and accurate large-scale DFT calculations using adaptive finite-element discretization will be presented, which form the basis for the recently released DFT-FE open-source code. The computational efficiency, scalability and performance of DFT-FE will be presented, which can compute the electronic structure of systems containing many thousands of atoms in wall-times of few minutes. Some recent studies on the energetics of quasicrystals (ScZn 7.33 ) and dislocations in Mg using DFT-FE will be presented, which highlight the complex systems that can be tackled using DFT-FE. In addressing the second challenge, our recent progress in bridging highly accurate quantum many-body methods with DFT will be discussed, which is achieved by computing and using exact exchange-correlation potentials to improve the exchange correlation functional description in DFT.
Biography: Vikram Gavini is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 2007. His interests are in developing methods for large-scale and quantum-accurate electronic structure calculations, numerical analysis of PDEs and scientific computing. DFT-FE, a massively parallel open-source code for large-scale real-space DFT calculations, has been developed in his group. He is the recipient of NSF CAREER Award in 2011, AFOSR Young Investigator Award in 2013, Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (2012-14), USACM Gallagher Award in 2015, among others. He led the team that received the 2023 ACM Gordon Bell Prize in high performance computing.
More Info: https://sac.usc.edu/events/
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Raymond USC Viterbi
Event Link: https://sac.usc.edu/events/
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AAI-CCI-MHI Seminar on CPS
Fri, Apr 26, 2024 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Joerg Lahann, Professor University of Michigan
Talk Title: Protein Nanoparticles as multifunctional drug delivery carriers
Series: EE598 Seminar Series
Abstract: Precise control of the physical and biochemical properties of nanoparticle-based drug delivery vehicles is a
prerequisite for effective transport of drugs across a range of biological barriers. To date, the range of biodegradable
macromolecular systems with appropriate biocompatibility, low levels of immunogenicity and extended structural stability
that can be prepared at scale remains rather limited. Towards that end, nanoparticles comprised of protein/polymer
conjugates offer a range of unique features, such as biodegradability and extended in vivo stability, active targeting and
stimuli-responsiveness, or the potential for delivery of small-molecule drugs and biopharmaceuticals.
Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) co-jetting, an adaptive manufacturing process that involves transferring two or more
capillary needles in a side-by-side configuration, can be used to create a wide range of multicompartmental protein/
polymer nanoparticles. The protein nanoparticles combine the processability of synthetic polymers with the biological
properties of proteins. In the context of glioblastoma multiforme, protein nanoparticles have been devised that enable
systemic delivery of RNAi to intracranial brain tumors. Protein nanoparticles that can enable controlled release of
combination drugs from the same nanoparticle will also be discussed
Biography: Joerg Lahann is the Wolfgang Pauli Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering. Since 2012, he has been the
founding director of the University of Michigan Biointerfaces Institute. Prof. Lahann is a co-author of more than 325
publications including papers in Science, Nature Materials, Nature Biotechnology, or PNAS and has contributed to 50
patents and patent applications. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the American
Association for the Advancement of the Sciences (AAAS), and the American Institute for Medical and Biological
Engineering (AIMBE). He has been selected by Technology Review as one of the top 100 young investigators and the
recipient of the 2007 Nanoscale Science and Engineering Award, a NSF-CAREER award, and both a single-PI and a
team Idea award (2006 & 2011) from the US Department of Defense. Prof. Lahann has contributed to the development
of 3D printing methods for ultraporous, precisely engineered organoids, multicompartmental nanoparticles for drug
delivery applications, and vapor-based polymer coatings.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ariana Perez
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AI Seminar: Staring into the Abyss and Eating Glass
Fri, Apr 26, 2024 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rajiv Maheswaran, Former Second Spectrum CEO, USC Faculty
Talk Title: Staring into the Abyss and Eating Glass
Abstract: Rajiv spent a decade as faculty at USC and then a decade building a startup. He will briefly outline the path that took him from one to the other and answer questions about the adventures and misadventures and the similarities and differences in the journeys.
Biography: Rajiv Maheswaran was the CEO and Co-Founder of Second Spectrum, a startup that used computer vision and machine learning to automate next-generation data collection and real-time video augmentation in sports, creating software for teams, leagues and media. Second Spectrum clients have spanned the top leagues in sports including the NBA (where all teams are clients), NFL, English Premier League and top media partners such as Amazon (winning an Emmy for NFL Prime Vision), CBS (winning an Emmy for RomoVision), ESPN (NBA Marvel Arena of Heroes), and NBC (Premier League DataCast). Prior to Second Spectrum, Rajiv was a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California’s Department of Computer Science and Project Leader at the Information Sciences Institute where he and Second Spectrum COO / Co-Founder Yu-Han Chang co-directed the Computational Behavior Group. Rajiv has written over 100 publications in artificial intelligence, control theory, data visualization, decision theory and game theory. Rajiv and Yu-Han received the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Use-Inspired Research Award, and they are the only two-time winners of the Alpha Award for Best Research Paper at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Rajiv received a B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics, Engineering and Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Host: Craig Knoblock
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/events/4889/ai-seminar-staring-into-the-abyss-and-eating-glass/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99736587279?pwd=TnZXTzdYOWFNZlJmQ0dYYlF2QURDZz09Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 1135/1137
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/99736587279?pwd=TnZXTzdYOWFNZlJmQ0dYYlF2QURDZz09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Tricia Olmedo
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/events/4889/ai-seminar-staring-into-the-abyss-and-eating-glass/
