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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for November
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Helicopter Accident Investigation - Nov. 3-7, 2008
Mon, Nov 03, 2008
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
HAI 09-1
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Attendees Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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Software Safety - Nov. 3-6, 2008
Mon, Nov 03, 2008
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SFT 09-1
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Attendees Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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BME 533 Seminar Series: Richard Roberts, PhD
Mon, Nov 03, 2008 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Richard Roberts, PhD, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, USC "Peptide and Protein Design Using mRNA Display"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate/Department/Sponsors only
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Geppeto: Consumers Approach to Programming
Wed, Nov 05, 2008 @ 10:30 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Sinisa Srbljic, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Host: Prof. Nenad MedvidovicAbstract:
Contemporary society is experiencing a steady stream of new electronic gadgets, software products, and web applications. In this flood of functionality, users have adapted to rely less on manuals (if they are present at all) and shift their learning to trial and error, common paradigms, and experimentation. To accommodate this style of use . or perhaps driving this behavior - developers have successfully abstracted much of the technological complexity and transformed it into intuitive user interfaces often avoiding the need for reading lengthy manuals and formal training. Is it possible to adopt the same trial-and-error experimentation habit not only for using gadgets, but also for application development? We claim that intuitive aggregation and combination of software gadgets makes this possible.In this talk, we will show the use of current technology in building a consumer oriented development tool appropriate for individuals not formally trained in programming. We demonstrate that the complexity of existing system and scripting languages i.e.; syntax, semantics, control and data flow, data structures, data types, and programming components can be successfully replaced with analogies intuitively accessible to a much wider consumer population based exclusively on their use and understanding of user interfaces in popular web applications. We present a demo of Geppeto . a consumer tool for gadget-based application development. Composing gadgets with Geppeto does not require programming experience or reading of convoluted manuals. The presented research is sponsored by Google Inc. and the Croatian Ministry of Science.Biography:
Professor Sinisa Srbljic, Ph.D., is currently a professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, and the project leader of the Geppeto project. His career also spans Silicon Valley where he worked on large-scale distributed systems at AT&T Labs. He was visiting the University of Toronto, where he worked on the NUMAchine multiprocessor project, and the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include Web computing, gadget composition, and consumer programming. In teaching, he is involved in the theory of computing, programming language translation, service-oriented computing, and network middleware systems.Location: Waite Phillips Hall Of Education (WPH) - B27
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Computing Game-Theoretic Solutions
Thu, Nov 06, 2008 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Vincent Conitzer, Duke University
Host: Prof. Milind TambeAbstract:
Computer scientists are increasingly confronted with settings where multiple self-interested parties (humans or software agents) interact, especially in the context of the Internet. Examples include auctions, exchanges, elections, and other negotiation protocols, as well as job scheduling, routing, and webpage ranking. In these settings, the optimal course of action for one agent generally depends on what the other agents do, resulting in a tricky circularity. Game theory provides various notions of how agents should act in such domains. However, especially from an AI perspective, these concepts become useful only when we can compute the solutions that they prescribe. In this talk, I will review several standard game-theoretic solution concepts, including dominance, iterated dominance, Nash equilibrium, and Stackelberg strategies. I will also discuss algorithms and complexity results for computing these solutions.Biography:
Vincent Conitzer is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Economics at Duke University. He received Ph.D. (2006) and M.S. (2003) degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and an A.B. (2001) degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. His research focuses on computational aspects of microeconomics, in particular game theory, mechanism design, voting/social choice, and auctions. This work uses techniques from, and includes applications to, artificial intelligence and multiagent systems. Conitzer received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2008), an Honorable Mention for the 2007 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, the 2006 IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award, the AAMAS Best Program Committee Member Award (2006), and an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship (2005). He is a co-author on papers that received a AAAI-08 Outstanding Paper Award and the AAMAS-08 Pragnesh Jay Modi Best Student Paper Award.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium: Fighting Cancer with Nanoparticle Medicines
Fri, Nov 07, 2008 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Lecture offered by Professor Mark E. Davis, Warren and Katherine Schlinger Professor of Chemical Engineering and Member of the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, Experimental Therapeutics Program, California Institute of Technology.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs
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Integrated Systems Seminar Series - Dr. Michael Green, UC-Irvine
Fri, Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
"Novel CMOS Design Techniques for Multi-Gb/s Broadband Communication Circuits" - a talk by Dr. Michael Green, Professor, UC-Irvine
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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DLS: The Parallel Revolution has Started: Are You Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem
Fri, Nov 07, 2008 @ 03:30 PM - 05:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Abstract:This talk will explain
* Why the La-Z-Boy era of sequential programming is over
* The sorry record of prior commercial forays in parallelism
* The implications to the IT industry if the parallel revolution should fail
* The opportunities and pitfalls of this revolution
* What Berkeley is doing to be at the forefront of this revolutionBiography:David Andrew Patterson (born November 16, 1947) is an American computer pioneer and academic who has held the position of Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley since 1977.A native of Evergreen Park, Illinois, David Patterson attended UCLA, receiving his A.B. in 1969, M.S. in 1970 and Ph.D. (advised by David F. Martin and Gerald Estrin) in 1976. He is one of the original innovators of the widely used Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) (in collaboration with Carlo H. Sequin), Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID) (in collaboration with Randy Katz), and Network of Workstations (NOW) (in collaboration with Eric Brewer and David Culler). Past chair of the Computer Science Department at U.C. Berkeley and the Computing Research Association, he served on the Information Technology Advisory Committee for the U.S. President (PITAC) during 2003-05 and was elected president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for 2004–06.He co-authored five books, including two with John L. Hennessy on computer architecture: Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (4 editions—latest is ISBN 0-12-370490-1) and Computer Organization and Design: the Hardware/Software Interface (3 editions—latest is ISBN 1-55860-604-1). They have been widely used as textbooks for graduate and undergraduate courses since 1990.His work has been recognized by about 30 awards for research, teaching, and service, including Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as well as by election to the National Academy of Engineering and the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. In 2005 he and Hennessy shared Japan's Computer & Communication award and, in 2006, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and received the Distinguished Service Award from the Computing Research Association. In 2007 he was named a Fellow of the Computer History Museum and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and, in 2008, won the ACM Distinguished Service Award and the ACM-IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Award.Lecture: SAL-101, 3:30PMReception: SAL Courtyard, 4:30PM
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - Auditorium (-101)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Threat and Error Management Development - Nov. 10-12, 2008
Mon, Nov 10, 2008
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
TEM 09-1
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Attendees Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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Advanced System Safety Analysis - Nov. 10-14, 2008
Mon, Nov 10, 2008
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
ADVSS 09-1
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Attendees Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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BME 533 Seminar Series
Mon, Nov 10, 2008 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Cesar Palerm, PhD, Principal Scientist, Medtronic Diabetes, Northridge, CA "Diabetes and Technology: From Water-Tasters to an Artificial Pancreas"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate/Department/Sponsors only
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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STAIR: The STanford Artificial Intelligence Robot project
Tue, Nov 11, 2008 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Andrew Y. Ng, Stanford University
Host: Prof. Fei ShaAbstract:
This talk will describe the STAIR home assistant robot project, and the satellite projects that led to key STAIR components such as (i) robotic grasping of previously unknown objects, (ii) depth perception from a single still image, and (iii) multi-modal robotic perception.Since its birth in 1956, the AI dream has been to build systems that exhibit broad-spectrum competence and intelligence. STAIR revisits this dream, and seeks to integrate onto a single robot platform tools drawn from all areas of AI including learning, vision, navigation, manipulation, planning, and speech/NLP. This is in distinct contrast to, and also represents an attempt to reverse, the 30 year old trend of working on fragmented AI sub-fields. STAIR's goal is a useful home assistant robot, and over the long term, we envision a single robot that can perform tasks such as tidying up a room, using a dishwasher, fetching and delivering items, and preparing meals.In this talk, I'll describe our progress on having the STAIR robot fetch items from around the office, and on having STAIR take inventory of office items. Specifically, I'll describe: (i) learning to grasp previously unseen objects (including unloading items from a dishwasher); (ii) probabilistic multi-resolution maps, which enable the robot to open/use doors; (iii) a robotic foveal+peripheral vision system for object recognition and tracking. I'll also outline some of the main technical ideas---such as learning 3-d reconstructions from a single still image, and reinforcement learning algorithms for robotic control---that played key roles in enabling these STAIR components.Biography:
Andrew Ng is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. His research interests include machine learning, reinforcement learning/control, and broad-competence AI. His group has won best paper/best student paper awards at ACL, CEAS, 3DRR and ICML. He is also a recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Minimal Mass Structures for Control
Wed, Nov 12, 2008 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Minimal Mass Structures for ControlRobert SkeltonProfessor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of California
San Diego, CA 92093An optimization of a structure before, and independent of, control design leads to high energy controllers with little cooperation between the dynamics of the controller and the dynamics of the structure. Some optimization problems have been solved to minimize mass while maintaining a high degree of controllability. Two examples are given: Optimal structures under compressive loads and optimal structures under bending loads. The bending case solves a problem that has been open since the work of Michell in 1904, when he solved the infinitely complex case (a continuum of material), leaving the optimal discrete case open.Location: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall, Room 102 (SLH 102)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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Robot Babies
Thu, Nov 13, 2008 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Melinda Snodgrass
Host: Prof. Milind Tambe
This lecture is part of CS499 "Intelligent agents and science fiction". Abstract:
This talk is designed to raise several questions.The first is to examine the purpose of the robot in fiction. Aliens can also serve this purpose because they, like robots, are The Other. Ultimately we use the robot as a way to explore issues that confront humans. What does it mean to be human? What is morality?In fiction we often treat the robot as a blank slate or even as a child learning the ways of the world. Which leads to the second question --Why build an AI? Is this driven by the human need to create? A night of unprotected sex can accomplish that. Why build a machine? I would like to involve the audience in this part of the discussion.Finally I will look at how I find dramatic stories regarding robots/AI.s, and also how the stories have changed as our world has become ever more wired. You notice there aren.t very many stories about power hungry computers taking over the world any longer because we.ve all faced the Blue Screen of Death. We live and work with computers every day, and we know they are fundamentally stupid.So, if we build an AI do we make it smart enough to be venal?Biography:
Melinda Snodgrass was born in Los Angeles, but her family moved to New Mexico when she was five months old so she considers herself a native. She was educated at the University of New Mexico graduating Magna cum Lauda in History. During her undergraduate days she took a year off to study opera at the Conservatory of Vienna in Vienna, Austria. Upon her return from Europe she entered the U.N.M. School of Law.After graduation she practiced for three years, and discovered that while she loved the study of law she didn't particularly love lawyers so she began a career in writing. She has written numerous science fiction novels, and helps edit and writes for the WILD CARD anthologies.In 1988 she accepted a job on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and began her Hollywood career. Her most recent Hollywood position was as Consulting Producer on the N.B.C. show PROFILER. She has written television pilots and feature films.Her novel, THE EDGE OF REASON, an occult thriller, has just been released by Tor books, and the second novel THE EDGE OF RUIN will be published in June of 2009. she is hard at work on her story for the next Wild Card's Anthology, and she is working with Ian Tregillis to adapt his novel, BITTER SEED, as a screenplay. Her passion (aside from writing) is riding Grand Prix dressage on her Lusitano stallion Vento da Broga.Location: Seeley Wintersmith Mudd Memorial Hall (of Philosophy) (MHP) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Semiconductor Nanomembranes
Thu, Nov 13, 2008 @ 12:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Lyman Handy Colloquium SeriesPresentsMax LagalyProfessor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI 53706Abstract: TBA
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium: The Foundations of the Digital Wireless World
Fri, Nov 14, 2008 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Lecture offered by Dr. Andrew Viterbi, Co-Founder of Qualcomm, Inventor of the Viterbi Algorithm, Electrical Engineering Professor at UCSD, and President of Viterbi Group
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Honors Program Students and All USC Faculty and Staff are Invited to Attend
Contact: Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs
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Nonlinear Light Matter Interactions in Slow Light Photonic Structures: Performance Metrics
Fri, Nov 14, 2008 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jacob B. Khurgin,
Johns Hopkins UniversityAbstract: Strong confinement of the electromagnetic field and reduction of the group velocity can be achieved in various Slow Light Structures can greatly enhance the strength of light matter interactions. These interactions include various nonlinear effects as well as spontaneous emission. Based on these well understood observations a number of devices based on slow light had been proposed, including all-optical and electro-optical modulators and switches, various sensors, and the devices for quantum communication and information processing.All these slow light devices inevitably rely upon existence of strong optical resonances, and the resonances are always accompanied by strong dispersion and significant loss. As a result, the bandwidth of SL devices becomes limited.In this presentation I will address the issue of trade off between the bandwidth and other important characteristics of SL devices – switching power, size, average power dissipation, noise floor, and others. I will show that different photonic schemes (for example single rather than coupled resonators) may be more applicable for different nonlinear effects. I will identify the most promising application niches for the nonlinear devices based on slow light.Biography: Jacob B. Khurgin had graduated with MS in Optics from the Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics in St Petersburg, Russia in 1979, where he was also born before that. In 1980 he had emigrated to US, and, to his own great surprise, immediately landed what then seemed to be a meaningful job with Philips Laboratories of NV Philips in Briarcliff Manor, NY. There for 8 years he worked with various degrees of success on miniature solid-state lasers, II-VI semiconductor lasers, various display and lighting fixtures, X-ray imaging, and small appliances such as electric shavers and coffeemakers (for which he has 3 patents). Simultaneously he was pursuing his graduate studies at Polytechnic Institute of NY, where he had received PhD in Electro-physics in Jan. 1987. In Jan. 1988, prompted by a promotion to a Department Manager, Khurgin's industrial career came to an abrupt end, and he had joined the Electrical Engineering department of Johns Hopkins University, where he had settled down and is currently a Professor. His research topics over the years included an eclectic mixture of optics of semiconductor nanostructures, nonlinear optical devices, optical communications, microwave photonics, and condensed matter physics. Currently he is working in the areas of laser cooling, phonon engineering for high frequency transistors, coherent optical communications, and slow light propagation. His publications include 2 book chapters, one book edited, 170+ papers in refereed journals and 8 patents. Prof. Khurgin is an OSA Fellow.Host: Alan Willner, willner@usc.edu, EEB 538, x04664Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Optimizing Locomotion: Learning Control at Intermediate Reynolds Number
Fri, Nov 14, 2008 @ 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Russ Tedrake, MIT
Host: Prof. Gaurav SukhatmeAbstract:
In this talk I'll describe our efforts in using computational tools from optimal control theory (including machine learning and motion planning algorithms) to design efficient and agile control systems for locomotion. In particular, I'll emphasize new results applying these ideas to bird-scale aerial vehicles in complicated fluid regimes. Fluid dynamics, particularly at intermediate Reynolds numbers, represents one of the hard sciences where experiments still have a clear advantage over theory. It also happens that this dynamic regime offers some incredibly exciting controls problems; problems where classical control approaches have not made significant progress. I will argue that optimal control methods based on approximate models and model-free reinforcement learning methods are very well-suited to these regimes and may be the most natural route to finding efficient, high-performance control solutions. I'll describe our learning experiments with robotic birds (which fly with flapping wings) and with an airplane that can land on a perch. I will also briefly describe how these tools can be applied naturally to the control of minimally-actuated walking machines on rough terrain.Biography:
Russ Tedrake is the X Consortium Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. He received his B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1999, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2004, working with Sebastian Seung. After graduation, he joined the MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department as a Postdoctoral Associate. In 2008, he received an NSF CAREER award, the MIT Jerome Saltzer award for undergraduate teaching, and was named a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellow.Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 406
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Gas Turbine Engine Accident Investigation - Nov. 17-21, 2008
Mon, Nov 17, 2008
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
GTAI 09-1
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Attendees Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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BME 533 Seminar Series:CANCELLED FOR THE DAY
Mon, Nov 17, 2008 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Location: CANCELLED
Audiences: Graduate/Department/Sponsors only
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Improving deep packet inspection through extended automata
Tue, Nov 18, 2008 @ 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Cristian Estan, University of Wisconsin Host: Prof. Ramesh Govindan Abstract:
Deep packet inspection is playing an increasingly important role in novel network services. Regular expressions are the language of choice for writing signatures used in deep packet inspection, but standard signature matching solutions are not suitable for high-speed environments. Deterministic finite automata (DFAs) are fast but combining the DFAs for multiple signatures often leads to state space explosion. Non-deterministic finite automata (NFAs) are small but matching can be slow for large signature sets. This talk presents a new solution that simultaneously addresses these problems. Extended finite automata (XFAs) augment deterministic finite automata (DFAs) with finite auxiliary variables and simple instructions that manipulate them. The introduction of auxiliary variables allows us to eliminate state space explosion. In experiments with signature sets used for intrusion prevention by Snort and Cisco Systems, XFAs simultaneously reduce memory and run time by more than an order of magnitude when compared to earlier solutions. Biography:
Cristian Estan has been an assistant professor in the Computer Sciences Department at University of Wisconsin-Madison since Fall 2004. His Ph.D. is from University of California, San Diego (adviser George Varghese). His research focuses on network security, network traffic measurement, and network traffic analysis. It has resulted in publications in top conferences in networking, security, systems, and databases: SIGCOMM, IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland), OSDI, SIGMETRICS, ICDE, IMC, etc. His work is supported by multiple grants from NSF including a CAREER grant and gifts from Cisco Systems.Location: Charles Lee Powell Hall (PHE) - 223
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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On Broadcast Scheduling
Tue, Nov 18, 2008 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Samir Khuller, University of Maryland
Host: Prof. Leana GolubchikAbstract:
Broadcasting over a wireless channel is a standard mechanism to disseminate information to a set of clients. Clients request different pieces of information, called "pages", and in this "pull-based" model, the server responds with a broadcast schedule. The key property that distinguishes this problem from standard scheduling is that multiple requests may be satisfied by a single broadcast of the requested page. Surprisingly, this small change makes almost all the problems in this area NP-hard whereas without this property these problems can be solved optimally in polynomial time for unit sized pages. This overlap property arises in other contexts as well such as in multi-query processing.We consider a variety of different objective functions in our work minimizing the sum of response times, minimizing the maximum response time and maximizing the number of satisfied requests when requests have deadlines. This is a survey talk based on several papers and will cover a collection of results using a variety of techniques. Finally we propose some open problems. No background knowledge beyond undergraduate algorithms is expected.Biography:
Samir Khuller received his M.S and Ph.D from Cornell University in 1989 and 1990, respectively. He spent two years as a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) at the University of Maryland, before joining the Computer Science Department in 1992, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He spent several summers at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, and also visited the IBM Tokyo Research Lab for several weeks. From 2004 to 2008 he was the Associate Chair for Graduate Education.His research interests are in graph algorithms, discrete optimization, and computational geometry. He has published about 140 journal and conference papers, and several book chapters on these topics. He is an editor for the journal Networks, International Journal on Foundations of Computer Science, problems Editor for ACM Trans. on Algorithms, and a columnist for SIGACT News. He has served on several program committees.He received the National Science Foundation's Career Development Award, several Dept. Teaching Awards, the Dean's Teaching Excellence Award and also a CTE-Lilly Teaching Fellowship. In 2003, he and his students were awarded the "Best newcomer paper" award for the ACM PODS Conference. He received the University of Maryland's Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award in 2007, as well as a Google Research Award. He graduated at the top of the Computer Science Class from IIT-Kanpur.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Sunlight-mediated disinfection of viruses in surface water:
Wed, Nov 19, 2008 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
...The role of reactive oxygen speciesDr. Tamar Kohn, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), SwitzerlandAbstract:Waterborne pathogens in drinking and recreational water present a serious threat to public health worldwide. Pathogens enter water sources via the discharge of inadequately treated and raw wastewater. The situation is especially acute in developing countries, where an estimated 2.6 billion people lack access to proper sanitation facilities. Industrialized
nations have also recognized waterborne pathogens as an emerging water quality problem. Up to 9 million cases of waterborne illnesses are estimated to occur annually in the US alone. Alarmingly, waterborne disease outbreaks are directly related to heavy rainfall events and are therefore considered a growing public health risk associated with the anticipated effects of global warming.Pathogenic viruses present a particular challenge for microbial water quality
because they are excreted in very high numbers from infected patients, while their infectious dose can be very low. In surface water, sunlight-mediated disinfection is an important factor governing the survival of viruses. This naturally occurring disinfection process is also exploited for engineering applications, such as waste stabilization ponds. Sunlight-mediated inactivation can occur directly, via damage to nucleic acids by UVB
light. In addition, inactivation can result from indirect damage of virus components by reactive oxygen species formed in the presence of sunlight and oxygen and sensitizers in the surrounding water sample (exogenous inactivation). While the role of direct damage has long been recognized, only little is known about the contribution of exogenous inactivation to overall virus disinfection.The goal of my work is to develop a quantitative and mechanistic understanding of exogenous virus inactivation in sunlit water. In experiments using a solar simulator, we investigated the sunlight-mediated inactivation of coliphages MS2 and PhiX174, two commonly used surrogates for human viruses. In this presentation I will illustrate the importance of different reactive oxygen species on virus survival and I will discuss the
mechanisms which cause the viruses to lose infectivity. In addition, I will demonstrate how we are using this information to develop novel methods to distinguish between viable and inactivated viruses.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Graduate Seminar
Thu, Nov 20, 2008 @ 01:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science Presents:"FUNCTIONAL DESIGN FOR NANOSCALE ARCHITECTURES"Marilyn L. Minus, Ph.D.
School of Polymer, Textile, and Fiber Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GeorgiaAbstractFunctional materials are indigenous to nature. From a morphological standpoint, these materials are designed such that every feature is involved in its functional capability. Materials produced in the research lab and industries have yet to capture the kind of functional efficiency exhibited in nature. The field of nanotechnology has ushered in a new era for the design and processing of materials. The abundance of nanomaterials available provides endless combinations for imagining and constructing nanocomposites which have applications within one or more field of study. In addition, this field has also opened new opportunities of educational gleaning for future generations of scientist. The nano- and macro-scale properties of polymers have long been studied and much is already known. However, the mishmash of polymer with nanoparticles has now broadened our view of how these macromolecules can be influenced into novel architectures at the nanoscale to produce new structures and enhancement of bulk properties. Polymer selforganization/assembly directly influenced by nanoparticles provides a basis to approach many fundamental research questions including the design of new materials for energy applications. Understanding these processes and utilizing these designs has the potential to reshape our view of how to incorporate polymers into nanocomposites to tailor bulk applications for specific functionalities. Such intelligent design combines both top-down and bottom-up approaches for erecting nanocomposites. In our world, new product design, development, and optimization are in constant demand and these materials find their beginnings in the laboratory. The potential implications of applying technology to the nano world breathe new life into researching materials for energy applications. Can we dream of a way to use the wealth of new materials available today to construct a system that will simultaneously convert CO2 to O2 and provide energy from solar and bio sources? Such a mechanism can exist as thin flexible sheets can be incorporated into window panels, construction and automotive materials, or industrial textiles making use of rain water and sunlight to provide electrical energy to buildings or vehicles while cleaning the air we breathe.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Thinking Outside the Box: How to Survive Peer Pressure
Fri, Nov 21, 2008 @ 11:30 AM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
EE Students 'Practical Guide' Seminar Series
Seminar Leaders: Profs. Michael J. Neely and Viktor K. PrasannaHost: Prof. Todd Brun
Organizer: Prof. Alan Willner
Website: http://ee.usc.edu/news/practical-guide/* Pizza will be provided by the EE Department.*Abstract: Graduate students, particularly international students, face a number of challenges as they settle down. This seminar will offer informal discussion of many opportunities on campus as well as in our department for academic success and enrichment. It will also offer a perspective on "thinking outside the box" for research success. This involves understanding and identifying constraints that are useful (and those that are not), building up research confidence, and mastering old ideas while being open to developing and applying new ones.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium: The Methanol Economy
Fri, Nov 21, 2008 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Lecture offered by Professor George Olah, Nobel Laureate, Director of USC's Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs
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BME 533 Seminar Series: Constantinos Sioutas, ScD
Mon, Nov 24, 2008 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Constantinos Sioutas, ScD, Fred Champion Professor & Co-Director of the Southern California Particle Center, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, USC:
"Physical, Chemical and Toxicological Characteristics of Particulate Matter from Mobile Sources
Summary of Research by the Southern California Particle Center"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate/Department/Sponsors only
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Stochastic Local Search for Propositional Satisfiability
Mon, Nov 24, 2008 @ 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Abdul Sattar, Griffith University, Australia
Host: Prof. Milind TambeAbstract:
The problem of finding a consistent truth assignment to all propositional variables in a formula, known as SAT problem, has been an interesting and difficult challenge. Indeed, SAT is at the heart of all computationally intractable problems. Many real world problems could be encoded as SAT problems. Thus finding an efficient solution for SAT has far reaching impact on computationally hard problems. This talk will begin with an overview of the main approaches for solving SAT problems. We will then focus on stochastic local search based methods. These methods have been shown to be highly effective for large size problems. We will present our recent results on clause weighting based local search, including an influential method that automatically learns about the structure of the problem, and efficiently exploit those structures to solve some of the difficult challenge problems in the field.Biography:
Prof Sattar is founding Director of the Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems (IIIS), a research centre of excellence at Griffith University established in 2003. He is a Research Leader at NICTA Queensland Laboratory since June 2005, and also held the Associate Director of Education portfolio at the Queensland Laboratory from October 2006-June 2008. He has been an academic staff member at Griffith University since February 1992 as a lecturer (1992-95), senior lecturer (1996-99), and professor (2000-present) within the School of Information and Communication Technology. Prior to his career at Griffith University, he was a lecturer in Physics in Rajasthan, India (1980-82), research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India (1982-85), the University of Waterloo, Canada (1985-87), and the University of Alberta, Canada (1987-1991).He holds a BSc (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) and an MSc (Physics) from the University of Rajasthan, India, an MPhil in Computer and Systems Sciences from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, and an MMath in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and a PhD in Computer Science (with specialization in Artificial Intelligence) from the University of Alberta, Canada. His current research interests include knowledge representation and reasoning, constraint satisfaction, rational agents, propositional satisfiability, temporal reasoning, temporal databases, and bioinformatics. He has supervised 17 successful completions of PhD graduates, and published over 100 technical papers in refereed conferences and journals in the field. His research team has won three major international awards in recent years (the gold medals for the SAT 2005 and SAT 2007 competitions in the random satisfiable category and an IJCAI 2007 distinguished paper award).Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 144
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Applications of Feedback System EngineeringPrinciples to the Design of Brain-Machine Interfaces
Mon, Nov 24, 2008 @ 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Refreshments will be served 3-4 PM.ABSTRACT: Although it is well-known that every brain machine interface (BMI) depends critically on the use of feedback, many of the algorithms in place for designing (BMIs) do not completely exploit this implication. In this talk we discuss how novel exploitation of feedback delivered to the user can result in significant improved performance. Our approach comes from stochastic control, recursive estimation, and feedback information theory; it is independent of the specific neural sensing modality, the device to be controlled, and the specific neural delivery mechanism of feedback. In effect, we interpret the user and the prosthetic as engaging in a dialogue about user intent, and we consider feedback delivery strategies that not only give the user information about the state of the prosthetic, but also information about the interface's belief about user intent. We will discuss some EEG-based BMI applications and develop an approach that espouses principles from stochastic control and feedback information theory coding. We illustrate significant performance improvement and lowcomplexity implementation. Lastly, we conclude with a discussion of future directions we plan to pursue with this methodology. Joint Collaboration with Timothy Bretl (UIUC) and Ed Maclin (UIUC) BIO:Todd P. Coleman received the B.S. degrees in electrical engineering (summa cum laude), as well as computer engineering (summa cum laude) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2000, along with the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, in 2002, and 2005. During the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a postdoctoral scholar at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital in computational neuroscience. Since the fall of 2006, he has been on the faculty in the ECE Department and Neuroscience Program at UIUC. His research interests include information theory, operations research, and computational neuroscience. Dr. Coleman, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship recipient, was awarded the University of Michigan College of Engineering's Hugh Rumler Senior Class Prize in 1999 and was awarded the MIT EECS Department's Morris J. Levin Award for Best Masterworks Oral Thesis Presentation in 2002. http://www.ifp.uiuc.edu/~colemant/index_files/bio.htm
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mary Francis
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The Promise, the Limits, and the Beauty of Software (Distinguished Lecture)
Mon, Nov 24, 2008 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Grady Booch, IBM Research
Host: Prof. Barry BoehmAbstract:
Within this generation, software has changed the way that individuals collaborate, organizations do business, economies operate, and cultures interact. Software-intensive systems can amplify human intelligence, but they cannot replace human judgment; software-intensive systems can fuse, coordinate, classify, and analyze information, but they cannot create knowledge.Although software offers seemingly limitless promise, there are some very real limits to what software can do. Not everything we want to build can be built: there exist pragmatic theoretical and technical limits that make software development hard, if not in some cases impossible.Furthermore, not everything we want to build should be built: there exist moral, economic, social, and political limits that govern human industry.Software-intensive systems are perhaps the most intellectually complex artifacts created by humans, and while the majority of individuals in the civilized world rely on software in their daily lives, few of them understand the essential complexity therein, the labour required to create such artifacts, and the beautiful and elegant chaos of their architecture.In this presentation, we will examine the promise, the limits, and the beauty of software, as well as offer some conclusions that can be drawn from the last 60 years of software and some expectations and cautions for the next generation.Biography:
http://www.handbookofsoftwarearchitecture.com/index.jsp?page=ContactLocation: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Information Theoretic Approaches for Utilizing Packet Timings in Networks
Tue, Nov 25, 2008 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Todd P. Coleman
University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignAbstract: The use of network services and distributed applications is becoming more and more prevalent as time progresses. This motivates the desire to use advanced communication, control, and prediction strategies to enable these distributed applications - without perturbing the normal operation of networks. Recently, researchers and practitioners have begun espousing the use of the timing modality to afford new degrees of freedom. Here we discuss utilizing packet timings in networks in order to gather and convey information. We specifically speak to: (a) the development of sparse graph codes combined for communicating with packet timings across queuing timing channels that enables efficient reliable decoding at rates approaching fundamental limits, and (b) closed-form characterization of the rate-distortion function of a Poisson process with a queuing distortion measure. If time permits, we will show how the technique used in (b) enables a simple memoryless proof to the capacity of the celebrated "Bits through queues" channel model of Anantharam and Verdu and enables new converses to multiterminal timing channel information theoretic problems.Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Forget him (or her) and keep on moving: Making mobile social networks navigable
Tue, Nov 25, 2008 @ 11:00 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Augustin Chaintreau, Thomson, Paris
Host: Prof. Ramesh GovindanAbstract:
A network is navigable if a simple decentralized scheme allows efficient routing (i.e. in a polylogarithmic number of steps). Previous works have shown that general classes of graphs can be made navigable by adding few links according to an appropriate distribution. However, for most of this graphs, navigability is sensitive to small deviations from this distribution. Moreover, it seems difficult for the nodes to manage such a link addition in a distributed way. In spite of some efforts, and evidence of the "small-world phenomenon" in social networks, no model currently proves the emergence of navigability from local dynamics.Here we prove that navigability emerges from nodes own mobility and memory. Inspired by emerging opportunistic mobile networks using human carried devices (a.k.a. Pocket switched networks), we model a network where nodes move (in our case, according to a random walk in dimension d), and may opportunistically create connections as they meet physically. Once established, these connections are randomly maintained or forgotten, based only their current age. We prove that this simple setting allows one to create navigable networks. We present a few applications of these techniques to design opportunistic spatial gossip, and discuss the upcoming challenges in relation with recent experiences on using social software for opportunistic mobile networks.(this is a joint work with Pierre Fraigniaud and Emmanuelle Lebhar, from CNRS-Universite Paris Diderot and CMM-Universidad de Chile)Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 163
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
