SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for the 2nd week of November
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Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Mon, Nov 06, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jordan Berg, National Science Foundation
Talk Title: Dynamics, Controls, and Robotics Programs at NSF: a Biased Perspective
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: This talk will present several programs in the area of dynamics, control, and robotics at NSF. Dr. Berg is a Program Officer in the Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation in the NSF Engineering Directorate, where he co-directs the Dynamics, Control, and System Diagnostics program. He was the original director of the CMMI Mind, Machine, and Motor Nexus (M3X) program, and he is a Program Director for the National Robotics Initiative (NRI-2.0). Dr. Berg will discuss funding opportunities in these programs, as well as in the new CMMI LEAP-HI program. The talk will provide some general guidelines for choosing between NSF programs in the dynamics, controls, and robotics areas, and will include ample time for Q&A.
Biography: Jordan M. Berg received the BSE and MSE in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 1981 and 1984. He worked in the Attitude Control Analysis group at RCA Astro-Electronics in East Windsor, NJ, from 1983 to 1986. He received the PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, and the MS in Mathematics and Computer Science from Drexel University in 1992. He has held postdoctoral appointments at the USAF Wright Laboratory in Dayton, OH, and the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications in Minneapolis, MN. Since 1996 he has been at Texas Tech University, where he is currently Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Co-Director of the Nano Tech Center. As a Fulbright Scholar in 2008 he held visiting faculty appointments at the University of Ruhuna and University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka. He is a Professional Engineer in the State of Texas and a Fellow of the ASME. In 2014 he was appointed a Program Director for the Sensors, Dynamics, and Controls (SDC) program in the Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) Division of the Engineering (ENG) Directorate at the National Science Foundation, where he is currently serving as an IPA rotator. His current research interests include nonlinear and geometric control, soft robotics, human-machine systems, and the modeling, simulation, design, and control of nano- and micro-systems.
Host: Mihailo Jovanovic
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering
Tue, Nov 07, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Francesco Bullo, University of California, Santa Barbara
Talk Title: Network Systems and Kuramoto Oscillators
Series: Fall 2017 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Abstract: Network systems are mathematical models for the study of cooperation,
propagation, synchronization and other dynamical phenomena that arise
among interconnected agents. Network systems are widespread in science
as fundamental modeling tools. They also play a key growing role in
technology, e.g., in the design of power grids, cooperative robotic
behaviors and distributed computing algorithms. Their study pervades
applied mathematics.
This talk will review established and emerging frameworks for
modeling, analysis and design of network systems. I will survey the
available comprehensive theory for linear network systems and then
highlight selected nonlinear concepts. Next, I will focus on recent
developments on the analysis of security and transmission capacity in
power grids. I will review the Kuramoto model of coupled oscillators
and present recent results on its synchronization behavior.
Biography: Francesco Bullo is a Professor with the Mechanical
Engineering Department and the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems
and Computation at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was
previously associated with the University of Padova, the California
Institute of Technology, and the University of Illinois. His research
interests focus on network systems and distributed control with
application to robotic coordination, power grids and social
networks. He is the coauthor of "Geometric Control of Mechanical
Systems" (Springer, 2004) and "Distributed Control of Robotic
Networks" (Princeton, 2009); his forthcoming "Lectures on Network
Systems" is available on his website. He received best paper awards
for his work in IEEE Control Systems, Automatica, SIAM Journal on
Control and Optimization, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems,
and IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems. He is a Fellow of
IEEE and IFAC. He has served on the editorial boards of IEEE, SIAM,
and ESAIM journals, and will serve as IEEE CSS President in 2018.
Host: Ketan Savla, ksavla@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering Joint Seminar Series on Cyber-Physical Systems
Wed, Nov 08, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Pavithra Prabhakar, Associate Professor, Kansas State University
Talk Title: Formal Verification of Robustness Properties of Cyber-Physical Systems
Abstract: Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) consist of complex systems that combine control, computation and communication to achieve sophisticated functionalities as in autonomous driving in driverless cars and automated load balancing in smart grids. The safety criticality of these systems demands strong guarantees about their correct functioning. Formal verification is an area of computer science that deals with rigorous and automated methods for correctness analysis based on mathematical models of systems and correctness specifications. In this talk, we present an overview of our work on formal verification techniques for cyber-physical systems analysis using the framework of hybrid systems. Hybrid systems capture an important feature of CPSs, namely, mixed discrete-continuous behaviors that arise due to the interaction of complex digital control software (discrete elements) with physical systems (continuous elements).
We will focus on the formal verification of a fundamental property in control design, namely, stability. Stability is a robustness property that capture notions such as small perturbations to the initial state or input to a system result in only small variations in the behavior of the system. We will present a novel algorithmic approach to stability analysis based on model-checking and abstraction-refinement techniques. We highlight the technical challenges in the development of an algorithmic framework for stability analysis owing to the robustness aspect. We will present experimental results using our tool AVERIST (Algorithmic VERifier for STability), that illustrate the practical benefits of the algorithmic approach as compared to well-known deductive methods for automated verification of stability based on Lyapunov functions. Finally, we will present some future research directions including automated design of hybrid control systems and formal analysis of hybrid systems in the presence of uncertainties.
Biography: Pavithra Prabhakar is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Peggy and Gary Edwards Chair in Engineering at the Kansas State University. She obtained her doctorate in Computer Science and a masters in Applied Mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, followed by a CMI postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. Her main research interest is in formal analysis of cyber-physical systems with emphasis on both foundational and practical aspects related to automated and scalable techniques for verification and synthesis of hybrid systems. She is the recipient of a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant from the EU, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Refraction Networking: Censorship Circumvention in the Core of the Internet
Thu, Nov 09, 2017 @ 02:00 PM - 03:15 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Nikita Borisov , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: Refraction Networking: Censorship Circumvention in the Core of the Internet
Abstract: Internet users around the world are facing censorship. To access blocked websites, they use circumvention services that most commonly consist VPN-like proxies. The censors, in turn, try to block such proxies, creating a sort of cat-and-mouse game. Refraction networking takes a different approach by placing refracting routers inside ISP networks. By spending a special signal, a user can ask a router to refract *any* connection that transits the ISP to another, blocked destination, in a process that is undetectable by the censor. To prevent such connections, the censor would need to block all traffic from reaching that ISP, which considerably raises the cost of censorship.
I will discuss the design of refraction networking and how it achieves the properties above. I will also discuss the results of our a pilot deployment of refraction networking two ISPs handling an aggregate of nearly 100 Mbps traffic, which provided censorship circumvention to 50,000 users in a country with heavy Internet censorship. I will close by discussing some future research issues in the space.
Biography: Nikita Borisov is an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research is interests are online privacy and network security, with recent work on anonymous communication, censorship resistance, analysis of encrypted traffic, and protocols for secure communication. He is the co-designer of the Off-the-Record (OTR) instant messaging protocol and was responsible for the first public analysis of 802.11 security. He has been the chair of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium and the ACM Workshop on Privacy in Electronic Society. He is also the recipient of the NSF CAREER award. Prof. Borisov received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005 and a B.Math from the University of Waterloo in 1998.
Host: Xuehai Qian, x04459, xuehai.qian@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
