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Events for the 4th week of March
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Meet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, & Engineering Talk
Mon, Mar 23, 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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Information, Inference, and Privacy
Mon, Mar 23, 2015 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Flavio du Pin Calmon, MIT
Talk Title: Information, Inference, and Privacy
Abstract: Widespread collection of data has led to new and challenging privacy and security risks. There is a need to engineer mechanisms that allow users to selectively disclose their data to a third party in order to achieve a utility goal (e.g. receive high quality product recommendations), while restricting the release of private information (e.g. not revealing a given medical condition). In this talk, we use tools from information theory, statistics and estimation theory to characterize the fundamental limits of estimation when only partial statistics of the data are known. We then apply the insight gained by characterizing these limits to quantify the fundamental privacy-utility tradeoff and to design privacy-assuring mechanisms.
In addition, we introduce security metrics and associated results based on the spectrum of the conditional expectation operator, called the principal inertia components. The principal inertia components allow a fine-grained decomposition of the dependence between a hidden and an observed variable which, in turn, is useful for deriving fundamental bounds for estimation problems, and for measuring information leakage in secure communication models. Finally, we illustrate how our results can be used as a design driver for applications in security, noisy computation and distributed systems.
Biography: Flavio du Pin Calmon is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (with a minor in Mathematics) at MIT, and a member of the Network Coding and Reliable Communications Group at the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). His research interests include information theory, statistics, estimation theory, security and privacy. In addition to his work at MIT, Flavio has ongoing collaborations with the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Technicolor SA and NetApp. Before coming to MIT, he received an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil, and a B.Sc. in Communications Engineering from the Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil.
Host: Andreas Molisch
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Seminar in Biomedical Engineering
Mon, Mar 23, 2015 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Xuefeng Wang, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Institute of Genomic BIology & Department of Physics University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Talk Title: CANCELLED
Abstract: tba
Host: Stanley Yamashiro
Location: OHE 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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RASC Seminar Event: Prof. Carrick Detweiler (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) - Bringing Aerial Robots Closer to the Water: Sensing, Sampling, and Safety
Mon, Mar 23, 2015 @ 12:30 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Carrick Detweiler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Talk Title: Bringing Aerial Robots Closer to the Water: Sensing, Sampling, and Safety
Series: RASC Seminar Series
Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being used for everything from crop surveying to pipeline monitoring. They are significantly cheaper than the traditional manned airplane or helicopter approaches to obtaining aerial imagery and sensor data. The next generation of UAVs, however, will do more than simply observe. In this talk, I will discuss the challenges of using aerial robots very close to the water to obtain aerial water samples and sensor data from remote waters locations without needing to bring a boat to each location. When flying close to water, there is little time to react to errors and among obstacles. I will discuss automated software analysis techniques we are developing to detect and correct system errors to reduce risk and increase safety. I will focus on our recent work on the UAV-based water sampler system, but also discuss other applications we are pursuing, including using UAVs to recharge remotely deployed sensors and how we are using very low flying UAVs to monitor the growth of crops.
Biography: Dr. Carrick Detweiler is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He co-directs and co-founded the Nebraska Intelligent MoBile Unmanned Systems (NIMBUS) Lab at UNL, which focuses on developing software and systems for small aerial robots and sensor systems. Carrick obtained his B.A. in 2004 from Middlebury College and his Ph.D. in 2010 from MIT CSAIL. He is a Faculty Fellow at the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute at UNL and recently received the 2014 College of Engineering Henry Y. Kleinkauf Family Distinguished New Faculty Teaching Award. He is currently lead PI on NSF and USDA grants, including a National Robotics Initiative Grant. In addition to research activities, Carrick actively promotes the use of robotics in the arts through workshops and collaborations with the international dance companies Pilobolus and STREB.
Host: RASC
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 406
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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EE-Electrophysics
Mon, Mar 23, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jesse Maassen, Purdue University
Talk Title: Heat transport on the nanoscale: lessons from electron transport
Abstract: Electronics has shaped our modern world. The downscaling of device dimensions that made this possible not only presented enormous technological challenges, it also raised many fundamental questions. Over the past two decades a deep understanding of electronic transport at the nanoscale has been developed, along with the computational tools that accurately capture the relevant physics. However, electron transport cannot be separated from phonon transport. Self-heating in nanoscale devices critically limits their performance, and coupled electron-phonon transport in nanostructures provides a route to increase the performance of thermoelectric energy conversion. Further progress in electronics will require a deeper understanding of thermal transport at the nanoscale along with the development of new computational tools that address challenges from the nano- to macro-scale. I have begun to tackle these issues in a unique way - by unifying the concepts and techniques for electron and phonon transport.
In this talk I will discuss our recent findings on nanoscale heat transport
- highlighting the similarities of electron and phonon transport. Work on the fundamental limits of thermal interface resistance and transport in 2D materials will be presented. In addition, I will describe a new approach to treat heat transport on all length and time scales. This technique is not only simple, computationally efficient and able to reproduce results of detailed modeling with high accuracy, but is also physically transparent thus providing new fundamental (and still controversial!) insights such as the fact that Fourier's Law often works very well at the nanoscale. Results of this method combined with detailed first principles modeling of nanomaterials will be presented.
We envision using this framework to analyze recent unresolved experiments, to help understand the results of detailed simulations, and to explore coupled electro-thermal transport in a variety nanoscale materials and devices.
Biography: Jesse Maassen received B.Eng. and M.A.Sc. degrees in engineering physics from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal in 2006. He obtained a Ph.D. in physics from McGill University in 2011 by working on first principles simulations of nanoelectronic devices. Since 2012 Dr. Maassen has been a postdoctoral research associate at Purdue University working with Prof.
Mark Lundstrom. His research interests focus on exploring novel materials and devices, using predictive first principles modeling, with an emphasis on electro-thermal transport.
Jesse Maassen was awarded a Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council
(NSERC) of Canada, as well as a Postdoctoral Fellowship from NSERC. He won best doctoral thesis from McGill Physics Department in 2011, and received the Keren Prize for best theoretical work at the Trends in Nanotechnology conference.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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Seminar with Ermah Ergelen
Mon, Mar 23, 2015 @ 04:30 PM - 05:30 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Emrah Ergelen, Vice President of Arge Construction
Talk Title: Strategic Alliances in Emerging Markets: A Perspective from International Construction Industry
Abstract: The presentation discusses strategic alliances used in the international construction industry, while focusing on reasons, processes, types, success factors and pitfalls in relation to such alliances. The speaker illustrates these topics with specific project examples from his experience in the emerging markets.
Biography: Mr. Emrah Ergelen is an entrepreneur and a professional with a 20-years experience in the international construction industry in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. He is currently the Vice President of Arge Construction, co-founded by him in 2005 as a spin-off from his family firm Hazinedaroglu, for which he has worked between 1995-2005. During his career Emrah managed 19 strategic alliances, all of which were international. He holds a MBA from Bocconi, a MS in Construction Engineering and Management from MIT and a BEng with Honours in Civil Engineering from Nottingham.
Host: Hank Koffman
More Information: Ermah Poster.pdf
Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kaela Berry
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Learn How to Build a Hardware Startup
Mon, Mar 23, 2015 @ 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
RSVP Here
At the Viterbi Hacker House, VSi2 is hosting Nate Deschaine. Nate Deschaine is Dragon’s Senior Mechanical Engineer and heads up the Dragon Certified program, working closely with hardware startups as they prepare to raise a round or launch a crowdfunding campaign.
Formally a Mechnical Engineer at iRobot, Nate focused on consumer products and spent an extensive amount of time in China over the course of six years. Nate holds a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Wentworth Institute of Technology.
Dragon Innovation helps growing companies navigate the manufacturing process. It has worked with the top hardware startups / companies including MakerBot, Pebble, Jibo, Coin, Sifteo, Vinli, Lifx, Remotive, Formlabs, Ideo, Kinsa, Leap, and many more.
Dragon Innovation understands the process of building a hardware startup inside and out. If you are building a hardware startup, you definitely can’t afford to miss this event.
Nate has also suggested if you are working on a hardware startup, you should bring prototypes, renderings, sketches, etc. to get some personal feedback and guidance.
Hope to see you all there!Location: Kerckhoff Hall (KER) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Student Innovation Institute
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CS Colloquium: Justin Solomon (Stanford University) - Transportation Techniques for Geometric Data Processing
Tue, Mar 24, 2015 @ 09:45 AM - 10:50 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Justin Solomon, Stanford University
Talk Title: Transportation Techniques for Geometric Data Processing
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Modeling and understanding low- and high-dimensional data is a recurring theme in graphics, optimization, learning, and vision. Abstracting away application domains reveals common threads using geometric constructs like distances, similarities, and curvatures. This shared structure suggests the possibility of developing geometric data processing as a discipline in itself.
To this end, I will introduce optimal transportation (OT) as a versatile component of the geometric data processing toolkit. Originally proposed for minimizing the cost of shipping products from producers to consumers, OT links probability and geometry using distributions to encode geometric features and developing metric machinery to quantify their relationships.
To transition OT from theory to practice, I will show how to solve previously intractable OT problems efficiently on discretized domains and demonstrate a wide range of applications enabled by this new machinery. I will illustrate the advantages and challenges of OT for geometric data processing by outlining my recent work in geometry processing, computer graphics, and machine learning. In each case, I will consider optimization aspects of the OT problem for relevant geometric domains---including triangulated surfaces, graphs, and subsets of Euclidean space---and then show how the resulting machinery can be used to approach outstanding problems in surface correspondence, modeling, and semi-supervised learning.
This lecture will be streamed HERE.
Biography: Justin Solomon is a PhD candidate and teaching fellow in the Geometric Computing Group at Stanford University studying problems in shape analysis, machine learning, and graphics from a geometric perspective. His work is supported by the Hertz Foundation Fellowship, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the NDSEG Fellowship. Justin holds bachelors degrees in mathematics and computer science and an MS in computer science from Stanford. He has served as the lecturer for courses in graphics, differential geometry, and numerical methods; his forthcoming textbook entitled Numerical Algorithms focuses on applications of numerical methods across modern computer science. Before his graduate studies, Justin was a member of Pixar's Tools Research group. He is a pianist, cellist, and amateur musicologist with award-winning research on early recordings of the Elgar Cello Concerto.
Host: Computer Science Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/301312091/browser
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/301312091/browser
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Electrical Engineering Seminar
Tue, Mar 24, 2015 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Swagath Venkataramani, Purdue University
Talk Title: Addressing the Efficiency Gap with Approximate Computing
Abstract: The âefficiency gapâ created by diminishing benefits from semiconductor technology scaling on the one hand, and projected growth in computing and data demand on the other, has created an urgent need to identify new sources of computing efficiency across the computing stack. Fortunately, the workloads that drive the demand for computing efficiency also present new opportunities. In data centers and the cloud, the demand for computing is driven by the need to organize, search through, analyze, and draw inferences from, exploding amounts of digital data. In mobile and embedded devices, the need to more naturally and intelligently interact with the physical world, and process richer media drive much of the computing demand. A common pattern that emerges from both ends of the spectrum is that these applications are largely not about calculating a precise numerical answer; instead, âcorrectnessâ is defined as producing results that are good enough, or of sufficient quality, to produce an acceptable user experience. As a result, these workloads are endowed with a high degree of intrinsic resilience to their underlying computations being executed in an approximate or inexact manner. Approximate computing broadly refers to exploiting the forgiving nature (or intrinsic resilience) of applications to design more efficient (faster, lower power) computing platforms. In this talk, I will describe how current workload trends are driving interest in approximate computing, and describe a vision for approximate computing at all layers of the computing stack. To realize this vision, I will outline a holistic approach that includes automatic frameworks to synthesize approximate circuit blocks, a model for programmable approximate processors that explicitly codifies the notion of quality into the HW/SW interface, and finally software techniques to systematically identify resilient computations within an application and to apply approximate computing to achieve a favorable quality-efficiency tradeoff. I will conclude with an overview of the other research directions that I am exploring to address the efficiency gap viz. computing with spintronics, and heterogeneous many-core accelerators for emerging workloads.
Biography: Swagath Venkataramani is a 5-year PhD student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University. His research interests include, Approximate Computing, Computing with Spintronic Devices, Heterogeneous Parallel Architectures, and Computational Imaging. His dissertation research was awarded the Intel PhD fellowship in computing leadership and Purdue Bilsland Dissertation fellowship. It has also been featured in MIT Technology Review, Slashdot, Physics Today, and NSF News from the Field. Swagath graduated with a Bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University, India as the university gold medalist. He has worked with the Exa-scale Computing Group at Intel as part of the US DOEâs FastForward Program, and with the Sensing and Energy Research Group at Microsoft Research.
Host: Prof. Alice C. Parker
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Epstein Institute / ISE 651 Seminar Series
Tue, Mar 24, 2015 @ 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jimeng Sun, Associate Professor, School of Computational Science and Engineering, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Computational Phenotyping on Electronic Health Records using Tensor Factorization
Abstract: As the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) has grown, EHRs are now composed of a diverse array of data, including structured information (e.g., diagnoses, medications, and lab results), and unstructured clinical progress notes. The interactions among different data sources within an EHR are challenging to model, hampering our ability to leverage traditional analytic frameworks.
The goal of this project is to address these challenges by developing a general computational framework for transforming EHR data into meaningful phenotypes with only modest levels of expert guidance. We represent and analyze EHR data as inter-connected high-order relations i.e. tensors (e.g. tuples of patient-medication-diagnosis, patient-lab, and patient-symptoms). The proposed analytic framework generalizes several existing data mining methodologies, including dimensionality reduction, topic modeling and co-clustering, which all arise as limited special cases of analyzing second order tensors. It will also enable flexible refinement of candidates to incorporate feedback from domain experts.
The significance of the resulting phenotypes will have diverse clinical applications, including: a) cohort construction, where case and control patients are identified with respect to specific phenotype combinations; b) genome wide association studies (GWAS), where target phenotypes of patients are tested against DNA sequence variation for significant statistical associations; and c) clinical predictive modeling, where a model is developed to predict target phenotypes or diseases will be demonstrated. The framework is developed with public accessible data from MIMIC-II and CMS and validate in real clinical environments at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and VUMC through several high-impact disease targets (including hypertension, type 2 diabetes, hypothyroidism, atrial fibrillation, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis).
Biography: Jimeng Sun is an Associate Professor of School of Computational Science and Engineering at College of Computing in Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he was a research staff member at IBM TJ Watson Research Center. His research focuses on health analytics using electronic health records and data mining, especially in designing novel tensor analysis and similarity learning methods and developing large-scale predictive modeling systems.
Dr. Sun has worked on various healthcare applications such as computational phenotyping from electronic health records, heart failure onset prediction and hypertension control management. He has collaborated with many healthcare institutions including Vanderbilt university medical center, Children's healthcare of Atlanta, Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Geisinger Health System and Sutter Health.
He has published over 70 papers, filed over 20 patents (5 granted). He has received ICDM best research paper award in 2008, SDM best research paper award in 2007, and KDD Dissertation runner-up award in 2008. Dr. Sun received his B.S. and M.Phil. in Computer Science from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2002 and 2003, and PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007.
More Information: Seminar-Jimeng Sun.docx
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 206
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Georgia Lum
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Viterbi Keynote Lecture
Tue, Mar 24, 2015 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. H. Vincent Poor / Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Princeton University
Talk Title: Fundamental Limits on Information Security and Privacy
Series: Distinguished Lecturer Series
Abstract: As has become quite clear from recent headlines, the ubiquity of technologies such as wireless communications and on-line data repositories has created new challenges in information security and privacy. Information theory provides fundamental limits that can guide the development of methods for addressing these challenges. After a brief historical account of the use of information theory to characterize secrecy, this talk will review two areas to which these ideas have been applied successfully: wireless physical layer security, which examines the ability of the physical properties of the radio channel to provide confidentiality in data transmission; and utility-privacy tradeoffs of data sources, which quantify the balance between the protection of private information contained in such sources and the provision of measurable benefits to legitimate users of them. Several potential applications of these ideas will also be discussed.
Biography: H. Vincent Poor (Ph.D., Princeton 1977) is Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, where he is also the Michael Henry Strater University Professor. From 1977 until he joined the Princeton faculty in 1990, he was a faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has also held visiting appointments at a number of other universities, including most recently at Stanford and Imperial College. His research interests are primarily in the areas of information theory and signal processing, with applications in wireless networks and related fields. Among his publications in these areas is the recent book Principles of Cognitive Radio (Cambridge University Press, 2013). At Princeton he has developed and taught several courses designed to bring technological subject matter to general audiences, including âThe Wireless Revolutionâ (in which Andrew Viterbi was one of the first guest speakers) and âSix Degrees of Separation: Small World Networks in Science, Technology and Society.â
Dr. Poor is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and is a foreign member of the Royal Society. He is a former President of the IEEE Information Theory Society, and a former Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He currently serves as a director of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives and of the IEEE Foundation, and as a member of the Council of the National Academy of Engineering. Recent recognition of his work includes the 2014 URSI Booker Gold Medal, and honorary doctorates from several universities in Asia and Europe.
Host: Dr. Sandeep K. Gupta
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/770154652
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/770154652
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Busan Graduate Information Session
Tue, Mar 24, 2015 @ 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Graduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions
Students who have earned or are in the process of earning a Bachelor's degree in engineering, math, or a hard science (such as physics, biology, or chemistry) are welcome to attend to learn more about applying to our graduate programs.
The session will include information on the following topics:
Master's & Ph.D. programs in engineering
How to Apply
Scholarships and funding
Student life at USC and in Los Angeles
There will also be sufficient time for questions. Refreshments will be provided.
Please contact us at viterbi.gradprograms@usc.edu if you have any inquiries about the event.
We look forward to seeing you there.
For more information about the event and to register, please visit the event pageAudiences: Students with an undergraduate backrgound in engineering, math or science
Contact: William Schwerin
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Meet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, & Engineering Talk
Wed, Mar 25, 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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Electrical engineering seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Laurent Lessard, University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Automating the analysis and design of large-scale optimization algorithms
Abstract: The next generation of complex engineered systems will see an unprecedented integration of electromechanical components, communication, and embedded computation. Imminent examples include self-driving vehicles, smart buildings, and UAVs for automated delivery of goods. It is critical that these new technologies be safe and efficient, as their failure would be socially and economically catastrophic.
This talk will focus on the challenge of integrating data-driven optimization algorithms into safety-critical control systems. The problem of selecting a suitable algorithm for use in large-scale optimization is currently more of an art than a science; a great deal of expertise is required to know which algorithms to apply and how to properly tune them. Moreover, there are seldom performance or robustness guarantees.
Our key observation is that iterative optimization algorithms may be viewed as discrete-time controllers, and the problem of algorithm selection/tuning may be viewed as a robust control problem. This viewpoint allows us to treat both electromechanical and algorithmic components in a unified manner. By solving simple semidefinite programs, we can derive robust bounds on convergence rates for popular algorithms such as the gradient method, proximal methods, fast/accelerated methods, and operator-splitting methods such as ADMM. Finally, our framework can be used to search for algorithms that meet desired performance guarantees, thus establishing a new and principled methodology for algorithm design. As an illustrative example, we synthesize a new family of first-order algorithms that explore the trade-off between performance and robustness to noise.
Biography: Laurent Lessard was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He received the B.A.Sc. degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Berkeley Center for Control and Identification at the University of California, Berkeley. Before that, he was an LCCC postdoc in the Department of Automatic Control at Lund University in Sweden. His research interests include decentralized control, robust control, and large-scale optimization. Dr. Lessard received the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award at the American Control Conference in 2013.
Host: Prof. Rahul Jain
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Computer Science Faculty Meeting
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Workshops & Infosessions
Event details will be emailed to invited attendees.
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Invited Faculty Only
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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VSi2 Startup Office Hours
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 01:30 PM - 04:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Working on a startup idea? Want to get feedback/guidance/support?
Schedule a 30 min appt with VSi2 Staff to get guidance and help.
You can schedule an appointment hereLocation: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 330D
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Student Innovation Institute
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Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Young-Han Kim, UC San Diego
Talk Title: Point-to-point codes for interference channels: A journey toward high performance at low complexity
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: For high data rates and massive connectivity, the next-generation cellular networks are expected to deploy many small base stations. While such dense deployment provides the benefit of bringing radio closer to end users, it also increases the amount of interference from neighboring cells. Consequently, smart management of interference would become one of the key enabling technologies for high-spectral-efficiency, low-power, broad-coverage wireless communication.
In this talk, we discuss recent developments in channel coding techniques for interference channels, primarily focusing on the sliding-window superposition coding scheme. This coding scheme achieves the performance of simultaneous decoding with point-to-point channel codes and low-complexity decoding. Simulation results demonstrate that sliding-window superposition coding can sometimes double the performance of the conventional method of treating interference as noise, still using the standard LTE turbo codes.
Joint work with Bernd Bandemer, Chiao-Yi Chen, Abbas El Gamal, Hosung Park, Eren Sasoglu, and Lele Wang.
Biography: Young-Han Kim received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1996 and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering (M.S. degrees in Statistics and in Electrical Engineering) from Stanford University in 2006. Since then, he has been a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Kim is a recipient of the 2008 NSF CAREER Award and the 2012 IEEE Information Theory Paper Award. He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society during 2012 and 13.
Host: Prof. Salman Avestimehr and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Ming Hsieh Institute Distinguished Visitor Seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Georgios B. Giannakis , University of Minnesota
Talk Title: Seminar I: Learning Tools for Big Data Analytics
Series: MHI Distinguished Visitor Seminar Series
Abstract: We live in an era of data deluge. Pervasive sensors collect massive amounts of information on every bit of our lives, churning out enormous streams of raw data in various formats. Mining information from unprecedented volumes of data promises to limit the spread of epidemics and diseases, identify trends in financial markets, learn the dynamics of emergent social-computational systems, and also protect critical infrastructure including the smart grid and the Internetâs backbone network. While Big Data can be definitely perceived as a big blessing, big challenges also arise with large-scale datasets. The sheer volume of data makes it often impossible to run analytics using a central processor and storage, and distributed processing with parallelized multi-processors is preferred while the data themselves are stored in the cloud. As many sources continuously generate data in real time, analytics must often be performed âon-the-flyâ and without an opportunity to revisit past entries. Due to their disparate origins, massive datasets are noisy, incomplete, prone to outliers, and vulnerable to cyber-attacks. These effects are amplified if the acquisition and transportation cost per datum is driven to a minimum. Overall, Big Data present challenges in which resources such as time, space, and energy, are intertwined in complex ways with data resources. Given these challenges, ample signal processing opportunities arise. This tutorial lecture outlines ongoing research in novel models applicable to a wide range of Big Data analytics problems, as well as algorithms to handle the practical challenges, while revealing fundamental limits and insights on the mathematical trade-offs involved.
Biography: (Fellowâ97) received his Diploma in Electrical Engr. from the Ntl. Tech. Univ. of Athens, Greece, 1981. From 1982 to 1986 he was with the Univ. of Southern California (USC), where he received his MSc. in Electrical Engineering, 1983, MSc. in Mathematics, 1986, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engr., 1986. Since 1999 he has been a professor with the Univ. of Minnesota, where he now holds an ADC Chair in Wireless Telecommunications in the ECE Department, and serves as director of the Digital Technology Center. His general interests span the areas of communications, networking and statistical signal processing subjects on which he has published more than 375 journal papers, 625 conference papers, 20 book chapters, two edited books and two research monographs (h-index 112). Current research focuses on big data analytics, wireless cognitive radios, network science with applications to social, brain, and power networks with renewables. He is the co-iinventor of 22 patents issued, and the co-recipient of 8 best paper awards from the IEEE Signal Processing (SP) and Communications Societies, including the G. Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications. He also received Technical Achievement Awards from the SP Society (2000), from EURASIP (2005), a Young Faculty Teaching Award, the G. W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Research from the University of Minnesota, and the IEEE Fourier Technical Field Award (2015). He is a Fellow of EURASIP, and has served the IEEE in a number of posts including that of a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE-SP Society.
Host: Professor Richard Leahy
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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EE-Electrophysics Seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Meisam Honarvar, California Institute of Technology
Talk Title: From Tera-Scale Communication to Lab-in-the-Body: Challenges and Opportunities for CMOS Technology
Abstract: Combining the high level of integration offered by CMOS and micro/nanofabrication technology enables complex and compact sensing systems. During the first part of the presentation, the opportunities for integrated microsystems for implantable health monitors will be explored. The combination of power and data telemetry and physiological sensors within small chips enables us to contemplate new microsystems for healthcare monitoring that serve as closed loop therapy systems and allow for the remote management of patients. Such systems could be implanted as continuous glucose monitors (CGM), neural prosthetics and other metabolic and physiological measurement tools and will enable a new class of continuous digital health monitors that leads to preventative healthcare at lower cost. As an example of such systems, I will present my research on implantable CGM microsystems.
Over the past couple of decades we have witnessed a tremendous growth in computational capability owing to the rapid advances in CMOS technology. Additionally smart devices and their social apps, as well as cloud storage and computation have resulted in a tremendous growth in big data infrastructures. With this increase in the computation, a corresponding scaling in data communication bandwidth is inevitable. The bandwidth of the current physical channels not only limits the communication between chips, it also imposes serious problem for on-chip interconnection. In the second part of my talk, I will go over new low-power circuit techniques that enable massively parallel electrical and optical communication to address the bandwidth requirement of the future networks.
Biography: Meisam Nazari received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena in 2009 and 2013, respectively. He is currently a staff scientist in the department of electrical engineering at California Institute of Technology. His research interests include high-performance mixed-signal integrated circuits, with the focus on biomedical and medical circuits and systems as well as high-speed and low-power optical and electrical interconnects. He is the recipient of 2008 Brian L. Barge Award for excellence in microsystems integration, 2010 AMD/CICC Student Scholarship Award, the 2012 Solid-State Circuits Society Pre-doctoral Achievement Award, and the 2012 Circuits and Systems Society Pre-doctoral Scholarship.
Host: EE-Electrophysics
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
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Energy informatics distinguished seminar
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Arvind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: BlueDBM: A Multi-access, Distributed Flash Store for Big Data Analytics
Series: Energy Informatics Distinguished Seminar Series
Abstract: Complex analytics of the vast amount of data collected via social media, cell phones, ubiquitous smart sensors, and satellites is likely to be the biggest economic driver for the IT industry over the next decade. For many âBig Dataâ applications, the limiting factor in performance is often the transportation of large amount of data from hard disks to where it can be processed, i.e. DRAM. We will present BlueDBM, an architecture for a scalable distributed flash store which is designed to overcome this limitation in two ways. First, the architecture provides a high-performance, high-capacity, scalable random-access storage. It achieves high-throughput by sharing large numbers of flash chips across a low-latency, chip-to-chip backplane network managed by the flash controllers. Second, it permits some computation near the data via a FPGA-based programmable flash controller. We will present the preliminary results on accelerating complex queries using BlueDBM consisting of 20 nodes and up to 32 TB of flash.
Biography: Arvind is the Johnson Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT. Arvindâs group, in collaboration with Motorola, built the Monsoon dataflow machines and its associated software in the late eighties. In 2000, Arvind started Sandburst which was sold to Broadcom in 2006. In 2003, Arvind co-founded Bluespec Inc., an EDA company to produce a set of tools for high-level synthesis. In 2001, Dr. R. S. Nikhil and Arvind published the book âImplicit parallel programming in pHâ. Arvind's current research focus is on enabling rapid development of embedded systems.
Arvind is a Fellow of IEEE and ACM, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Host: Viktor Prasanna
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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Meet the Women of YP
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 05:00 PM - 07:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Workshops & Infosessions
Come meet members of YP's Women's Initiative and hear about their work at YP. The evening will start off with a panel discussion where they will answer your questions about their experiences at YP and the working world. Then we will have time for you to network with the panelists and talk more in a more informal setting about your questions and career goals. This is a great time to practice all the networking skills you have been learning!
To register, click here https://myviterbi.usc.edu/vasa/?PostingID=1234567966.Location: 211
Audiences: Undergrad
Contact: Christine D'Arcy
Event Link: https://myviterbi.usc.edu/vasa/?PostingID=1234567966
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VSi2: Meet a Co-Founder
Wed, Mar 25, 2015 @ 06:30 PM - 09:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
RSVP Here
Do you have a startup idea but no team to make it happen? Or are you an engineer looking for a team to join? We hear you! We've heard a lot of these requests throughout the semester and that's why we are hosting a "Meet a Co-Founder" event at the Viterbi Hacker House. We want to create opportunities for student entrepreneurs to meet, collaborate, and bridge the gap for team formation.
Please select if you're a technical/non-technical founder by choosing a ticket. Tickets are limitted for each ticket category (75 techical / 75 non-technical). All tickets are free. USC students only.
We'll see you there!
The VSi2 TeamLocation: Kerckhoff Hall (KER) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Student Innovation Institute
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USC Viterbi STEM Spotlight on the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 08:30 AM - 04:30 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering K-12 STEM Center
University Calendar
The USC Viterbi STEM Spotlight series focuses on three departments each year. In March, the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering is being spotlighted. In the morning and afternoon of Thursday, 3/26, pre-registered middle & high school students will be visiting electrical engineering research labs. More information on the USC Viterbi STEM Spotlight can be found here: http://bit.ly/EEspotlight.
Audiences: K-12 Schools pre-registered
Contact: Katie Mills
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CS Colloquium: Suman Jana (Stanford) - Rise of the Planet of the Apps: Security and Privacy in the Age of Bad Code
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 09:45 AM - 10:50 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Suman Jana, Stanford
Talk Title: Rise of the Planet of the Apps: Security and Privacy in the Age of Bad Code
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Computing is undergoing a major shift. Third-party applications hosted in online software markets have become ubiquitous on all kinds of platforms: mobile phones, Web browsers, gaming devices, even household robots. These applications often include yet more third-party code for advertising, analytics, etc. These trends have dramatically increased the amount of bad code throughout the software stack - buggy code, malicious code, code that overcollects private information intentionally or by accident, overprivileged code vulnerable to abuse - as well as the amount of sensitive data processed by bad code.
In this talk, I will demonstrate that existing application platforms are ill-suited to dealing with bad code, thus causing security and privacy problems. I will then show how to isolate bad code without affecting its useful functionality, by redesigning the interfaces across the software stack and controlling the information released to the applications by the platform. I will also show how automated testing can identify bad code and help developers improve their applications.
The lecture will be streamed HERE.
Biography: Suman Jana is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. He earned his PhD in 2014 from the University of Texas, where he was supported by the Google PhD Fellowship. He is broadly interested in identifying fundamental flaws in existing systems and building new systems with strong security and privacy guarantees. Suman received the 2014 PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy-Enhancing Technologies, Best Practical Paper Award from the 2014 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), Best Student Paper Award from the 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, and the 2012 Best Applied Security Paper Award.
Suman's research has been widely covered in popular media, and his code has been deployed at Google, Mozilla, and Apache.
Host: Computer Science Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/773593518
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/773593518
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USC Racing Hosts: Formula E Showcar on Campus
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 03:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity
Come see one of two Formula E showcars in existence here at USC! FIA Formula E is a new formula electric series that will be racing on the streets of Long Beach April 4th and is a free event. Don't miss this opportunity to see one of the cars up close and personal and speak to a representative about the racing series. More info about Formula E can be found at:
www.fiaformulae.com/Location: Epstein Family Plaza
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: USC Racing (Formula SAE Team)
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Ming Hsieh Institute Distinguished Visitor Seminar
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Georgios B. Giannakis , University of Minnesota
Talk Title: Seminar II: Comprehensive State Inference for Cognitive Radio Networks
Series: MHI Distinguished Visitor Seminar Series
Abstract: Spectrum sensing is a critical prerequisite in envisioned applications of wireless cognitive radio (CR) networks, which promise to resolve the perceived bandwidth scarcity versus under-utilization dilemma. This talk presents recent advances for comprehensive situation awareness at the PHY of CR networks by capitalizing on the novel notion of spatio-temporal RF cartography, which amounts to constructing two families of maps: (m1) global power spectral density maps capturing the distribution of power across space, time, and frequency; and (m2) local channel gain maps providing the propagation medium per frequency from each node to any point in space and time. Paralleling the success of routing tables, the vision is to have CR nodes jointly utilize these maps so as to enable: (v1) identification of opportunistically available spectrum bands for re-use, and handoff operation; (v2) localization, transmit-power estimation, and tracking of primary user activities; and (v3) interference control, resource allocation, and routing. If time allows, CR sensing beyond the PHY will be presented too for flagging network anomalies.
Biography: (Fellowâ97) received his Diploma in Electrical Engr. from the Ntl. Tech. Univ. of Athens, Greece, 1981. From 1982 to 1986 he was with the Univ. of Southern California (USC), where he received his MSc. in Electrical Engineering, 1983, MSc. in Mathematics, 1986, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engr., 1986. Since 1999 he has been a professor with the Univ. of Minnesota, where he now holds an ADC Chair in Wireless Telecommunications in the ECE Department, and serves as director of the Digital Technology Center. His general interests span the areas of communications, networking and statistical signal processing subjects on which he has published more than 375 journal papers, 625 conference papers, 20 book chapters, two edited books and two research monographs (h-index 112). Current research focuses on big data analytics, wireless cognitive radios, network science with applications to social, brain, and power networks with renewables. He is the (co-) inventor of 22 patents issued, and the (co-) recipient of 8 best paper awards from the IEEE Signal Processing (SP) and Communications Societies, including the G. Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications. He also received Technical Achievement Awards from the SP Society (2000), from EURASIP (2005), a Young Faculty Teaching Award, the G. W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Research from the University of Minnesota, and the IEEE Fourier Technical Field Award (2015). He is a Fellow of EURASIP, and has served the IEEE in a number of posts including that of a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE-SP Society.
Host: Professor Richard Leahy
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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RASC Seminar Event: Prof. Carrick Detweiler (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) - Bringing Aerial Robots Closer to the Water: Sensing, Sampling, and Safety
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Carrick Detweiler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Talk Title: Bringing Aerial Robots Closer to the Water: Sensing, Sampling, and Safety
Series: RASC Seminar Series
Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being used for everything from crop surveying to pipeline monitoring. They are significantly cheaper than the traditional manned airplane or helicopter approaches to obtaining aerial imagery and sensor data. The next generation of UAVs, however, will do more than simply observe. In this talk, I will discuss the challenges of using aerial robots very close to the water to obtain aerial water samples and sensor data from remote waters locations without needing to bring a boat to each location. When flying close to water, there is little time to react to errors and among obstacles. I will discuss automated software analysis techniques we are developing to detect and correct system errors to reduce risk and increase safety. I will focus on our recent work on the UAV-based water sampler system, but also discuss other applications we are pursuing, including using UAVs to recharge remotely deployed sensors and how we are using very low flying UAVs to monitor the growth of crops.
Biography: Dr. Carrick Detweiler is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He co-directs and co-founded the Nebraska Intelligent MoBile Unmanned Systems (NIMBUS) Lab at UNL, which focuses on developing software and systems for small aerial robots and sensor systems. Carrick obtained his B.A. in 2004 from Middlebury College and his Ph.D. in 2010 from MIT CSAIL. He is a Faculty Fellow at the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute at UNL and recently received the 2014 College of Engineering Henry Y. Kleinkauf Family Distinguished New Faculty Teaching Award. He is currently lead PI on NSF and USDA grants, including a National Robotics Initiative Grant. In addition to research activities, Carrick actively promotes the use of robotics in the arts through workshops and collaborations with the international dance companies Pilobolus and STREB.
Host: RASC
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 406
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Distinguished Lecture: Yang Jiao (ASU)
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yang Jiao, Arizona State University, Materials Science & Engineering
Talk Title: A unified scheme for the quantification, modeling, and reconstruction of heterogeneous materials in 3D and 4D
Series: Distinguished Lectures
Abstract: TBA
Host: Prof. Sahimi
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ryan Choi
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VSi2 Startup Office Hours
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 01:00 PM - 05:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Working on a startup idea? Want to get feedback/guidance/support?
Schedule a 30 min appt with VSi2 Staff to get guidance and help.
You can schedule an appointment hereLocation: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 330D
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Student Innovation Institute
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2015 John Laufer Lecture
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 01:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Harry L. Swinney, Sid Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Department of Physics at College of Natural Sciences at University of Texas at Austin
Talk Title: Internal Gravity Wave Energy in the Oceans
Abstract: Internal gravity waves occur inside fluids whose density varies with depth, as happens in the atmosphere, oceans, and protoplanetary disks. In the oceans the internal waves produced by tidal flow over bottom topography travel thousands of kilometers, affecting ocean mixing and currents, and ultimately impacting the climate. However, it is difficult to make accurate estimates of the total internal wave energy in the oceans because of the complexity of ocean topography and the constructive and destructive interference of the waves. This talk presents results from laboratory experiments, numerical simulations, and ocean observations that yield insight into internal wave dynamics and improve estimates of the total internal wave energy.
Biography: Harry L. Swinney received a BS in physics from Rhodes College (1961) and a PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University (1968). He held faculty appointments at New York University and City College of New York before moving in 1978 to the University of Texas at Austin. In the 1970s Swinney and J.P. Gollub found that fluid flow between concentric cylinders with the inner one rotating exhibited a transition from flow characterized by two incommensurate frequencies to chaotic flow; this was the first laboratory study of chaotic behavior. Later, at the University of Texas, Swinney showed that the strange (chaotic) attractors that had been discussed by theorists actually occur in laboratory systems. In the past three decades Swinneyâs research group has examined chaos and pattern formation in a variety of fluid, chemical, solid, granular, and biological systems. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1992. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He was awarded the American Physical Society Fluid Dynamics Prize, the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics Moser Lecture Prize, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal of the European Geophysical Union, and the Boltzmann Medal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.
Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - Ballroom A
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Valerie Childress
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Electrical Engineering Systems Seminar - Xuehai Qian
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Xuehai Qian, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California Berkeley
Talk Title: Taming Relaxed Memory Consistency and Non-determinism in Parallel Systems
Abstract: With computer architectures moving towards an era dominated by many-core machines and the ever-increasing demands of big data processing, parallel programming has become the norm. Unfortunately, most current programmers find parallelism challenging. It is urgent to provide architectural and software supports to make parallel applications easy to build, reason and debug. Among others, relaxed memory consistency and non-determinism in particular make shared-memory based parallel programming difficult.
In this talk, I will give an overview of our strategy to tame the two factors. Specifically, I will present OmniOrder, a cache coherence protocol for atomic blocks (transactions). It eliminates the effects of relaxed consistency by supporting strict sequential consistency with high performance. OmniOrder supports conflict serialization based on the conventional directory-based protocol. I will also present Pacifier, a deterministic record and replay scheme for relaxed consistency models beyond Total-Store-Order (TSO). It helps to track and understand the behaviors of relaxed consistency.
Biography: Xuehai Qian is a postdoctoral researcher at University of California Berkeley. He got the Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2013. His research interests include parallel computer architecture, architectural support for programming productivity and debugging support for large-scale HPC applications. He received an MS in Computer Science from the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and a BS in Computer Engineering from Beihang University, Beijing.
Host: Prof. Michel Dubois
More Information: print_Qian.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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Kid City Hope Place with ASBME
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 05:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity
Missing high school or just love kids? Don't fret! Help tutor high school students in various math and English classes. You can also help review and edit personal statements for seniors applying to college!
Location: First United Methodist Church of Los Angeles
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
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Seoul Graduate Information Session
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 @ 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Graduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions
Students who have earned or are in the process of earning a Bachelor's degree in engineering, math, or a hard science (such as physics, biology, or chemistry) are welcome to attend to learn more about applying to our graduate programs.
The session will include information on the following topics:
Master's & Ph.D. programs in engineering
How to Apply
Scholarships and funding
Student life at USC and in Los Angeles
There will also be sufficient time for questions. Refreshments will be provided.
Please contact us at viterbi.gradprograms@usc.edu if you have any inquiries about the event.
We look forward to seeing you there.
For more information about the event and to register, please visit the event pageAudiences: Students with an undergraduate backrgound in engineering, math or science
Contact: William Schwerin
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Meet USC: Admission Presentation, Campus Tour, & Engineering Talk
Fri, Mar 27, 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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USC PSOC Seminar Series - Dr. Min Yu
Fri, Mar 27, 2015 @ 11:45 AM - 01:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Min Yu, MD/PhD, USC - Keck School of Medicine
Talk Title: Circulating tumor cells as liquid biopsies for metastasis
Abstract: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), shed from primary and metastatic tumors into blood stream, contain potential rare cancer stem cells or metastasis-initiating cells. We have analyzed characteristics of CTCs in both mouse cancer models and human cancer patients. Previously, we have discovered an important WNT2-TAK1 pathway in promoting pancreatic cancer metastasis via enhanced resistance to anoikis, and demonstrated evidence of epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) in CTCs isolated from breast cancer patients. We have recently developed in vitro culture of CTCs, enabling in depth analysis of their molecular properties using next-generation sequencing and pilot drug sensitivity testing. In several CTC lines, inoculation of 20,000 cells into immunodeficient mice was sufficient for tumorigenesis. Thus, patient-derived CTC lines allow detailed interrogation of cancer stem cell properties at single cell level and its derived clonal populations, potentially contributing to the development of targeted therapies against the metastasis initiating cancer stem cells.
Host: USC PSOC - Dr. Mitchell Gross
Location: Clinical Science Center (CSC) - Harkness Auditorium, 2nd Floor
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Rosa Rangel
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium
Fri, Mar 27, 2015 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rustom Jehangir, Co-Founder and Engineer, BlueRobotics
Talk Title: Starting a Hardware Company
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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Integrated Systems Seminar
Fri, Mar 27, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Hesaam Esfandyarpour, GenapSys Inc.
Talk Title: TBD
Series: Integrated Systems Seminar
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=915368
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=915368
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Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Mar 27, 2015 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Subhayan De and Simin Karvigh , Astani CEE Ph.D. Candidates
Talk Title: Efficient Bayesian Model Selection for Locally Nonlinear Systems incorporating Dynamic Measurements
Abstract: Subhayan De's abstract:
The modeling of a structural system is often complicated by the dynamic characterization of a component by competing families of models, also known as model classes, where the choice of a particular model class falls to the discretion of the researcher. Bayesian model selection can be used to help find the most plausible model class. For linear models, the computational effort for characterization of dynamic properties using natural frequencies and mode shapes, as well as Monte Carlo sampling method, is reasonably well understood. On the other hand, to characterize the dynamic behavior of nonlinear models, response time histories are needed, resulting in high computational cost even when most of the structure is linear and the nonlinear behavior is very localized.
In this study, the computational effort of Bayesian model selection is dramatically reduced in two ways: (1) using a more intelligent Monte Carlo sampling and (2) exploiting the local nature of the nonlinearities. The marginal likelihoods, which are the evidences of the model classes, are estimated with response time histories using ânested samplingâ (Skilling 2006), which samples more from regions with high likelihood values than regions with low likelihood regions. The localized nature of the nonlinearities in the dynamic system is exploited using an efficient response calculation algorithm (Gaurav et al. 2011) by transforming the system equations of motion to a low-order nonlinear Volterra integral equation (NVIE) that is solved numerically. This approach is demonstrated with numerical models of a base-isolated 11-story 2-bay 99-DOF superstructure on the hysteretic lead rubber bearing (LRB) isolators. Model selection is performed to choose from among six model classes: four linear (AASHTO, CALTRANS, JPWRI, modified AASHTO) and two nonlinear (Bouc-Wen, bilinear) models of the isolator, using simulated responses to historical earthquake records. The computational efficiency of the proposed approach is compared with a traditional ordinary differential equation solver (MATLABâs ode45) demonstrating speedup up to two orders of magnitude.
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes