This calendar is your conduit to the events in Plan-It Purple that pertain specifically to the McCormick School of Engineering. If you would like to list an event on the calendar, please consult the list of department contacts.
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Event List
This list shows seminars for April only. [Show all events]
Joint Mech Eng with Civil and Environ Eng Seminar: Kenneth Loh, Univ of MI
Tuesday April 1, 2008 at 10:00 AM — 2145 Sheridan Rd. Tech Institute, Civil Conference Room A230
Multifunctional Nanocomposites for
Structural Health Monitoring
Abstract: Currently, population growth, environmental sustainability, and the need to rehabilitate or reconstruct civil infrastructures have warranted novel technologies for monitoring and enhancing understanding of complex engineered systems. The field of structural health monitoring and damage detection provides quantitative global- and component-scale structural response data to pave way for newer structural analysis, design, retrofit, and maintenance schemes. In this regard, nanotechnology offers a plethora of material fabrication techniques for designing next-generation multifunctional systems that possess a diverse suite of functionalities including self-sensing, actuation, self-healing, power harvesting, among many others. Here, carbon nanotubes are employed and encoded with electrochemical/electromechanical sensing transduction mechanisms for structural monitoring and damage detection. Using a layer-by-layer fabrication technique coupled with an electrical impedance tomographic spatial conductivity mapping algorithm, multifunctional thin films are validated for structural monitoring applications. Specifically, the electrical properties of these “sensing skins” change linearly in response to applied stimuli (e.g., cyclic loading, fatigue cracks, impact, and, corrosion). The versatility of nanostructures is explored for designing embedded multilayer self-sensing and self-powered wireless systems. In addition, the design of ultra-strong composites, energy harvesters, biosensors, and pathogen/pollutant membranes are also presented.
Bio: Mr. Kenneth Loh is a Ph.D. candidate of Civil & Environmental Engineering and is a M.S. candidate of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan; Mr. Loh received his M.S. degree in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2005 and B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2004.
For more information, contact:
Arlene Preus
a-preus@northwestern.edu
847 467-6510
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
Seminar by: Sven Leyffer, Argonne National Laboratory
Tuesday April 1, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Tech Bldg Room M228
Topic: Branch-and-Refine for Global Optimization of Mixed Integer Nonconex Optimization Problems
Speaker: Sven Leyffer
Abstract: The efficient management of energy is one of the most important challenges of this century, We consider an application arising in the efficient management of energy, namely the problem of optimal power flow. This problem is pivotal to the management of transmission systems. Especially, we focus on the tertiary voltage control (TVC) problem, whose aim it is to predict the effects of an expansion of the network, or to determine the optimal operating conditions of the existing network. This application gives rise to a nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem. Nonconvex MINLPs are among the most difficult optimization problem: they combine the difficulty of optimizing over discrete variable sets with the challenges of handing nonconvex functions. We propose a new global optimization method for solving noncovex MINLPs. Our method decomposes the nonliner functions into one-and two-dimensional components for which piecewise linear envelopes are constructed using ideas similar to special ordered sets. The resulting relaxation is then successively refined by branching on integer or continuous variables. We prove many interesting results, and present some preliminary numerical experience.
For more information, contact:
Gwen Hoffman
g-hoffman2@northwestern.edu
(847) 491-3576
Industrial Engineering/ Management Sciences
ChBE Student Seminars: J. Rea and E. West, Northwestern University
Thursday April 3, 2008 at 9:00 AM — Tech LR4
Engineering the in vitro ovarian follicle culture environment: Developmental regulation by the culture matrix and translational progress
Erin West
Northwestern University
Peptide-Lipoplexes and Protein Polymers for Gene Delivery
Jennifer Rea
Northwestern University
Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 9:00 AM
The Technological Institute, Lecture Room 4
2145 Sheridan Road
Refreshments will be served at 8:45 AM
Event URL: http://www.chem-biol-eng.northwestern.edu/news/seminars/
For more information, contact:
Allison Sillers
a-strick@northwestern.edu
847-491-2773
Chemical & Biological Engineering Colloquia
EECS SEMINAR: "Exploiting Multicore Parallelism with Dynamic Instrumentation and Compilation"
Thursday April 3, 2008 at 11:00 AM — Technological Institute - Room L324
EECS SEMINAR
Dr. Chi-Keung (CK) Luk
Software Pathfinding and Innovation Group
Intel Corporation
"Exploiting Multicore Parallelism with Dynamic Instrumentation and Compilation"
The emerging multicore era has brought many opportunities and challenges to systems research. Two of the challenges I have been focusing on are (i) how to provide detailed analysis of parallel programs and (ii) how to map computations in a parallel program to the underlying hardware in order to achieve the optimal performance.
For (i), we have developed the Pin dynamic instrumentation system, which has become very popular for writing architectural and program analysis tools. By inserting instrumentation codes on the fly, Pin can perform fine-grain monitoring of the architectural state of a program. As an example, I will discuss a parallel programming tool called Thread Checker which we built with Pin for detecting common parallel programming bugs like data races and deadlocks. I will also discuss the dynamic compilation techniques behind Pin. In addition, I will present an extension of Pin called PinOS, which performs whole-system instrumentation (i.e. including both OS and applications) by using virtualization techniques.
For (ii), I have developed the Qilin parallel programming system, which exploits the hardware parallelism available on machines with a multicore CPU and a GPU. Qilin provides a C++ API for writing data-parallel operations so that the compiler is alleviated from the difficult job of extracting parallelism from serial code. At runtime, the Qilin compiler automatically partitions these API calls into tasks and maps these tasks to the underlying hardware using an adaptive algorithm. Preliminary results show that our parallel system can achieve significant speedups (above 10x) over the serial case for some important computation kernels.
At the end, I will outline my future works in parallel programming, compilation, and virtualization.
Chi-Keung (CK) Luk
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Brooke Hildebrand
brooke@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-3451
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
CBB Seminar: Dr. Jake Yue Chen - IUPUI
Friday April 4, 2008 at 2:00 PM — Cook Hall, room 3118 A&B, 2220 Campus Drive
CBB Seminar - Translational Systems Biology: Connectivity, Network Models, & Panel Biomarker Discoveries
Dr. Jake Yue Chen - IUPUI
Assistant Professor - Informatics & Computer and Information Science
Abstract:
Systems biology is an emerging research area that aims to study complex molecular mechanisms of cells in the context of molecular networks and biological pathways. “Translational systems biology”, which I modeled after the term “translational medicine”, is the application of systems biology techniques to post-genome drug discovery and biomarker discovery problems. Translational systems biology relies on the development of tools to enable the iterative development of connectivity maps, network models, and predictive biology solutions. For each of these three topic areas, I will describe recent research trends and our work. I will describe our c-maps web server, which integrates text mining and conventional data mining techniques, to connect genes with drug compounds in their disease context. I will describe SPINNER, a new simple yet effective algorithm to rank proteins/genes based on biomolecular interaction networks. I will also describe GeneTerrain, a visualization software tool based on molecular network models of a disease, to discover and test molecular biomarkers.
For more information, contact:
Suzana Han
suzana@northwestern.edu
847-467-1972
McCormick - Computational Biology and Bioinformati
Enviornmental Engineering & Science Seminar
Friday April 4, 2008 at 2:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Rd/A230
Ms. Carla Ng from the department of Chemical and Biological Engineering here at Northwestern will present her talk entitled "Climate Change Impacts on bioaccumulation risk: Insights from Cosmopolitan Species."
For more information, contact:
Neal Blair
n-blair@northwestern.edu
847-491-8790
McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering
Master of Project Management Seminar
Monday April 7, 2008 at 2:30 PM — Tech Building, 2145 Sheridan Rd., CEE Conference Room, A230
Ms. Erin Faulkner, Director of Project Controls from the Westfield Corporation will be the guest speaker at the MPM Seminar. The seminar topic will be on "Project Controls: An Alternative Career Choice in Construction."
For more information, contact:
Prof. Raymond J. Krizek or Leona Lealaitafea
l-lealaitafea@northwestern.edu
847/491-7246
Master of Project Management
EECS Seminar: "Learning by Learning to Communicate"
Tuesday April 8, 2008 at 11:00 AM — Ford ITW Auditorium
Human intelligence appears to be a product of cooperation among many specialists. I show how a system of specialists can capture cross-specialist knowledge through a struggle to agree on signals for communicating with one another. This process of "learning by learning to communicate" may help to explain how humans develop our unique capacity for the "high-level" agile cooperation that permeates our daily lives.
I have created mechanisms for signal agreement that exploit the phenomenon of "communication bootstrapping," in which shared experiences form a basis for agreement on a system of signals. These mechanisms are demonstrated using a vision specialist and a hearing specialist that jointly observe a simulated four-way intersection. As they agree on signals, the two specialists capture some dynamics of
the simulation as differences in how they interpret these signals.
Jacob Beal is a postdoctoral associate in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, where he recently completed his Ph.D. under Prof. Gerald Jay Sussman. His research interests center on the engineering of robust adaptive systems, with a focus on problems of system integration for human-level intelligence and on problems of modeling and control for spatially-distributed networks like sensor networks, robotic swarms, and cells during morphogenesis.
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Zach
Zach@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-467-1333
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Joint MechEng & Civil Eng Seminar: Oluwaseyi Balogun, PhD, NU
Wednesday April 9, 2008 at 4:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Rd, Tech Institute, Civil Conf Rm A230
OPTICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF MICRO- AND NANOSCALE STRUCTURES
Abstract: Quantitative measurement and understanding of the thermo-mechanical behavior of materials on micro- and nanometer length scales are critical to the development of a wide variety of emerging material systems including composite structures, high temperature ceramic coatings, and micro- and nanoelectromechanical devices. The physical properties of these material systems are intrinsically heterogeneous and length scale dependent, as such, measurement of the scale specific material properties is needed in order to accurately predict the operational performance and reliability of these systems. Techniques that rely on optical methods for monitoring thermo-acoustic waves generated by ultrafast or fast bit rate intensity modulated lasers are particularly suitable for the characterization of thermo-mechanical properties at micro- and nanometer length scales. These techniques are non-contact, non-destructive, and their spatial and temporal resolutions are high.
I will present some recent results detailing my progress towards the development of optical methods for the quantitative characterization of the elastic, internal and external structural, and interfacial properties of micro- and nanoscale material systems. These material systems include thin film structures, functionally graded high temperature ceramic coatings, fully dense and nanoporous thin metallic membranes, and nanoelectromechanical resonators.
I will also present an overview of future directions that include the development of hybrid atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical methods for nanoscale thermo-mechanical characterization. The combination of optical methods with atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques can greatly improve the lateral spatial resolution of optical measurements, as the interaction region of the optical fields with a sample surface is localized and enhanced in the vicinity of the nanometer scale AFM tip.
B
For more information, contact:
Arlene Preus
a-preus@northwestern.edu
847 467-6510
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
ChBE Student Seminar: C.Fredlake, Northwestern University
Thursday April 10, 2008 at 9:00 AM — Tech LR4
The design of polymer systems for high performance and ultra-fast microchip DNA sequencing by electrophoresis
Christopher Fredlake
Northwestern University
Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 9:00 AM
The Technological Institute, Lecture Room 4
2145 Sheridan Road
Refreshments will be served at 8:45 AM
Event URL: http://www.chem-biol-eng.northwestern.edu/news/seminars/
For more information, contact:
Allison Sillers
a-strick@northwestern.edu
847-491-2773
Chemical & Biological Engineering Colloquia
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Seminar
Thursday April 10, 2008 at 10:00 AM — 2133 Sheridan Road, Ford Building, ITW Auditorium, Rm 1.350
Using multiple surrogates for design optimization
Abstract: Engineering design often requires such a large number of simulations that it is impossible to use the high-fidelity models used for analysis. Instead it is common to use surrogates obtained by fitting simple algebraic models to simulations at a cloud of points in design space. In the past, the cost of fitting such surrogates was an important issue, so that inexpensive surrogates, such as polynomial response surfaces were most popular. Today, it is affordable to use more computationally expensive surrogates such as Kriging, but the choice among dozens of possible surrogates is often based on personal preference and past experience. Instead of choosing a single surrogate, the presentation will make the case for using a number of surrogates and carrying multiple design optimizations in parallel. Examples from structural and CFD design will be given.
Bio: Raphael Haftka received his BS and MS at Israel Institute of Technology and his PhD at UC San Diego. He is the author of two textbooks on structural optimization as well as several hundred papers. Before teaching at Florida he has taught at Virginia Tech and two IITs (Chicago, and Haifa). He is zealous about collaborating with colleagues, has co-authored papers with more than 100 peers and all of his PhD students are co-directed by other faculty members including several faculty members in France and Korea.
For more information, contact:
Arlene Preus
a-preus@northwestern.edu
847 467-6510
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
BME Seminar John Linehan, Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University
Thursday April 10, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Tech M345
Medical Device Innovation
In science, the important problems arise in the space at the intersections of disciplines. For bioengineers, it’s biology, chemistry and engineering. Biomedical engineers are motivated to use their deep understanding of science to create devices, processes, and systems with the patient in mind. Innovation is defined inventiveness put to use. The US is the world leader in medical device innovation. Many unmet clinical needs still exist in the healthcare space. This talk will put the medical device industry into context, discuss how medical devices are developed and brought to the clinic, and offer a plan on how one can prepare his/herself to be an innovator.
For more information, contact:
Robert Walsh
robert-walsh@northwestern.edu
847-467-1213
McCormick - Biomedical Engineering Department
CBB Student Seminars - Sankar Narayan Krishna & Pamela Shaw
Friday April 11, 2008 at 2:00 PM — Cook Hall, room 3118 A&B, 2220 Campus Drive
CBB Student Seminars -
Sankar Narayan Krishna - Structure-Activity Relationship Study of MEK-4 & Genistein
Research Advisor:
Raymond Bergan, Feinberg School of Medicine
Pamela Shaw - Characteristics of Epstein-Barr Virus Envelope Protein gp42: Application of Sequence and Structure Analysis
Research Advisor:
Richard M. Longnecker, Department of Microbiology-Immunology, Feinberg School of Medicine
For more information, contact:
Suzana Han
suzana@northwestern.edu
847-467-1972
McCormick - Computational Biology and Bioinformati
Environmental Engineering & Science Seminar
Friday April 11, 2008 at 2:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Rd/A230
Dr.Eric Masanet of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab will present his talk entitled "Climate Change Mitigation through Supply Chain Carbon Management: What's the Potential?"
For more information, contact:
Neal Blair
n-blair@northwestern.edu
847-491-8790
McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering
EECS "Meet the Faculty" SEMINAR: Dr. Gokhan Memik, Assistant Professor
Friday April 11, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Technological Institute - Room L324
EECS “MEET THE FACULTY” SEMINAR
“Learning and Leveraging the Relationship between Architectural Properties and User Satisfaction”
Dr. Gokhan Memik, Assistant Professor
Lisa Wissner-Slivka and Benjamin Slivka Chair in Computer Science
Processors will continue to rely on technology scaling (i.e., smaller manufacturing technologies) to meet aggressive performance targets. Although technology scaling has been in the core of advances in professor performance in the previous decades, further scaling introduces several important challenges: power densities are increasing rapidly, processor reliability is diminishing, and yield levels are going down drastically. In this talk, I will overview our efforts in minimizing these effects through architectural schemes.
The first part of the talk focuses on a recent project aimed at understanding the user satisfaction with architectural decisions. Specifically, we have investigated the relationship between microarchitectural parameters and user satisfaction: we analyzed the relationship between hardware performance counter (HPC) readings and individual satisfaction levels reported by users for several interactive applications. Our results show that the satisfaction of the user is strongly correlated to the performance of the underlying hardware and more importantly, that user satisfaction is highly user-dependent. To take advantage of these observations, we developed a framework called Individualized Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (iDVFS). A set of user studies demonstrates that iDVFS reduces the CPU power consumption by over 25% in representative applications as compared to the Windows DVFS algorithm.
In the second part of the talk, I will highlight various other ongoing projects. We have developed variable access latency caches that can be used to increase the performance under large variations in circuit properties (i.e., process and thermal variations). I will then describe how architectures can be design
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Brooke Hildebrand
brooke@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-3451
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Master of Project Management Seminar
Monday April 14, 2008 at 2:30 PM — Tech Building, 2145 Sheridan Rd., CEE Conference Room, A230
Mr. Kunal Panchal from Kenny Construction will be the guest speaker at the MPM seminar. The seminar topic will be on "Preparing for the Real World".
For more information, contact:
Prof. Raymond J. Krizek or Leona Lealaitafea
l-lealaitafea@northwestern.edu
847/491-7246
Master of Project Management
Joint Mech Eng & Civin Eng Seminar: Prof. Daniel Balint, Imperial College, London
Tuesday April 15, 2008 at 9:30 AM — 2145 Sheridan Rd., Tech. Instit., Civil Conf erence Room. A230
Thermal Barrier Coatings and Material Size Effects
Abstract: This talk comprises overviews with select details of two different but related topics on connecting small scale processes to macroscopic mechanical behavior and performance of solid material systems. It will begin with the anatomy of a thermal barrier coating (TBC) and a discussion of its industrial relevance; one example of the latter is gas turbines which are reliant on TBCs for thermal protection. Post-mortems of turbine blades taken out of engines have long indicated that spallation is frequently initiated by a morphological instability in the thin thermally grown oxide layer. Seminal experimental evidence of oxide rumpling will be presented, followed by a comprehensive analytical model that captures all the traits of this important failure mode. The mechanistic causes of oxide rumpling will be discovered through a series of model studies. The talk will then divert to discrete dislocation analyses of size effects in material deformation. Size effects not captured by traditional continuum plasticity theories arise naturally when the micromechanisms of plastic deformation are modeled explicitly. Dislocation structures evolve under applied loading from nucleation, glide and climb events, as well as annihilations, interactions with obstacles and grain boundaries. Behaviors commonly observed in polycrystals are natural outcomes of the formulation, including slip transfer across grain boundaries and inverse scaling of flow stress with grain size as a result of dislocation pile-ups. A brief overview of discrete dislocation plasticity will be presented, followed by a series of studies conducted to probe the origins of important size effects: (i) grain size on flow strength (ii) grain size on a mode I crack (iii) thin film thickness on indentation response (iv) asperity size in frictional contacts (v) specimen size on uniaxial deformation.
For more information, contact:
Arlene Preus
a-preus@northwestern.edu
847 467-6510
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
Seminar by: PANOS PARDALOS, University of Florida
Tuesday April 15, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Tech Bldg Room M228
Topic: Nonlinear Integer Programming Applications in Biomedicine
Speaker: PANOS PARDALOS
Abstract: In recent years optimization has been widely used in many problems in biomedicine. These problems are inherently complex and very difficult to solve. In this talk we are going to focus on global optimization techniques (multi-quadratic 0-1 integer programming) in computational neurosciences and biclustering (nonlinear fractional 0-1 integer programming) based data mining approaches in cancer research. In addition, several other applications will be briefly discussed.
For more information, contact:
Gwen Hoffman
g-hoffman2@northwestern.edu
(847) 491-3576
Industrial Engineering/ Management Sciences
EECS Distinguished Seminar: "COMPUTING NUMERICALLY WITH FUNCTIONS INSTEAD OF NUMBERS"
Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center - ITW Auditorium
EECS Distinguished Seminar Series
“COMPUTING NUMERICALLY WITH FUNCTIONS INSTEAD OF NUMBERS”
Lloyd N. Trefethen
Oxford University
For a long time there have been two kinds of mathematical computation: symbolic and numerical. Symbolic computing manipulates algebraic expressions exactly, but it is unworkable for many applications since the space and time requirements tend to grow combinatorially. Numerical computing avoids the combinatorial explosion by rounding to 16 digits at each step, but it works just with individual numbers, not algebraic expressions. This talk will describe a new kind of computing that aims to combine the feel of symbolics with the speed of numerics. The idea is to represent functions by Chebyshev expansions whose length is determined adaptively to maintain an accuracy of close to machine precision. Our "chebfun" system is implemented in object-oriented Matlab, with familiar vector operations such as sum and diff being overloaded to analogues for functions such as integration and differentiation. The system is surprisingly effective, and a demonstration will be given together with a discussion of the underlying mathematics and of the prospects for the future. The chebfun system is a joint project with Zachary Battles, Ricardo Pachon, Rodrigo Platte, and Toby Driscoll.
Nick Trefethen is Professor of Numerical Analysis and head of the Numerical Analysis Group at Oxford University. He was educated at Harvard and Stanford and held professorial positions at NYU, MIT, and Cornell before coming to Oxford in 1997. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. As an author he is known for his books Numerical Linear Algebra (1997), Spectral Methods in MATLAB (2000), Schwarz-Christoffel Mapping (2002), and Spectra and Pseudospectra (2005). He is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher, with about 90 journal publications in numerical analysis and applied mathematics, and has served as editor for ma
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Brooke Hildebrand
brooke@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-3451
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
ChBE Seminar: K. Baggerly, University of Texas, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Thursday April 17, 2008 at 9:00 AM — Tech LR4
Cell Lines, Microarrays, Drugs and Disease: Trying to Predict Response to Chemotherapy
Professor Keith Baggerly
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 9:00 AM
The Technological Institute, Lecture Room 4
2145 Sheridan Road
Refreshments will be served at 8:45 AM
Event URL: http://www.chem-biol-eng.northwestern.edu/news/seminars/
For more information, contact:
Allison Sillers
a-strick@northwestern.edu
847-491-2773
Chemical & Biological Engineering Colloquia
EECS Distinguished Seminar: Applying Tissue Specific Imaging to Brain Imaging in Multiple Sclerosis
Thursday April 17, 2008 at 10:00 AM — Technological Institute - Room A230
EECS SEMINAR
Vasiliki N. Ikonomidou
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NIH)
"Applying Tissue Specific Imaging to Brain Imaging in Multiple Sclerosis"
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is currently the method of choice for anatomical exams in the central nervous system, since it offers excellent soft tissue contrast. However, despite being very sensitive to even small tissue differentiation, it lacks specificity, making it difficult to uniquely associate MRI changes with specific underlying pathology. The talk will discuss the application of a new anatomical MRI technique, Tissue Specific Imaging (TSI), to brain imaging in Multiple Sclerosis. TSI provides three images, one for each major brain tissue type (gray matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid). By combining the information from three images, instead of just one, TSI offers a new way to characterize tissue and lesions. The proposed technique is sensitive to early tissue differentiation, but at the same time is able to distinguish more advanced tissue damage, thus combining sensitivity and specificity in tissue characterization.
Vasiliki N. Ikonomidou received her MSc and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1997 and 2002, respectively. Following that, she received a Visiting Fellowship from the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health, where she worked at the Laboratory of Functional and Molecular Imaging under Dr. Jeff H. Duyn focusing on development of novel, high-contrast techniques for high-field MRI. Since 2006 she has been with the Neuroimmunology Branch of NINDS/NIH, where she has been working on the application of MRI techniques to the diagnosis and disease characterization in multiple sclerosis patients. Dr Ikonomidou is a recipient of the URSI Young Scientist Award and a member of the IEEE.
Host: Prof. Sotirios A. Tsaftaris
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Brooke Hildebrand
brooke@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-3451
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
BME Seminar: Claus-Peter Richter, NU, Asst Professor, MED-Otolaryngology
Thursday April 17, 2008 at 4:00 PM — TECH M345
Optical radiation in neural interfaces - a paradigm shift in neural stimulation.
Neural prosthetic devices are artificial extensions to the body that restore or supplement nervous system function that was lost during disease or injury. The devices stimulate remaining neural tissue providing some input to the nervous system. Hereby, the challenge for neural prostheses is to stimulate remaining neurons selectively. However, the electrical current spread does not allow easily stimulating small neuron populations. In neural prostheses developments, particular success has been realized in the cochlear prostheses development. The devices bypass damaged hair cells in the auditory system by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Stimulating discrete spiral ganglion cell populations in cochlear implant users' ears is similar to the encoding of small acoustic frequency bands in a normal-hearing person's ear. In contemporary cochlear implants, however, the injected electric current is spread widely along the scala tympani and across turns. Consequently, stimulation of spatially discrete spiral ganglion cell populations is difficult. One goal of implant device development is to design cochlear implants that stimulate smaller populations of spiral ganglion cells. Extreme spatially selective stimulation is possible using light.
The presentation will demonstrate that stimulation of auditory neurons is possible with optical radiation, it is extremely selective and it is possible at high repetition rates.
For more information, contact:
Robert Walsh
robert-walsh@northwestern.edu
847-467-1213
McCormick - Biomedical Engineering Department
Master of Project Management Seminar
Monday April 21, 2008 at 2:30 PM — Tech Building, 2145 Sheridan Rd., CEE Conference Room, A230
Mr. Charles Porter from the Development Management Associates will be the guest speaker at the MPM seminar. The seminar topic will be on the "Real Estate Development Process".
For more information, contact:
Prof. Raymond J. Krizek or Leona Lealaitafea
l-lealaitafea@northwestern.edu
847/491-7246
Master of Project Management
EECS SEMINAR: "Interoperability: calculi for multi-language programs"
Tuesday April 22, 2008 at 11:00 AM — Technological Institute - Room L324
EECS SEMINAR
Dr. Robby Findler
University of Chicago
"Interoperability: calculi for multi-language programs"
Inter-language interoperability is big business, as the success of Microsoft's .NET, COM and Sun's JVM show. Programming language designers are designing programming languages that reflect that fact --- JScheme, SML#, and Scala, to name a few, all treat interoperability as a central design feature. Still, current multi-language research tends not to focus on the semantics of interoperation features, but only on how to implement them efficiently. This talk will discuss recent efforts to model the semantics of multi-language systems using techniques that abstract away the low-level details of interoperability like garbage collection and representation coherence, and instead focus on semantic properties like type-safety, equivalence, and termination behavior. These techniques allow us to easily adapt standard proof techniques such as subject-reduction, logical relations, and operational equivalence for use on multilanguage systems.
Robby Findler is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. He received his PhD from Rice University in 2002. His research area is programming languages and he focuses on programming environments, software contracts, and tools for modeling operational semantics. In addition, he maintains DrScheme, the world's most widely used Scheme program development environment and he co-authored the book "How to Design Programs."
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Brooke Hildebrand
brooke@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-3451
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Seminar by: Agam Sinha, The MITRE Corporation
Tuesday April 22, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Tech Bldg Room M228
Topic: A Peek into Modeling and Simulation Applications to Air Transportation System
Speaker: Agam Sinha
Abstract: This seminar will cover a brief introduction to the Air Transportation System with a focus on Air Traffic Control and Management perspective. After discussing the current status and the future direction for the U.S. Air Traffic Management System, a kaleidoscope of specific applications of modeling and simulation and their relation to decision-making will be presented. Participant interactions are expected and encouraged.
For more information, contact:
Gwen Hoffman
g-hoffman2@northwestern.edu
(847) 491-3576
Industrial Engineering/ Management Sciences
ChBE Seminar: J.Schieber, Illinois Institute of Technology
Thursday April 24, 2008 at 9:00 AM — Tech LR4
Multiscale modeling of macromolecular dynamics in concentrated environments
Professor Jay Schieber
Illinois Institute of Technology
Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 9:00 AM
The Technological Institute, Lecture Room 4
2145 Sheridan Road
Refreshments will be served at 8:45 AM
Event URL: http://www.chem-biol-eng.northwestern.edu/news/seminars/
For more information, contact:
Allison Sillers
a-strick@northwestern.edu
847-491-2773
Chemical & Biological Engineering Colloquia
Theoretical and Applies Mechanics Seminar: Prof. Robert Carpick, Univ of PA
Thursday April 24, 2008 at 10:00 AM — 2133 Sheridan Road,, Ford Building, ITW Auditorium, Rm 1.350
Nanotribology of Carbon: How the Topmost Atoms Matter
Abstract: Friction and adhesion are critical factors in micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (M/NEMS) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) applications, and these forces are yet to be well-understood or controlled. Carbon-based films are a prime candidate for these applications because of their high strength, low friction, and stable surfaces [1], but the composition of the surfaces must be controlled at the atomic and molecular level. We use atomic force microscopy (AFM) determine nanoscale adhesion and friction as a function of surface atomic structure. We present studies of diamond, where the final atomic layer is tailored. Characterization of the surface atomic bonding configuration (including the carbon hybridization state) is is determined by synchrotron-based X-ray absorption spectroscopy and other surface spectroscopy methods. These experiments show that nanoscale adhesion and friction are directly affected by the nature of these bonds. Exposure to atomic hydrogen (H) terminates the surface with a H monolayer, maximizes the pure diamond bonding character, and correspondingly reduces friction and adhesion to the van der Waals limit [2,3]. Furthermore, substituting H with deuterium reduces nanoscale friction significantly indicating a direct link between surface vibrations and friction [4]. We will discuss the possible physical origins of this frictional isotope effect.
[1] D. S. Grierson & R. W. Carpick, "Nanotribology of carbon-based materials". Nano Today 2, 12 (2007) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1748-0132(07)70139-1
[2] A. V. Sumant, D. S. Grierson, J. E. Gerbi, J. Birrell, U. D. Lanke, O. Auciello, J. A. Carlisle & R. W. Carpick, "Toward the ultimate tribological interface: Surface chemistry and nanotribology of ultrananocrystalline diamond". Adv. Mater. 17, 1039 (2005) http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adma.200401264
[3] A. V. Sumant, D. S. Grierson, J. E. Gerbi, J. A. Carlisle, O. Auciello & R. W
For more information, contact:
Arlene Preus
a-preus@northwestern.edu
847 467-6510
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
Environmental Engineering & Science Seminars
Friday April 25, 2008 at 2:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Rd /Tech A230
Professor Franz Geiger from the department of Chemistry will present his talk entitled" Transport Across Environmemtal Interfaces Studied Directly in real time & without Lables:From Metal Ions to Pharmaceuticals."
For more information, contact:
Neal Blair
n-blair@northwestern.edu
847-491-8790
McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering
EECS Distinguished Seminar: "THE FUTURE OF COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURE: DOWN, UP, AND SIDEWAYS"
Friday April 25, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Technological Institute - Room L324
EECS DISTINGUISHED SEMINAR
John Laird
University of Michigan
"THE FUTURE OF COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURE: DOWN, UP, AND SIDEWAYS"
Over the last twenty-five years, in both AI and psychology, research on cognitive architecture has become an important approach for developing integrated theories of both artificial and natural intelligence. Recently, there has been a surge in research in cognitive architecture with the development of many new architectures such as Polyscheme, LIDA, MicroPsi, ICARUS, Clarion, NARS, and Companions, in addition to stalwarts such as Soar, ACT-R, EPIC, 4CAPS, and 4D/RCS. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of the current state of cognitive architecture research and then launch into speculation as to the future of cognitive architectures, focusing on potential progress in three directions: Down - making contact to the brain and advances in computer technology; Up - developing general cognitive capabilities that are critical for achieving human-level behavior and that rise above the details of specific architectures; and Sideways - extending existing architectures with new capabilities and into new problems, and developing methodologies for evaluating and comparing cognitive architectures.
John Laird attended the University of Michigan where he majored in Communication and Computer Science in the college of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts (LSA). After graduating in 1975, he worked at Burroughs Corp. for a year in Plymouth, MI. At Burroughs, he worked on the compiler for the S1000 check sorting system. John entered the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon University in the Fall of 1976. From 1976 to 1984, he was a graduate student. Throughout his graduate career, John had the great pleasure to work with and learn from Allen Newell. One of the giants of AI, Allen was critical to John's success as a graduate student and beyond. While at Carnegie Mellon, he met Paul Rosenbloom, who shared John's goal of exploring t
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Brooke Hildebrand
brooke@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-3451
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Dean's Seminar Series Presents Mark Mills
Tuesday April 29, 2008 at 4:30 PM — Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center, ITW Classroom
The McCormick Dean's Seminar Series and the Center for Energy-Efficient Transportation present Mark Mills, founding partner in Digital Power Capital, a private equity venture fund that invests in new and emerging energy technologies at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 in the ITW Classroom in the Ford Design Center. Mills’ lecture is entitled, “Energy - From Oil Sands to Data Centers: Unlimited Supply & Infinite Demand.”
For more information, contact:
Carol Berry
cberry@northwestern.edu
847-491-3195
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Scienc
