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Events for the 3rd week of February
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Seminar in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Feb 16, 2015 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title: NO CLASS (PRESIDENT'S DAY)
Host: Stanley Yamashiro
Location: OHE 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Epstein ISE Department Seminar
Tue, Feb 17, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hoda Bidkhori, Lecturer and Postdoctoral Associate, Operations Research and Statistics Group, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Flexibility, Adaptability and Pareto Efficiency in Manufacturing Operations
Abstract: Process and operational flexibility have been widely applied in many industries as competitive strategies to improve responsiveness to demand uncertainty. The first part of this talk addresses the problem of managing process and operational flexibility in a fairly general manufacturing system. In our model, each plant might have a different cost for adding flexibility or extra capacity, and different costs for transporting its different products. We model this problem as an adaptive optimization problem and discuss different approaches to solve it efficiently. One of the features of our model is that it captures information about the uncertainty in the demand; different demand uncertainties lead to different design suggestions. We conclude this talk with several computational and theoretical results.
In the second part of the talk, we introduce a method for worst-case analysis of stochastic programming for a class of truncated distributions. We use this to evaluate the performance of general unbalanced process flexibility structures.
Biography: Hoda Bidkhori is a lecturer and postdoctoral associate in the Operations Research and Statistics group at MIT's Sloan School of Management. She holds a Ph.D. degree in Applied Mathematics from MIT. Her current research centers around decision making under uncertainty and the development and implementation of robust and computationally tractable solutions for problems arising in manufacturing and logistics. She is a recipient of the Roger Family Prizes at MIT for excellent mentorship, and Second and Third Prizes in the 8th and 9th International Competition for University Students.
Host: Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
More Information: SEMINAR-Bidkhori.doc
Location: 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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From Systems to Networks: Theory and Computation for Distributed Predictive Control
Tue, Feb 17, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Melanie Zeilinger, University of California, Berkeley and the Empirical Inference Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Talk Title: From Systems to Networks: Theory and Computation for Distributed Predictive Control
Abstract: The control of a network of interacting dynamical systems is a central challenge for addressing a range of emerging application problems; examples include energy systems balancing a network of generation, load and storage devices, or robotic systems comprising a large number of components or agents. Utilizing the connectivity and interactions in the network by exploiting advances in communication and computation technologies offers the potential for pushing these systems to higher performance while increasing efficiency of operation, which will reduce system over-design and associated costs. However, safety requirements and high system complexity represent key limiting factors for leveraging these new opportunities.
This talk will present some of our recent work that brings high-performance control with hard guarantees on system safety to distributed systems, offering a scalable and modular approach that exploits interconnection effects and flexibly adjusts to network changes. A new framework for plug and play distributed predictive control will be introduced and we will discuss essential theoretical and practical aspects for certifying distributed decision-making based on an optimization-in-the-loop paradigm. We will show how the proposed scheme ensures the fundamental properties of stability and constraint satisfaction of the global system without recourse to any centralized coordination and even in the presence of online network changes, while allowing the control systems to optimize for performance. Application examples in area generation control and grid-aware electric vehicle charging will demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed theory. Lastly, we will address the computational aspects of the framework and present new results for certifying optimization with limited-precision computation or communication.
Biography: Melanie Zeilinger is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Marie Curie fellow in a joint program with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley and the Empirical Inference Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen, Germany. From 2011-2012 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ãcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. She received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich in Switzerland in 2011, and the diploma in Engineering Cybernetics from the University of Stuttgart in Germany in 2006. She conducted her diploma thesis research at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2005-2006. She received the ETH medal for her dissertation in 2012 and was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship for Career Development by the European Commission in 2011. Her research interests are centered around real-time and distributed control and optimization, as well as safe learning-based control, with applications to energy distribution and management systems and human-in-the-loop control.
Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 540, x04667
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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From Systems to Networks: Theory and Computation for Distributed Predictive Control
Tue, Feb 17, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University Calendar
Abstract: The control of a network of interacting dynamical systems is a central challenge for addressing a range of emerging application problems; examples include energy systems balancing a network of generation, load and storage devices, or robotic systems comprising a large number of components or agents. Utilizing the connectivity and interactions in the network by exploiting advances in communication and computation technologies offers the potential for pushing these systems to higher performance while increasing efficiency of operation, which will reduce system over-design and associated costs. However, safety requirements and high system complexity represent key limiting factors for leveraging these new opportunities.
This talk will present some of our recent work that brings high-performance control with hard guarantees on system safety to distributed systems, offering a scalable and modular approach that exploits interconnection effects and flexibly adjusts to network changes. A new framework for plug and play distributed predictive control will be introduced and we will discuss essential theoretical and practical aspects for certifying distributed decision-making based on an optimization-in-the-loop paradigm. We will show how the proposed scheme ensures the fundamental properties of stability and constraint satisfaction of the global system without recourse to any centralized coordination and even in the presence of online network changes, while allowing the control systems to optimize for performance. Application examples in area generation control and grid-aware electric vehicle charging will demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed theory. Lastly, we will address the computational aspects of the framework and present new results for certifying optimization with limited-precision computation or communication.
Biography: Melanie Zeilinger is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Marie Curie fellow in a joint program with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley and the Empirical Inference Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen, Germany. From 2011-2012 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ãcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. She received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich in Switzerland in 2011, and the diploma in Engineering Cybernetics from the University of Stuttgart in Germany in 2006. She conducted her diploma thesis research at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2005-2006. She received the ETH medal for her dissertation in 2012 and was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship for Career Development by the European Commission in 2011. Her research interests are centered around real-time and distributed control and optimization, as well as safe learning-based control, with applications to energy distribution and management systems and human-in-the-loop control.
Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 540, x04667
Location: EEB 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kaela Berry
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Epstein Institute / ISE 651 Seminar Series
Tue, Feb 17, 2015 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Boris Defourny, Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
Talk Title: Optimal Learning for a Class of Structured Problems
Abstract: While several methods exist to formulate decision making problems under uncertainty, sometimes we also have the opportunity to make experiments to make more informed decisions. For instance, consider a market survey that tries to identify consumersâ preferences prior to launching a new product. Optimal learning roughly refers to the task of selecting the best experiments to carry out, dynamically as we collect more information. Optimal learning comes in several flavors, depending on the experiments we can make and the model that produces the final decision we implement given the information collected. In this talk, we focus on certain classes of optimal learning problems and approximate solution approaches. We adopt a Bayesian perspective to model the information dynamics, and we develop methods adapted to special structures of interest in optimal learning. This work is motivated in part by the question of valuing information for a risk-averse decision maker.
Biography: Boris Defourny is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Lehigh University. His research interests are in the broad areas of stochastic optimization and machine learning, with a focus on energy systems analysis, electricity markets, and more generally, valuation of interconnected assets. Boris Defourny obtained his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Liege, in Belgium, and then worked as an associate professional specialist in the Operations Research and Financial Engineering department at Princeton University, prior to joining Lehigh in 2013.
More Information: Seminar-Defourny.docx
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Interviewing Strategies and Techniques - VCS
Tue, Feb 17, 2015 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Discover tips on how to prepare for both technical and behavioral interviews, as well as the proper steps for follow-up!
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 124
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
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PepsiCo Info Session
Tue, Feb 17, 2015 @ 06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
PepsiCo will be hosting an information session for students interested in learning about the available positions within our Pepsi Americas Beverages division. This is a great way to learn more about the company and our career opportunities. This is also a fantastic opportunity to meet the professionals. Refreshments will be served.
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
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Covidien Networking Event
Tue, Feb 17, 2015 @ 07:30 PM - 09:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity
Covidien, a company recently acquired by Medtronic, is coming to USC to offer career development information and speak about internship opportunities with its Irvine, CA Vascular Therapies (ev3) division. Come out to meet University Relations staff and learn more about this global medical device leader. To RSVP: To RSVP, use the following link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1obtRGljsu5-8yDu6MJCbiFQ9pnH5o17MuuhUgiel44c/viewform. Then email covidien.resume@gmail.com with an electronic copy of your resume.
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
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Meet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, & Engineering Talk
Wed, Feb 18, 2015
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Receptions & Special Events
This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process, a student led walking tour of campus, and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. During the engineering session we will discuss the curriculum, research opportunities, hands-on projects, entrepreneurial support programs, and other aspects of the engineering school. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process, and financial aid.
Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 8:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m. Please make sure to check availability and register online for the session you wish to attend. Also, remember to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - USC Admission Office
Audiences: Prospective Undergrads and Families
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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Creativity in People and Computers
Wed, Feb 18, 2015 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Paul Thagard, University of Waterloo
Talk Title: Creativity in People and Computers
Abstract: Abstract: An idea is creative if it is new, valuable, and surprising. This talk will describe neural mechanisms for human creativity, including multimodal representations, binding of representations into new ones, and competition among them to become conscious. These mechanisms contrast with current computational models of creativity such as Chef Watson, but suggest how computers might become more creative.
Biography: Paul Thagard is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo.
His most recent books are The Brain and the Meaning of Life (Princeton University Press, 2010) and The Cognitive Science of Science: Explanation, Discovery, and Conceptual Change (MIT Press, 2012).
Host: Greg Ver Steeg
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th floor large conference room
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kary LAU
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Feb 18, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mingyue Ji, USC
Talk Title: Turning Memory into Bandwidth via Wireless Edge Caching: Fundamental Limits and Practical Challenges
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Video is responsible for 66% of the 100x increase of wireless data traffic predicted in the next few years. Traditional methods for network capacity increase are very costly, and do not exploit the unique features of video. This talk gives a survey of a novel transmission paradigm based on the following two key properties: (i) video shows a high degree of asynchronous content reuse, and (ii) storage is the fastest-increasing quantity in modern hardware. Based on these properties, we suggest caching at wireless edge, namely, caching in helper stations (femto-caching) and/or directly into the user devices. We study two fundamentally different network structures: shared link caching networks and device-to-device (D2D) caching networks.
First, we present results based on network coded multicast delivery and/or D2D transmissions that show a âMooreâs lawâ for throughput: namely, in a certain regime of sufficiently high content reuse and/or sufficiently high aggregate storage capacity (sum of the storage capacity of all the users) in the network, the per-user throughput increases linearly, or even super-linearly with the cache size, and it is independent of the number of users for large network size, despite the fact that these users make independent and individual video files requests, i.e., the system does not exploit the naive broadcasting property of the wireless medium to send the same source to everybody. On the other hand, for both considered networks, we also provide information theoretic converse, by using which, we show that the proposed schemes achieves the order-optimal capacity. Then, we present the practical challenges and limitations of the achievable schemes. To overcome these challenges, for both network structures, we design novel polynomial-time complexity algorithms, which achieves near optimal performance such that they preserve the promised âMooreâs lawâ for throughput under realistic network parameter regimes.
Biography: Mingyue Ji is a final year PhD candidate at Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California (USC). His adviser is Professor Giuseppe Caire, and he is also very fortunate to collaborate with Professor Andreas Molisch during his PhD study. Prior to USC, he worked as a research engineer and finished his Master thesis at the Access Technologies and Signal Processing Group in Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden. He also obtained his Master of Science (MS) Degree in Electrical Engineering at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden, and obtained his Bachelor Degree in Communication Engineering at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China.
Host: Ashutosh Nayyar and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: EEB 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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USC Viterbi STEM Spotlight on the Sonny Astani Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Thu, Feb 19, 2015 @ 08:30 AM - 12:30 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering K-12 STEM Center
Receptions & Special Events
The USC Viterbi STEM Spotlight series focuses on three departments each year. In February, the Sonny Astani Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering is being spotlighted. On the morning of Thursday, 2/19, middle school students will be visiting the Structure and Spectrophotometer labs for tours. More information on the USC Viterbi STEM Spotlight can be found here: bit.ly/CEEspotlight
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - Structure Teaching Lab & Spectrophotometer Teaching Lab
Audiences: K-12 Schools pre-registered
Contact: Katie Mills
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CS Colloquium: Guy Rothblum (Stanford) - How to Verify Computations without Reexecuting Them
Thu, Feb 19, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Guy Rothblum, Stanford University
Talk Title: How to Verify Computations without Reexecuting Them
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Can we prove the correctness of a polynomial-time computation to a verifier who cannot re-execute the computation on its own? Such proof systems can be used in cloud computing scenarios, allowing weak devices (from phones and tablets to wearable or embedded devices) to delegate work and storage to a third party, without compromising the correctness of delegated computations. I will survey a line of work that answers this question, and constructs proof systems for delegating computations using the machinery of interactive proofs and cryptography.
Biography: Guy Rothblum is a researcher at Stanford University. He has wide interests in theoretical computer science, with a focus on cryptography, privacy-preserving data analysis, security and complexity theory. His research aims to promote a foundational understanding of computing under security, privacy, and reliability concerns.
Dr. Rothblum completed his Ph.D. at MIT, where his advisor was Shafi Goldwasser, and his M.Sc. at The Weizmann Institute of Science, where his advisor was Moni Naor. Until recently, he was a researcher at Microsoft Researchâs Silicon Valley Lab (2011-2014).
Host: Computer Science Department
Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/537213719Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/537213719
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Epstein ISE Department Seminar
Thu, Feb 19, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Nathan Kallus, PhD Candidate, Operations Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: From Predictive to Prescriptive Analytics
Abstract:
We combine ideas from machine learning (ML) and operations research and management science (OR/MS) in developing a framework, along with specific methods, for using data to prescribe optimal decisions in OR/MS problems. In a departure from other work on data-driven optimization and reflecting our practical experience with the data available in applications of OR/MS, we consider data consisting, not only of observations of quantities with direct effect on costs/revenues, such as demand or returns, but predominantly of observations of associated auxiliary quantities. The main problem of interest is a conditional stochastic optimization problem, given imperfect observations, where the joint probability distributions that specify the problem are unknown. We demonstrate that our proposed solution methods, which are inspired by ML methods such as local regression (LOESS), classification and regression trees (CART), and random forests (RF), are generally applicable to a wide range of decision problems. We prove that they are computationally tractable and asymptotically optimal under mild conditions even when data is not independent and identically distributed (iid) and even for censored observations. As an analogue to the coefficient of determination R^2, we develop a metric P termed the coefficient of prescriptiveness to measure the prescriptive content of data and the efficacy of a policy from an operations perspective. To demonstrate the power of our approach in a real-world setting we study an inventory management problem faced by the distribution arm of an international media conglomerate, which ships an average of 1 billion units per year. We leverage both internal data and public online data harvested from IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Google to prescribe operational decisions that outperform baseline measures. Specifically, the data we collect, leveraged by our methods, accounts for an 88% improvement as measured by our coefficient of prescriptiveness.
This is joint work with Dimitris Bertsimas, MIT.
Biography:
Nathan Kallus is a PhD candidate in operations research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His interests lie at the intersection of optimization, operations, and management with statistics, machine learning, and data science. Nathan holds a BA in Mathematics and BS in Computer Science both from the University of California, Berkeley.
Host: Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
More Information: SEMINAR-Kallus.doc
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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CS Colloquium: Karthik Ramasamy (Twitter)
Thu, Feb 19, 2015 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Karthik Ramasamy, Twitter
Talk Title: Real Time Analytics @Twitter
Abstract: Real time analytics seems to be a buzz word these days. Twitter identified the need for real time analytics early on and invested in a massive data pipeline that collects, aggregates, processes large volumes of data in real time. At the heart of the pipeline is Twitter Storm, a real-time stream processing engine widely used in Twitter. Storm is used for real-time data analytics, time series aggregation, and powering real-time features like trending topics. In this talk, we will give an overview of real time analytics, discuss the twitter real time data pipeline and how Storm is used for extracting analytics. We will also discuss the challenges we faced and lessons we have learned while building this infrastructure at Twitter.
Biography: Karthik is the engineering manager and technical lead for Real Time Analytics @Twitter. He has two decades of experience working in parallel databases, big data infrastructure and networking. He cofounded Locomatix, a company that specializes in real timestreaming processing on Hadoop and Cassandra using SQL that was acquired by Twitter. Before Locomatix, he had a brief stint with Greenplum where he worked on parallel query scheduling. Greenplum was eventually acquired by EMC for more than $300M. Prior to Greenplum, Karthik was at Juniper Networks where he designed and delivered platforms, protocols, databases and high availability solutions for network routers that are widely deployed in the Internet. Before joining Juniper at University of Wisconsin, he worked extensively in parallel database systems, query processing, scale out technologies, storage engine and online analytical systems. Several of these research were spun as a company later acquired by Teradata.
He is the author of several publications, patents and one of the best selling book "Network Routing: Algorithms, Protocols and Architectures." He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UW Madison with a focus on databases.
Host: Shahram Ghandeharizadeh
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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MFD - Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Distinguished Lecture: Colin Wolden (Colorado School of Mines)
Thu, Feb 19, 2015 @ 12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Colin Wolden, Colorado School of Mines, Dept. of Chemical & Biological Engineering
Talk Title: Interface Engineering of Advanced Contacts for High Efficiency CdTe Solar Cells
Series: Distinguished Lectures
Abstract: TBA
Host: Prof. Gupta
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ryan Choi
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Social Media in the Job Search
Thu, Feb 19, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
Learn ways to utilize technology to find job opportunities, maximize your networking, and building an online presence!
Location: RTH 105
Audiences: All Viterbi Students
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
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Schlumberger Info Session
Thu, Feb 19, 2015 @ 06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions
We invite you to meet with us for an inside look at our Field Engineer and Petrotechnical positions. You will have an opportunity to talk one on one with Schlumberger representatives and learn more about who we are and what we do as an Oilfield Services Company. Food and Beverages will be provided!
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services
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Society of Women Engineers High School Guide to Engineering
Fri, Feb 20, 2015
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity
Help to inspire the next generation of women engineers! Please check out the SWE USC facebook page for more event details!
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Society of Women Engineers Society of Women Engineers
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Meet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, & Engineering Talk
Fri, Feb 20, 2015
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Receptions & Special Events
This half day program is designed for prospective freshmen and family members. Meet USC includes an information session on the University and the Admission process, a student led walking tour of campus, and a meeting with us in the Viterbi School. During the engineering session we will discuss the curriculum, research opportunities, hands-on projects, entrepreneurial support programs, and other aspects of the engineering school. Meet USC is designed to answer all of your questions about USC, the application process, and financial aid.
Reservations are required for Meet USC. This program occurs twice, once at 8:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m. Please make sure to check availability and register online for the session you wish to attend. Also, remember to list an Engineering major as your "intended major" on the webform!Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - USC Admission Office
Audiences: Prospective Undergrads and Families
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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SIMULIA/Abaqus Update Seminar and User Meetings at University of Southern California
Fri, Feb 20, 2015 @ 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Workshops & Infosessions
WHAT: Members of SIMULIA (makers of the Abaqus® software) will be on-campus to present a technical update seminar, and to meet with Faculty and Students. Be sure to mark the date on your calendar and plan to attend.
Update Seminar Presentation Agenda
1. Update on SIMULIA in Academia – New Research and Teaching packages with dramatically increased capabilities. USC now has access to *ALL* SIMULIA software technology using the same license tokens used for Abaqus:
• Abaqus® for Finite Element Analysis (structural, thermal, fluids, and multi-physics)
• Tosca® for topology optimization
• fe-safe® for fatigue and durability analysis
• Isight® for process integration, trade studies, and multi-discipline design optimization
2. What’s new in Abaqus 6.14 – Highlights
• Abaqus 6.14 was released in July 2014
Individual and Small Group meetings
Dick Rotelli of SIMULIA would like to meet individually or in small groups with USC faculty and students to learn how they are using Abaqus or other SIMULIA software, and get their feedback. These meetings can be scheduled anytime during the day, before or after the Update Seminar presentation. To reserve a time slot, please contact Dick.Rotelli@3ds.com.
For More Information Contact: Dick Rotelli at 401-531-5362 or Dick.Rotelli@3ds.com
Location: Robert Glen Rapp Engineering Research Building (RRB) - 208
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi IT
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium
Fri, Feb 20, 2015 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jonathan Gratch, Director for Virtual Human Research, USC Institute for Creative Technologies
Talk Title: Interdisciplinary Research: Playing at the Boundary of Engineering, Psychology, and Business
Host: W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Program
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jeffrey Teng
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Introduction to Internetworking
Fri, Feb 20, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Mujtaba Khambatti, Bing Search Engine
Talk Title: Why do we care about Performance
Abstract: This talk will discuss Bings approach to web performance. Bing is known for its rich search experiences that powers over a third of all US search traffic (from Bing.com, Yahoo, Baidu, Siri, Windows search, and several mobile entry points). Despite the richness and the high volume of traffic, it remains a superfast site, delivering results within a couple blinks of an eye. This is possible due to a deep rooted culture that balances speed with a desire to deliver beautiful experiences to its users; and several technical investments to improve performance like browser side enhancements, rendering enhancements, network/CDN optimizations, and server optimizations. The talk will dive into details on several of these technology investments including how Bing is able to measure performance at scale for hundreds of millions of page views daily. Bingâs focus on improving search speed has shown a provable impact to user engagement and revenue thereby fueling an even greater investment in web performance across Bing. Mujtaba will also share some of the advanced creative ideas like HTTP2, smart network caching, and so on that are being explored with the intent to reduce all unneeded latency in the search experience. Bing believes in the quest to create engaging websites that are both beautiful and fast, something nearly all websites need to have. This talk will share an approach that is essential to the success of any web property (websites, web apps, services) in the new Web 2.0 world.
Biography: Dr. Mujtaba Khambatti is a Principal Program Manager Lead in the Bing team at Microsoft. He runs several engineering teams that power the engine of Bing. He currently runs the web performance team, the UX platform team that powers Bingâs experiences across tablet, mobile and desktop devices, the Bing API team that creates and manages access to Bing search via REST APIs, and the Agility/Core Engineering team. In the past he worked in Windows on various engineering teams doing work on OS reliability, servicing and security. Here he managed engineering of monthly security & non-security updates to 1 billion Windows users worldwide, built several features to improve key reliability concerns like: Recovery, Hang Reporting, Resource Exhaustion Prevention, and Reliability Monitor. He is the recipient of numerous corporate awards for team and technical success including 5 engineering excellence awards. Mujtaba received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Arizona State University (2003).
Host: Alefiya Hussain
Location: SLH 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Alefiya Hussain
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NL Seminar: Semantic Parsing as Machine Translation
Fri, Feb 20, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jonathan May, USC/ISI
Talk Title: Semantic Parsing as Machine Translation
Series: Natural Language Seminar
Abstract: We cast the generation of semantic graphs from natural language text as a machine translation problem, where the source language is English and the target language is a labeled graph representing a semantic interpretation, known as an Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR). Via a series of data transformations we create a training set that is amenable to a string-to-tree syntax mt decoder. Previous work in SBMT and AMR parsing is combined to yield a trainable system that achieves state-of-the-art parsing results.
Biography: Jonathan May is a computer scientist at USC-ISI, where he also received a PhD in 2010. His current focus areas are in machine translation, machine learning, and natural language understanding. Jonathan co-developed and patented a highly portable method for optimizing thousands of features in machine translation systems that has since been incorporated into all leading open source MT systems. He has previously worked in automata theory and information extraction and at SDL Language Weaver and BBN Technologies.
Host: Nima Pourdamghani and Kevin Knight
More Info: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 6th Flr Conf Rm # 689, Marina Del Rey
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Peter Zamar
Event Link: http://nlg.isi.edu/nl-seminar/
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Integrated Systems Seminar
Fri, Feb 20, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Dragan Maksimovic, University of Colorado
Talk Title: Distributed Power Electronics in Photovoltaic Power Systems
Series: Integrated Systems Seminar
Abstract: This talk is focused on power electronics in photovoltaic (PV) solar power systems. State of the art and emerging trends in PV system architectures are addressed, with emphasis on improvements in energy capture, efficiency, reliability, impact on reduced balance of system and installation costs, and increased levels of integration. Architectures based on distributed power electronics, including dc optimizers and microinverters, are highlighted. A new isolated-port system architecture is introduced, based on differential power processing submodule integrated dc-dc converters and simple distributed controls, leading to smart PV panels with integrated power management. It is shown how fine-granularity maximum power point tracking results in substantial improvements in energy capture in PV systems with mismatches due to partial shading, temperature gradients, dirt, tolerances, or ageing. Advantages of distributed differential power processing are verified by simulation and experimental results in representative scenarios, including rooftop and commercial-scale PV solar power systems.
Biography: Prof. Dragan Maksimovic received his Ph.D. degree from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, in 1989. In 1992, he joined the University of Colorado at Boulder where he is currently a Charles V. Schelke Endowed Professor and Director of the Colorado Power Electronics Center (CoPEC) in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. Prof. Maksimovic is a Fellow of the IEEE and serves as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Power Electronics Society. He is co-author of the textbook Fundamentals of Power Electronics, 2nd edition, Springer 2001. His current research interests include power electronics for renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, high frequency power conversion using wide bandgap semiconductors, digital control of switched-mode power converters, as well as analog, digital and mixed-signal integrated circuits for power management applications.
Host: Hosted by Prof. Hossein Hashemi, Prof. Mike Chen, and Prof. Mahta Moghaddam Organized and hosted by Run Chen
More Info: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=915365
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Elise Herrera-Green
Event Link: http://mhi.usc.edu/events/event-details/?event_id=915365