Events for the 4th week of April
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Controls Seminar: Dario Paccagnan
Mon, Apr 21, 2025 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dario Paccagnan, Associate Professor, Department of Computing, Imperial College London
Talk Title: Pick-to-Learn for Systems and Control: Data-driven design with state-of-the art safety guarantees
Abstract: Data-driven methods have become powerful tools for tackling increasingly complex problems in Systems and Control. However, deploying these methods in real-world settings — especially safety-critical ones — requires rigorous safety and performance guarantees. This need has motivated much recent work at the interface of Statistical Learning and Control, aiming to integrate formal guarantees with data-driven design methods. However, many existing approaches achieve this only by sacrificing valuable data for testing/calibration or by restricting the design space, thus leading to suboptimal performances.
Against this backdrop, in this talk I will introduce Pick-to-Learn (P2L) for Systems and Control, a novel framework designed to equipany data-driven control method with state-of-the-art safety and performance guarantees. Crucially, P2L enables the use of all available data to jointly synthesize and certify the design, eliminating the need to set aside data for calibration or validation purposes.
I will then demonstrate how, as a result, P2L delivers designs and certificates that outperforms existing methods across a range of core problems including optimal control, reachability analysis, safe synthesis, and robust control.
Biography: Dario Paccagnan is a Senior Lecturer (US Associate Professor) and a member of the Computational Optimization Group in the Department of Computing, Imperial College London.Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Control, Dynamical System, and Computations, UCSB hosted by Prof. Francesco Bullo and Prof. Jason Marden. Paccagnan received a PhD in optimization and control from ETH Zurich under the guidance of Prof. John Lygeros. He was awarded a B.Sc. and two M.Sc. degrees from the University of Padova, and the Technical University of Denmark under the TIME double degree program.He is interested in the modeling, analysis, and control of multi-agent systems where self-interested agents take autonomous decisions. He leverages theoretical models and real world case studies to shed light on the societal impact of self-interested decision making.
Host: Dr. Lars Lindemann, llindema@usc.edu | Dr. Mihailo Jovanovic, mihailo@usc.edu | Dr. Ketan Savla, ksavla@usc.edu
More Information: 2025.04.21 Seminar - Dario Paccagnan.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Lars Lindemann
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Semiconductors and Microelectronics Technology seminar - Wolfgang Maass, Thursday, April24th at 2pm in EEB 248
Thu, Apr 24, 2025 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Wolfgang Maas, Institute of Machine Learning and Neural Computation Graz University of Technology
Talk Title: Recent brain-data and theories suggest new ways of porting cognitive function into neuromorphic hardware through on-chip learning
Series: Semiconductors & Microelectronics Technology
Abstract: I will discuss experimental data and models for BTSP (Behavioral Time Scale Synaptic Plasticity), the only known mechanism for 1-shot learning in the brain. I also will explain how BTSP can be used to create content-addressable memories and to learn cognitive maps that enable flexible goal-directed behavior. References and a simple model for BTSP have already been published (Yujie Wu and Wolfgang Maass, Nat. Comm. 2025). The other material is unpublished.
Biography: Wolfgang Maass - Since 2023: Director of the ELLIS Unit Graz (ELLIS = European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems). 1992-2017 Founder and Head of the Institut fuer Grundlagen der Informationsverarbeitung (Institute of Theoretical Computer Science) at Graz University of Technology. Since 1991 Professor of Computer Science at the Graz University of Technology in Austria (since 2017 without teaching duties except education of Phd students, leader of research projects). 1986 - 1991 Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois in Chicago. 1984 - 1986 Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois in Chicago. 1975 - 1984 Postdoc at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Chicago, and the University of California at Berkeley.
Host: Prof. Jayakanth Ravichandran, Prof. J. Joshua Yang, Prof. Chongwu Zhou, Prof. Stephen Cronin, and Prof. Wei Wu
More Information: Wolfgang Maass Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Quantum/Physics Joint seminar - Kenneth Brown, Friday, April 25th at 2pm in EEB 132 & Zoom
Fri, Apr 25, 2025 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Kenneth Brown, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry Duke University
Talk Title: Building Quantum Systems at Universities
Series: MHI Physics Joint Seminar Series
Abstract: Quantum computers have improved dramatically as industry has pushed the capability of these devices in terms of both scale and quality. Continued improvement requires research at all levels of the stack from the physical control of qubits to the software-layer that executes programs. Quantum systems at universities enable scientists and engineers to optimize over all these levels and to test new frameworks for quantum system design. In this talk, I will discuss how varying levels of access to quantum computers at companies, national laboratories, and universities enable different kinds of research.
Biography: Kenneth Brown is the Michael J. Fitzpatrick Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry at Duke University. He is an expert in quantum information science and engineering, and he uses the control of quantum systems to develop new technologies and understand the natural world. His research interests are ion trap quantum computers and quantum error correction. He serves on the American Physical Society Council of Representatives for the Division of Quantum Information. He was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Kavli Fellow, and an Experienced Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for his work in quantum information.
Host: Quntao Zhuang, Eli Levenson-Falk, Jonathan Habif, Daniel Lidar, Kelly Luo,k Todd Brun, Tony Levi, Stephan Haas
More Info: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92394501475?pwd=xmrBvQLybbTORjh79PVFav4Abrzeba.1
More Information: Ken Brown Flyer.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/92394501475?pwd=xmrBvQLybbTORjh79PVFav4Abrzeba.1
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
