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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211207T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211207T150000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211130T003827Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211130T003827Z
UID:5321-1638885600-1638889200@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Dissertation Defense: Sara Banian
DESCRIPTION:PhD Dissertation Defense: Content-Aware AI-Driven Design Assistance Frameworks for Graphic Design Layouts \nSara Banian \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: Designing user interfaces (UIs) for mobile interaction is widespread but still challenging. It is important for the overall user satisfaction and application success. During the design process\, designers express their requirements through images describing the UI’s layout\, structure\, and content. Designers\, however\, encounter key challenges throughout the design process. For example\, searching for inspiring design examples is challenging because current search systems rely on only text-based queries and do not consider the UI structure and content. Furthermore\, these systems often focus on overall page-level layout over individual UI components. Also\, creating wireframe templates is difficult for many designers as it necessitates an understanding of different design guidelines. Therefore\, it is critical to support designers by developing effective design tools to help them be more productive and creative.\nIn this dissertation\, I aim to explore how to develop design assistance methodologies to augment the process of UI layout design\, with a particular focus on visual search and layout generation. Specifically\, for this exploration\, I seek to investigate the use of advanced deep learning models in the context of mobile UI layout design. Processing layouts differs from processing pixel-level images in that it necessitates processing both the semantic (e.g.\, labels) and spatial (e.g.\, coordinates) content of the layout to model the data properly. To achieve this\, I explore the design problems from both the data and the model side. First\, I present a large-scale UI dataset that accurately specifies the interface’s view hierarchy (i.e.\, UI components and their location). Second\, I contribute the VINS framework\, which is composed of three systems LayVis\, CompVis\, and TransVis that addresses layout-based visual search\, component-based visual search\, and layout generation\, respectively.\nFirst\, I introduce LayVis\, an object-detection layout-based retrieval model. It takes as input a UI image and retrieves visually similar design examples. Next\, I introduce CompVis\, a component-based visual search system to easily retrieve individual UI components via convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Specifically\, for a given query\, the system allows to retrieve (1) text label synonyms\, (2) similar UI components\, and (3) design examples containing such components. Finally\, I present TransVis\, a transformer-based generative framework that investigate how to generate UI layouts according to user specifications and following design practices. It specifically models UI layouts as an ordered sequence of elements based on spatial and semantic relationships for (1) generating complete UI layouts\, (2) auto-completing existing UI layouts seamlessly\, and (3) supporting many design elements per layout.\nOverall\, the work presented in this dissertation contributes to augmenting the UI layout design. Through quantitative and qualitative evaluation of VINS\, we conclude the following: (1) Advanced deep learning models can aid in the development of design assistance methodologies for layout design; and (2) Designers perceive the use of VINS inspiring and useful. Such insights\, combined with the open-sourced large-scale dataset\, can help the research community develop more effective AI-based data-driven design tools. This work presents future opportunities to investigate different deep learning models within the context of layout design and how designers interact with these AI-based models.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-dissertation-defense-sara-banian/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211203T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211203T110000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211202T020751Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211202T020751Z
UID:5325-1638525600-1638529200@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Dissertation Defense: Murphy Wonsick
DESCRIPTION:PhD Dissertation Defense: Supervisory Control for Humanoid Robots Through Virtual Reality Interfaces \nMurphy Wonsick \nLocation: ISEC 655 \nAbstract: Recent advancements in robotics have allowed robots to become capable enough to be used in a wide variety of domains that are dangerous for humans to operate in\, such as disaster relief operations\, exploration of extraterrestrial planets\, bomb disposal\, or nuclear decommissioning efforts. However\, current supervisory control interfaces that allow humans to explore and interact in these environments through remote presence and teleoperation are complex and often require expert operators. Virtual reality provides a medium to create immersive and easy-to-use teleoperation interfaces. Virtual reality allows operators to visualize and interact with 3D data in a 3D environment that is not possible with traditional interfaces that make use of 2D devices\, such as monitors\, keyboards\, mice\, tablets\, and/or game controllers. Yet\, development of supervisory control virtual reality interfaces for robot operation is still very limited. Most present work in virtual reality interfaces focuses on direct teleoperation and not on high-level control that supervisory control interfaces can provide. In this dissertation\, we focus on developing virtual reality supervisory control interfaces for remote robot operation. We specifically focus on high degree-of-freedom robots\, such as humanoid robots or mobile manipulator robots\, as they are the most suited types of robots for remote operation. To accomplish this\, we first look to better understand and define humanoid robot capabilities using NASA’s humanoid robot\, Valkyrie. Following\, we synthesize the current state-of-the-art supervisory control interfaces for humanoid robots to create our own supervisory control interface using traditional devices. We then use this information to create a virtual reality supervisory control interface for Valkyrie. Finally\, we look to improve virtual reality interfaces for robot operation through a user-centered design approach to inform future development on virtual reality interfaces.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-dissertation-defense-murphy-wonsick/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211202T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211202T160000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211202T020920Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211202T020920Z
UID:5327-1638457200-1638460800@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Tong Jian
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Robust Sparsified Deep Learning \nTong Jian \nLocation: Zoom Link \n(ID: 75807284369\, Passcode: 463BXOZk) \nAbstract: In this thesis\, we investigate and address robustness concerns about DNN-based real-life applications on resource constrained systems\, environment adaptation\, and adversarial learning\, respectively. We propose a means of compressing a Radio Frequency (RF) deep neural network architecture through weight pruning\, and provide a systems-level analysis of the implementation of such a pruned architecture at resource-constrained edge devices. In particular\, we jointly train and sparsify neural networks tailored to edge hardware implementations. Under only negligible accuracy loss (less than 1%)\, we can achieve at most 27.2x pruning rate for 50-device classification. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach over multiple edge hardware platforms and our method yields significant inference speedups\, 11.5x on the FPGA and 3x on the smartphone\, as well as high efficiency.\nFurthermore\, we propose a new learn-prune-share (LPS) algorithm for achieving robustness to environment adaptation in the field of lifelong learning. Our method maintains a parsimonious neural network model and achieves exact no forgetting by splitting the network into task-specific partitions via an ADMM-based weight pruning strategy. Moreover\, a novel selective knowledge sharing scheme is integrated seamlessly into the ADMM optimization framework to address knowledge reuse. We show that our approach achieves significant improvement over the state-of-the-art methods on multiple real-life datasets.\nFinally\, we investigate the HSIC bottleneck as regularizer (HBaR) as a means to enhance adversarial robustness. We show that the HSIC bottleneck enhances robustness to adversarial attacks both theoretically and experimentally. In particular\, we prove that the HSIC bottleneck regularizer reduces the sensitivity of the classifier to adversarial examples. Our experiments on multiple benchmark datasets and architectures demonstrate that incorporating an HSIC bottleneck regularizer attains competitive natural accuracy and improves adversarial robustness\, both with and without adversarial examples during training.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-tong-jian/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211201T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211201T163000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211123T011210Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211123T011210Z
UID:5299-1638372600-1638376200@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Zulqarnain Qayyum Khan
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Interpretable Machine Learning for Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology \nZulqarnain Qayyum Khan \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: In this thesis\, we leverage Machine Learning to investigate questions of interest in affective psychophysiology and neuroscience . We argue for and apply appropriate existing methods where possible and analyze the results they provide. Where existing methods fail to provide an answer we propose and build new models. We demonstrate the use of Hierarchical Clustering to investigate autonomic nervous system reactivity during an active coping stressor task\, revealing physiological indices of challenge and threat. Similarly\, we leverage Dirichlet Process Gaussian Mixture Modelling (DP-GMM) to reveal the variation in affective experience during a context-aware experience sampling study and to investigate the relationship between emotional granularity and cardiorespiratory physiological activity using resting state data for participants in the same study. We propose and develop Neural Topographic Factor Analysis (NTFA)\, a novel factor analysis model for fMRI data with a deep generative prior that teases apart participant and stimulus driven variation and commonalities and learns a latent space that can shed light on important neuroscientific phenomenon such as individual variation and degeneracy.\nBased on the work we have already done\, we propose three further lines of research that we intend to include in this thesis. First\, NTFA can essentially be viewed as a family of models\, where appropriate modifications can be made depending on what questions are needed to be answered. Leveraging this\, we propose explicitly adapting NTFA to tackle the question of degeneracy in neural responses. This involves introducing another latent space which can be used to capture and visualize the interaction of each participant with each stimulus in a given fMRI study. The arrangement of inferred embeddings in this latent space can then suggest presence or absence of different types of degeneracy in neural responses among participants in response to the presented stimuli. Second\, during the course of this interdisciplinary research we realized that there is a need for a comprehensive work that sheds light on the assumptions and limitations of some of the most popular machine learning methods used commonly in the sciences (specially psychology)\, and provide recommendations on how researchers can be more mindful of the underlying assumptions machine learning methods make. This can then equip users of ML methods to draw more appropriate conclusions from the results they get. We intend to include this in our thesis. Third\, continuing along the same lines\, there is also a need for better explanation models for the increasingly complicated ML models in use today. This is especially true in health sciences where the knowledge of why an ML model made a particular decision is almost as important as that decision being accurate. To this end we propose a theoretical work that ties the reliability of explanation models to the robustness of the models they are trying to explain.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-zulqarnain-qayyum-khan/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211201T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211201T130000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211124T225107Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211124T225107Z
UID:5307-1638360000-1638363600@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Dissertation Defense: Flavius Pop
DESCRIPTION:PhD Dissertation Defense: Intrabody Communication for Real-Time Monitoring of Implanted Medical Devices based on Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers \nFlavius Pop \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: Nowadays when we think about medical devices and patient monitoring\, we can easily imagine ourselves laying down in a hospital bad\, wires coming out of everywhere\, and being looked after by nurses and physicians. Scary and not that comfortable! For this reason\, medical wearable devices are becoming more popular for at-home monitoring and transmitting data back to the hospital. Sometimes wearables are not enough\, this is why Implanted Medical Devices (IMDs) are still required to monitor many vital signs (blood flow\, insulin level\, neurons reading etc.) and act upon these readings (nerve stimulation\, heart defibrillation\, insulin pumping etc.). In order to be minimally invasive\, reduce the risk of infection and rejection from the body\, and last a long time (avoiding any further surgery) the IMDs require robust wireless communication technology to communicate with the external world. In this presentation I am going to show how we can implement an ultrasonic wireless communication link based on Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (pMUTs) arrays. PMUT arrays can be integrated with existing IMDs\, used for wireless power charging\, and can enable communication links for receiving and transmitting data. During the first part of the presentation I will show the modeling and design of the pMUT arrays\, followed by the fabrication process and the device’s characterization for system level validation. At this point\, the communication link is implemented with arrays implanted in a tissue phantom and the channel is characterized at several distances. During the second part of the presentation I will show novel techniques to improve the ultrasonic communication link such as duplexing matching networks for bandwidth definition and direct modulation for implantation depth increase and direct bitstream feeding. In the future I envision that the number of IMDs are going to increase\, and therefore I developed a scanning protocol that will allow medical doctors to find all implanted devices. This is the equivalent of an “ultrasonic stethoscope”. Given the small form-factor of the IMDs these will have little to no space for a battery\, limiting the operation lifetime. For this reason\, I developed an Ultrasonic Wakeup Receiver (UWuRx) based and on the direct modulation system and on a Micromachined Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) switch which allows for near zero-power consumption in the idle state. This UWuRx enabled on-demand device usability and limited the idle power consumption\, which leads to battery life extension.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-dissertation-defense-flavius-pop/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211201T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211201T100000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211124T225155Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211129T200240Z
UID:5309-1638349200-1638352800@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Dissertation Defense: Kai Li
DESCRIPTION:PhD Dissertation Defense: Reconfigurable and Intelligent Wireless Charging Surfaces \nKai Li \nLocation: 232 ISEC \nAbstract: Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have received significant attention for theirpotential to transform the environments by intelligently reconfiguring the surfaces\, infrastructures\,and engineering the electrical and magnetic fields. On the other hand\, while wireless power transfer has advanced\, there has been limited progress on increasing the charging coverage\, such as charging over large surfaces\, multi-device charging\, and automation. This dissertation aims to address these challenges and design and develop first-of-its-kindtheory and practice to transform ordinary surfaces into contactless\, intelligent\, and multi-devicewireless chargers. First\, the combination between magnetic resonance and the so-called concept of‘energy hopping’ across wireless inter-connected coils turns a large surface into a programmablewireless charging surface. The magnetic fields are carefully shaped on the fly over the surface\,enabling them to distribute energy efficiently at multiple locations on demand and charge differenttypes of devices. Two frameworks are developed: SoftCharge can deliver 23 W up-to 20cm over a larger surface\, and iSurface enables the creation of arbitrary and configurable power spots and power flow paths over 2D and 3D resonator surfaces. Inspired by the strong coupled magnetic resonance wireless power transfer\, two intelligentsurface sensing frameworks\, SoftSense\, and iSense\, are introduced that create collaborative surface-based object sensing and tracking using networked coils. SoftSense allows detection of the type of object and where it is placed on a large surface. iSense enables robot tracking over large surfaces.We validate our design on real sensing prototypes\, and experimental results show that each sensing coil only consumes few milliwatts and has 90% accuracy for velocity estimation.Combined with meta-surface\, we extended the intelligent charging surfaces to enhances safety\, end-to-end power transfer efficiency\, and customized power pattern over the surface.Toward this\, we design and develop a new system call meta-resonance wireless power transfer system that consists of power distribution layer and meta-resonance layer\, along with a new theory and prototype for fine-tuned and controllable power amplifying\, power blocking and normal power passing over the surface. We aim to create customized pattern and different application from portable devices(phone\, tablet) to medical devices\, and industrial devices with high safety and high power transfer efficiency.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-dissertation-defense-kai-li-2/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211201T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211201T090000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211118T211129Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211118T211129Z
UID:5293-1638345600-1638349200@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:Learn about the Co-op Program (Disciplinary) Webinar
DESCRIPTION:Please join our Assistant Dean of Co-op at a webinar discussing the Co-op experiential learning opportunities available for graduate students in the departments of Bioengineering\, Chemical Engineering\, Civil & Environmental Engineering\, Electrical & Computer Engineering\, and Mechanical & Industrial Engineering. \nRegister
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/learn-about-the-co-op-program-disciplinary-webinar/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211130T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211130T130000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211130T004002Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211130T004002Z
UID:5323-1638273600-1638277200@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Sara Garcia Sanchez
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Learning and Shaping the Wireless Environment: An Integrated View of Sensing\, Computing and Communication \nSara Garcia Sanchez \nLocation: Microsoft Teams \nAbstract: The explosive growth in Internet of Things (IoT) deployments and anticipated data volumes that will be generated within future autonomous vehicles require collecting and processing large amounts of data\, generally transmitted over the wireless channel. In this context\, conventional permanent deployments limited to leverage the existing wireless environment\, often fall short of meeting the required capacity demand. To address this limitation\, this dissertation takes a hands-on approach to equip communication systems with technology to perceive and collaborate with and within the environment. Specifically\, we build (i) accurate physics-oriented predictive models and multimode sensing techniques to gain awareness of the existing channel\, as well as (ii) novel multidisciplinary approaches to intelligently modify the wireless channel towards the communication link benefit.\nIn this dissertation\, we first prove that combining wireless channel modelling\, multimode sensing and robotics provides significant link performance gains. To this extent\, we adopt a systems approach to study how millimeter wave (mmWave) radio transmitters on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) provide high throughput links under typical hovering conditions. Based on sensing and modelling efforts\, we propose techniques to exploit the information contained in the spatial and angular domains of empirically collected data from GPS\, cameras and RF signals. We demonstrate hovering impact mitigation by (i) selecting near-to-optimum transmission parameters as compared to the mmWave standard IEEE 802.11ad and (ii) proposing corrective coordinated actions at the UAVs from the robotic controls. These methods achieve mmWave beam-tracking and robust link deployment under event(s) impacting link performance\, such as hovering or blockage in the light of sight between transmitter and receiver.\nThen\, this dissertation experimentally demonstrates how the wireless environment can be interactively programmed through the use of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) to partially offload computation into the wireless domain. In particular\, we propose AirNN\, a system capable of realizing analog over-the-air convolutions\, accurately enough to substitute their digital equivalent in a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN).\nAs proposed future work\, this dissertation will explore innovative uses of the RIS technology in MIMO systems for 6G and beyond. Specifically\, we will investigate (i) how the use of RIS helps overcome environmental limitations of a highly spatially correlated MIMO system\, and (ii) whether the use of RIS can enable the use of MIMO techniques with a single antenna at the receiver.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-sara-garcia-sanchez-2/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211130T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211130T130000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211129T194635Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211129T194635Z
UID:5318-1638273600-1638277200@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Sara Garcia Sanchez
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Learning and Shaping the Wireless Environment: An Integrated View of Sensing\, Computing and Communication \nSara Garcia Sanchez \nLocation: TBA \nAbstract: The explosive growth in Internet of Things (IoT) deployments and anticipated data volumes that will be generated within future autonomous vehicles require collecting and processing large amounts of data\, generally transmitted over the wireless channel. In this context\, conventional permanent deployments limited to leverage the existing wireless environment\, often fall short of meeting the required capacity demand. To address this limitation\, this dissertation takes a hands-on approach to equip communication systems with technology to perceive and collaborate with and within the environment. Specifically\, we build (i) accurate physics-oriented predictive models and multimode sensing techniques to gain awareness of the existing channel\, as well as (ii) novel multidisciplinary approaches to intelligently modify the wireless channel towards the communication link benefit.\nIn this dissertation\, we first prove that combining wireless channel modelling\, multimode sensing and robotics provides significant link performance gains. To this extent\, we adopt a systems approach to study how millimeter wave (mmWave) radio transmitters on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) provide high throughput links under typical hovering conditions. Based on sensing and modelling efforts\, we propose techniques to exploit the information contained in the spatial and angular domains of empirically collected data from GPS\, cameras and RF signals. We demonstrate hovering impact mitigation by (i) selecting near-to-optimum transmission parameters as compared to the mmWave standard IEEE 802.11ad and (ii) proposing corrective coordinated actions at the UAVs from the robotic controls. These methods achieve mmWave beam-tracking and robust link deployment under event(s) impacting link performance\, such as hovering or blockage in the light of sight between transmitter and receiver.\nThen\, this dissertation experimentally demonstrates how the wireless environment can be interactively programmed through the use of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) to partially offload computation into the wireless domain. In particular\, we propose AirNN\, a system capable of realizing analog over-the-air convolutions\, accurately enough to substitute their digital equivalent in a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN).\nAs proposed future work\, this dissertation will explore innovative uses of the RIS technology in Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems for 6G and beyond. Specifically\, we will investigate (i) how the use of RIS helps overcome environmental limitations of a highly spatially correlated MIMO channels\, and (ii) whether the use of RIS can enable the use of MIMO techniques with a single antenna at the receiver.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-sara-garcia-sanchez/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211119T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211119T100000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211118T010643Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211118T010643Z
UID:5291-1637312400-1637316000@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Ziqiang Cai
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Near-infrared Optical Modulation by Hybrid Graphene Metasurfaces \nZiqiang Cai \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: The field of metasurfaces has emerged as one of the most promising frontiers in optical research due to the compact footprint and flexibility in light manipulation. To further advance the practical applications of metasurfaces\, tunable or reconfigurable metasurfaces are highly desirable. One approach is to utilize graphene by taking advantage of its tunable optical properties upon electrical bias. Graphene metasurfaces have been extensively studied in many applications\, including polarization tuning\, phase tuning\, photodetectors\, chemical sensing\, tunable lens\, etc. However\, the working wavelengths of the reported graphene metasurfaces are limited in mid-infrared and terahertz spectra.\nIn this proposal review\, I will discuss a graphene metasurface that can push the working wavelength into the near-infrared region (≤ 3.0 µm). The device combines graphene with plasmonic structures made of gold to enhance the interband transition of graphene\, resulting in decent tunability at near-infrared wavelengths. The tuning process of our graphene metasurface shows distinct differences in comparison with the graphene metasurfaces operating in the mid-infrared or terahertz spectra\, which can be accurately predicted by both theory and simulation. The measured results show a reflection modulation ΔR of about 10% and a modulation depth ΔR/Rmax of 17% at 2.42 µm.\nFinally\, by using an anisotropic plasmonic structure\, our hybrid graphene metasurface can simultaneously operate in the near-infrared and mid-infrared spectra. The measured modulation depth is 18.2% at 2.30 µm and 24.7% at 5.67 µm. Our research substantially broadens the working wavelength of graphene metasurfaces\, and manifest potential applications in near-infrared electro-optic modulators\, reconfigurable lenses\, and polarization modulators.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-ziqiang-cai/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211105T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211105T090000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211019T180913Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211022T000424Z
UID:5245-1636099200-1636102800@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:MS Robotics Webinar
DESCRIPTION:Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing MS Robotics departmental course offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ms-robotics-webinar/
ORGANIZER;CN="Graduate School of Engineering":MAILTO:coe-gradadmissions@northeastern.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211104T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211104T110000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211028T184322Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211028T184322Z
UID:5275-1636020000-1636023600@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Cooper Loughlin
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Unsupervised Machine Learning Approaches to Sequential Data Analysis \nCooper Loughlin \nLocation: Remote \nAbstract: Analysis of sequential data is central to many fields of science and engineering. Often\, sequences are collections of observations made over time and space with little or no contextual information. The goal of analysis may be to evaluate relationships\, identify unusual observations\, or forecast future behavior based on historical data. Unsupervised modeling of sequences (e.g.\, time series) can illuminate the underlying structure of the data and enable analysis. \nIn this proposal\, we discuss a statistical model for multivariate time series and an associated inference algorithm. We develop a preliminary model for a particularly challenging class of multivariate time series where the observations are counts (non-negative integers) that are nonuniformly sampled in time. We develop a state space model and inference algorithm based on Monte Carlo integration and Expectation-Maximization. This preliminary work highlights some key challenges still to be addressed. In particular\, continuously variable sampling intervals\, computational complexity of sampling\, and long-term dependencies among observations are properties of real data that are not handled well by the preliminary model. Recent developments in unsupervised sequence modeling using deep learning techniques are introduced including variational auto-encoders\, recurrent neural networks\, and ordinary differential equation recurrent neural networks. We propose utilizing these deep learning techniques to improve the state of the art in sequential data analysis.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-cooper-loughlin/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211103T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211103T110000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211019T180502Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211022T000104Z
UID:5243-1635935400-1635937200@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:Electrical & Computer Engineering
DESCRIPTION:Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing the Electrical and Computer Engineering departmental program offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/electrical-computer-engineering/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211103T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211103T110000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211004T174453Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211004T174453Z
UID:5220-1635933600-1635937200@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Jared Miller
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Nonlinear and Time-Delay Systems Analysis using Occupation Measures \nJared Miller \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: Techniques to analyze nonlinear systems include peak and reachable set estimation. The reachable set of a system is the set of states accessible by trajectories of a dynamical system at specified times given initial conditions. The peak estimation problem finds extreme values of a state function along trajectories. Examples of peak estimation include finding the maximum height of a wave\, voltage on a power line\, speed of a vehicle\, and infection rate of an epidemic. These problems may be posed as infinite dimensional linear programs (LP) in occupation measures\, where occupation measures are Borel measures that contain all information about trajectories. Under mild assumptions\, a sequence of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI) in increasing degree will converge from outside to the LP optimum\, which is in turn equal to the true optimum of the program in trajectories.\nThe first part of this thesis expands upon the occupation measure formulation for peak estimation. The safety of trajectories with respect to an unsafe set may be quantified by measuring the constraint violation (safety margins)\, which is a maximum peak estimation problem. The distance of closest approach between trajectories and an unsafe set may be bounded through a modification of the peak estimation problem. Peak estimation may be applied to dynamics possessing a broad class of uncertainties\, which includes the data-driven setting of black-box polynomial dynamics. A modular MATLAB toolbox is developed to solve and interpret these variations on peak estimation problems.\nThe second part of this thesis introduces an occupation measure framework for analysis and control of time-delay systems. The evolution of time delay systems depends on present and past values of the state. Some instances of time delay systems with their associated delays include epidemic models (incubation period)\, population dynamics (gestation time)\, and fluid modeling (transport time of fluid moving in a pipe). An occupation measure framework is developed to define weak solutions over a finite time interval of nonlinear time-delay systems with a finite number of bounded discrete delays. Applications of this time-delay weak solution include optimal control (including dead-time)\, peak estimation\, and reachable set estimation of time delay systems.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-jared-miller/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211029T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211029T120000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211028T183932Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211028T184125Z
UID:5273-1635505200-1635508800@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Ramtin Khalili
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Efficient State and Parameter Estimation in Three-Phase Power Systems \nRamtin Khalili \nLocation: Microsoft Link \nAbstract: As the number of renewable energy sources\, bulk energy storage systems\, and non-conventional loads increase and connect to the power grid not only at transmission but also sub-transmission and distribution levels\, three-phase unsymmetrical network monitoring becomes necessary for reliable operation and control of the overall power grid. The use of modal decomposition of measurement equations has already been shown to simplify the formulation and resulting computational complexity of three-phase state estimation of systems where all the transmission lines are three-phase and fully transposed. When there are untransposed and/or mixed-phase lines\, modal decomposition can no longer fully decouple the three-phase measurement equations. This shortcoming is eliminated by a simple yet practical solution based on the commonly used numerical compensation techniques. Thus\, it enables the application of the powerful decoupling approach to any type of three-phase networks which may contain untransposed or mixed-phase lines and are fully observable by PMUs. This implicit restriction is then removed by using a transformation that enables the use of SCADA measurements which are more commonly available in power grids. Furthermore\, It has been shown that network parameter errors can bias the state estimation solution. Network parameter errors are common due to aging\, changes in the ambient temperature\, human data entry error\, etc. So\, an efficient approach is proposed to detect and correct the network parameter errors in three-phase untransposed transmission lines. Preliminary results to illustrate the performance of the proposed methods and associated algorithms will be presented using different test systems.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-ramtin-khalili/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211029T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211029T110000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211020T191027Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211020T191027Z
UID:5250-1635501600-1635505200@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Cesar Antonio Galvez Nunez
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Fault Location in Radial and Meshed Networks Containing Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) \nCesar Antonio Galvez Nunez \nLocation: Microsoft Teams Link \nAbstract: Rapidly increasing numbers of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) connected to transmission and distribution networks via Inverter Based Power Sources (IBPSs) introduce new challenges in detecting and locating faults. Distribution networks are historically designed to operate as radial systems with unidirectional power flows\, which may no longer hold true due to the presence of large numbers of IBPSs. The commonly used impedance-based fault location methods are no longer reliable due to the limitations imposed by unknown fault resistance\, asymmetry of lines\, and presence of IBPSs\, which need to comply with the new grid codes for Fault Ride Through (FRT) requirements. In this proposal\, a new fault location method that can be used for radial and meshed networks containing DERs and addresses the limitations of conventional methods mentioned above will be introduced. The approach requires a limited number of digital fault recorders (DFR) to be placed in the network and uses the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) to compute the first arrival times of fault-generated traveling waves. The proposal first presents a new two-terminal fault location technique used strictly for radial distribution networks\, and then extends this to the general case of combined transmission and distribution networks with radial or meshed configurations. The method is further extended to be applied to hybrid AC/DC complex transmission grids containing DERs and High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) lines. Preliminary results will be presented illustrating these methods on typical power grids and fault scenarios.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-cesar-antonio-galvez-nunez/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211028T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211028T110000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211025T211553Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211025T211553Z
UID:5259-1635415200-1635418800@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Dissertation Defense: Hongjia Li
DESCRIPTION:PhD Dissertation Defense: Automation Design and DNN Acceleration Frameworks: from software implementation to hardware physical design \nHongjia Li \nLocation: Northeastern Zoom Link \nAbstract: With the breakthrough of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) in the past decade\, neural network-based computer vision has made huge progress\, achieving exceptional performance. Tasks such as object detection\, activity detection\, and medical diagnosis are deployed in a wide range of applications\, including autonomous driving\, robot vision and training\, human-computer interaction\, and augmented reality. To increase the demand of application accuracy\, DNN models are tuned to large scales by adding more parameters and layers. Meanwhile\, mobile devices are rapidly becoming the central computer and carrier for deep learning tasks. However\, real-time execution has been limited due to the computation/storage resource constraints on mobile devices.\nThe first part of this dissertation\, I will present our unified real-time mobile acceleration of DNNs framework\, seamlessly integrating hardware-friendly\, structured model compression with mobile-targeted compiler optimization. The goal of our framework is to provide an unprecedented\, real-time performance of such large-scale neural network inference using simply off-the-shelf mobile devices. Our proposed fine-grained block-based pruning scheme can be universally applicable to all types of DNN layers\, such as CONV layers with different kernel sizes and fully connected layers. Different weight pruning schemes\, such as unstructured pruning\, filter/column pruning\, and our block-based pruning\, are analyzed and compared given the specific deep learning problems. To validate our framework\, various applications are implemented and demonstrated\, object detection\, medical diagnosis. All applications can achieve real-time inference on mobile devices\, outperforming the current mobile acceleration framework by up to 6.7X in speed.\nFor the second part of this dissertation\, I will dive into an efficient automate framework for Adiabatic Quantum-Flux-Parametron (AQFP) technology\, meeting the unique features and constraints. Superconductive electronics (SCE) based on the Josephson junction (JJ) single flux quantum (SFQ) logic cells have evolved into a within-reach “beyond-CMOS” technology. Placement is the primary step in physical design of the electronic systems as it directly affects the maximum frequency and routability of circuits. Algorithms for global placement\, the core step in the placement process\, typically minimize the total wirelength of a design as the main objective as it indirectly affects the routability and timing of circuits. Although minimizing the total wirelength improves the timing of the circuit in general\, it does not directly target optimizing the delay of timing critical paths. Timing and routability driving placement methods are therefore needed. The currently mature design automation tools for CMOS cannot be directly applied to the design of superconducting electronics. In this dissertation\, I will present our proposed timing-aware AQFP-specific placement and routing framework\, given a path balanced AQFP netlist with clock phases. The proposed framework will reduce the solution complexity by making effective use of the row-wise placement/routing opportunity as each AQFP cell is assigned to a specific row (clock phase). \n 
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-dissertation-defense-hongjia-li/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211027T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211027T150000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211021T174450Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211021T174450Z
UID:5254-1635343200-1635346800@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:LEADERs Event: AI Challenges in the Deployment of Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems
DESCRIPTION:This presentation will help attendees learn about integrating AI in auto industry. While AI has been able to achieve remarkable success over the last 10 years\, can it really be trusted?  What does trustworthy AI look like in the context of connected vehicles and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS)?  To create an ADAS for all\, it’s paramount that the AI systems in the vehicle be trusted and work for everyone.  This is especially important given the nature of ADAS as a safety-critical\, cyber-physical\, and people-centric system of systems.  In this talk\, the presenter will outline a number of challenges in building AI systems which could potentially be deployed in future ADAS. \nSpeaker Dr. Jacob Bond leads trustworthy AI research at General Motors R&D.  In addition to his work on ensuring AI systems in the vehicle can be trusted\, his research looks at how to keep AI systems private and how to ensure cloud and vehicle systems can establish secure communications.  After receiving a Ph.D. in computational mathematics and cryptography from Purdue University\, he joined General Motors’ Product Cybersecurity organization\, focusing on applications of public-key cryptography.  Jacob then began investigating the security of AI systems\, moving to GM R&D and expanding his work to encompass the trustworthiness of AI systems.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/leaders-event-ai-challenges-in-the-deployment-of-advanced-driver-assistance-systems/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211022T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211022T133000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211020T191155Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211020T191155Z
UID:5252-1634905800-1634909400@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Chengju Yu
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Development of Interface-Engineered Thin Films and Magnetodielectric Bulk Composites for MMIC Applications \nChengju Yu \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: Magnetodielectric materials are ubiquitous in electronic\, energy\, automotive\, communication\, and medical systems over radio frequency bands from high frequency to quasi-optical frequencies. With recent developments in modern power and communication technologies\, improvements in magnetic materials and related components have attracted a great deal of attention from academic and industrial research groups.\nIn this proposal review\, we demonstrate multiple paths to the development of next generation magnetodielectric thin films and bulk composites that offer disruptive advances to performance and size reduction\, including:\n(i) Consistent and reliable processing protocols are established using interface-engineered barium magnetoplumbite films deposited on Si-polar SiC substrates with AlN capping layers and MgO nucleation layers for microwave and millimeter-wave monolithic integrated circuits (MMICs);\n(ii) Both thin and thick yttrium iron garnet films are achieved using PLD and LPE with outstanding crystalline and magnetic properties to meet the needs of magnonics and spintronics technologies; (iii) Inductor cores are developed for power generation\, conversion\, conditioning functions for use in power electronic systems and high-power pulse generators operating at 100s kHz and 100s MHz frequencies\, respectively. Power loss and thermal management models of non-linear magnetic inductors are established and implemented with viable paths demonstrated using interface-engineered composites as a means of achieving high magnetization\, high permeability\, low core losses.\nThe common theme of all three projects is the engineering of the chemistry\, structure\, magnetic and electric properties of the interface between the principal layers\, films\, and grains that constitute the product in order to optimize performance.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-chengju-yu/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211014T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211014T130000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211013T001304Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211013T001304Z
UID:5239-1634212800-1634216400@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Tirthak Patel
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Toward System Software Stack for NISQ–era Quantum Computers \nTirthak Patel \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: Despite rapid progress in quantum computing in the last decade\, the limited usability of quantum computers remains a major roadblock toward the wider adoption of quantum computing. Prohibitively high error rates on existing Near-term Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers limit their usability even for quantum-advantage-proven algorithms (that is\, algorithms that are infeasible or orders of magnitude slower on classical computers). As a result\, the executions of these algorithms on existing quantum computers are highly erroneous and produce noisy program outputs. Currently\, quantum computing programmers lack system software tools and methods to estimate the correct output from these erroneous executions. \nThis dissertation demonstrates how to extract correct program output from noisy executions on today’s erroneous quantum computers. In particular\, this dissertation describes the design and implementation of a suite of cross-layer system software for extracting meaningful output from the erroneous executions using hardware-level quantum pulse control\, noise-aware quantum compilation\, and post-execution error mitigation. The real-system prototypes and experimental evaluation on IBM quantum computers demonstrate how specific quantum mechanics properties\, hardware-level pulse control\, and post-execution statistical processing can be put together to improve the usability of today’s quantum computers transparently. This dissertation achieves this without requiring user intervention\, domain knowledge about quantum algorithms\, or additional quantum hardware support. \nThis dissertation opens up new research avenues for hybrid quantum-classical computing and lowers the barrier to entry for quantum computing research via open-sourcing multiple novel datasets and system software frameworks (independently verified and results reproduced by other researchers in the community).
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-tirthak-patel/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211006T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211006T200000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20210929T180818Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210929T181335Z
UID:5191-1633539600-1633550400@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:Showcase of Opportunities for Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavor (SOURCE)
DESCRIPTION:Calling all Huskies! Learn more about what cutting-edge research and creative endeavor look like at Northeastern. This is your chance to talk one-on-one with faculty from across the colleges about their research – and how you can get involved in projects during your time at Northeastern. Not everyone will have open positions right now but you’ll get a chance to see the range of work that’s happening and begin to make connections that you can build for the rest of your time at Northeastern. \nBefore you attend\, here’s some advice to consider. \n\nTake a look and see who’ll be there. We have an online database of attendees. Go through it and learn more about the project areas and visit the researcher/creative practitioner web pages. This will help prepare you for a conversation and help you ask any questions you might have.\nGet ready for a conversation from your end. Think about goals you have \, as well as your current interests and skills and those that you want to develop. How does what you have read about the various projects align with what you know about yourself and your interests? Take a minute to practice a simple declarative sentence\, “My name is ____________. I study ____________. I think that this part of your work ____________ is interesting because of this intellectual reason/moral imperative/grand impact ____________.  I’d love to learn more about it because of this previous experience ____________ and these skills ____________ and my long-term interest in ____________.  How I can get involved?” You might not know how to fill in all of the blanks right now (that’s why you’re in school) but see how close you can get.  When you know who you are\, what you value\, and how you can contribute — and get some practice saying it out loud– being confident becomes easier.\nRemember\, not every faculty member will have open positions now — but a good impression lasts a long time. You can’t go wrong with being polite and courteous.   Address faculty members as Professor until told otherwise (better to err on the side of formality).\nKeep in mind your time! If you want to be involved in research or creative practice\, a good thing to keep in mind is that faculty members will commit a lot of time to training and mentoring their undergraduates. They’re investing time\, energy\, and expertise in their mentees and want to know that you will make time for the projects\, show up consistently\, and ideally be with them for longer than a semester if possible. The learning curve of most projects is steep and it takes some time to get to the meatiest parts of the work. Be honest with yourself about the commitment you can make\, be frank with your faculty mentors\, and stick to your word. Communication and honesty in relationships\, including the mentoring relationship\, is key.\n\nSOURCE is a collaboration between Bouvé College of Health Sciences; College of Arts\, Media and Design; College of Engineering; College of Science; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; D’Amore-McKim School of Business; and Khoury College of Computer Science. It is coordinated by Undergraduate Research and Fellowships on behalf of the Office of the Chancellor.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/showcase-of-opportunities-for-undergraduate-research-and-creative-endeavor/
LOCATION:Curry Student Center\, 360 Huntington Ave.\, Boston\, MA\, 02115\, United States
GEO:42.3394629;-71.0885286
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Curry Student Center 360 Huntington Ave. Boston MA 02115 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=360 Huntington Ave.:geo:-71.0885286,42.3394629
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211006T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211006T120000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20211004T224056Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211004T224056Z
UID:5222-1633518000-1633521600@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Bin Sun
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Lightweight Neural Networks via Factorization \nBin Sun \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: Deep learning has become popular in recent years primarily due to powerful computing devices such as GPUs. However\, many applications such as face alignment\, image classification\, and gesture recognition need to be deployed to multimedia devices\, smartphones\, or embedded systems with limited resources. Thus\, there is an urgent need for high-performance but memory-efficient deep learning models. For this\, we design several lightweight deep learning models for different tasks with factorization strategies. \nSpecifically\, we constructed a lightweight face alignment model by proposing a factorization-based deep convolution module named Depthwise Separable Block (DSB) and a light but practical module based on the spatial configuration of the faces. Experiments on four popular datasets verify that Block Mobilenet has better overall performance with less than 1MB storage size. Besides the face analysis application\, we also explored a general\, lightweight deep learning module for image classification with low-rank pointwise residual (LRPR) convolution\, called LRPRNet. Essentially\, LRPR aims at using a low-rank approximation to factorize the pointwise convolution while keeping depthwise convolutions as the residual module to rectify the LRPR module. Moreover\, our LRPR is quite general and can be directly applied to many existing network architectures.\nDue to the success of the factorization strategy on image-based data\, we extended factorization on time sequence data for Sign Language Recognition (SLR). We achieved the first rank in the challenge of SLR with the help of our proposed novel Separable Spatial-Temporal Convolution Network (SSTCN)\, which divides a 3D convolution on joint features into several stages \, which help the SSTCN achieve higher accuracy with fewer parameters.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-bin-sun/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210927T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210927T120000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20210920T183529Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210920T183529Z
UID:5177-1632740400-1632744000@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Tianyu Dai
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Data-Driven Control and Estimation \nTianyu Dai \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: During the last two decades\, data-driven control (DDC) has attracted growing attention in the control community. Unlike model-based control (MBC) that first uses the collected data to identify the system\, then designs the controller according to the certainty equivalence principle\, DDC skips the system identification (SYSID) step and leads to a control law directly from data. One important feature of DDC is that some fundamental limitations of MBC such as uncertainty versus robustness\, inevitable modeling error\, and possible expensive cost of SYSID are avoided in the DDC framework. These benefits enable the researcher to design controllers with better performance and accuracy. \nThe aim of this proposal is to summarize our contributions to the DDC field. We mainly discuss the following problem: given a single trajectory of noisy data and a few priors of the model structure\, how to design a state feedback controller to stabilize the system with unknown dynamics and in addition\, to meet some performance criteria. The main idea hinges on duality theory to establish the connection between two sets\, one compatible with the noisy data\, and the second satisfying some design properties such as stability or optimality. Our main results show that for all possible systems compatible with the data\, the data-driven control law can be obtained by solving a convex optimization problem. \nThis proposal is organized as follows: to start with\, we propose a DDC framework for switched linear systems relying on the Farkas’ lemma to search for a common polyhedral control Lyapunov function using the theory of moments. Then to reduce the computational burden\, we provide another method called data-driven quadratic stabilization control for linear systems that is based on quadratic Lyapunov function. To deal with nonlinear system\, we first design data-driven controllers for polynomial systems using the dual Lyapunov theorem. Then to handle general nonlinearities\, we propose a method based on state-dependent representations. Finally\, a data-driven estimator is proposed that gives the worst-case optimal estimation of the trajectory of a switched linear system.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-tianyu-dai/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210920T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210920T140000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20210920T174407Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210920T174931Z
UID:5172-1632142800-1632146400@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:Distinguished Lecture: Dr. Elliot Eichen
DESCRIPTION:The Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things is pleased to host a distinguished lecture on Real-time Geo-spatial Spectrum Sharing by Dr. Elliot Eichen. \nWhen: Monday\, September 20th\, 1pm. \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: New technology and new applications for wireless communications have created competition for frequency bands traditionally allocated to remote sensing and defense applications. Competition for spectrum is particularly intense in mm (and sub-mm) wave bands where the requirements for 5G/6G transmissions overlap with measurements made by passive radiometers (Earth Exploration Satellite Services – EESS) that are used for weather forecasting and as baseline data for climate models. Real-time Geospatial Spectrum Sharing (RGSS) enables EESS radiometers and 5G/6G networks to gracefully share spectrum by modifying network traffic during the time window (~ 10s of msec) that a base station (gNB) and its connected endpoints (UEs) are within the effective field of view (eFOV) of a radiometer. RGSS is based on existing network infrastructure rather than Monte-Carlo network simulations (the ITU model); it can provide better isolation between 5G/6G transmissions and EESS radiometers than the ITU’s hardware-based Out-of-Band (OOB) emission limits (e.g.\, -32 dBW/200MHz-gNB and -29 dBW/200MHz-UE) in dense urban environments\, while simultaneously enabling carriers to create larger cell sizes and use network repeaters in suburban and rural settings. In addition\, RGSS can adapt to changes in network or remote sensing technology by modifying the underlying network or EESS ecosystem descriptions (schemas). \nIn this talk\, we show that RGSS: \n\nCan prevent 5G/6G transmissions from corrupting EESS measurement data\nHas sufficient geolocation accuracy to provide a realistic solution\, based on experimental confirmation of predicted measurement pixels vs. actual measurement pixels\nApplies to all mm-wave and submm-wave bands (e.g.\, a single system can be used for all bands\, such as 24\, 51\, and 90 GHz\, although the modification time windows for each band may be different)\nEnables carriers to optimize network performance by geography and time of day\, rather than designing for the worst-case scenario across the entire network (i.e.\, avoids the ” one size fits all” OOB emissions model)\nIncludes the effect of massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) beamforming antennas\nIs commensurate with existing 5G architectures and deployment models\, and\nProvides a simple mechanism to test and police compliance compared with over the air TRP OOB measurements.\n\nBio: Elliot Eichen retired as Director of R&D at Verizon in 2017\, after a 35-year career (except for 2½ years on staff at MIT) at GTE Labs\, GTE/BBN\, and Verizon Labs. From 2018-2019\, he was an IEEE-USA/AAAS congressional fellow\, which is where he became interested in spectrum management and the overlap between 5G/6G and EESS passive sensors. Dr. Eichen received a Ph.D. in Optics from The University of Arizona\, and a B.S in Physics from SUNY Stony Brook. His contributions to the technical community include associate editor of IEEE Photonics Technology Letters\, committee chair of Optical Fiber Communications (OFC)\, chair of the IEEE/OSA Optical Amplifier Conference\, Visiting Industry Professor at Tufts University\, and adjunct faculty at NEU. He has more than 40 peer-reviewed publications and about 60 US patents.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/distinguished-lecture-dr-elliot-eichen/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210916T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210916T170000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20210908T194439Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210908T194439Z
UID:5158-1631808000-1631811600@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Nirjhar Bhattacharjee
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Sputtered Topological Insulator/Ferromagnet Heterostructures for Energy Efficient Spintronic Device Applications \nNirjhar Bhattacharjee \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: Topological insulators (TI) are Van der Waals (VdW) layered materials which possess enormous spin-orbit coupling (SOC) strength and spin-momentum locked robust surface states. TIs in presence of time-reversal symmetry breaking magnetic order can also exhibit chiral quantum anomalous (QAH) or Axion insulator edge channels. These and myriad of other material properties predicted\, and achievable utilizing TIs\, magnetic-TIs (MTI) and TI based heterostructures can open the path towards realization of a diverse class of energy efficient spintronic devices for information processing and storage. Crystalline oriented TIs which possess topologically nontrivial properties are grown using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) which is incompatible with industrial CMOS processes. Magnetron sputtering\, on the other hand is the CMOS industry stand thin film growth technique because of the advantages of high throughput\, large area\, and high quality thin film growth capability. In this work\, first the growth of high quality TI: Bi2Te3 thin films using CMOS compatible magnetron sputtering process is introduced. Next\, room temperature characterization of magnetic and SOT properties of TI/ferromagnet (FM) heterostructures will be presented. Finally\, fascinating magnetic properties of material systems with FM species intercalated in TIs will be reported which can possibly house exotic quantum material phases. \nBy varying process temperature between 20-250ºC\, growth of Bi2Te3 with stoichiometric composition and varying crystalline order from disordered to highly c-axis oriented VdW layered films were obtained. Using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) imaging\, the crystalline property of the TI film was confirmed. Further\, coupling the sputtered TI films with ferromagnetic (FM) thin films surprisingly showed a giant enhancement in Gilbert damping with c-axis oriented TI which is crucial for energy efficient SOT-MRAM devices. This suggested enhancement in spin-orbit coupling strength for c-axis oriented TI thin films compared to disordered ones. Formation of interface layers because of elemental diffusion has been reported in literature. But\, literature reports on SOT characteristics have largely assumed atomically sharp interfaces between TI and FM layers. We observed crystalline order dependent interface thickness and composition in Bi2Te3/Ni80Fe20 heterostructures because of diffusion of Ni across the interface. An enhancement in damping-line SOT in crystalline ordered Bi2Te3 was observed. The spin-charge conversion efficiency was however found to be larger for granular and lowest for polycrystalline disordered Bi2Te3 samples considering the interface layers. Further\, with the intercalation of Ni in Bi2Te3\, emergence of an antiferromagnetic VdW phase was observed in Ni-intercalated Bi2Te3 interface. This AFM VdW interface resulted in a large spontaneous exchange bias in Bi2Te3/Ni80Fe20 and Bi2Te3/NiZn-Ferrite heterostructures at temperatures below ~63 K which is higher than the transition temperatures of MTIs reported in literature. Structural and chemical characterization of the Ni-intercalated Bi2Te3 showed evidence of formation of Ni-Te bonds and indicated towards formation of MTI compounds. These results open new avenues for experimental exploration of fascinating high-temperature QAH and other topologically nontrivial material phases in interfaces of industrial CMOS process compatible sputter-grown TI/FM heterostructures. Understanding the properties of these TI based material systems can lead to realization of robust energy efficient spintronic devices.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-nirjhar-bhattacharjee/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210914T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210914T150000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20210908T184332Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210908T184332Z
UID:5151-1631628000-1631631600@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Dissertation Defense: Vageeswar Rajaram
DESCRIPTION:PhD Dissertation Defense: Near-Zero Power Microelectromechanical Sensors for Large-Scale IoT Sensor Networks \nVageeswar Rajaram \nLocation: ISEC 432 \nAbstract: The Internet-of-things revolution has ushered the development of sensing technologies aimed towards establishing large-scale remote sensor networks to monitor the environment continuously and with high spatial resolution. However\, with existing sensor technologies this goal has so far been limited in terms of scalability (i.e.\, the number of sensors in a network\, areal coverage and spatial granularity). A major impeding factor is sensor power consumption: state-of-the-art remote sensor technologies need to be actively powered (i.e.\, by a battery) to continuously monitor the environment for an object of interest\, even at standby (when it is not present). This is because all signals collected by the sensor from the environment need to be processed by active signal conditioning circuits to distinguish a signal of interest from other signals. Therefore\, in applications where an event or signal of interest occurs only occasionally\, most of the battery is drained by processing irrelevant signals. The result is that as the sensor network scales up\, so do the costs and labor associated with the sensors’ battery replacements. This makes it unfeasible to deploy and maintain large numbers of sensors for any application and greatly limits the scale of sensor networks. Extremely low power consumption therefore is critical in enabling large sensor networks by reducing or even eliminating costs associated with frequent battery replacements.\nThis work describes the development of a revolutionary new sensing platform aimed at creating sensors with battery lifetimes limited only by the self-discharge of the battery itself (>10 years). The ultimate goal for the technology is to enable maintenance-free sensor nodes for truly large-scale “deploy-and-forget” sensor networks. In particular\, this work details the development of novel infrared sensors based on micro-electro-mechanical photoswitches that are capable of detecting and distinguishing specific infrared signatures associated with objects of interest (hot gases\, fire\, human body\, etc.) while remaining dormant with near-zero power consumption at standby. This unique sensor technology aims to break the paradigm of requiring a power supply to perform sensing by instead relying on the energy contained in the infrared signals emitted by the object of interest itself to perform its detection. This dissertation presents a comprehensive summary of the sensor’s design\, its capabilities\, and the various technical developments that have led this technology to evolve from a concept to a prototype near-zero power wireless infrared sensor with orders of magnitude lesser power consumption compared to the state-of-the-art.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-dissertation-defense-vageeswar-rajaram/
LOCATION:432 ISEC\, 360 Huntington Ave\, Boston\, MA\, 02115\, United States
GEO:42.3396156;-71.0886534
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=432 ISEC 360 Huntington Ave Boston MA 02115 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=360 Huntington Ave:geo:-71.0886534,42.3396156
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210910T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210910T150000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20210908T194338Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210908T194338Z
UID:5156-1631282400-1631286000@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Dissertation Defense: Wenqian Liu
DESCRIPTION:PhD Dissertation Defense: Explainable Efficient Models for Computer Vision Applications \nWenqian Liu \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: State of the art deep learning based models\, such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and generative models\, achieve impressive results\, but with their great performance comes great complexity and opacity\, huge parametric spaces and little explainability. The criticality of model explainability and output interpretability\, manifests clearly in real-time critical decision making processes and human-centred applications\, such as in healthcare\, security and insurance. Explainability and interpretability are tackled in this thesis\, as intrinsic qualities in the model architecture as well as post-hoc improvement on existing models. In the area of frame prediction in video sequences\, we introduce DYAN\, a novel network with very few parameters\, that is easy to train and produces accurate high quality predictions. Another key aspect of DYAN is interpretability\, as its encoder-decoder architecture is designed following concepts from systems identification theory and exploits the dynamics-based invariants of the data. We also introduce KW-DYAN\, an extension of DYAN that tackles the issue of time lagging in video predictions\, by implementing a novel way of quantifying prediction timeliness and proposing a new recurrent network for adaptive temporal sequence prediction. The experimental results show the reduced lagging across datasets\, while also performing well in other metrics. In this thesis we also propose the first technique to visually explain VAEs by means of gradient-based attentions\, with methods to generate visual attentions from the learned latent space\, and also demonstrate such attention explanations serve more than just explaining VAEs. We show how these attention maps can be used to localize anomalies in images\, conducting state-of-the-art performance on multiple datasets. We also apply our technique for skin image anomaly detection and diagnosis and achieve competitive quantitative and qualitative results.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-dissertation-defense-wenqian-liu/
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210903T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210903T120000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20210825T175854Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210825T175854Z
UID:5137-1630666800-1630670400@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Nikita Mirchandani
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Ultra-Low Power and Robust Analog Computing Circuits and System Design Framework for Machine Learning Applications \nNikita Mirchandani \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: As the scaling of CMOS transistors has almost halted\, performance gains of digital systems have also started to stagnate. There is a renewed interest in alternate computing techniques such as in-memory computing\, hybrid computing\, approximate computing\, and analog computing. In particular\, analog computing has reemerged as a promising alternative to save power and improve performance specifically for machine-learning (ML) applications. Analog computing has better area and power efficiency when compared to their digital counterpart. Power and chip area efficiency make analog computing highly appealing for implementing deep learning algorithms on-chip\, computing circuits for the internet-of-things (IoT) devices\, and implantable and wearable biomedical devices. However\, compared to digital computing\, analog computing methods have not nearly been utilized to their fullest potential due to longstanding challenges related to reliability\, programmability\, power consumption\, and high susceptibility to variations.\nThe subject of this dissertation research is to develop robust ultra-low power analog hardware suitable for machine learning applications. First\, a robust analog design methodology is presented to address issues of variability in analog circuits. A constant transconductance design technique using switched capacitor circuits is presented. The design approach is then applied to build circuits for ML applications. An analog vector matrix multiplier (VMM) is designed to be used in the convolutional layer in an ML analog computing vision hardware platform. Computing circuits are tested as part of an image classification DNN algorithm on the MNIST dataset and can achieve a classification accuracy of 96.1%. \nThe design approach is also used to design an analog computing system architecture for detection of seizures using EEG signals. A conventional EEG monitoring system includes an analog front-end (AFE)\, ADC\, digital filtering stage\, EEG feature extraction engine\, and SVM classification. Such systems suffer from high power and chip area requirements. The corresponding analog architecture is composed of AFE amplifiers to provide gain for the incoming signal. The AFE is followed by an analog filtering stage\, where spectral power from each of the bands is used as a feature for seizure classification. The output of each filter is applied to a corresponding feature extraction circuit to continuously monitor the onset of a seizure in an ultra-lower power mode with sub-threshold analog processing. The system level architecture is first modeled to obtain classification accuracy of seizures. Simulation times for the design of such complex analog systems can be prohibitively long\, particularly when the impacts of nonidealities such as noise\, nonlinearity\, and device mismatches have to be considered at the system level. The simulation time is reduced by building accurate models of the analog blocks for faster simulations. The analog models help to define the required specifications for each block in order to achieve a specified system-level classification accuracy.\nInfrastructure circuits like oscillators and voltage regulators for the proposed SoC are presented. A 254 nW 21 kHz on-chip RC oscillator with 21.5 ppm/oC temperature stability is presented to provide stable clock source for the proposed SoC.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-nikita-mirchandani/
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210830T093000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210830T103000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20210819T215252Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210819T215252Z
UID:5129-1630315800-1630319400@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Proposal Review: Keng Chen
DESCRIPTION:PhD Proposal Review: Design of Accurate and Responsive Power Management Integrated Circuits for Microprocessor Systems \nKeng Chen \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: As technology improves\, the processors used in data centers are becoming increasingly powerful. Since the number of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors integrated into these processors continues to rise\, it becomes more challenging to design the power management integrated circuits to accurately regulate the supply voltages and ensure fast operational speeds for the processors. Furthermore\, with multi-core technology being extensively used in processor design\, there is more than just one voltage rail per chip that needs to be precisely regulated. In this research\, circuit design methods will be developed to improve the regulation accuracy\, both of the output voltage and converter switching frequency\, which are proposed for an integrated buck regulator designed for point of load (POL) applications. In order to ensure both accuracy and fast speed of operation\, a constant-on-time (COT) architecture was selected for this integrated buck regulator design approach. To provide accurate output voltage regulation\, the on-chip feedback sensing network and the bandgap reference circuit need to exhibit high accuracy. For this reason\, a highly accurate bandgap reference generation circuit with 5.8 ppm/°C – 13.5 ppm/°C over a wide operational region (-40 °C to 150 °C) has been designed. This bandgap reference circuit has a current-mode architecture and provides a 1.16V reference voltage with a 3.3V supply. A multi-section curvature compensation method is proposed to alleviate the nonlinear temperature-dependent error from the bipolar junction transistor’s base-emitter voltage. The two operational amplifiers utilized in this bandgap reference design to generate proportional-to-absolute-temperature (PTAT) and complementary-to-absolute-temperature (CTAT) current sources share one auxiliary auto-zero amplifier to ensure low input-referred offset voltage. Within many voltage regulators\, the feedback sensing network consists of multiple operational amplifiers\, and a major error source is the impact of the input-referred offset voltages of these amplifiers. \nThis research introduces the utilization of two different input-referred offset voltage correction methods for multiple amplifiers. The multi-amplifier system under investigation is used for feedback sensing during voltage regulation. It contains an instrumentation amplifier consisting of three folded cascode stages\, and an additional amplifier configured as a unity-gain buffer for a reference voltage. The first method in this work alleviates voltage offsets in a 4-amplifier system based on a shared auxiliary amplifier correction circuit that switches between different target amplifiers. The second method applies a chopping-based auto-zero procedure to cancel the input-referred offset voltage of the same system. Since chopping causes voltage ripples\, a correction circuit with a successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter is used to reduce the output ripples. Both proposed methods can achieve less than 1mV feedback sensing error in voltage regulator applications.\nFor the constant-on-time buck regulator itself\, a new frequency locking loop to regulate the on-time pulse is also proposed in this work. The system shows less than 1% frequency shift over a wide programmable operational frequency range (400 KHz to 2 MHz). This frequency accuracy will further benefit the constant-on-time circuit to meet electromagnetic interference requirements without harming the fast-transient performance.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-proposal-review-keng-chen/
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210825T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210825T113000
DTSTAMP:20260503T100326
CREATED:20210818T000348Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210823T174620Z
UID:5115-1629887400-1629891000@ece.northeastern.edu
SUMMARY:ECE PhD Dissertation Defense: Apoorve Mohan
DESCRIPTION:PhD Dissertation Defense: Rethinking the Choice between Static and Dynamic Provisioning for Centralized Bare-Metal Deployments \nApoorve Mohan \nLocation: Zoom Link \nAbstract: Technological inertia leads many organizations to continue to employ static provisioning strategies for bare-metal deployments. This results in architectural and runtime inefficiencies. However\, most performance and security-sensitive organizations currently employ static provisioning strategies to run and manage their workloads on physical servers (also known as bare-metal servers). This thesis demonstrates how recent technological advances enable dynamic provisioning strategies to improve aggregate bare-metal resource efficiency in centralized bare-metal deployments. Conceptually\, this dissertation has four parts. First\, it introduces a new system architecture for dynamic bare-metal provisioning. The proposed architecture reduces overhead and operational complexity and improves fault tolerance and performance. To achieve these improvements\, it decouples the provisioned state from the bare-metal servers. Second\, the thesis identifies the performance and operational issues due to intrusive software introspection strategies employed in existing bare-metal deployments. We present a dynamic bare-metal provisioning-based system to enable non-intrusive software introspection of bare-metal deployments to mitigate these issues. Many organizations have realized the cost benefits of consolidating their computing infrastructure over managing multiple\, relatively smaller compute facilities. \nOver the past decade\, virtual infrastructure solutions have become the obvious choice in consolidated (i.e.\, single-tenant managed or centralized) deployments for many organizations due to the scalability\, availability\, and cost benefits it offers. However\, most performance and security-sensitive organizations such as medical companies and hospitals\, financial institutions\, federal agencies run their workloads directly on physical (i.e.\, bare-metal) infrastructure. They are unwilling to tolerate the performance unpredictability and security risks due to co-location and performance overhead or vulnerabilities due to a large code base of the complex virtualization stack. In addition\, even if an organization uses virtual infrastructure\, bare-metal infrastructure is used to set up virtualization software stack and when their workloads require direct and exclusive access to hardware components (e.g.\, InfiniBand\, RAID\, FPGAs\, GPUs) that are difficult to virtualize. Such organizations invest enormous sums of money to buy or rent bare-metal servers and set up and manage bare-metal clusters. Thus\, it is imperative that these organizations efficiently operate and utilize the bare-metal clusters they set up to maximize their investment returns. However\, despite the technological advances over the past decade\, organizations continually employ static provisioning strategies in bare-metal deployments that contribute to poor aggregate bare-metal resource efficiency. Thesis Statement: This thesis demonstrates how dynamic provisioning can mitigate observed inefficiencies in centralized bare-metal deployments. The proposed dynamic provisioning strategies leverages existing storage disaggregation and fault-tolerance technologies to improve aggregate bare-metal resource efficiency. By applying it to four real-world scenarios\, this thesis demonstrates the effectiveness of dynamic provisioning.
URL:https://ece.northeastern.edu/event/ece-phd-dissertation-defense-apoorve-mohan/
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