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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for November
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Effect of Phase Spectrum Uncertainties of Earthquake Motion on Seismic Fragility Curve of Steel Brid
Tue, Nov 01, 2005 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
*BY
*Prof. Tadanobu Sato
*Faculty of Science and Engineering
Waseda University
satotdnb@aoni.waseda.jpAbstract:* The earthquake resistant capacity of a structure with uncertainties is evaluated by fragility curves based on the probabilistic concept. We estimate fragility curves by using Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) and limit seismic intensity. For the effective estimation of the tail part, namely low conditional failure probability, we use the Subset simulation method. Samples are generated to search the failure region in each subspace by using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). The effect of phase spectrum uncertainties on the fragility curve is also examined and a method to define a design earthquake motion eliminating phase uncertainties.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 203
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Estimation Theory and Mutual Information
Wed, Nov 02, 2005 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Sergio Verdu, Princeton UniversityAbstract: For signals observed in Gaussian noise, there are several interesting intersections between information theory and linear and nonlinear minimum mean-square error (MMSE) estimation. We have shown a new relationship between the input-output mutual information and the MMSE achievable by the optimal estimator of the input. This relationship holds for arbitrarily distributed scalar and vector signals, as well as for discrete-time and continuous-time noncausal MMSE estimation (smoothing). We have also recently shown the counterpart of these results in discrete-input discrete-output channels. I will also discuss several applications of these information theoretic results: the mercury/waterfilling formula for power allocation with arbitrary input constellations; a universal continuous-time nonlinear filtering formula that couples the signal-to-noise ratios achievable by smoothing and filtering; and a very simple proof of the entropy-power inequality.Bio: Sergio Verdú is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University where he teaches and conducts research on information theory.In 1998, Cambridge University Press published his book "Multiuser Detection," which received the Frederick E. Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education. His papers have received several awards: the D. Fink Paper Award from the IEEE, the 1998 Information Theory Outstanding Paper Award, a Golden Jubilee Paper Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society, the 2000 Paper Award from the Japan Telecommunications Advancement Foundation, and the 2002 Leonard G. Abraham Prize Award from the IEEE Communications Society. He has received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.Sergio Verdú served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 1997 and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory.Host: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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SILICON AND QUARTZ MEMS INERTIAL SENSORS FOR AVIONICS AND SPACE APPLICATIONS
Wed, Nov 02, 2005 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Santiram Kal
Dept. of Electronics & Elect. Commun. Engg.
Indian Institute of Technology A major attention of micromachining technology has recently been focused on miniature inertial sensors. Rapid advancement of micromachined accelerometer technology has enabled cost effective high performance micro accelerometers that revolutionizes the traditional accelerometer market. Apart from commercial and consumer applications, one major applications of miniature high precision accelerometer is in the field of avionics and space. This lecture deals with the development of both silicon and quartz micromachined MEMS accelerometers and gyros for avionics and space applications. An accelerometer of the range of âb 13 g with very low off-axis acceleration, a resolution of âb 2 mg and a linearity of less than 1% has been designed and fabricated. As the piezoresistive accelerometers are less susceptible to parasitic capacitance and electromagnetic interference, we opted for the same because of simple fabrication process and read out circuitry. The piezoresistive accelerometer consists of a silicon base, a proof mass supported by double cantilever beam and cap layers. Coventorware 2001.3 software package has been used to design the accelerometer. Simulation results indicate that the maximum output voltage under 13 g acceleration along z-axis is nearly 20 mV with 5 volts bridge supply whereas off-axis response is about 3-4 order less than z-axis response, which is one of the requirement of the navigational grade accelerometers. TMAH based five mask accelerometer technology has been indigenously developed at IIT Kharagpur and the MEMS accelerometers were fabricated, bonded and packaged. Interface electronics for the MEMS accelerometer has been designed and the chips were tested with available facilities. Characterization of the chip has been conducted up to âb 10 g and results are found to be highly encouraging. Plot of acceleration with output voltage is found to be highly linear (< 1 %) and with negligible offset value. The off-axis sensitivity was less than nearly two orders of magnitude than z-axis acceleration. IIT Kharagpur was the first in India to develop quartz micromachining technology. The indigenous development of the quartz technology is considered significant because quartz micromachining is protected technology with very little details are available in scientific literature. We have made use of this technology to fabricate tiny dual tuning fork structures with built-in electrodes via flexures, for sensing rotation (gyro), and double-ended tuning forks (DETF) used in MEMS accelerometers. This lecture also covers design and fabrication of quartz double-ended tuning fork accelerometer and dual tuning fork gyros.Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 230
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ericka Lieberknecht
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Special Seminar: Can Distributed Local Saliency Computations Solve the Feature Binding
Wed, Nov 02, 2005 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
TITLE: Can Distributed Local Saliency Computations Solve the Feature Binding
Problem?John K. TsotsosYork University, Toronto, Canada
Director, Center for Vision Research
Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering
Canada Research Chair in Computational VisionHOST: Laurent itti Abstract:
Computational vision has a long history of proposing methods for
decomposing a visual signal into components. For example, many good
strategies have appeared for decomposing visual motion signals (such as
Heeger, Sperling). What has been far more elusive is how to recombine
those components into a whole. This problem has even merited its own name
- the binding problem. To date no realizable process has appeared to solve
the binding problem, even in part, although several proposals have
appeared. This paper proposes a novel solution for a significant portion
of the binding problem, namely, the re-combination of visual features into
larger patterns and their localization in the image. The solution requires
the abandonment of the nearly ubiquitous saliency map and adoption of a
distributed, localized computation of saliency that is dependent on local
neural selectivity constraints. This strategy is demonstrated within a
fully implemented model that attends to simple motion patterns in image
sequences.
-------------------------------------------------Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - -107
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Vishal Thakkar
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Chat with the Chair
Thu, Nov 03, 2005 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
John Choma
Chair of EE-Electrophysics and ProfessorGet to know who the Chair is
Express Opinions you would like to relay to the chair
Express Concerns about the Department
Faculty and Student Relationships
Students Rights
Undergraduate Research / Internship
Breakdown of each specialization
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 230
Audiences: Undergraduate Electrical Engineering
Contact: Ericka Lieberknecht
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Viterbi Early Career Chair Lecture Series
Thu, Nov 03, 2005 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Integrated Media Systems Center
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Brian Pardo: Audio Presence -- new tools for musical information retrieval and interactionABSTRACT: A key problem facing us in the 21st century is information retrieval and management – how to retrieve, process, and store the information one seeks from the huge and ever-growing mass of available data. Consequently, one of the most important information-science tasks for the 21st century is to design ways to efficiently and accurately access the information that people need within collections of documents or in a single document. Increasingly, the documents of interest are multimedia. Music, from mp3s to ring tones to digitized scores, is one of the most popular categories of multimedia.Music collections are typically indexed by such features as title, composer, and performer. However, people often wish to perform tasks that require knowledge of their musical content, such as the melody ("What is the name of that song that goes like this ?"), the lyrics ("Make me a video that goes with these lyrics"), or other content ("Could you make the flute part a bit louder in this recording?").In this talk, Bryan Pardo will give an overview of research taking place in his laboratory at Northwestern University that address such information needs, presenting demonstrations of current projects. The projects discussed in this talk include vocal interfaces and search engines for music databases, machine following of improvised performances, automatic separation of sound sources in a stereo mix to isolate individual instruments, and automatic creation of music videos based on the lyrics of an audio recording.BIOSKETCH: Bryan Pardo is an assistant professor in the Northwestern University Department of Computer Science with a courtesy appointment in Northwestern's School of Music. Bryan received his B. Mus. from the Ohio State University in 1990, M.S. in Computer Science in 1993, M. Mus. from the University of Michigan in 2001, and Ph. D. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan in 2005. While completing his dissertation, he served as an assistant professor of Music at Madonna University in Detroit, MI. In addition to his academic appointments, Bryan has worked as a software developer for IBM, General Dynamics, and SPSS. When not computing or teaching, Bryan performs throughout the Midwest on clarinet and saxophone with the Klezmer band Into the Freylakh and with the performance-art ensemble Weave.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elaine Chew
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Taking on the Worlds Toughest Energy Challenges
Fri, Nov 04, 2005 @ 01:45 PM - 02:15 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Taking on the World's Toughest Energy Challenges: As the worldwide demand for energy continues to grow, new and innovative solutions in the oil and gas industry are required to meet the demand.J. J. (JEFF) WOODBURY
Vice President, Global Engineering
ExxonMobil Production CompanyABSTRACT:
As the worldwide demand for energy continues to grow, new and innovative solutions in the oil and gas industry are required to meet the demand. Understanding all energy sources and their role in meeting future demand is key in determining business and long-term development strategies. Application of new technology is critical in meeting the growing demand for oil and gas. ExxonMobil Production Company (EMPC) is finding ways to meet these ever increasing challenges. Emerging business segments such as deepwater developments, LNG terminals, and heavy oil and tight gas projects are only a few examples of new technology applications.
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - ontology Auditorium (GER)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Calen Boutilier
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Materials Science Program Seminar
Fri, Nov 04, 2005 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
The Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials SciencePRESENTS A SEMINAR
BYDr. Donavan HallAssistant Editor of Physical Review Letters"Behind the scenes at Physical Review Letters or What happens
after you click the submit button"AbstractDonavan Hall, Assistant Editor of Physical Review Letters, provides an insider glimpse into the peer review and editorial process that leads to decisions concerning publication of Letters submitted to PRL. He will give practical advice for authors and referees. In addition he will try to answer any questions you may have about general editorial matters.Dr. Donavan Hall is a condensed matter physicist who prior to becoming an assistant editor with PRL, spent five years as a researcher at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. His field of specialty was Fermi surface measurement and low temperature/high-field instrumentation development.**ALL FIRST YEAR MATERIALS SCIENCE MAJORS ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND**Location: Vivian Hall of Engineering (VHE) - 217
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce
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Bio-Engineering Systems Analysis in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit - Seminar Series
Mon, Nov 07, 2005 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
George Hatzakis, PhD Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and USC Keck School of Medicine"Bio-Engineering Systems Analysis in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to improve Clinical Therapeutics"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate
Contact: Darryl Hwang
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Antenna selection and RF preprocessing for MIMO systems
Tue, Nov 08, 2005 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Andreas Molisch, Mitsubishi Electric Research LabsAbstract: Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems can significantly increase the capacity of a wireless link and improve the robustness of the link. However, an important factor limiting the adoption of MIMO is the increased system- and hardware complexity. The signal received (transmitted) at each antenna element requires a separate Radio Frequency (RF) demodulator (demod) chain, which is expensive. A way to mitigate this problem is antenna selection, where either one, or both, link ends choose the "best" out of available antennas, so that only L (instead of N) RF chains are required. This talk will give an overview of the performance of antenna selection schemes when used in conjunction with diversity or with spatial multiplexing. In ideal channels, full diversity order can be achieved, and also the number of independent data streams for spatial multiplexing can be maintained if certain conditions on are fulfilled. However, there is a reduction of beamforming gain, which can lead to a significant performance loss especially in correlated channels. We will then demonstrate that a preprocessing of the signals in the RF domain by an array of phase shifters can recover most of this beamforming gain. A discussion of the hardware nonidealities in the preprocessing scheme and their impact on the performance wraps up the talk.Bio: Andreas F. Molisch (Fellow, IEEE) is a senior researcher with Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (Cambridge, MA), and professor for radio systems at Lund University, Sweden. Previously, he had worked at AT&T Bell Labs (NJ) and the Technical University of Vienna, Austria. His current research interests are wireless propagation channels, MIMO systems, and ultrawideband (UWB) systems. He has authored, co-authored, or edited four books, 11 book chapters, some 85 journal papers, and numerous conference contributions. He is inventor of more than 40 patents, has been chairman of various standardization and industrial groups in the area of MIMO and UWB, and received several awards.Host: Keith Chugg, chugg@usc.edu, x.07294
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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THE FUTURE OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
Wed, Nov 09, 2005 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
THE FUTURE OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
Shop Floors to Factories to Supply Chains to EnterprisesProf. William B. Rouse, DirectorTennenbaum Institute
Georgia Institute of Technology
(www.ti.gatech.edu)ABSTRACTIndustrial engineering is the engineering discipline that can assure that all the pieces fit together. Our perspectives, methods, and tools enable addressing the complexity of today's enterprises – large in scale, laced with uncertainties, and dynamic in function and form. We are the multi-discipline that understands and integrates across contributing disciplines from engineering, computing, management, and economics, as well as the physical, behavioral, and policy sciences. Our practitioners need to be expert in addressing cross-cutting strategic challenges of enterprises and our students need to be educated in the fundamentals of these challenges. Enterprises ranging from private sector companies to public sector government agencies are the domain of industrial engineering – the place where we make critical contributions to value-centered enterprises.Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - ontology Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: James Moore II
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Exact quantum circuits for measuring entanglement
Wed, Nov 09, 2005 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Hilary Carteret, University of CalgaryAbstract: There has recently been a lot of interest in techniques for measuring the non-local properties of a density matrix as efficiently as possible. These functions are often defined in terms of unphysical maps, such as the partial transpose. Previous proposed methods for measuring these quantities relied on full state tomography (very inefficient) or the Structural Physical Approximation, which adds large amounts of noise to shift the spectrum of the partially transposed density matrix to be positive, thus incurring a corresponding loss of sensitivity. The moments of the resulting modified density operator are measured using certain sets of generalized Mach-Zehnder interferometers and the spectrum can then be determined using a little algebra.I will show how to construct a family of simple circuits that can determine the spectrum of the partial transpose of a density matrix, without the addition of noise. These circuits depend only on the dimension of the density matrix and do not need any components that are not already required to determine the eigenspectrum of the original density matrix by interferometry. They measure the minimum amount of information required to determine the PT-spectrum completely and they will be exact up to experimental errors.If we get time, I can discuss some extensions to this construction which can be used to measure the concurrence and related entanglement monotones.Bio: Hilary Carteret was born in London, England. She did her D.Phil. in Mathematics at the University of York, working for Tony Sudbery. After six months working in the QOLS group in Imperial College, she moved to Canada, where she has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Waterloo (IQC) and then the Universite de Montreal. She has just moved to the new Institute for Quantum Information Science at the University of Calgary, to work with Barry Sanders.Host: Professor Todd A. Brun, tbrun@usc.edu, x. 03503
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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Lyman Handy Colloquium
Thu, Nov 10, 2005 @ 12:30 AM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Lyman L. Handy Colloquium
Crystal Engineering for Product
& Process DesignProfessor Michael F. Doherty
Department of Chemical Engineering
University of California, Santa BarbaraAbstractCrystalline organic solids are ubiquitous as either final products or as intermediates in the
specialty chemical, pharmaceutical, and home & personal care industries. Virtually all small
molecular weight drugs are isolated as crystalline materials, and over 90% of all pharmaceutical
products are formulated in particulate, generally crystalline form. Crystalline chemical
intermediates, such as adipic acid, are produced in large amounts to make polymers and specialty
products. Skin creams and other personal care product formulations contain crystalline solids. In
most cases the properties of the crystalline solid have a major impact on the functionality of the
product as well as the design and operation of the manufacturing process.
A novel method for modeling the shape evolution of 3-dimensional faceted crystals has been
developed in which the normal distances to each face from an origin inside the crystal are
represented by a system of ordinary differential equations. The model is initialized from an
arbitrary initial seed shape and size, but known polymorph. The growth model for the crystal faces
is based on surface integration kinetics as the rate determining step. The key variables on which
the model depends are (1) properties of the solid state, such as unit cell, space group,
intermolecular potentials, charge distribution, etc, and (2) surface free energy at the crystalsolution
interface. At each time step, the entire family of possible discrete shape evolution events
(e.g., vertices bifurcating into edges or faces, etc.) are exhaustively enumerated and investigated
using a new set of simple testable conditions. The evolving crystal shape is then determined from
the evolving set of normal distances and the corresponding crystallographic planes. The model has
been successfully applied to a selection of complex molecular crystals of interest in pharmaceutical
and specialty chemical products.
In this presentation we discuss the interactions between crystal engineering and
crystallization process & product design. We assess the current status of knowledge in this field and
identify critical areas for future research and development.Thursday, November 10, 2005
Seminar at 12:30 p.m. - OHE 122
Refreshments served after the seminar in HED Lobby
The Scientific Community is Cordially InvitedLocation: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce
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A Portable Continuous Desulfurization Unit for Diesel
Fri, Nov 11, 2005 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 AM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:Meng-Wei Wan, PhD Candidate
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Southern CaliforniaAbstractDue to the stringent rules requiring ultra-low sulfur content in diesel fuels, it is necessary to develop alternative methods of desulfurization of fossil fuel derived oil, such as diesel. Current technology is not sufficient to solve this problem. The ultrasound assisted oxidative desulfurization process (UAOD) which combines three complementary techniques: ultrasonication, phase transfer catalysis and transition metal catalyzed oxidation, has accomplished high sulfur removal in a short contact time at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure. For diesel fuels containing various levels of sulfur content, the UAOD process followed by solvent extraction has demonstrated that the sulfur reduction can reach above 95 % removal efficiency or a final sulfur content below 15 ppm in mild conditions.
For large-scale commercial production, this research has successfully developed and operated a continuous desulfurization unit, which consists of a sonoreactor, an RF amplifier, a function generator, a pretreatment tank, and a pipeline system. A single unit only requires about 2` x 4` x 1` space for installation. The results indicate a remarkable 92% removal efficiency for sulfur in marine logistic diesel, even at a treatment rate as high as 25 lb/hour, which is approximately 2 barrels per day. Therefore, the sonoreactor unit demonstrated the feasibility of large-scale operation even in a relatively small installation with low capital investment and maintenance cost. It also ensures the safety considerations by operating with diluted hydrogen peroxide under ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 156
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Honors Colloquium Seminar: Things Ive Learned that I Never Thought Would be Useful to My Career
Fri, Nov 11, 2005 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
This Honors Colloquium lecture will be given by Dennis Simanaitis, the Engineering Editor of Road and Track Magazine.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Erika Pratt
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Ship Shock Trial Modeling and Simulation
Wed, Nov 16, 2005 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:Young S. Shin, Ph.D.
Department of Mechanical and Astronautical Engineering
Naval Postgraduate School
Monterey, California 93943
(831) 656-2568, yshin@nps.eduAbstract
During World War II many surface combatants were damaged or severely crippled by close-proximity underwater explosions from ordnance that had actually missed their target. Since this time all new classes of combatants have been required to conduct shock trial tests on the lead ship of the class in order to test the survivability of mission essential equipment in a severe shock environment. While these tests are extremely important in determining the vulnerabilities of a surface ship, they require an extensive amount of preparation, man-hours, and money. Furthermore, these tests present an obvious danger to the crew on board, the ship itself, and any marine life in the vicinity. Creating a virtual shock environment by use of a computer to model the ship structure and the surrounding fluid presents a valuable design tool and an attractive alternative to these tests. The research work shown in this paper investigated the accuracy of shock simulation using the shock trials conducted on DDG class ship. The ship shock modeling and simulation strategy is discussed and the effects of fluid volume size, mesh density, mesh quality are also investigated.
Location: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall, Room 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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USC Entrepreneur Club Panel: The Business of Technology and Entrepreneurship
Wed, Nov 16, 2005 @ 07:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Panelists include:Richard Koffler, CEO of Koffler Ventures & President LA Venture Asson> (LAVA)Randy Churchill, PricewaterhouseCoopersRick Citron, Citron & DeutschMark Lieberman, Administrator for Business Technlogy Center of Los Angeles County.
Location: Upstairs Commons,
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Eric Mankin
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THE MORK FAMILY DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS SCIENCE PRESENTS A SEMINAR BY
Thu, Nov 17, 2005 @ 01:00 AM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Hugh StittJohnson Matthey"What flow visualisation can teach us about reactor
design (What? Flow visualisation can teach us about
reactor design?)"Abstract:
Reactor design in industry is still dominated by empirical methods and the use of design
margins. Flow visualisation techniques such as tomography and velocimetry are extensively
used as research tool for, especially multiphase, reactors. While the images and movies can
be impressive, they do not in themselve give us quantitative guidance in reactor design. How
should and can we use these to improve reactor design in practice? The use of these
techniques to improve uderstanding of reactor hydrodynamics and their use to underpin and
validate phenomenological models that can potentially used in design will be briefly
reviwed. The question then is how can these techniques benefit scale up, design and
operation of commercial reactors. Examples will be presented of using flow visualisation in
scale up studies and in diagnostic studies of commercial reactors, and the different demands
of flow visualisation in lab, pilot and commercial reactors discussed.Thursday, November 17, 2005
Seminar at 1:00 p.m. â€" HED 116
Refreshments â€" 12:45 p.m.The Scientific Community is Cordially InvitedLocation: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce
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THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT
Thu, Nov 17, 2005 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
DISTINGUISHED LECTURER SERIES"The History and Future of the
Integrated Circuit"Prof. Thomas Lee
Stanford UniversityGerontology Auditorium (GER-124)Thursday, November 17, 20052:00-3:00p.m.[A reception will follow at 3:00p.m.]Abstract:Moore's law is rapidly approaching the half-century mark, and many wonder how much longer it can work its magic. This talk doesn't presume an answer to that question, but instead looks at the history of the semiconductor age to suggest possible futures. There will be a focus on the much-underappreciated role of chance in creating semiconductor technology. Relatively few engineers are aware that diodes were a 19th-century discovery, and that the PN junction and even doping were discoveries, the latter aided by a pair of sensitive noses. The path to the future will likely require similar fortuitous discoveries, aided by Pasteur's famous "prepared minds.Bio:Thomas H. Lee received the S.B., S.M. and Sc.D. degrees in electrical engineering, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, 1985, and 1990, respectively. He joined Analog Devices in 1990 where he was primarily engaged in the design of high-speed clock recovery devices. In 1992, he joined Rambus Inc. in Mountain View, CA where he developed high-speed analog circuitry for 500 megabyte/s CMOS DRAMs. He has also contributed to the development of PLLs in the StrongARM, Alpha and AMD K6/K7/K8 microprocessors. Since 1994, he has been a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University where his research focus has been on gigahertz-speed wireline and wireless integrated circuits built in conventional silicon technologies, particularly CMOS. He has twice received the "Best Paper" award at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, co-authored a "Best Student Paper" at ISSCC, was awarded the Best Paper prize at CICC, and is a Packard Foundation Fellowship recipient. He is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer of both the Solid-State Circuits and Microwave Societies. He holds 35 U.S. patents and authored The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits (now in its second edition), and Planar Microwave Engineering, both with Cambridge University Press. He is a co-author of four additional books on RF circuit design, and also cofounded Matrix Semiconductor.Host: Prof. John Choma, x04692Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - ontology Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Rosine Sarafian
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Seminar
Fri, Nov 18, 2005 @ 02:30 AM - 03:30 AM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
THE MORK FAMILY DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS SCIENCEPRESENTS A SEMINAR
BYDr. Ivan VeselyThe H. Russell Smith Foundation Endowed Chair of Cardiothoracic Research and Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery Research
The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles
Professor of Cardiothoracic surgery, The Keck School of Medicine University of Southern California"Bioengineering of Heart Valves"November 18, 2005
2:45-3:30 PM
(Refreshments will be served at 2:30 PM)
VHE 217**ALL FIRST YEAR MATERIALS SCIENCE MAJORS ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND**
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce
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Honors Colloquium Seminar: The DC-3 Aircraft; Historic and Technical Perspective
Fri, Nov 18, 2005 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
This Honors Colloquium lecture will be given by Dr. John Vassberg, Boeing Technical Fellow from the Flight Sciences and Advanced Design Department of the Phantom Works Organization, The Boeing Company.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Erika Pratt
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Thermal Remediation of Creosote and Pentachlorophenol in a Heterogeneous Stratigraphy
Fri, Nov 18, 2005 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:Craig L. Eaker, Ph.D.
Southern California Edison
Rosemead,CA
craig.eaker@sce.comAbstractThe presentation is a case study of the results of the Visalia Steam Remediation Project (VSRP) conducted May 1997 through June 2000. The present laboratory data demonstrates success in achieving the project goal of restoring the groundwater quality to meet the regulatory standards. During 36 months of field operations, approximately 660,000,000 pounds of steam was injected into the formation to thermally treat 375,000 yards of contaminated material. About 1,330,000 pounds of a mixture of Creosote, Diesel, Pentachlorophenol, and Dioxins were extracted as vapors and liquids, or were chemically oxidized in the formation. Currently the groundwater at the "Point of Compliance" meets the Remediation Standards as specified by the California EPA, Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC). The groundwater assays in this vicinity have produced results which comply with the Remediation Standards for Pentachlorophenol (1 ug/L), Benzo(a)Pyrene (0.2 ug/L), and TCDDeqv (30 pg/L).The presentation will graphically represent six years of groundwater assays which clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of a thermal remedy to restore groundwater, adversely impacted by wood preservative chemicals, to a drinking water quality. Additionally, "best practices" for steam reservoir management and empirical observations of in-situ oxidation and saponification of wood preservative chemicals will be presented.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 156
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Technological Challenges in Building and Managing Utility Computing Grids
Fri, Nov 18, 2005 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
CENG SEMINAR SERIESTechnological Challenges in Building and Managing Utility Computing GridsDr. Rajkumar BuyyaGrid Computing and Distributed Systems (GRIDS) LaboratoryDept. of Computer Science and Software EngineeringUniversity of Melbourne, AustraliaAbstract:Grid computing, one of the latest buzzwords in the ICT industry, is emerging as a new paradigm for Internet-based parallel and distributing computing. It leverages existing IT infrastructure to optimize compute resources and manage data and computing workloads. The developers of Grids and Grid applications need to address numerous challenges: security, heterogeneity, dynamicity, scalability, reliability, service creation and pricing, resource discovery, resource management, application decomposition and service composition, and qualify of services. To address some these challenges, the Gridbus Project at the University of Melbourne has developed grid middleware technologies that support rapid creation and deployment of eScience and eBusiness applications on enterprise and global Grids. In this seminar, we place emphasis on fundamental challenges of Grid economy, how to design and develop Grid technologies and applications capable of dynamically leasing services of distributed resources at runtime depending on their availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality of service requirements. We briefly present various components of the Gridbus Toolkit and then discuss, in detail, the Gridbus service broker that supports composition and deployment of applications on utility Grids. Case studies on Gridbus middleware in creation of Grid applications on international Grids will be highlighted.Biographical Sketch :Dr. Rajkumar Buyya is a Senior Lecturer, Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek, USA) Fellow of Grid Computing, and the Director of the Grid Computing and Distributed Systems (GRIDS) Laboratory within the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has authored/co-authored over 130 publications. The books on emerging topics that he edited include, High Performance Cluster Computing published by Prentice Hall, USA, 1999; and High Performance Mass Storage and Parallel I/O, IEEE and Wiley Press, USA, 2001. He also edited proceedings of ten international conferences and served as guest editor for major research journals. He is currently serving as Elected Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing (TCSC). He has organized and chaired IEEE/ACM international conferences in the area of Cluster and Grid Computing. For further information on Dr. Buyya, please browse: http://www.buyya.com.Host: Prof. Kai Hwang, x04470
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -108
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Rosine Sarafian
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Viterbi Early Career Chair Lecture Series
Fri, Nov 18, 2005 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Integrated Media Systems Center
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
CAROL KRUMHANSL: Statistics and Geometries of Music Professor of Psychology, Cornell UniversityABSTRACT: Tonality is the term that refers to the basic principles governing musical pitch. It includes descriptions of scale structure, harmony, and the relationship between musical keys. In addition to being a central topic developed in music theory, it has provided a rich source for cognitive and computational investigations. The talk will begin with a brief summary of this background, followed by a description of two recent research projects.The first project is an application of a statistical learning model of language learning (Automatic Distillation of Structure - ADIOS, Zach Solan et al.) to music. There are two main motivations for extending the model to music. First, the extension tests whether a statistical learning model of this kind can extract musically interpretable structures from a musical corpus. Second, the applications address a question that has received mixed evidence in the music cognition literature, namely, whether rhythm and pitch are independent aspects of musical structure.The second project considers a geometric approach to describing tonality, the Fourier balances proposed in Ian Quinn's (2004) dissertation. The Fourier balances are derived from Lewin's Fourier properties that were proposed to characterize chord structure. In their geometric form, they provide an intuitively accessible way to represent scale structure and key relations. It will be shown that they can also be used to account for tonal hierarchies. Finally, an application to an octatonic selection from Messian will be presented that demonstrates how the Fourier balances might account for musical tension.BIOSKETCH: Carol Krumhansl is Professor of Psychology at Cornell University, author of the seminal text Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch, and past President of the Society of Music Perception and Cognition. Her research in music cognition, spanning 25 years, began with her Ph.D. thesis at Stanford University, and focused initially on musical pitch, specifically tonality and melody. Over the years it has expanded to include studies of musical rhythm and timbre, dance, emotion, contemporary proposals in music theory, and the neuroscience of music, applied to music ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to twelve-tone serialism and atonal songs, from Javanese musical scales and Indian raga to Finnish spiritual folk hymns and Sami yoiks. The research has used a wide variety of approaches, including standard cognitive tasks such as memory and scaling, development, cross-cultural studies, psychophysiology, and most recently brain imaging. She has held visiting positions at IRCAM in Paris, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and the Montreal Neurological Institute.Host: Elaine Chew, Viterbi Early Career, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems EngineeringSupported in part by the Viterbi Early Career Chair Funds, the Integrated Media Systems Center, and the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elaine Chew
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Perceptual learning and auditory training by cochlear implant patients - Seminar Series
Mon, Nov 21, 2005 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Qianjie Fu, PhD
Scientist II & Section Chief, House Ear Institute, and Research Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, USC"Perceptual learning and auditory training by cochlear implant patients"Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - -132
Audiences: Graduate
Contact: Darryl Hwang
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Discussion & Book Signing
Tue, Nov 22, 2005 @ 12:15 PM - 01:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Michael Chorost:
Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human (Houghton Mifflin, June 2005) is my story of becoming a cyborg. It's a scientific memoir of going deaf and getting my hearing back with a cochlear implant, that is, a computer embedded in my skull. Science fiction writers and filmmakers have speculated about cyborgs (human-computer fusions) for decades, but in this book I reveal what it's really like to have part of one's body controlled by a computer.http://www.michaelchorost.com/
Location: Estelle Doheny Eye Foundation (DOH) - eny Memorial Library (DML 233)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Sarah Oesch
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Quantum informations first family, revisited
Tue, Nov 22, 2005 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Patrick Hayden, McGill UniversityAbstract: It's been almost two years since Devetak, Harrow and Winter introduced their "mother" and "father" protocols into quantum information theory. In their paper, almost all of the many varieties of capacity and distillation protocols that had been previously been devised in quantum information theory were organized into two sets of children, those descended from the mother and those descended from the father. In this talk, I'll sketch a new and very simple proof of the mother protocol. Along the way, she'll reveal herself to be even more powerful than previously thought. In addition to generating optimal entanglement distillation protocols, I'll show how she provides a straightforward proof of the Horodecki-Oppenheim-Winter negative information result and can be used as a building block for the distributed compression of quantum data. In her new, more powerful form, the mother protocol even generates the father. The original two sets of children are thereby reduced to one and our understanding of quantum information theory is radically simplified: by starting with a single maximally quantum-mechanical protocol and transforming it in a few simple ways we can accomplish most of the tasks of interest in two-party quantum information processing.Bio: Patrick Hayden is currently an assistant professor of computer science at McGill University. Prior to joining McGill in 2004, he spent three years as a Sherman Fairchild Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He obtained his D.Phil. in physics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and a B.Sc. in mathematics and physics from McGill. His current fascination with quantum information processing was foreshadowed early; as a high school student, he worked summers as a programmer for an operating systems company with the curiously prescient, if premature, name Quantum Software Systems.Host: Professor Igor Devetak, devetak@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
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Polycrystalline modeling of fcc materials under changes in strain path
Mon, Nov 28, 2005 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:Irene Beyerlein
Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM 87545, USAAbstractStudies show that when the load path is changed, the stress-strain behavior of a polycrystalline metal highly depends on the texture (the distribution of crystallographic orientations of the crystals) and microstructures that developed during the pre-straining. Particularly when the pre-strains are large, texture and microstructural evolution within individual crystals become heterogeneous, potentially inducing noticeable changes in the macroscopic flow response when the direction of loading is changed. At Los Alamos, we are developing a constitutive model for fcc materials under strain path changes, including reversals of the applied load (leading to a drop in yield stress, the so-called Bauschinger effect) and straining in directions normal to the pre-strain (leading to an increase in yield stress, a cross-effect). The model accounts for both texture evolution and several microscale mechanisms responsible for the possible directional anisotropy in the single crystals. These mechanisms include the formation of dislocation microstructures preferentially on slip planes, localized destruction of such microstructures generated by channeling dislocations activated in subsequent strain paths, and the release of polar dislocations when slip is locally reversed. We apply this model to predict the response under Bauschinger tests, in which the direction of axial loading is reversed. As a more complex example, we also apply our model to predict the subsequent flow stress in pure copper processed by equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE), a process which imposes severe plastic shear strains.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 203
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Sight restoration: technology, biology and behavior - Seminar Series
Mon, Nov 28, 2005 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Ione Fine, PhD
Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology, Keck School of Medicine, USC"Sight restoration: technology, biology and behavior "
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate
Contact: Darryl Hwang
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Measuring knowledge work and knowledge worker productivity
Mon, Nov 28, 2005 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKERYuri W. Ramirez
M.B.A, PhD candidate
Department of Industrial Engineering
University of Wisconsin-Madison ABSTRACT This research uses industrial engineering techniques to create applications
for the measurement of knowledge work and knowledge worker
productivity. This particular project identifies different groups of knowledge
workers by using a framework that assigns knowledge worker scores
(KWS). Using industrial engineering tools to create a dependent variable
that describes the knowledge worker and that allows us to differentiate
between them is the key to enable scientific research in the field, creating
endless opportunities to explore how the type of knowledge worker
correlates different independent variables. Scientific knowledge on
knowledge worker could save companies millions of dollars in terms of
training, increased productivity, and effective recruitment and retaining for
example.Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 309
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ronak Shah
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Neurobotics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding and Assisting Humans
Tue, Nov 29, 2005 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker
Yoky Matsuoka
http://www.ri.cmu.edu/people/matsuoka_yoky.htmlAbstractNeurobotics is a new field that lies at the intersection of Robotics and Neuroscience. Neurobotics is currently a small community but is growing rapidly in both engineering and science. In the Neurobotics Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, robotic models and environments are used to understand the biomechanics and neuromuscular control of human limbs. In parallel, robotic systems are developed to augment, replace and rehabilitate damaged sensorimotor functions. In this talk, an overview of the Neurobotics Lab is presented and two example projects are addressed in more detail. First, the Anatomically Correct Testbed (ACT) Hand, a prototype of a seamlessly integrated prosthetic hand, is introduced. A description of how the ACT Hand is used to understand the neural control strategy of the high-degree-of-freedom redundant human hand will follow. As a second example, a robotic rehabilitation environment with distorted feedback is presented. To enrich this therapeutic environment, a patientÕs adaptation and other neuromuscular states are monitored using a dynamic system identification technique, and a safe whole-body interaction environment is constructed. Finally, there will be a brief description of the Neurobotics Lab outreach and educational programs for minority and disabled students.Short BiographyProfessor Yoky Matsuoka is an Anna Loomis McCandless Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute, Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University. She is also a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her Ph.D. at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Neuroscience in 1998. She received an M.S. from MIT in 1995 and a B.S. from UC Berkeley in 1993, both in EECS. Prior to joining CMU, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT and in Mechanical Engineering at Harvard University. Her work at CMU earned a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2004, Anna Loomis McCandless Chair in 2004, and IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award in 2005.
Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 107
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Nancy Levien
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Model-Based Face Analysis
Wed, Nov 30, 2005 @ 01:00 PM - 02:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Model-Based Face AnalysisSimon Baker, Research Scientist
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA1:00- 2:30 pm
November 30, 2005
OHE Studio CAbstract:A face model is a mapping from a set of parameters to an image of a face. The most well-known face models are Active Appearance Models and 3D Morphable Models. Computer vision applications of face models include head pose estimation for user interfaces, gaze estimation, pose normalization for face recognition, lip-reading, expression recognition, and face coding for low bandwidth video-conferencing. In all of these applications, the key task is to fit the face model to an input image; i.e. to find the parameters of the model that match the input image as well as possible.In this talk I will describe how face model fitting, a non-linear optimization, can be posed as an image alignment problem. Image alignment is a standard computer vision technique, with applications to optical flow, tracking, mosaic construction, layered scene representations, and medical image registration. I will describe an efficient image alignment algorithm and show how it relates to others in a unifying framework. Applying our algorithm to faces results in real time 2D, 3D, and multi-view face model fitting algorithms.
Bio:
Simon Baker is a Research Scientist in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where he conducts research in Computer Vision. Before joining the Robotics Institute in September 1998, he was a Graduate Research Assistant at Columbia University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in the Department of Computer Science. He also spent a summer visiting the Vision Technology Group at Microsoft Research. He received a B.A. in Mathmematics from Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1991, a M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1992, and a M.S. in Mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1995. His current research interests include: face analysis (recognition, tracking, model building, and resolution enhancement), 3D reconstruction and vision/graphics, vision theory, vision for automotive applications, and projector-camera systems. For more details of his research, see his webpage: http://www.ri.cmu.edu/people/baker_simon.html
List Host: Dr. Gerard Medioni
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - Studio C
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Nancy Levien
