USC Viterbi: Game Theory. Spring 2015

SPRING 2015 28

5 WAYS GAMES CAN CHANGE THE WORLD From autism to teaching kids math

32

CS@SC Trojan strengths in computer science

6

CLOSE-UP The first-ever 3-D portrait of a sitting U.S. president

Milind Tambe's game theory software protects our nation’s ports, airlines and trains. Now, it’s being used to protect Earth’s most endangered animals.

PRETTY IN George Ban-Weiss believes that reective residential rooftops can help cool our homes and even reduce air pollution.

By Marc Ballon

PHOTO: NOE MONTES

George Ban-Weiss is to rooftops what Michael Jordan is to basketball: an original.

The assistant professor at the USC Viterbi Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has undertaken groundbreaking research into how dark and other non-reflecting residential roofs contribute to warmer homes, higher air conditioning bills and “urban heat islands”— a phenomenon in which cities are several degrees warmer than surrounding areas. That warmer air in some cases exacerbates air pollutants like ground-level ozone.

In two recent papers, Ban-Weiss and his co-authors looked at roofs in seven California cities: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Bakersfield, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and San Diego.

Employing algorithms to extract data from aerial images along with sophisticated modeling, they found that dark, heat-absorbing residential roofs predominated in all the municipalities.

Los Angeles, for instance, posted an average of 0.17 on a sunlight reflectance scale between

0 and 1. That means the majority of the city’s rooftops, especially residential roofs, are dark.

They also found that converting Bakersfield’s heat-absorbing roofs to reflective materials could reduce afternoon summertime temperatures by up to 0.2 degrees Celsius.

“If you change roofs from dark to very reflective, you can save, on average, 10 to 20 percent on the air conditioning energy bills, as well cool the surrounding environment a bit,” said BanWeiss, whom MIT Technology Review named in August 2014 among the world’s 35 top innovators under the age of 35.

Ban-Weiss’ roof expertise appears to have had an impact on policymaking.

In 2013, Ban-Weiss made a presentation at a conference organized by the advocacy group Climate Resolve on ways to improve the city’s climate resilience. Then–Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa delivered the opening remarks at the event.

“The maps that I created made it very clear that the current state of residential roofs in Los

Angeles is very inefficient and that there’s room for a lot of improvement,” Ban-Weiss said.

Through his staff, Villaraigosa was already aware of Ban-Weiss’ research, according to Craig Tranby, environmental supervisor at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. A few months after the conference, the Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance mandating that roofs on new homes be light colored or reflect in the near-infrared part of the spectrum so that they maintain their dark appearance without absorbing heat. Mayor Eric Garcetti signed the ordinance in January 2014.

“George definitely played a role in all this,” Tranby said.

Ban-Weiss hopes his research findings might encourage other cities to follow Los Angeles’ lead in regulating residential roofs.

“It’s fulfilling to know that the research I’m doing could have an impact on actual policy and help result in reductions in air conditioning energy use and heat in cities,” Ban-Weiss said.

CONTENTS WHAT'S NEXT

INTRO IFC

PRETTY IN WHITE

4

DEAN'S MESSAGE: CS@SC

5

THE CAMPAIGN FOR USC

14

WHEN WILL WE HAVE LUKE SKYWALKER’S PROSTHETIC HAND?

36

A HELPING HAND

38

PAYING IT FORWARD

15

SHHH! THE INTERNET IS SLEEPING

39

IN MEMORIAM

15

WATCH THIS VIDEO TO SCREEN YOURSELF FOR PARKINSON’S DISEASE

39

A RIGHT TO CLEAN WATER

40

MAD INVENTOR

ARTICLES 6

PIXELS, NOT PAINT: ENGINEERS CREATE THE MOST REALISTIC PRESIDENTIAL PORTRAIT EVER

7

WHO’S THE BEST SHOOTER IN THE NBA?

8

REIMAGINED

10

FAC U LT Y A C C O L A D E S

10

SECONDHAND SMOKE: TOXIC HEAVY METALS IN E-CIGARETTES AND TRADITIONAL CIGARETTES

11

16

MEET ICT’S VIRTUAL HUMANS

EDITORIAL

18

YOUR FRIENDS ARE COOLER THAN YOU ARE

19

H E Y, Y O U TA L K I N G T O ME?

20

INVESTORS BET ON THE STARTUP GARAGE

21

GAME CHANGER

22

A SAFER WORLD

28

5 WAYS GAMES WILL CHANGE THE WORLD

12

THE MAGIC OF CHEMISTRY

32

CS@SC

12

ENGINEERING THE PERFECT PB&J

34

CS@SC:

BY THE NUMBERS

13

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS

35

FIXING THE INTERNET

Visit USC Viterbi magazine's new digital incarnation.

Find motion comics, video extras and additional stories at:

USCViterbi

Managing Editor Marc Ballon

ISSN 2329-0498

Art Director Michelle Henry

SPRING 2015

Dean Yannis C. Yortsos Executive Director, Communications and Marketing Michael Chung Editor Adam Smith

2

Spring 2015

42

FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR ACCIDENT: LESSONS LEARNED FOR U.S. NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

43

NET NEUTRALITY AND THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET

CHANGING THE

FEATURES

DEAR DRAGONBOT

STUDENT LIFE

ALUMNI

Cassie Paton, Robert Perkins, Samantha Romero, Hai Vu

Graphic Design Friend of a Friend

Photography David Ahntholz, Luke Fisher, Michelle Henry, Noe Montes, Michelle Park

Contributing Writers Orli Belman, Cathi Douglas, David Haldane, Greg Hardesty, Megan Hazle, Katie McKissick, Matthew Kredell,

Artwork Peter Bollinger, Katherine Duffy, Michelle Henry, Douglas Holgate, Katie McKissick, Huan Tran

Volume 14, Issue 1 USC Viterbi Magazine is published twice a year for the alumni and friends of the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California.

Letters to the editor and comments are welcome.

Please send them to:

CONVERSATION 44

MANY LIVES OF ENGINEERS

THE LAST WORD 48

Q&A: JAMIE MONTGOMERY

MAGAZINE.VITERBI.USC.EDU

Or email them to: viterbi.communications@usc.edu OFFICE OF THE DEAN 213.740.7832 viterbi.usc.edu Engineering+ viterbi.usc.edu/engineeringplus OFFICE OF ADVANCEMENT 213.740.2502

USC Viterbi Magazine Alumni Relations 1150 S. Olive Street, Suite 1510 viterbi.usc.edu/alumni Los Angeles, CA 90015

Corporate & Foundation Relations viterbi.usc.edu/ corporate Development viterbi.usc.edu/giving OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING viterbi.usc.edu OFFICE OF ADMISSION AND STUDENT AFFAIRS 800.526.3347

IN MEMORIAM: Philanthropist Erna Viterbi dies at 81.

The wife of USC Trustee Andrew Viterbi and USC Viterbi joint namesake was a staunch supporter of USC.

By Carl Marziali

Erna Viterbi, philanthropist, joint namesake of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and wife of USC trustee Andrew Viterbi, died in San Diego on Feb. 17.

She was 81.

“For well over five decades, Erna was Andy’s beloved wife and trusted partner as they built an extraordinary life together,” said USC President C. L. Max Nikias. “She earned the affection and admiration of everyone in the Trojan Family, and we take comfort in knowing that her remarkable life story will inspire generations of Trojans to come.”

Life during wartime She was born Erna Finci in 1934 to a Jewish family in Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia. During World War II, Erna, her brother and parents fled the city as the German army moved in.

Heading for the Italian army in Montenegro, the family reached the army’s positions at the same time as partisans blew up a troop carrier. In reprisal, the Italians arrested many civilians. Among them were Erna’s father, Joseph, her grandfather and two uncles. Seeing them in handcuffs, she burst into tears.

“Let them go,” she recalled an Italian officer saying.

“I don’t want to see this little girl cry.”

The family found shelter for a time with a sympathetic family in Parma, Italy, before waiting out the war in Switzerland. They settled in California in 1950.

She would meet her future husband in 1956, when Andrew Viterbi was working in the communications research group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. Mutual friends and Andrew’s cousins encouraged Erna and Andrew to go out on a date.

“And I guess they were right,” Erna recalled in an interview years later.

Andrew said Erna “was destined to be my wife.”

They married in 1958, a year after Andrew began his association with USC by pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering while continuing his research at JPL. Andrew realized the solution to his now-famous Viterbi algorithm, which made possible error-free digital wireless transmission, while he and Erna sat on the beach and watched their two small children, Audrey and Alan, playing in the sand.

Erna would be at Andrew’s side through the wireless revolution, which for the Viterbis culminated with the founding of San Diego-based Qualcomm, the first wireless communications company to incorporate the Viterbi algorithm. Qualcomm’s superior technology helped it become a world leader in digital communications.

Legacy at USC In 2004, Erna and Andrew decided to make a naming gift to the institution where he earned his doctorate: USC’s School of Engineering.

“I immediately endorsed his idea of giving it to USC, because I felt it had done great things for his career,” Erna said.

Thanks to the couple’s historic $52 million gift, at that time the largest for any engineering school in

Erna and Andrew Viterbi, photographed here in 2005, named the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and endowed chairs and scholarships. (Photo: Steve Cohn)

Erna Viterbi and her mother were among the refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe who fled to Switzerland. (Photo: USC Libraries Special Collections)

the nation, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering took its new name on March 2, 2004.

The Viterbis continued to support the school and university over the next 10 years, giving $2 million in 1999 to endow a chair in communications at USC Viterbi, and another $15 million in 2014 to support scholarship in engineering and genocide studies, including five endowed chairs and five graduate student fellowships at USC Viterbi.

Yannis C. Yortsos, dean of USC Viterbi, said her legacy would live on through the engineering school.

“She was a wonderful human being, with great heart, generous spirit, full of optimism, humility and grace,” Yortsos said. “We are all that much better because our paths in life crossed with hers.”

The gift also created the Andrew J. and Erna Finci Viterbi Executive Director Chair at the USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education, part of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Erna Viterbi held leadership roles at philanthropies around the world, in addition to her unwavering support of USC Viterbi and the USC Shoah Foundation. Together with Andrew, she gave generously to educational institutions, health sciences research, veterans’ causes and arts organizations.

Erna is survived by her husband, Andrew, of La Jolla, California; son, Alan, and daughter, Audrey; and numerous grandchildren.

USC will host a celebration of her life in early May.

3

INTRO DEAN YANNIS C. YORTSOS' MESSAGE

CS@SC: Computer Science at USC

Across: 1. Where the Domain Name System for the modern email addresses (i.e., .com) originated. (Hint: Information Sciences Institute, the computer science research powerhouse affiliated for 43 years with USC Viterbi.)

5. Where Turing Award winner and builder of RSA, the first cybersecurity defense, works.

(Hint: Leonard Adleman. Need I say more.)

1

2

3

4

5

1 This issue’s editorial contains a crossword puzzle. Well, sort of. It is a short linear puzzle, in which the character @ is also allowed and in which the clue throughout will be the title of this editorial: CS@SCComputer Science at USC. (Will Shortz, be not afraid! Be very not afraid!)

2 3 4 5 Down: 1. 2011 recipient of the largest federal research expenditures in any academic institution in the U.S. (Hint: University of Southern California.)

2. Where the spectacular graphics of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Avatar” were developed. (Hint: Academy Award winner and CS faculty Paul Debevec.)

Had I been a more adept crossword puzzle builder, I would have been able to fill row upon row and column upon column with the distinctions and accomplishments of computer science at USC, since its genesis on campus in the late 1960s. From robotics to computer games, computer science theory to networks, algorithms to software engineering, graphics

BOARD OF COUNCILORS Dwight J. Baum - Chairman Michael Abbott Terry Adams Sonny Astani William F. Ballhaus Jr. Ronald R. Barnes Carol A. Bartz Yang Ho Cho, USC Trustee David W. Chonette Leo Chu Malcolm R. Currie, USC Life Trustee Kenneth C. Dahlberg

4

Spring 2015

John Deininger Feng Deng Albert Dorman Daniel J. Epstein, USC Trustee Alan J. Fohrer Hester Gill Kenton Gregory Ming Hsieh, USC Trustee Jen-Hsun Huang Karl A. Jacob III Ken R. Klein, USC Trustee Harel Kodesh David A. Lane Greta Lydecker Alfred E. Mann, USC Life Trustee

to artificial intelligence, machine learning to computer architecture, big data to analytics… the list is too long to complete. I use the set theory symbol for union, U, because it lends some artistic element (and because I want to impress you a little) to capture this powerful combined strength by:

CS@SC=CS U ISI U ICT U EE In this I have accounted for the Department of Computer Science (CS), the Information Sciences Institute (ISI), the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), and part (at least computer engineering, communications and signal processing) of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering (EE).

Computer Science at USC, as well as elsewhere, descended from math, and, typical of its nature, promptly disrupted it: discrete math challenged in epic fashion the continuous; digital relentlessly displaced analog; information became a compelling alternative narrative to the physical. Our own Paul Rosenbloom argues for computer science to become the fourth paradigm of sciences — i.e., along with physics — and so alludes to James Gleich in “The Information.”

The first class I taught as a faculty member at USC (a chemical engineer, no less) was Fortran.

We thought then that computer science was interesting. Few among us could have predicted the revolutionary role it would play in a short few decades. Largely through its power, we now live “in the most exciting era for science and engineering in human history,” as the late NAE President Chuck Vest proclaimed at USC in the Fall of 2010, during the second NAE Grand Challenges Summit. Today, Engineering+ is enabling all sciences, all disciplines, even the arts. CS@SC has been a key contributor to this empowerment.

It is thrilling to just think of its future contributions. And I can’t wait to see them.

Gordon S. Marshall, USC Life Trustee Fariborz Maseeh Bryan B. Min John Mork, USC Trustee Donald L. Paul Stephen Poizner Debra Reed George (Ted) Scalise John F. Shea Patrick Soon-Shiong Mark A. Stevens, USC Trustee Tom Vise Andrew J. Viterbi, USC Trustee William Wang Jeffrey Wilcox

Jeffrey J. Woodbury Carla Mann Woods Shuguang (Alex) Xu

CORPORATE ADVISORY BOARD Steve Acevedo Joseph Aguilar Sujata Banerjee Jan Berkeley Joseph Bok Frank Chandler Jerry Charlow Sachin Chawla Tao Chen

THE CAMPAIGN FOR USC

The Campaign for USC is a multi-year effort to secure $6 billion or more in private philanthropy for the university.

As our portion of that larger campaign, we are seeking to raise $500 million for the Dean’s priorities for the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

DEAN YANNIS C. YORTSOS

“Dramatic advances in the last several decades have demonstrated the power of engineering and technology to meet challenges and open new horizons for the benefit of humankind. We are counting on USC’s engineers and their imaginations to help overcome the challenges of the 21st century.”

DEAN’S PRIORITIES / OPPORTUNITIES TO GIVE

GOAL

$500 MILLION

MARY ANN SCHWARTZ Senior Associate Dean, Advancement

Attracting the most talented people and helping them flourish Scholarship Funds Chairs Graduate Fellowships

AS OF MARCH 2015

Enhancing the curriculum

$258 MILLION 10,428 donors to date

Undergraduate Excellence Funds to support undergraduate experiences

Solving global challenges through research

9,419 have given < $1,000

Research Endowment for Departments USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience

BRUCE HUENERS '74, on why he is funding a full scholarship for USC Viterbi undergraduates :

Leveraging the reach of engineering through innovation and entrepreneurship Dean’s Innovation Fund

How to give and where to find more details about giving opportunities:

Lee Druxman Dan Eslinger Pamela Fox Dani Goldberg Arnold Hackett Alan Jacobsen Sumeet Jakatdar Ken Johnson Chris Jones Shiv Joshi Ronalee Lo Mann Marija Mikic-Rakic Nandhu Nandhakumar Christopher Seams Neil Siegel

“ Achieving our ambitious goals will require unprecedented support from donors at all levels throughout the Trojan Family. We call upon the thousands of alumni, faculty, staff, community members, parents and friends who share our vision and are eager to help USC Viterbi fulfill its goals and aspirations. ”

Todd Stevens Roberto Vasquez Murali Venkat Aber Whitcomb

EMERGING LEADERS BOARD Ali Fakhari - Chairman Farzana Ansari Kameron Burk Dwipal Desai Tracy Dooley Reed Doucette Lydia Froemelt Mike Ghaffary

Please visit www.viterbi.usc.edu/giving

David Hodge Justin Jameson Atman Kadakia Preethi Kasireddy Wilson Kyi Amy Lin Rohan Mehra Dara Mir Charles Ralston Paige Selby Timur Taluy Warren Tichenor II Craig Western

OR

“When you get to a certain age, you look at what you could leave behind you that will last.”

(Please see story on page 38)

Contact the USC Viterbi Advancement office at 213.740.2502

CHINA/EAST ASIA ADVISORY BOARD

Kevin Wei Shuguang (Alex) Xu Jeff Zhao

Feng Deng - Chairman Simon Cao Yang Ho Cho, USC Trustee Charles Chong Leo Chu Joseph Fan Chengyu Fu, USC Trustee Ming Hsieh, USC Trustee Bill Huang Kenneth Koo Wendy Ngan Janson Shi Stan Wang

INDIA ADVISORY BOARD Srinath Batni - Chairman Madhusudan Atre Srinivas Chinamilli Sridhar Jayanthi Ananth Krishnan Priyanka Mittal N. R. Narayana Murthy Ranjit Nair N. Narendra

Ishwardutt Parulkar Dave Ranson Devita Saraf Kiran Mazumdar Shaw JK Srivastava Vijay Srivastava Sandeep Tandon Rajan Vasa

5

ARTICLES

Pixels, Not Paint: Engineers Create the Most Realistic Presidential Portrait Ever

The latest portrait of President Barack Obama is true to life — truly.

By Belman

By Orli Megan Hazleand Megan Hazle

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Fun Fact:

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Last June, USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) Chief Visual Officer Paul Debevec traveled to the White House to join a Smithsonian Institution-led team in creating the first-ever 3-D portrait and 3-D-printed bust of a U.S. president.

For their portrait session with Obama, Debevec’s team brought a modified version of their Playa Vista-based Light Stage X to Washington, D.C. The high-speed system used eight cameras and custom-built 50 LED lights to create a realistic computer model of Obama in just over a second by flashing 10 polarized lighting conditions over the president’s face to record the effects of light striking his face from different angles. Back at the Smithsonian’s offices, the team processed the data from the Light Stage as well as scans collected by the Smithsonian with handheld 3-D scanners, in order to create a digital portrait for a life-sized 3-D–print bust of the president.

“The Smithsonian’s 3-D presidential portrait project represents the first deployment of a Light Stage system designed for mobile use, and the fastest scanning session ever conducted by ICT’s Graphics Laboratory,” said Debevec, a USC Viterbi professor of computer science. “The Smithsonian Institution had an ambitious vision to create the first-ever 3-D-printed model of a president, and it was an honor to contribute our technology to the process.”

The completed portrait and bust were displayed at the White House Maker Faire on June 18. In December, they were put on view in the Commons gallery of the Smithsonian Institution Building, known as the Castle, in Washington.

The Light Stage system has been used extensively in Hollywood to scan actors for their virtual roles in blockbusters including “Avatar,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Maleficent.” In 2010, Debevec and his collaborators received a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award in recognition of their contribution to visual effects via the development of the Light Stage.

Debevec and ICT have also used the Light Stage in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Lab to create realistic virtual characters for immersive military training environments. The Army has funded much of the research underlying the development of the Light Stage systems. In addition, the USC Shoah Foundation has used the technology to scan Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter for a test project to preserve the ability for future generations to ask him questions.

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Three USC Viterbi Computer Science professors are each credited in Peter Jackson's epic film series, “The Hobbit,” for their work as visiting scientists at Weta Digital in New Zealand during the productions: Paul Debevec for “An Unexpected Journey,” Jernej Barbič for “The Desolation of Smaug” and Hao Li for “The Battle of the Five Armies.”

nej

Spring 2015

Je r

6

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE WHITE HOUSE

Who’s the Best Shooter in the NBA? Wh Rajiv Maheswaran and Yu-Han Chang, M both b h research assistant professors at the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute (ISI), look to measure things beyond the standard box score.

Armed with data gleaned from the image-tracking technology installed in every NBA arena, they are doing for basketball what “Moneyball” did for baseball. Their resulting spin-off company, Second Spectrum, feeds the Los Angeles Clippers and six other NBA teams analytical data generated by its proprietary software system. In the example below, we unpack a specific insight from their 2014 Best Paper at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference: “Quantifying Shot Quality in the NBA.” It was the pair’s second consecutive research paper to take home the coveted award.

LeBron James is clearly the league’s most dominant scorer in the paint.

He has an EFG of 75.6. But even when adjusted for ESQ, LeBron is shooting +19 over expectation. Manu Ginobili and Kevin Durant, the two scorers closest to him, boast a +14 and +11.2, respectively.

STATS’ SportVUsystem Cameras and software can now quantify shot distance, shot angle, defender distance, defender angle, player speed, player velocity angle and much, much more.

DeAndre Jordan has the second-highest EFG of any player in the NBA, but that’s not the full story. He’s No. 1 in ESQ, attempting the easiest shots in the league (though he still shoots a strong +5.2 over expectation, per EFG+).

Dirk Nowitzki a 12-time NBA All-Star, is ranked 64th among all shooters with an EFG of 53.9. But the paper reveals the hidden truth: Nowitzki is attempting the sixth-most difficult shots of anyone in the league. Adjusting for this, Nowitzki has an EFG+ of 10.0, “which is sixth in the league and more reflective of his elite shooting ability.”

Who’s the Best Shooter in the NBA? Most people would look at field goal percentage, but not Maheswaran and Chang. Who attempts the easiest and toughest shots? Then on top of that, who’s really good at making them?

For example, not all 20-foot jump shots are created equal. Was it off the dribble, fading away, with two defenders a foot away? Or was it wide open?

Two new stats provide greater insight.

EFG

I L LU S T R AT I O N : P E T E R B O L L I N G E R

Effective field goal percentage — a current measure of shooting ability, accounting for the value of three-pointers versus twos.

ESQ

Effective shot quality — a new stat created by Maheswaran and Chang that measures shot difficulty based on: Probability of success based on league averages and exact location on the court Distance (in feet) of nearest defender(s) Whether shot was made off the dribble or without dribbling (catch and shoot)

EFG+

The most revealing stat proposed by Maheswaran and Chang. EFG+ = EFG – ESQ. How much better than expected does a player shoot?

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ARTICLES

REIMAGINED

AS “DIVERGENT” POSTER ART

AS “WHERE’S WALDO?” BOOK I L LU S T R AT I O N : D O U G L A S H O L G AT E

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Spring 2015

The scientific research poster has been a mainstay for decades. For USC Viterbi magazine, we took a recent poster from USC Viterbi Assistant Professor Yan Liu’s Melady Lab in the Department of Computer Science, and re-imagined the ideas in various art forms.

AS

ESQUIRE COVER I L LU S T R AT I O N : M I C H E L L E H E N RY

SUMMARY: By mining social media data, can Big Data analytic algorithms detect anomalous behaviors, such as cyberbullying, terrorist planning or fraud dissemination? Liu’s team developed GLAD (Group Latent Anomaly Detection), a statistical machine-learning model that automatically finds anomalies in groups of users, as opposed to just individuals. To achieve this goal, Liu’s team applies this model to both point-wise data (individual e-mails, posts) and pair-wise data (exchange of e-mails) to assign a ranking (0 to 1) of groups in terms of anomalousness by comparing with other similar groups.

— Adam Smith

AS “PEANUTS” COMIC STRIP I L LU S T R AT I O N : K AT H E R I N E D U F F Y

AS

I L LU S T R AT I O N : H U A N T R A N

CHINESE WATERCOLOR

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ARTICLES YANNIS C. YORTSOS 1

Inducted as Associate Member of the Academy of Athens in Greece

2

MARYAM SHANECHI

Inducted to the National Academy of Inventors Grand Prize in the 2014 Create the Future Design Contest by the NASA Tech Briefs Media Group

NSF CAREER Award

JIM WEILAND

KEVIN KNIGHT

AIMBE Fellow

Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) Fellow

6

5

DANIEL MARCU Association for Computational 8 Linguistics (ACL) Fellow

Applied Networking Research Prize, 13 Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), Internet Society (ISOC)

AIMBE Fellow

NSF CAREER Award

SECONDHAND SMOKE: Toxic heavy metals in e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes.

By Megan Hazle

E-cigarettes are healthier for your neighbors than traditional cigarettes, but still release toxins into the air, according to a new study from USC. Constantinos Sioutas, professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and a team of other research scientists studying secondhand smoke from e-cigarettes discovered an overall 10-fold decrease in exposure to harmful particles, with close-to-zero exposure to organic carcinogens.

1st place in the ASC National

10 Preconstruc-

tion Competition

11

JONG-SHI PANG

2015 John Tyndall Award from the IEEE Photonics Society and the Optical Society of America

KETAN SAVLA

17

LUCIO SOIBELMAN

DAN DAPKUS

TERENCE LANGER

4

FACULTY ACCOLADES

Diverse Emerging Scholars 9

14

STEPHEN LU

3

STACEY FINLEY

RAMESH GOVINDAN

10 Spring 2015

BEHROKH KHOSHNEVIS

INFORMS Best Paper published between 2010–2012 15 in Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment Section

19

7

ETHAN KATZ-BASSETT

2015 TMS Structural Materials Division Distinguished Scientist/ Engineer Award

Applied Networking Research Prize, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), Internet Society (ISOC)

DAVID KEMPE 20

Inducted to the National Academy of Inventors

MICHAEL KASSNER

Okawa Foundation Research 16 Grant

IEEE Fellow

18

ALAN WILLNER

12

JERNEJ BARBIC

DANIEL LIDAR

iPodia, 2014 Excellent Teaching Award from Technion University Start-Up MBA Program

SIGKDD Test of Time Award

AWARDS TO FACULTY & TEAM

TEN-YEAR TECHNICAL IMPACT AWARD FROM THE ACM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MULTIMODAL INTERFACES

Shrikanth Narayanan, Sungbok Lee and Ulrich Neumann 2014 INTERSPEECH COMPUTATIONAL PARALINGUISTICS CHALLENGE AWARD

Shrikanth Narayanan

However, levels of exposure to some harmful metals in secondhand e-cigarette smoke were found to be significantly higher.

“Our results demonstrate that overall electronic cigarettes seem to be less harmful than regular cigarettes, but their elevated content of toxic metals such as nickel and chromium do raise concerns,” said Sioutas, corresponding author of the study, which was published online on Aug. 22 by the Journal of Environmental Science, Processes and Impacts.

The researchers found that much of the toxic metals did not come from the e-cigarette liquid, but most likely from the cartridge. Therefore, better manufacturing standards for the devices could reduce the quantity of metals in e-cigarette smoke.

Traditional Cigarettes

E-cig, from other components

E-cig, from e-liquid SECONDHAND HEAVY METAL TOXICITY IN CIGARETTES

I L LU S T R AT I O N : M I C H E L L E H E N RY

Dear DragonBot

By Katie McKissick Based on interactive DragonBot scripts written by Brittany Jo Flores

DragonBot is a furry, friendly robot that teaches children healthy habits. With a flexible, fuzzy exterior and animated virtual face powered by a smartphone, DragonBot encourages kids to choose nutritious foods, exercise regularly — often by dancing, — and get a good night’s rest.

The Interaction Lab in the Department of Computer Science has two of these socially assistive robots, designed by collaborators at MIT, who go by the names Cayenne and Chili. With a kid-friendly script about training for the upcoming Dragon Race, and with the guidance of Ph.D. candidate Elaine Short, Cayenne and Chili are powerful teachers that help students learn how to make healthy choices. Recently, Cayenne and Chili took a break from their busy teaching schedule to answer a few questions from students.

Dear DragonBot, When I get home from school, I am very hungry. I like to have a snack. I do not always know what to have. What do you have for a snack?

From, Hungry After School Age 8

Dear DragonBot, I feel tired after I get to school. I do not know why. It happens every morning. My friends do not feel tired. Why do I feel tired? Do you feel tired at school?

From, Tiny and Tired Age 7

Salutations, Tiny and Tired!

around and running so much, I get hungry too. But if I haveFrom, an unhealthy snack, I feel awful afterward.

Have you ever had a snack that didn’t make you feel Hungry After School good? It’s Ageno8 fun, is it? Nope, nope, nope.

The key to a good snack is finding something that has protein. Protein will make you feel full, and it helps you build strong muscles. You could have some peanut butter on celery sticks—I call them dragon logs—so yummy! You could also have baby carrots dipped in hummus. Mmm, all this talk about good snacks is making me hungry!

Hope you find your perfect snack!

I’m sorry you don’t feel good in the mornings at school. That is no fun at all! You know what I bet it is? Not having a healthy breakfast. If you skip breakfast, that can make you feel tired, but you can also feel that way if you have too much sugar with breakfast.

Sugar is strange because it makes you feel charged up at first, but then you crash soon afterward and feel tired and flat. Is that how you feel in the morning? Maybe you eat a sugary cereal or doughnut in the morning, and that is why you feel that way.

What I like to have for breakfast is something that has plenty of fiber. Fiber helps you feel full, and it won’t leave you feeling tired later like sugar does. I usually have whole-wheat toast or oatmeal in the morning. I feel satisfied after, and then I can take on my day of flying and playing with other dragons without feeling tired!

Have a healthy breakfast, and you’ll feel better too!

Love, Chili

Love, Cayenne

Dear DragonBot, Hiiiiiiii, Hungry After School!

When I get home from school, I am hungry. I like have aa snack snack.inI the do Oh,very my goodness.

I lovetohaving not especially always know to have.

What afternoon, whenwhat I’ve been training all day do you have forbig a snack? to compete in the next Dragon Race. After flying

PHOTO: LUKE FISHER

Dear DragonBots, I like to play video games.

My mom says I should get more exercise. Why? Do you exercise?

What should I do? Is my mom right?

She’s usually right.

From, Cozy on the Couch Age 11

Hellooooo there, Cozy on the Couch!

Yup, your mom is right! Exercise is wonderful! We make sure to get lots of exercise every day so that we can compete in the Dragon Races, but even if you’re not going to be in a big race, exercise makes you feel great and keeps you strong and healthy.

Anything that gets you moving around and using your body is exercise. Running, jumping and dancing are exercise. Even laughing is exercise! We do a lot of giggling and laughing every day, and it is great for us!

We like video games, too, but always remember to get up and move around. It will make you feel good, it will keep you strong, and your mom will be happy too. What’s better than that?

Love, Chili and Cayenne

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STUDENT LIFE

THE MAGIC OF CHEMISTRY Passion leads this Renaissance woman to study chemical engineering.

By Cathi Douglas In third grade, Lyssa Aruda received a Harry Potter potions kit. The gift thrilled her to no end.

Science, especially chemistry, physics and math, had long fascinated her.

Today, Aruda studies chemical engineering at a sunnier version of Hogwarts, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

“Chemistry is kind of the closest you can get to magic,” Aruda said.

Aruda plans to use her degree to create solutions in a fast-paced environment as a consultant in engineering technology. “I like seeing results immediately,” she said. “I want to help people and make them happy, to solve problems that I think are cool and exciting. I’m having fun while contributing something meaningful to the world.”

After completing a summer internship as a systems and business integration analyst at Accenture, where she focused on health and public service issues, Aruda now works in Associate Professor Andrea Hodge’s nanomaterials research lab.

She said Hodge’s enthusiasm for the work is contagious. Another of her favorite professors is Andrea Armani, who makes complex material interesting by weaving humor into her lectures.

“Lyssa is the kind of student who inspires the faculty to be better teachers,” said Armani, Fluor Early Career Chair and associate professor in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. “She is actively engaged in

Engineering the Perfect PB&J Freshman Academy leverages peanut butter and jelly to explore computer science and systems engineering.

By Hai Vu In a recent class, Joseph Greenfield, a USC Viterbi senior lecturer, demonstrated the disastrous consequences of unclear instructions. Like a computer, Greenfield followed a student’s instructions to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich exactly as stated. He started by flinging slices of bread across the room because the student failed to explain precisely how to take the bread out of the bag.

Such miscommunications are common in the computer sciences and engineering field.

Greenfield, who teaches one of the Engineering

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PHOTO: MICHELLE HENRY

class, frequently posing complex questions which combined multiple fields of engineering. Given all of her other activities, it truly speaks to her scholastic ability.”

A Weisen Scholarship student, Aruda is studying in a dual USC Viterbi program that will culminate in a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in May and a master’s in engineering management in December. With a 3.75 GPA and a minor in art history — she is partial to the Baroque and Renaissance periods — Aruda is an active member of Alpha Phi sorority, where she has served on the executive board; the campus chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, where she serves as an officer; the Order of Omega honor society, comprised of the top 3 percent of the Greek community, where she serves as president; the Viterbi Freshman Academy, where she mentors freshman engineering students; and the Viterbi Student Ambassador program, where she helps recruit new students.

A former high school cheerleader who earned the Girl Scout Gold Award (equivalent to the Boy Scouts’ Eagle Scout ranking), Aruda also volunteers with the Girl Scouts at Compton Avenue Elementary School, where she helps organize projects and assists scouts in earning badges. She participates in USC Friends and Neighbors Days and has traveled to South Korea and Israel as a teacher’s assistant in USC Viterbi’s famed iPodia Program, meeting students from around the globe and teaming with them to present innovative projects.

Aruda wants to make the most of her college experience, so she compulsively fills her datebook with detailed to-do lists and believes that time management is her top skill. “I think the biggest challenge I face is prioritizing activities and finding the opportunities to do everything I love,” she said.

Freshman Academy courses, focuses on developing students’ engineering skills, exposing them to the National Academy of Engineering’s “14 Grand Challenges” and deepening their appreciation for the different fields of engineering. And peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are part of the plan: Greenfield’s challenge to his class was to engineer the perfect PB&J and optimize the given materials efficiently. Of course, there was a catch: Not only would the students have to design a game plan to assemble the maximum number of sandwiches, precisely to specifications, in less than five minutes, but they also had to take part in this competition in teams of five to mass produce the PB&Js. Not exactly “Top Chef,” but Greenfield’s assignment encompasses several different fields of engineering. Before beginning the challenge, each team had to produce written instructions for each position on the assembly line. Students were randomly placed into six groups of five people each. Potentially, an industrial and systems engineer-to-be might be placed next to a chemical

Lyssa Aruda, a chemical engineering major with a minor in art history, mentors freshmen engineering students and is a Weisen Scholarship recipient.

and biomedical engineer-to-be, replicating real-life situations in which a diverse group of engineers must work together to solve one of the 14 Grand Challenges — or in this case, to expertly combine peanut butter, jelly and white bread.

In total, each class produced more than 200 sandwiches. All of the beautifully crafted PB&Js were then donated to the local food bank so that others could enjoy the taste of 21st-century engineering at its best.

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We Are the Champions

By Samantha Romero

For the fourth consecutive year, USC Viterbi engineering students walked away with the grand prize in the fiercely competitive Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC).

Eighty-six teams from 25 universities and community colleges attended the Nov. 8 Southern California Regional tournament, held at Riverside Community College. UCLA placed second, while Caltech took home the bronze.

Competitors also included Harvey Mudd College, UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego.

The triumphant Trojan team featured USC Viterbi student programmers Ruixin Qiang, Gaoyuan Chen and Xinpei Yu. The five-hour battle of logic, algorithms and mental endurance has historically been a proving ground for many of

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Google’s and Facebook’s best programmers.

Participants had to answer a series of questions as quickly as possible within five hours, writing in C++ and Java to process spreadsheets and solve mathematical puzzles.

As the champions, the Trojans advance to the International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals that will take place May 16–21 in Morocco.

“The world finals in Morocco will be very intense," said Yu Cheng, a team coach and USC Viterbi Ph.D. candidate. "There will be about 120 teams from all over the world competing together. In the past three years, USC ranked 36th, 14th and 19th in this contest. We always want to do better than last year and keep raising the bar.”

Four-peat: USC Viterbi computer science students prevail in showdown of the region’s greatest wizards of C++ and Java.

“In what was the championship competition, the USC Viterbi CS student team won the equivalent of the Pac-12 South competition and was crowned the champion for the fourth straight year.”

YANNIS C. YORTSOS, dean, USC Viterbi School of Engineering

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WHAT'S NEXT

When Will We Have Luke Skywalker’s Prosthetic Hand?

Francisco Valero-Cuevas combines simulated neurons to inform the truly versatile and dexterous prosthetics and robots of the future.

By Katie McKissick

The human brain has 86 billion neurons. These individual cells act in concert to send electrical messages that result in our thoughts, memories and movements. No single neuron “knows” what it’s doing. Rather, neurons exhibit emergent intelligence, similar to millions of ants working together to construct and maintain a complex colony.

With this level of complexity, is it possible to program a nervous system from scratch?

In the USC Viterbi Department of Biomedical Engineering, Professor Francisco Valero-Cuevas, along with students Minos Niu, John Rocamora, Victor Barradas and Emily Lawrence, are collaborating with Professors Terry Sanger and Jerry Loeb oeb us to build “brain on a chip” models of the nervous system, in which computer programs simulatee rd. populations of neurons in the human spinal cord.

When running, the encoded neurons could control ntrol a robotic or prosthetic hand the same way we control our own bodies. This will be a practicall ction test of our understanding of how complex function emerges in the nervous system from populations of relatively “simple” individual neurons, how they communicate with each other and ultimately how they control our muscles.

“Over a century of trying to develop something that’s better than the split-hook prosthesis, we now have modern robotic hands and prosthetic hands that are amazing grippers, but they’re not dexterous manipulators,” Valero-Cuevas said. “They’re great at holding things, but is it the Luke Skywalker hand that would be able to pick something up, reorient and operate it? Think of all the operations that are needed to use your smartphone with one hand.

“If we really understand fundamental aspects of the nervous system,” Valero-Cuevas continued, “shouldn’t we be able to reproduce fundamental functions like finger motions?”

His projects, funded by the National Institutes of Health, are tackling some of the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges about how our brains fundamentally control our bodies. Enhancing our understanding of how the nervous system works will at the same time shed light on how it

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Chubs Happy Gilmore

breaks down and diseases emerge.

And this understanding will directly inform therapeutic interventions for neurological conditions as well as the designs for better, more functional and capable robots. “This work is a true interface between biology and engineering,” Valero-Cuevas said.

Translating a biological system like the spinal cord to computer code is no small feat, but all the information, complexity and beauty of a system like our brain traces back to mathematics.

“It turns out that we agree with something that Galileo said centuries ago: that nature is an open book if you only know the language in which it’s writ-

Luke Skywalker The Empire Strikes Back

ten, and the language is math,” said Valero-Cuevas.

To test his computer models of neural control, Valero-Cuevas is using a very faithful physical system: cadaver hands. Hand surgeons help him connect the hands’ tendons to strings driven by electric motors. The neuron software controls the activity of the motors, as if the motors were muscles themselves. This way, the simulated neurons face the same problem the nervous system faces: controlling the hand as if it were a marionette, driven by complex muscles and tendons. Each finger tendon is controlled by between six and 10 muscles, and in turn, each simulated muscle is controlled by a population of 256 independent neurons.

The goal is for the software and hardware to work in concert to control the cadaver hand the same way a healthy person can move his or her hand, complete with stretch reflexes, muscle tone and compliance.

“We are studying the very fundamental mecha-

Captain Hook Peter Pan

Edward Edward Scissorhands

nisms of how muscles have tone and how you modify that to get function, and how their disruptions lead to the pathological characteristics of hypertonia, spasticity and dystonia, which are very common in cerebral palsy, stroke and spinal cord injury,” Valero-Cuevas explained. “But we don’t really know where they come from, and we’re trying to understand that. And a team that includes Sanger and Loeb” — both of the USC Viterbi Medical Device Development Facility — “is very powerful in this regard.

“The irony is not lost on us that we’re combining one of the oldest scientific disciplines, hand anatomy, with some of the newest elements of ultra-fast parallel computing. We’re using this to answer central questions about evolution, health and disease, and how all these systems work,” Valero-Cuevas added.

Better prosthetic hands are just one potential application for this wide-ranging work. Another is a robot that is more compliant, meaning that its nervous systems will sense an obstacle and soften when contact is made. This would make robot-human interaction safer, especially for large, strong robots, so an accidental encounter could be more like bumping into a person than colliding with a brick wall.

For Valero-Cuevas, this is just one way that his lab explores the interaction of the brain and body, which is why his research group is called the BrainBody Dynamics Lab. “Some people think I only work on hands,” said Valero-Cuevas, “but that’s just because hands are an example of a complex system I can have on my desktop.”

Embracing the ideals of Engineering+, ValeroCuevas is also asking fundamental questions about evolutionary biology, such as why vertebrates appear to have “too many” muscles, what the evolutionary pressures were that led to the specialized body and brain in humans, and how the structure and function of the human nervous system defines the nature of dysfunction and rehabilitation.

“I’m very excited because it will be begin to narrow and define the conversations we should be having have about what is function, what is health, what is disease and what a robot should be like,” said Valero-Cuevas, “and then open up new questions.”

Ash Army of Darkness

Buster Bluth Arrested Development

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Shhh! The Internet Is Sleeping Z

By Robert Perkins

John Heidemann maps the Internet's “sleep” patterns around the globe.

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USC Viterbi researchers studying how big the Internet is have found that it “sleeps,” almost like a living creature.

This finding should help scientists and policymakers develop better systems to measure and track Internet outages, such as those that struck the New York area after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Understanding that the Internet sleeps will help them avoid confusing a sleeping Internet with an outage.

“The Internet is important in our lives and businesses, from streaming movies to buying online. Measuring network outages is a first step to improving Internet reliability,” said John Heidemann, a research professor at USC Viterbi’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI), and the study’s corresponding author. Heidemann collaborated with former USC Viterbi Ph.D. student Lin Quan and ISI’s Yuri Pradkin on the study, which was presented at the 2014 ACM Internet Measurements Conference in November.

While the Internet is always up and running for some—such as those with broadband access in the United States and Western Europe—in other areas, access varies over the course of the day, notably in Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.

The study also correlates countries with strong

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diurnal Internet access with lower GDP, meaning that the richer a country is, the more likely it is that the Internet will be up and running 24/7.

“This work is one of the first to explore how networking policies affect how the network is used,” Heidemann said.

There are some 4 billion IPv4 Internet addresses.

Heidemann and his team pinged about 3.7 million address blocks (representing about 950 million addresses) every 11 minutes over the span of two months, looking for daily patterns.

“This data helps us establish a baseline for the Internet—to understand how it functions so that we have a better idea of how resilient it is as a whole and can spot problems quicker,” Heidemann explained.

The team’s work is ongoing. “We have grown our coverage to 4 million blocks [more than 1 billion addresses] as Internet use grows,” Heidemann said.

He hopes that long-term observations will help guide Internet operation.

Heidemann’s research is funded by the Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate; HSARPA, Cyber Security Division via the Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate and SPAWAR.

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Heidemann’s research shows that the Internet “sleeps” at certain times around the world.

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Watch This Video to Screen Yourself for Parkinson’s Disease

Laurent Itti’s lab researches how eyetracking software can screen for neurological disorders quickly and effectively.

By Megan Hazle That tiny camera in your computer may soon be watching you.

Marketers are chomping at the bit for the not-sodistant day when eye-tracking software will be able to collect data on consumer reactions via computer and mobile cameras. Their goal is to produce more compelling ads. But such technology will also be able to screen users for Parkinson’s disease and other conditions.

Laurent Itti, a USC Viterbi professor of computer science, psychology and neuroscience whose lab develops eye-tracking software to research visual attention, explains this leap.

“As you move your eyes, the center of your pupil moves around, allowing the camera to see where you are actually looking on the screen,” Itti said. “For the first time, we are getting an objective fingerprint for each individual’s viewing behavior — how each brain is working — and we are finding that different neurological disorders have different fingerprints.”

This finding is significant because neurological disorders like Parkinson’s cannot be screened or diagnosed via a simple blood test. It takes hours of one-on-one interaction with a trained clinician to determine if a person has a disorder like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This testing, which can resemble an IQ test, is time-consuming and difficult to administer to young children.

“Nowadays, ADHD diagnoses are often initially triggered by a schoolteacher telling parents that their

child is out of control in the classroom,” Itti said. “This initial judgment is very subjective.”

To address that, Itti, former computer science Ph.D. student Po-He Tseng and partners from the Centre for Neuroscience Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, are researching and developing eye-tracking software that can streamline the screening of disorders like ADHD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, Parkinson’s and autism.

The test is quick, painless and effective. The subject sits in front of a computer outfitted with a video camera that tracks their eye movements while they watch video clips for five minutes (cartoons for kids, nature shows and street scenes for adults). The software then analyzes how often the eye moves and where, what most attracts the eye and how long it looks at those things, and how the subject’s reactions compare to a normative peer group.

The resulting score is a biometric signature of the subject’s brain, a neurological fingerprint. The likelihood that the subject suffers from a disorder is determined by comparing their score to that of a control population. If the results indicate a potential disorder, the subject may then seek an in-depth evaluation and diagnosis from a doctor.

Currently, Itti’s screening test for ADHD is 77 percent to 80 percent accurate. With further research, he hopes to increase its accuracy even more and expand the list of disorders the software can screen to include

conditions that are more difficult to diagnose, including schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Itti envisions that someday we won’t have to travel farther than our local pharmacy to screen ourselves for Parkinson’s disease and other neurological conditions, just as we can now do for blood pressure.

“You’ll be able to sit down at the pharmacy while you wait for your prescription and watch video clips for a few minutes. The machine will give you a number, just like a blood pressure reading,” he predicts. “And if the number is high, it will recommend you go to your doctor for a more in-depth evaluation.”

This research is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Human Frontier Science Program and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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WHAT'S NEXT

1. Captain Branch

2. Jessica Chen

3. Senior Chief Foster

Branch is a virtual battle buddy enlisted to help reduce incidences of post-traumatic stress. He serves as a mentor in STRIVE (Stress Resilience in Virtual Environments), an ICT initiative developed with Army and Navy support. STRIVE uses virtual reality to put users in the middle of realistic combat situations. At pivotal moments, Branch appears and provides instruction on the physical and emotional impacts of stress, along with relevant exercises and coping strategies.

Jessica, a young Army specialist, wants a transfer because a male colleague’s comments make her uncomfortable. As part of the Army’s Emergent Leader Immersive Training Environment (ELITE), soldiers hone their basic counseling skills through practice with virtual humans like Jessica. Other scenarios address substance abuse, financial problems and post-deployment readjustment. A built-in tutoring system provides feedback and assessment, with the goal of strengthening interpersonal communication skills for future Army leaders.

Think of Foster as the face of the future. He serves as a mentor and guide for Project BlueShark, ICT’s forward-looking collaboration with the Office of Naval Research that explores how we’ll collaborate and communicate 20 years from now. This virtual wingman guides participants through virtual and augmented reality experiences that are in the lab today but predicted to be part of our lives soon.

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Meet ICT’s Virtual Humans

By Orli Belman

In 2001, USC Viterbi computer science faculty members Jonathan Gratch, Randall Hill Jr. and Bill Swartout — all members of USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) — presented “Steve Goes to Bosnia: Towards a New Generation of Virtual Humans for Interactive Experiences” at a symposium on artificial intelligence.

The paper, written with then-ISI colleagues Jeff Rickel and Stacy Marsella, envisioned the development of virtual humans: computer-generated characters that look and act like real people and can understand, gesture, reason and exhibit emotion in order to serve as guides, mentors and teammates. At the time, the researchers called their goal ambitious. Nearly 15 years later, we introduce you to Steve’s progeny, virtual humans whose impact today is very real.

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Brad is a social scientist of sorts. ICT and USC Marshall School of Business researchers enlist him for studies rather than using human interviewers.

They can change his accent, his ethnicity, his personality and more, and then have him engage with real people in negotiations and other simulated social interactions. Consistent and cost-effective, the results from several studies show that how we treat virtual characters like Brad reveals much about how we treat one another.

Javier is not feeling well. It is up to the medical student assessing him to ask the right questions and pick up on the hints that will reveal what ails him. Part of USC Standard Patient, a collaboration between ICT and the Keck School of Medicine at USC, Javier allows future clinicians to practice their interview and diagnostic skills online. Medical professionals can easily program him and his many companions with unlimited conditions. He’s a model patient, indeed.

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4. Coach Mike

5. Barbara

6. Digital Ira

7. Ellie

A National Science Foundation-funded collaboration between ICT and the Museum of Science, Boston, Coach Mike was designed to be an enthusiastic proponent for STEM education as he helped museumgoers learn basic programming skills with a robot. He also demonstrates the value of virtual coaches. An evaluation found that visitors stayed longer and agreed to take on more challenges when he was activated. Rather than trying to look like a realistic person, Coach Mike has the distinction of being ICT’s first cartoon-style virtual human.

Barbara can appear nice, lobbing easyto-answer questions to a job hopeful. But with a click of a mouse, she can become a candidate’s worst nightmare. That variability is by design. As part of VITA, the Vocational Interview Training Agents project, a partnership between ICT and the Dan Marino Foundation, Barbara simulates different personality types — nice, neutral or aggressive — to help young adults with autism and other developmental disabilities practice and improve their job interview skills.

A collaboration between the ICT Graphics Lab and Activision R&D, Digital Ira is a photo-real replica of a face (ICT’s Ari Shapiro’s, in fact) that can be rendered in real time on a laptop — an advance that means video games can now display movie-like graphics. “If you say something looks like a video game character, today that means low-res and not realistic,” said ICT’s Chief Visual Officer Paul Debevec.

“That’s all about to change.”

Ellie is one of ICT’s most evolved virtual humans. She can read and react to human emotion by sensing smiles, frowns, shifts in gaze and more. She has interviewed more than 500 people as part of ICT’s SimSensei project, a DARPA-funded effort to help identify people with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It turns out Ellie is good at her job: A recent study found that people were willing to reveal more to her than to a real person.

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10. Bill Ford

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Bill Ford is a Vietnam vet who suffered from posttraumatic stress and now helps others by answering questions and providing support, including ways to connect with care providers. Built with funding from U.S. Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury to provide anonymous access to information, ICT’s first online virtual human platform has become a flexible system for conducting assessments and delivering online content with a personal touch.

Mike, a veteran suffering from PTSD, receives counseling from graduate students at the USC School of Social Work. Developed by ICT and the USC Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans and Military Families, Mike provides classroom-based practice for future social workers in addressing the specific needs of service members, veterans and their families.

Interviewing abused children can be difficult, even for seasoned professionals. Eight-year-old Julian, developed by ICT and the USC Gould School of Law, provides a way to practice asking the right questions in the right ways. Social workers, victim advocates, and legal and law enforcement professionals have interacted with Julian as part of an e-learning course on child interviewing techniques. Those asking open-ended questions—as recommended by a child-interviewing protocol—are rewarded with fuller answers than those asking close-ended, yes-or-no questions. ICT’s Webbased platform will soon allow non-computer scientists to program new questions and answers on their own.

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WHAT'S NEXT

Your Friends Are Cooler Than You Are

By Katie McKissick

Kristina Lerman explores the friendship paradox via social media data.

Browsing your social media newsfeed on a slow Saturday afternoon can leave you with mixed feelings. Your connections are posting pictures from a recent vacation to Hawaii or a barbecue with friends, or an update about a new job, a just-published book or a newly adopted dog. It might leave you thinking that most of your friends are more popular than you are.

And according to new research from the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute (ISI), it’s true. They are.

Research Associate Professor Kristina Lerman crunched new numbers on the friendship paradox, the statistical phenomenon that suggests that, on average, your friends have more friends than you do. But it goes further than that. Indeed, the majority of your friends have more friends than you do.

Specifically, Lerman and her collaborators looked deeper than the average, or mean, of connections on social media sites like Twitter.

They looked at the median: If you listed all your connections in order of the number of friends they had, the median is the person in the middle.

Lerman says this metric is more meaningful than an average, which can be heavily skewed by one outlier, such as being friends with Lady Gaga.

And it’s not just in the number of connections where your friends are surpassing you. Your friends post more often than you do and see more novel and higher-quality content than you do on their social media feeds.

This stronger friendship paradox holds for 98 percent of a population. Which means that virtually everyone, except the Lady Gagas of the social media world, have friends more popular than themselves.

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Now that Lerman and her team have updated the friendship paradox, how can engineers exploit this phenomenon?

“It might seem like some weird paradox that has no applications to reality, but actually it does,” Lerman said. For example, suppose you only have five doses of a vaccine for the Ebola virus and you’re going through a small village in Africa to administer the limited number of life-saving vaccines. Who should be vaccinated in order to have the maximum impact for shielding a small population from this deadly disease?

To harness the power of the friendship paradox, instead of choosing five people at random, you would actually ask people who their friends are, pick one of the friends at random and then vaccinate that person. This tactic, she said, would be more a more efficient way to stop the spread of the disease with limited resources.

“By asking people who their friends are and picking among those friends, purely by the laws of the friendship paradox, you’re more likely to get people who are more central in the network, who are more important to the spreading processes that are taking place and who are more important to network behavior,” Lerman explained.

Manually collecting data to make a map of a social network even for a small population can take years, but social media is an ideal research tool because all the connection data is already available. And the trove of social media network data is practically bottomless. Facebook has 1.23 billion active users. On Twitter, 271 million users compose half a billion tweets each day. Every minute, 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. And more users are signing up and new platforms are coming onto the scene every day.

Understanding the dynamics of these large social networks can have an enormous impact. Social media has helped to overthrow dictators, has led to the arrest of criminals, and has exposed police brutality that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Social media increases global awareness, civic engagement and voting rates. It’s where we go for breaking news and to expand our minds and connect with friends. Mining this rich resource for information can only lead to better lives for the users who provide such data.

“Social media platforms like this have the potential to be a force for social good,” said Lerman, echoing the ideals of Engineering+. “It brings up the possibility for social engineering. You can improve cognitive functioning through socializing, and Facebook could encourage socializing, for instance, among elderly populations who might be at risk for diminishing cognitive abilities. You can also help support people toward their goals, such as finishing high school.”

The possibilities for finding patterns in people’s social networks are not limited to tweets, status updates and posts to Reddit. Lerman plans to bring the same focus to large datasets made available on the Internet, such as the last 100 years of patents, legal decisions and science articles. “All of these represent social networks in which information, innovations and new ideas spread. We study all of them,” she said.

Lerman’s interest in social media piqued when she found herself on Flickr in 2006. “I was so fascinated with following links between people and photographs and text,” she said. “I had to justify spending all that time somehow, so I made it my research focus, and I haven’t looked back since. There are so many questions that are fascinating.”

PHOTO: NOE MONTES

Hey, You Talking to Me? USC Viterbi’s Urbashi Mitra looks to understand how thousands of bacteria communicate. Is this the key to forcing bacteria to do our bidding?

By Adam Smith Shewanella oneidensis, or “Shewy,” is a bacteria that lives in places like your backyard or Lake Oneida in upstate New York.

One of these rod-like bacteria by itself is not terribly impressive, but as a group, it has the potential to do things like power drug delivery nanobots or pacemakers in your body, or turn wastewater treatment plants into power plants.

The key, of course, is Shewy’s single superpower: its ability to move electrons long distances, even outside its own body. Indeed, moving electrons is at the heart of much of modern life, whether it’s a microchip that allows us to hear “Hey, Jude” or the very eating and breathing living things take for granted.

Shewy, it’s now suspected, may even share electrons to “talk” with its fellow bacteria.

The answers might lie in a rather unique USC collaboration between an engineer, Urbashi Mitra, an expert in communication networks, and a scientist, Moh El-Naggar, an expert in biophysics.

“We’re doing something that no one, to my knowledge, is doing,” said El-Naggar, a USC Dornsife assistant professor of physics. “We’re applying communication theory to networks of bacteria.”

But some key questions loom: If these bacteria are talking, conceivably firing a million electrons a second at one another, can we predict how many electrons they will share, and under what circumstances? Might we corral enough electrons to power our tiny devices?

Communication theory, in Mitra’s case, has traditionally been applied to the world of radio and cell phones. Mitra’s group works on the design and analysis of complex wireless communication systems. If you’re in Los Angeles, calling your grandmother in Duluth, you have to worry about things like “fidelity of information.” That is, did Grandma in Duluth hear exactly what I said two thousand miles away?

Consider Samuel Morse and the original telegraph. Back in 1844, he invoked the Bible, Numbers 23:23, to send the very first telegraph message — “What hath God wrought?” — from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. But what happened when the distance was more than a couple hundred miles?

What happened if the message was more complicated than “What hath God wrought?”

Morse knew that it was pure physics; the signal strength would be reduced as a function of the distance and the amount of data. So he imagined something new, the Morse Telegraph Repeater, a series of relay stations in every city that would duplicate the original message and pass them along to the next station.

According to Urbashi Mitra, a professor in USC Viterbi’s Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, “Any signal we send out is information.” Much like the waggle dancing of bees to indicate the location of food, networks of bacteria may also be communicating.

When Mitra heard about the “big news” in microbial research, it sounded an awful lot like the engineered wireless networks she’s been exploring these past 20 years.

According to El-Naggar, scientists have known for some time that bacterial cells share chemical signals back and forth in close proximity. But in 2012, deep in the ocean, scientists discovered something astonishing: thousands of bacterial cells, chains as long as a centimeter, had formed naturally in the wild.

Like Morse’s telegraph repeater, they were relaying information. Imagine for a moment, this Empire State Building of bacteria, submerged beneath the ocean floor. Each end of the tower has something the other side wants: The bacteria buried deepest in the soil have energy and hydrogen sulfide, but no oxygen. The bacteria nearest to the water have oxygen, but no energy.

The whole community of bacteria has to work together to move electrons from one end to another.

Was this sharing of electrons just another form of communication? How big a network could they form? How much information could they share? No one had done any mathematical modeling of this multi-hopped bacterial system before. Fortunately, Mitra was fascinated by this idea that communication could be more than the transmission of electromagnetic waves in the air. A key question, according to Mitra, is, “Could communication theory be used to explain why these seemingly impossibly long chains of bacteria existed in the wild?”

Consider the implications in our own bodies, where bacterial cells outnumber human cells by a ratio of 3 to 1. If electron exchange between bacteria is just another mode of communication, El-Naggar explained, “it could be a way of regulat-

ing microbes within our own bodies, which could have implications for disease.”

Most bacteria in our bodies do good things, not bad things. For example, mitochondria are ancient bacteria living in a symbiotic relationship with our cells. They generate the power, ATP, for all human life.

But it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where a disease like sepsis is caused by a bacterial communication gone haywire. Like a broken circuit, understanding the whys and hows of bacterial communication might enable new engineering solutions.

Said Mitra: “Once we define the fundamentals and validate the theory via experiment, the applications will be vast.”

19

WHAT'S NEXT

GARAGE HONOR ROLL

INVESTORS BET ON THE STARTUP GARAGE

$125,000 $50 0,0 00

00 $500,0

BY MARC BALLON $4.5 million

0 0,00 0 5 $4,

$1,000 ,000

The USC Viterbi Startup Garage opened its doors in summer 2013 with the goal of spawning a wave of dynamic, high-tech companies in Southern California that could blossom into the next Amazon or Google. The Startup Garage’s 10 inaugural teams—all led or co-founded by USC Viterbi students and alumni—received seed capital, mentoring, legal advice, office space in Marina Del Rey, and other strategic resources to help them succeed.

So what happened when these young entrepreneurs graduated from the security of the Startup Garage? Many of them went out and raised millions of dollars, underscoring the accelerator’s success and value in helping to transform ideas into viable businesses.

To date, five companies that graduated from the Startup Garage’s first class have raised a total of more than $6.6 million in follow-on capital.

AIO Robotics — Manufacturer of the Zeus, the world’s first all-in-one 3-D printer that prints, scans, copies and faxes. Forbes.com called Zeus “a game changer.”

Capital raised: $500,000

Taggler — An online marketplace that brings together screenprinters and customers looking for customized T-shirts at a good price. College customers include Georgetown, UC Berkeley, Stanford and Wisconsin.

Capital raised: $500,000

MediaHound Inc. — Creator of an app that

helps consumers search for, collect and share their favorite entertainment content, from books to music to video games.

Capital raised: $4.5 million Moving Analytics — Co-founded by Gaurav Sukhatme, chair of the USC Viterbi Department of Computer Science, the Movn app encourages people with recent heart surgeries to exercise.

Tilofy — Creator of the Watsup app, which

matches location information with data from multiple social media platforms and other online resources to deliver a real-time view of what’s happening nearby, from cool restaurants to plays, poetry readings and lectures. Forbes.com described Watsup as “a mobile technology [that] brings us one step closer to omniscience.”

Capital raised: $1 million

Capital raised: $125,000

20 Spring 2015

INFOGRAPHIC: FOAF

BY CASSIE PATON AND MARC BALLON

Anyone who’s had traditional braces has no doubt wished for a more comfortable, convenient and aesthetically pleasing alternative.

While Invisalign is one option, its effectiveness is limited to only a small number of patients who need minor corrections. However, a group of engineers and dentists from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC has a solution that addresses even the most severe cases and is virtually invisible.

ComfortCorrect, both the company’s and the technology’s name, will soon be offered as alternative to traditional braces and Invisalign.

It’s shaping up to be a game-changer in the teeth-straightening market.

Developed by its team of engineers and dentists that includes USC Viterbi professors Behrokh Khoshevis and Yong Chen as well as Professor Hongsheng Tong of the Ostrow School, ComfortCorrect uses programmable wiring technology that sits behind the teeth, making it more comfortable and affordable than current solutions, according to orthodontist John Pham, ComfortCorrect CEO, co-inventor and an Ostrow graduate. Compared to competitors’ products, ComfortCorrect features an improved design and is manufactured using an advanced robotic process, resulting in precision treatment that requires fewer follow-up orthodontic visits, he added.

ComfortCorrect has secured $350,000 in funding from prominent university business plan competitions, including the Ideas Empowered Program, the USC Coulter Translational Research Partnership Program, the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering and, most recently, the Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition (MEPC).

ComfortCorrect, a more comfortable and virtually invisible alternative to braces, is poised to dramatically affect the market.

CROOKED TEETH

GAME CHANGER

IT’S BEEN SURREAL, KIND OF LIKE A CINDERELLA S T O R Y. STRAIGHT TEETH

“It’s been surreal, kind of like a Cinderella story,” said Pham. “When we had this whole concept, we had no clue how far it’d go.”

Pham said when the ComfortCorrect team began pitching its concept to competitions and potential backers, it competed against innovators designing drones, cures for the common flu and cancer treatments. But what ComfortCorrect offered was so promising, one of the judges at the MEPC even handed Pham his business card after the team’s presentation.

“There’s a clear market need,” said USC Viterbi Professor Peter Beerel, executive director of the MEPC. “They’ve thought of all the aspects beyond the technology, and the judges saw this as a complete package.”

ComfortCorrect competes in a growing segment. In 2012, nearly 5.9 million Americans had braces, compared to 4.4 million in 1996, a 34 percent increase, according to the American Association of Orthodontists.

The company has partnered with about 200 of the country’s top-tier orthodontists and hopes to have the product on the market by the end of this year. Clinical trials have begun to treat young people with cleft lip and palate at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

As a child, Pham had traditional braces, although his newly straightened teeth later became crooked because he refused to wear a retainer.

No problem. Pham revealed he has worn a ComfortCorrect prototype since spring 2014. Within two months, he said, ComfortCorrect braces had fixed his teeth. Pham continues to use them.

“It’s very compelling to give a pitch to investors and say, ‘I’m wearing them right now,”’ said Pham, who calls himself “Patient Zero.” “I’m a walking billboard for ComfortCorrect.”

21

A

S A F E R WO R L D A software program created by USC Viterbi’s Milind Tambe protects U.S. ports and airports from terrorists and aims to protect wildlife from poachers.

By Marc Ballon

In the early 2000s, USC Viterbi Computer Science Professor Milind Tambe and a graduate student began working on a game-theory algorithm to optimize interactions among robots. They found that randomized interactions resulted in the most effective coordination.

“We were really just playing around with some concepts,” Tambe said. “Really, what could you do with this stuff?”

A couple years later, Tambe found out. At the inaugural meeting of CREATE (Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events), USC’s Department of Homeland Security-funded national research counterterrorism center, one of the speakers suggested that the 9/11 terrorists succeeded partly because American security operations had become so predictable. “Suddenly, a light bulb went off,” Tambe said. “Maybe intelligent randomization could be of some value.”

In the years since, Tambe and his research team have created ARMOR, a sophisticated software program that greatly enhances security around the world in a variety of settings, ranging from American ports and airports to Asian wildlife sanctuaries to African forests. The software and its many iterations use algorithms to randomize patrols to confuse would-be terrorists, poachers and other malefactors by making it impossible for them to identify exploitable patterns. Through machine learning, the software also continuously improves with the input of new data, such as when and where past attacks have occurred and the identification and ranking of high-value targets.

22 Spring 2015

ARMOR provides additional protection to highvalue assets through what Tambe calls “intelligent randomization.” That means important targets receive extra protection while others receive less oversight. Taken together, the software optimizes the use of limited resources to provide the greatest possible security.

Tambe’s research is rooted in mathematical game theory, which tries to predict how conflict might play out between adversaries. According to the Bavesian Stackelberg game theory, the offense (the bad guys) observes the defense (counterterrorism forces, park rangers and others) to identify and exploit any security weaknesses. ARMOR, through the creation of intelligently randomized schedules, aims to thwart attacks by keeping the potential criminals guessing.

“I think Milind’s work is very important,” said Ariel Procaccia, a Tambe collaborator and assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. “I believe it’s one of the most important applications of algorithmic or computational game theory out there.”

It’s certainly among the most widely used.

In 2007, Los Angeles International Airport counterterrorism experts began using ARMOR to randomize the scheduling of police checkpoints for the six inbound roads to LAX. That project’s success led to the creation of a new version of the software, IRIS, to randomize the flight schedules of federal air marshals. In 2011, the U.S. Coast Guard began using a version of Tambe’s software, called PROTECT, to help protect the Port of

Boston. Today, the system operates at four major American ports, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, which together rank No. 9 in the world by container traffic.

That’s not all. Last year, the Coast Guard successfully tested the system to thwart illegal fishing of red snapper and sharks off Texas in the Gulf of Mexico. Conservationists in Malaysia, Indonesia, Uganda, Nepal and elsewhere have tested or expressed interest in prototyping it to save endangered rhinos, tigers and other animals. The U.S. Navy, according to published reports, has expressed interest in using it for anti-piracy patrols.

With a missionary’s zeal, Tambe travels the globe to spread the word. His peregrinations have taken him from the Pentagon to national parks in Uganda. Tambe, a native of India with fluency in both Western and Eastern cultures, treads carefully when discussing the software, always listening and learning while diplomatically building consensus.

Tambe exudes deep-seated confidence about ARMOR’s potential to make a difference.

“I expect it to spread like wildfire throughout the world, including applications I can’t even think of,” he said. “I mean it’s absolutely fantastic. Wherever there’s an adversarial component involved, wow, we can be right there.”

Different iterations of USC Viterbi Professor Milind Tambe’s ARMOR game-theory systems are in use, undergoing beta testing or being considered for future uses around the globe. See examples on pages 24-27.

I L LU S T R AT I O N : F O A F

Milind Tambeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s software enhances security around the world in a variety of settings, ranging from American ports and airports to Asian wildlife sanctuaries to African forests.

23

DEPLOYED U.S. Ports — PROTECT U.S. Coast Guard officials Joe DiRenzo and David Boyd visited Milind Tambe at his USC office in 2010 to discuss his game-theoretical software and how he might modify it to optimize Coast Guard patrols of American ports.

DiRenzo, the Coast Guard Atlantic Area’s senior adviser for science, technology innovation and research, and Boyd, senior operations analyst at Coast Guard Pacific Area, both went away impressed. They were even more impressed when the police stopped them at a checkpoint on their way to LAX. Officers searched their car while dogs sniffed for drugs.

DiRenzo and Boyd knew that LAX police had employed Tambe’s system on roads leading in and out of the airport. Seeing it in action, though, brought home the value of intelligently randomizing scheduled patrols.

In 2011, Boston Harbor became the first U.S. port to use Tambe’s PROTECT system to secure crowded piers, bridges and ferry terminals. The Port of New York came next, followed by Los Angeles-Long Beach and Houston.

“Dr. Tambe’s research is both innovative and relevant in how we approach today’s port security problem set,” Boyd said. “It is very exciting to see how it is being applied to the maritime domain.”

Borrowing a page from Tambe, the Coast Guard randomizes scheduled patrols at most of its 361 ports. Still, PROTECT earns high marks for its effectiveness and ease of use. Perhaps that’s why senior Coast Guard officials have considered deploying it at other ports.

“We think it’s reduced the likelihood of an attack, because now we have randomized patrols,” said Craig Baldwin, program manager at the Coast Guard Research and Development Center. “From a mathematical sense, I believe it achieves the best resource allocation.”

Airplanes — IRIS The hijacking of four planes on Sept. 11, 2001, underscored America’s vulnerability to terrorists.

As part of its multipronged strategy to prevent future attacks, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has deployed Milind Tambe’s IRIS software since 2009. IRIS intelligently randomizes federal air marshals’ flight schedules to make their air patrols unpredictable to would-be malefactors.

For obvious reasons, TSA refuses to reveal when, where and on what flights it deploys IRIS. However, the agency uses the software at unnamed airports around the country and often on international flights, Tambe said.

“In some cases, when [TSA] have had to increase the number of air marshals, they’ve really exercised IRIS a lot more,” he said.

TSA appears quite satisfied with the software and is in ongoing talks about upgrading it and expanding its use, Tambe added.

In 2011, the Military Operations Research Society (MORS) awarded a TSA and USC team the prestigious RIST award for developing the

intelligently randomized software. The university, former Federal Air Marshal Service Director Robert Bray said in testimony before the U.S. Congress, was “the first non–Department of Defense winner in history.”

LA Metro — TRUSTS

LAX — ARMOR In 2006, the RAND Corp. released a report stating that some terrorist groups viewed Los Angeles International Airport as an “attractive target.” Unlike many other airports, LAX has several roads leading into it, giving potential terrorists many possible routes for curbside bombings or other attacks.

RAND recommended round-the-clock security checkpoints along the five thoroughfares to LAX. However, the estimated cost proved prohibitive.

Erroll G. Southers, then chief of homeland security and intelligence for LAX Police, had a different idea.

Through his affiliation with CREATE, USC’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, Southers knew Milind Tambe and was impressed by his work on intelligently randomized scheduling.

The LAX Police successfully tested the software in 2007. After “tweaking it based on officer feedback,” Southers said, officials deployed it in 2008.

“Weapons seizures went up. Narcotics seizures went up. And let’s just say our ability to identify persons of interest went up,” Southers said.

In January 2009, for instance, a random inspection of a truck on its way to the airport near Century and Sepulveda boulevards netted 10 handguns, five rifles, an antique musket and nearly 1,000 rounds of ammunition. One handgun was loaded.

ARMOR proved so effective at keeping the bad guys guessing that Southers could deploy fewer officers at roadside checkpoints and deploy them in the terminal and elsewhere.

Today, Southers, CREATE’s director of transition and research deployment, serves on the board of advisers of ARMORWAY, a new company created to commercialize Tambe’s “highly effective” software.

Fare evasion is a challenging and costly problem facing subway systems around the world. And the LA Metro is no different.

In an attempt to catch fare jumpers, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which LA Metro subcontracts for security, began experimenting with Milind Tambe’s TRUSTS software in 2011. The game-theoretical approach appeared to work, said Sheriff’s Lt. John Sullivan, former operations manager for transit, North Bureau.

“I think [TRUSTS] is a good thing,” he said. “I think it helps us more effectively employ police resources.”

In 2013, a controlled two-month study compared the number of fare jumpers police caught using schedules created by usual means versus those made by TRUSTS. The result: Metro police apprehended 66 percent more evaders with the intelligently randomized software, Tambe said.

“The problem with schedules made by humans is that humans tend to fall into simple, predictable patterns,” he said.

The Sheriff’s Department also ran experiments to ascertain TRUSTS’ effectiveness in deploying scarce police personnel to deter crime and terrorism on LA Metro, Sullivan said. Preliminary results were good, although more extensive testing is needed to draw any definitive conclusions, he added.

Tambe said ARMORWAY, his new company, and the Sheriff’s Department are in discussions about the long-term deployment of his software for LA Metro.

Sullivan is optimistic about TRUSTS’ future. “If the research continues to show its viability,” he said, “I think it will be embraced by LA Metro, the Sheriff’s Department and transit systems nationwide.”

Staten Island — PROTECT

Gulf of Mexico — ARMOR-FISH

Up to 4,000 passengers take the Staten Island Ferry to and from Manhattan during rush hour.

That makes it a potentially inviting target to wouldbe malefactors, especially given New York City’s status as America’s cultural and financial center.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s positive experience at several major ports with Milind Tambe’s security game-theory approach to optimize security asset allocation led the agency in 2013 to employ it at the Staten Island Ferry, according to Craig Baldwin, the program manager at the Coast Guard Research and Development Center.

“Anywhere it’s identified that escorts or some sort of protection is necessary for a ferry system, we’d like to consider utilizing the PROTECT gametheory approach to optimize the limited resources we have,” said Baldwin, who for the past four years has collaborated with Tambe on the system.

Tambe said he is proud of the growing acceptance of his game-theoretical randomizing software.

“When I saw the Coast Guard boats executing our algorithms from the top of the Staten Island Ferry, I was absolutely thrilled, goose bumps everywhere,” he said.

In the Gulf of Mexico off Corpus Christi, Texas, illegal fishing has decimated the shark and red snapper populations. Additionally, drug traffickers use the coastal waters to ply their trade.

Surface and aerial patrols have slowed illicit activities in the Gulf of Mexico, but there are simply not enough assets to cover the entire area. That’s why U.S. Coast Guard officials asked Milind Tambe and his research team to develop randomized scheduling software to help address this issue.

From the end of August until mid-October, the Game Theoretic Fish Patrol Schedule Model was deployed in the Gulf of Mexico in support of Coast Guard activities. During the 2014 testing, the Coast Guard interrupted two major illegal fishing operations—which impressed Sam Cheung, the Coast Guard’s Research and Development Center (RDC) project manager in game theory, along with his colleagues.

“Based on the results and feedback provided by relevant USCG officials, Dr. Milind Tambe and I think the Game Theoretic Fish Patrol Schedule Model supports operational effectiveness,” Cheung said.

S

24 Spring 2015

SUCCESSFULLY TESTED

Cheung has recommended that the Coast Guard and other government agencies consider employing it in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere to protect fish stocks and hamper other illegal activities, such as drug smuggling. However, Cheung added, “the challenge is finding the funds needed for long-term support and the required training needed for the software.”

Uganda — PAWS In Uganda, poachers win all too often, much to the detriment of local animal populations. Poachers exploit the country’s porous security network to slaughter Cape buffalo, waterbuck and giant forest hogs, which are served up locally and exported as “bush meat.” They target elephants for ivory.

In an effort to thwart the country’s poachers, Milind Tambe and Ugandan partners including park rangers and NGO officials are working on PAWSUganda, an iteration of the ARMOR software. In November, Tambe visited the country for a series of meetings to answer questions, listen and garner support. Among others, he talked to a high-ranking Uganda Wildlife Authority official to obtain new data that would allow Tambe and his team to finetune PAWS-Uganda.

In April 2014, Ugandan rangers tested PAWS at Queen Elizabeth National Park. Overall, the field tests went well. However, a few of the suggested patrol routes were less than optimal because they had been based on incomplete or outdated information, said Andrew Lemieux, a criminology researcher and Tambe associate who works closely with the Ugandan national park.

Tambe has vowed to make the necessary fixes.

He also plans to continue discussions with potential Ugandan partners to increase their comfort level with software created by American academic researchers thousands of miles away.

“Overall, I am hopeful PAWS will be deployed in Uganda,” Tambe said, “but to make it official will require some effort.”

Malaysia — PAWS Throughout Southeast Asia, experienced poachers wage war on the continent’s dwindling tiger population. Using leg snares and baited poison, they ruthlessly and efficiently kill the animals for their fur, meat and bones, which are often used in Chinese medicine. The systematic slaughter of tigers has reduced the worldwide population in the wild to as few as 3,200, a 97 percent drop in just over a century, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Illegal tiger trappers in Asia can operate undetected in forests for long periods of time, making them difficult to locate and arrest, said Rob Pickles, monitoring specialist in Panthera’s Tiger Program, an NGO committed to ensuring the survival of tigers and other wild cats. That’s why Panthera has partnered with Milind Tambe and his research team to test PAWS in Malaysia.

In November, Panthera, in conjunction with the nonprofit group Rimba, began testing the software in forests in northeast Malaysia. They evaluated its ability to generate effective patrols in the challenging, hilly terrain, Pickles said. Tambe hopes to visit Malaysia this spring to oversee additional beta

testing and to forge closer links with nonprofit and governmental conservation agencies.

“Panthera currently operates in 14 tiger sites across Asia, and each one of these requires guidance on patrol strategy,” Pickles said, “so PAWS might be an excellent tool to use at all of our sites.”

FUTURE APPLICATIONS Pentagon For the Pentagon, there is no greater duty than protecting U.S. troops, whether in transport, training or combat. With terrorists throughout the world targeting the United States and its military assets, the threat of sabotage and terrorism is a real and present danger.

After reading how the U.S. Coast Guard uses Milind Tambe’s ARMOR software to protect some American ports, “it was pretty easy to envision using it for force protection around military bases and facilities,” said U.S. Army Col. Jeffery Hannon.

Hannon said that the military faces the large challenge of how to deploy a shrinking number of ships, aircraft and troops to address a growing list of global and domestic needs. He thought a gametheoretic model application structured like ARMOR could be modified to meet users’ specifications and to identify and test different ways to assign and allocate military forces on a global scale. With that in mind, Tambe and Hannon met last summer with officers from the U.S. military to discuss the approach behind the ARMOR software.

While there is no commitment yet, Hannon said he thought ARMOR is “a useful tool that could be a significant jump forward for how the military tackles scarcity, whether the challenge is local force protection or the global problem of allocating forces to U.S. Combatant Commands.”

Madagascar — PAWS

In August, Gore and AVG officials visited eastern Madagascar to gather data from local people about where illegal logging takes place, the routes used to transport the stolen wood and the types of trees most at risk—information that Tambe can incorporate into the software. She and Tambe hope field-testing could begin by the end of this year.

“Everybody in Madagascar has been incredibly excited about collaborating with Milind, learning about the technology and science, and making a difference on the ground,” Gore said.

Singapore — STREETS As a USC Viterbi computer science graduate student, Pradeep Varakantham worked closely with Milind Tambe, one his Ph.D. advisers. When he graduated in 2007, Varakantham was well aware of Tambe’s ARMOR software and its potential.

Today, the assistant professor of information systems at Singapore Management University is collaborating with Tambe on new software that would intelligently randomize traffic police patrols to reduce the growing problem of reckless driving in the Asian city-state.

In Singapore, the number of traffic violations for speeding, running red lights and other infractions has increased, according to a 2013 report by the Singapore Police Force. The problem of reckless driving has become so acute that in 2012 the government created a multipronged program called Safer Roads Singapore.

Varakantham, Tambe and other researchers are working on a software program called STREETS that would intelligently randomize patrols and enhance roadside safety.

The duo has met several times with officials from Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs about it and hopes to secure funding for large-scale testing and deployment. Varakantham and Tambe are confident STREETS would make a difference.

“To the best of our knowledge, existing methods of traffic patrolling rely solely on the intuition of traffic officers on the ground,” Varakantham said. “STREETS not only incorporates information about driver driving patterns on different roads, but it also projects a perception of omnipresence through strategic randomization.”

In Madagascar, lush forests support the multitude of animal and plant life that contributes to the island country’s rich biodiversity. The forests sequester carbon, prevent erosion, promote ecotourism and serve as a source of malaria medicine and other plant-based medicines.

They also attract illegal loggers in search of money. In eastern Madagascar, they have cut down rosewood, ebony and other trees used in the production of musical instruments and furniture. It is believed that organized crime, some with ties to terrorist organizations, oversees the deforestation.

Meredith Gore, an associate professor of conservation social sciences at Michigan State University, believes that Milind Tambe’s ARMOR software might help turn the tide. She, Tambe and a Malagasy civil society group called Alliance Voahary Gasy (AVG) hope to eventually employ the software to randomize patrol schedules for rangers, police and national park officials to reduce environmental crimes.

25

MILIND TAMBE’S ARMOR AND ITS MANY ITERATIONS ARE USED AROUND THE WORLD TO PROTECT AGAINST TERRORISM, POACHERS, ILLEGAL FISHING AND OTHER THREATS.

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SUCCESSFULLY TESTED Gulf of Mexico (Near Corpus Christi, Texas) — ARMOR-FISH ARMOR-FISH intelligently randomized schedules for U.S. Coast Guard aerial patrols to thwart the illegal fishing of decimated shark and red snapper populations. (2014) Los Angeles Metro — TRUSTS The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which LA Metro subcontracts for security, employed TRUSTS to intelligently randomize patrol schedules to stop fare evasion. The Sheriff’s Department later ran preliminary experiments to ascertain effectiveness in deploying scarce police personnel to deter crime and terrorism on LA Metro. (2011–2013)

26 Spring 2015

Uganda — PAWS Ugandan rangers tested PAWS at Queen Elizabeth National Park to intelligently randomize patrols to prevent the slaughter of animals, including Cape buffalo, waterbuck and giant forest hogs, which are served up locally and exported as “bush meat.” (2014) Malaysia — PAWS Panthera, an NGO that is committed to ensuring the survival of tigers and other wild cats, in conjunction with the nonprofit group Rimba, began testing PAWS in forests in northeastern Malaysia, to evaluate its ability to generate effective patrols in the challenging, hilly terrain. (2014)

POSSIBLE FUTURE TEST SITES Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Indonesia — PAWS

DEPLOYED Ports — PROTECT PROTECT intelligently randomizes U.S. Coast Guard patrols to optimize scarce resources to secure crowded piers, bridges and ferry terminals.

PROTECT is employed at: Port of New York and New Jersey Port of Boston Port of Houston Port of Los Angeles-Long Beach

Staten Island Ferry — PROTECT PROTECT provides protection to the Staten Island Ferry, which carries up to 4,000 passengers at peak times.

U.S. Air Traffic — IRIS As part of its multipronged strategy to prevent attacks, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has since 2009 deployed Milind Tambe’s IRIS system, which Los Angeles International Airport — ARMOR intelligently randomizes federal air ARMOR intelligently randomizes schedules of marshals’ flight schedules to make their air checkpoints along the five roads that lead into patrols unpredictable to would-be the airport. malefactors.

PAWS

M A L AY S I A

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UGANDA MA

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FUTURE TEST SITES Singapore — STREETS Singaporean traffic authorities could employ STREETS to intelligently randomize police patrols to catch reckless drivers, a big problem in this island nation.

Madagascar — PAWS Milind Tambe, working with Meredith Gore, an associate professor of conservation social sciences at Michigan State University, and a Malagasy civil society group called Alliance

Voahary Gasy (AVG), hopes to eventually employ PAWS in Madagascar to randomize patrol schedules for rangers, police and national park officials to reduce environmental crimes, especially illegal logging.

27

5 Ways Games Will Change the World_ Much more than entertainment, games hold the power to transform peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives.

By Katie McKissick

Games have come a long way since Monopoly, Tetris and Mario. With immersive environments and personalized experiences, games are capable of far more than a few minutes or hours of entertainment. Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s teaching social skills to a child with autism spectrum disorder or encouraging people to conserve electricity, games tap into our natural curiosity and problem-solving skills.

They have the power to change the world for the better in inďŹ nite ways, and USC Viterbi is at the forefront of this powerful social technology.

28 Spring 2015

1 Providing Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder An ambitious, altruistic project emerged from the 2014 cohort of USC Games, the No. 1 ranked collaboration between USC Viterbi and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Developed by a team of 35 students from engineering, MBA, design and elsewhere in the USC community in Professor of Engineering Practice Mike Zyda’s Advanced Games course, Social Clues is an iPad application that transports players to a make-believe world that entertains while teaching children on the autism spectrum to make eye contact, listen to others and engage in conversation.

In the game, a player assumes the identity of ParticiPete or CommuniKate. Pete and Kate converse with different virtual characters in cafeterias, classrooms and other real-world settings to find lost toys. In the process, they learn the dos and don’ts of social interaction.

“What we’re trying to do is break down everyday interactions into something very understandable, very manageable,” said USC Marshall School of Business MBA student Jeremy Bernstein, Social Clues’ project lead, who created the game with his wife, Karen Okrent, a speech pathologist who often works with children with autism. “We’re basically giving our players a road map they can use offline,” he said.

With an estimated one in 68 children identified as having autism spectrum disorder — the broad term for the neurological condition that impairs communication, the ability to form relationships and respond appropriately to one’s surroundings, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the need for educational games such as Social Clues has never been greater.

2 Revolutionizing STEM Education For some students, science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) concepts are challenging. It can be easy to get lost in the details or become muddled in rote tasks without attaining true understanding.

Meanwhile, those same struggling students often play video games that were built on the same core concepts they are trying to master. Making games offers a unique opportunity for students to learn and readily apply their skills all while having fun and collaborating with peers. They are the future of education.

At the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute (ISI), researchers are combining video games and STEM education. Computer Science Professor Jihie Kim and computer scientist Erin Shaw, together with Jim Baker, former director of Viterbi's Integrated Media Systems Center, developed a program called Pedagogical Games. This game development curriculum, which is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, turns games into a learning opportunity wherein students can learn mathematical concepts via game creation. game creation.

As students design and build their games, they must use logical math and computational thinking in the process. Along the way they learn and master mathematical concepts inherent in the game-making process, such as using rates and fractions to set player speeds to grid multiples and ensure safe passage through mazes.

Piloted at schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where graduation rates hover around 50 percent, PedGames’ overarching goal is to address retention, career education and secondary mathematics while also fostering collaboration among students.

The program is poised to significantly impact achievement and retention and promote creativity.

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3 Encouraging Responsible Energy Consumption Most games tap into our underlying competitive nature. If you can channel that innate desire to be the best into saving energy, then you’ve got a powerful force to lower energy consumption.

At the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute, Nicole Sintov, a behavioral scientist, and Research Associate Professor Michael Orosz developed a game that challenged students in a USC dorm to see who could decrease their energy consumption the most.

The work was done as part of the Los Angeles Smart Grid Regional Demonstration Program, jointly funded by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Thirty-nine dormitory suites were outfitted with smart electric meters that recorded energy usage in 15-minute intervals. Energy data could be accessed through a touch-screen kiosk located in the lobby of the building. Dorm dwellers competed to achieve the biggest reduction in energy use to win prizes during the three-week competition, held in September. The rankings were updated continuously at the kiosk and posted on fliers.

The contest resulted in a 4 percent decrease in electricity use among all suites, representing a savings of 2,419 kilowatt-hours, the equivalent of more than 2,600 pounds of carbon dioxide. Impressively, this decrease was measured despite record heat and peak electricity demand in Southern California during the competition period.

“Our goal was to involve end users as partners in energy management, and we did this by fostering an interactive relationship between the dorm residents and their energy data, instead of delivering a technical solution and pushing it onto users,” said Sintov.

Apart from lowering energy consumption, according to exit surveys the student-participants said they were inspired by the competition and their self-efficacy beliefs increased. They also indicated their willingness to participate in future campus energy-efficiency programs. This shows how the gamification of something like energy usage with real-time feedback and incentives can motivate people to change behaviors and feel empowered by the process.

30 Spring 2015

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Nicole Sintov

Michael Orosz

4 Helping People Interact with Robots Games aren’t just for humans, either. USC Viterbi Computer Science Professor Maja Matarić uses games to help foster human-robot interactions. In the USC Interaction Lab, robots like Bandit, a userfriendly humanoid robot torso platform, use games to help people recover from stroke and to lead elderly patients through seated exercises.

To help stroke patients, Bandit leads users through the “button game,” created by Ph.D. students Kate Swift-Spong and Elaine Short. Bandit directs the patient to touch a particular button as quickly as possible using the stroke-affected limb.

Bandit tells the user how fast they completed the task and encourages them to keep improving.

Recent Ph.D. graduate Juan Fasola developed another game in which Bandit leads seniors through seated exercises by means of imitation: users are asked to imitate Bandit’s arm movements, or conversely, the user moves and Bandit imitates his or her motions. Bandit also leads participants through ever-lengthening sequences of motions that the user needs to remember.

In the not-too-distant future, robots will play a vital part in the health care system, filling gaps in care where there aren’t enough human caretakers.

By helping to care for people who might be suffering from Alzheimer’s, recovering from a stroke or needing to stay mobile to lessen the effects of arthritis, robots will revolutionize treatment and rehabilitation for this population. And games will be a key element to keep patients happy, alert and healthy.

Hao Li

Juan Fasola and Maja Matarić

5 Putting the Creative Power in Your Hands Next-generation, real-time performance capture technology means that a future game could star you in full digital form. One of the many applications of this, beyond being highly engaging, is that games designed to help people visualize themselves completing a difficult task or learning something new will be that much more realistic and believable.

With the myriad ways game mechanics can help people learn new skills, change their habits and lead healthier lives, the next step is to make more of them and put that creative power into more people’s hands.

While today you need a team of experts to build a quality game, in the future content will be personalized, and people will be able to generate games in less time for a fraction of the cost thanks to new tools in development by USC Viterbi Assistant Professor Hao Li, of the Department of Computer Science.

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CS@SC: With a legacy of strength in artificial intelligence, robotics, theory, games, multimedia, data-mining and machine learning, combined with a strong tradition of interdisciplinary research, USC Viterbi is a global leader in computer science.

BIG DATA AND MACHINE LEARNING

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE Since the department's founding in 1968, our faculty have made pioneering contributions to fundamental and interdisciplinary fields of computing. Our recent accomplishments include foundational results in DNA computing, Internet technologies, software architectures and software development modeling, human-robot interaction, statistical natural language processing, game theory, human behavior and Academy Award-winning work in computer graphics.

In this area, researchers are developing a framework for rapid integration of heterogeneous Big Data information sources. The framework captures complex interrelationships and interdependence across datasets and establishes probabilistic linkages among distributed content, complementing existing techniques by providing probabilistic queries that take into account the discovered structure among the data sources. To facilitate rich analysis of the integrated datasets, we leverage existing statistical learning, machine learning and data mining techniques.

INFORMATION SCIENCES INSTITUTE Spun off from the Rand Corp. in 1972 as a major ARPANET node, the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute conducts research across an exceptionally wide range of advanced information processing, computer and communications technologies. Researchers here played a key role in developing the protocols of the Internet (TCP/IP) and the .com Domain Name System, and today is home to 330 personnel, including 150 researchers and 80 graduate research assistants, bridging multiple disciplines from AI to software engineering to network security.

INSTITUTE FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES Established in 1999, the USC Institute for Creative Technologies is a U.S. Department of Defense-sponsored University Affiliated Research Center working in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Here, leaders in artificial intelligence, graphics, virtual reality and narrative advance low-cost immersive techniques and technologies to solve problems facing service members, students and society.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE The Information Sciences Institute operates one of the world’s largest artificial intelligence groups. Expertise includes natural language, information integration, education and “serious games.” We also explore adaptive robotics, digital government, unexpected events and other leading-edge disciplines.Research spans AI theory, technical aspects and practical implementation, such as building working prototypes and partnering with industry to create commercial applications.

QUANTUM AND THEORETICAL COMPUTING

INTERNET AND CYBER SECURITY

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

A joint effort of Lockheed Martin Corp., the Quantum Computation Center is exploring the power of adiabatic quantum computing. Computer scientists and USC Information Sciences Institute researchers conduct theoretical and experimental quantum research on the D-Wave One system, the world's first commercial adiabatic quantum optimizer and by far the largest functional quantum information processor ever built. In the theoretical arena, USC boasts the invention of DNA Computing, a branch of computing which uses DNA, biochemistry and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional silicon-based computer technologies.

Computer networks teams explore sensor networks and cybersecurity, along with network infrastructure, design and simulation, among other thrusts. Our researchers emphasize both theory and practice across a wide range of technologies and potential uses. For example, current initiatives include research, development and applications in data center networking and cloud-based systems; cyber infrastructure for environmental sensor networks; and Internet measurement and monitoring, including the highly regarded DETER cybersecurity research and testbed project

The Natural Language Group at the USC Information Sciences Institute conducts research in natural language processing and computational linguistics, developing new linguistic and mathematical techniques to make better technology. With triumphs like IBM’s “Jeopardy”-winning Watson and breaking codes likes the Copiale Cipher, researchers have a wide range of ongoing projects, including those related to statistical machine translation, question answering, summarization, ontologies, information retrieval and natural language generation.

GAMES

ROBOTICS

VIRTUAL HUMANS

Recognized as the No. game design program in North America by the Princeton Review, USC Games represents an exciting collaboration between the School of Cinematic Arts' Interactive Media and Games Division and the Viterbi School of Engineering's Department of Computer Science. Incorporating elements of design, artistry and engineering, USC Games offers an utterly unique educational experience for students, and serves as the launching pad for them to play significant roles in the game design field. With rigorous, handson instruction from master designers, engineers and working professionals in the industry, students have an unprecedented level of opportunity to delve into every aspect of creating games for a global audience.

With one of the most diverse groups of robots in academia, robotics research in the Department of Computer Science focuses on the science and technology of robotic systems, with broad and far-reaching applications. With projects spanning the major areas of robotics, including service, socially assistive, distributed, networked, marine, aerial, humanoid, nano, reconfigurable and space, our work impacts a broad spectrum of applications, including assistance, training and rehabilitation, education, environmental monitoring and cleanup, emergency response, homeland security and entertainment.

The Virtual Humans Group advances research in computer-generated characters that use language, have appropriate gestures, show emotion and react to verbal and non-verbal stimuli. Widely considered the most comprehensive research project of its kind, the Institute for Creative Technologies virtual human effort has applications in training and education and in furthering social science research about real people.

Current research spans cognitive architecture, embodiment, emotion, integrated virtual humans, recognition of non-verbal cues and natural language processing.

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CS@SC: By the Numbers

1 1 1

#

Federal funding in computer science (U.S. government R&D expenditures)

#

#

Video game design program (Princeton Review)

Online graduate computer IT program (U.S. News and World Report)

655

10 #12

#

Microsoft’s “top organizations in computer science”

1968 EVANGELOS THEODOROU, ’11, assistant professor (Georgia Tech)

28.7%

PH.D. ALUMNI IN ACADEMIA

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS

JONATHAN KELLY, ’11, assistant professor (University of Toronto)

“Best global universities for computer science” (U.S. News and World Report)

1

1 1

ACADEMY AWARD WINNER

2

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE MEMBERS

YURIY BRUN, ’08, assistant professor (University of Massachusetts)

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING MEMBERS

15

10.4%

10 8

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SIMONS INVESTIGATOR AND GOEDEL PRIZE WINNER

PAUL DEBEVEC

5

LEONARD ADLEMAN, GEORGE BEKEY*, BARRY BOEHM, ARISTIDES REQUICHA, MICHAEL WATERMAN *emeritus faculty

ODEST JENKINS, ’03, associate professor (Brown University)

PH.D. ALUMNI IN INDUSTRY

LEONARD ADLEMAN

LEONARD ADLEMAN, MICHAEL WATERMAN

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PH.D. ALUMNI AT FOUR LEADING COMPANIES

“Top global innovators under 35” (MIT Technology Review)

TURING PRIZE WINNER

DYLAN SHELL, ’08, assistant professor (Texas A&M)

HAL DAUMÉ, ’07, associate professor (University of Maryland) (2007)

50.4%

Percentage of undergraduate women in computer science, versus national average

SHANG-HUA TENG

DANIEL GOLDBERG, ’10, assistant professor, (Texas A&M) MARIN KOBILAROV, ’08, assistant professor (Johns Hopkins University) (

2x 2

5

ACM FELLOWS

6

AAAS FELLOWS

13

AAAI FELLOWS

14

IEEE FELLOWS

THE

USC Viterbi computer scientist Ethan Katz-Bassett works on ways to make the Internet run smoother, faster and better.

By Marc Ballon

Think of the Internet as a massive freeway. In the beginning, traffic is light. In time, however, gridlock develops. Unless ameliorative action is taken, the entire system could come to a grinding halt.

Ethan Katz-Bassett works to find ways to keep the Internet’s lanes flowing smoothly, even as the Web’s popularity continues to grow. Katz-Bassett, an assistant professor of computer science who joined USC Viterbi in 2012, works to improve Internet performance, making him a sort of traffic cop for the Web. “My research goal is to design novel systems and protocols to dramatically improve Internet reliability,” said Katz-Bassett, who in 2014 received the prestigious National Science Foundation Career Award, a five-year grant to support research, teaching and community outreach.

Added his USC Viterbi graduate student and collaborator, Tobias Flach: “We are making important steps toward improving the speed of the Internet and thereby making users happier.”

To make the Internet function better, KatzBassett and his colleagues believe they must better understand its operations, especially the delivery of content from large providers like Google and Netflix that generate much of the Web’s traffic.

For example, in 2013, Katz-Bassett led a team that developed techniques to locate all Google servers and map the connections between servers and clients. Over a 10-month period, the researchers measured a seven-fold increase in the number of Google locations around the world from which the company served client queries. (Google had

embarked on a major change in its server strategy.)

Additionally, Katz-Bassett and others in his lab, in collaboration with Google, redesigned how Web traffic recovers from congestion. The result: Exper-

I'M EXCITED TO HELP MY STUDENTS FIGURE OUT AND ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS, AND I'M EXCITED THAT MY RESEARCH ALLOWS THEM TO COLLABORATE WITH THE LARGEST INTERNET PROVIDERS TO MAKE THE WEB BETTER FOR EVERYONE.

iments showed that the changes sped up Google client connections by an average of 23 percent.

More recently, Katz-Bassett, along with coprincipal investigators Ramesh Govindan and Minlan Yu of USC Viterbi, and researchers from

Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts, launched an NSF-funded project to create a so-called “electronic eye in the sky” capable of looking down on the entire Internet to find the best routes for network operators to use.

“Our Internet experience depends on the performance and availability of routes that cross multiple networks, but service providers and operators have little visibility into or control over the other networks on which they rely,” Katz-Bassett said. “We have developed a number of techniques to give unprecedented visibility into and influence over these routes.”

Said Gaurav Sukhatme, chair of the USC Viterbi Department of Computer Science: “Ethan is a rising star in the area of Internet measurement who marries uncanny intuition with experimental rigor to accurately probe the functioning of the Internet in new ways.”

Katz-Bassett earned his Ph.D. at the University of Washington. For his dissertation, he built systems to improve Internet performance and availability. He then spent six months in Google’s Seattle office as part of a team tasked with making the Web work fast on mobile phones. Afterward, he moved on to an assistant professorship at USC Viterbi.

“I chose to come to USC Viterbi because I felt that people here cared about helping me succeed,” Katz-Bassett said. “I'm excited to help my students figure out and achieve their goals, and I'm excited that my research allows them to collaborate with the largest Internet providers to make the Web better for everyone.”

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ALUMNI

A HELPING HAND

T

he shy student from India learned about what he calls the “dignity of labor” while working and studying his way through graduate school at USC Viterbi.

To support himself while earning a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1985, Narendra Narayanan toiled away in the cafeteria, in the library and in the computer center. He also graded undergraduate papers and worked odd jobs.

The variety of work opened Narayanan up to a world of people from diverse backgrounds.

Never once, he said, did he feel like he was doing menial work. And those three years helped shape how the now-highly successful entrepreneur conducts business.

“USC was a game-changer for me,” said Narayanan, 54, who returned to India in late 1986.

Today, Narayanan is managing director of Vinyas Innovative Technologies Pvt Ltd., a group of global electronics manufacturing companies that together generate more than $100 million in annual revenues.

Based in Mysore, India, Vinyas has become a corporate champion of employing the disabled.

Since 2007, the privately held company has dedicated itself to training and hiring at least two people a year who are either hearing impaired or have a mental disability. Today, more than 10 per-

cent of Vinyas’ global workforce of 1,000 employees is disabled. Of those workers, 80 are hearing impaired, 14 are mentally challenged and 10 have other disabilities.

Creating work opportunities for the disabled is a mission Narayanan said was reinforced during his years at USC when he realized firsthand the value

“I LIKE THE ENVIRONMENT AND W O R K I N G C U LT U R E , ” SAID ONE HEARINGIMPAIRED WORKER AT VINYAS INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES. “MY SUPERVISORS ALWAYS ENCOURAGE AND SUPPORT ME TO DO V E R Y W E L L I N M Y J O B .”

Working his way through graduate school helped inspire a USC Viterbi alumnus to employ the disabled in his native India.

By Greg Hardesty

of putting in an honest day’s work. But the roots of that mission go back to his childhood.

“My father was a psychiatrist and research scholar who did a lot of work with the mentally challenged,” said Narayanan, who was born in Bangalore and earned his undergraduate degree from Bangalore University in 1981. “He would always come home from work and tell me, ‘If these people could work in a “normal” environment it would definitely make a difference in their lives, but that opportunity is not available to them.’”

When he launched Vinyas in 2001, Narayanan made it a priority to create work opportunities for the disabled. Prior to forming Vinyas, he established an electronics manufacturing services company for an industrial group in Mysore.

Working with local schools for the disabled, Vinyas developed a training program for potential

employees. And the company prodded some of its supervisors to learn sign language.

“It’s not been difficult at all,” Narayanan said of the extra investment in time and money required to hire the disabled.

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“USC WAS A GAMEC H A N G E R F O R M E ,” S A I D N A R E N D R A N A R AYA N A N , F O U N D E R O F V I N YA S . “ I R E A L LY C A M E O U T O F M Y S H E L L T H E R E .”

The employees perform such tasks as assembling electronic boards and packaging items.

They include workers like Puttaraju, 28, who is hearing impaired.

“I like the environment and working culture,” said Puttaraju, who requested that only his first name be used. “My supervisors always encourage and support me to do very well in my job.”

Another hearing-impaired employee, Ramachandra, 27, has worked in the Quality Department from four years.

“I feel to be proud working at Vinyas,” said Ramachandra, who also declined to give his last name.

One mentally challenged employee works in the front office at Vinyas.

“He can communicate well,” Narayanan said, “but he doesn’t know how to lie. If I say, ‘Tell that visitor I am not here,’ he will say, ‘Narendra said he is not here—he’s right here, but he says he’s not.’’’

But not being able to lie is the whole point, Narayanan added. “The reason we put him in the front office is to make the point that your business should be honest and ethical, and it all should start when customers walk into your door.”

Most of the disabled employees at Vinyas are in their 20s and 30s. When the program started in 2007, they mostly kept to themselves, Narayanan said, but over time they’ve become integrated with the whole workforce.

“They eat with everyone and have friends throughout the company,” Narayanan said.

He has seen other changes in the group as well.

“When they started, most would not be able to correlate what 100 rupees ($1.60) would get them, or that they should not spend all of their 6,000 rupees ($95) on food,” Narayanan said. “One young man who at first didn’t know what to do with his money went to HR one day after working here for a few years and said, ‘Hey, I worked on this particular Sunday and was not paid for it.’ This is an example of the changes I have seen in them.”

Narayanan’s commitment to the disabled has earned his company accolades in his native country. India’s Ministry of Social Justice and Welfare named Vinyas “Best Employer” for the

Year 2010–11. Through his involvement with Rotary International, Narayanan has been successful in encouraging other companies in India to follow his lead. And this past summer, Narayanan was recognized with a Widney House Volunteer Award from USC. Indeed, Narayanan visits Southern California every six months or so as a board member of an Indian-run company based in Los Angeles. When he does, he makes sure to look up his old friends at USC—the ones he credits with transforming a once-shy kid from India into a socially conscious entrepreneur. “I really came out of my shell there,” he said.

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ALUMNI

Paying It Forward USC Viterbi alumnus Bruce Hueners attended the university on a scholarship.

Now, he wants to make others’ dreams come true with a $1 million scholarship gift.

By Matthew Kredell Bruce Hueners, ’74, grew up knowing he would become a Trojan. His mother, Jean, had foreseen it when she was 6 years old.

It was 1931, and she was listening with her father to a wooden radio in Redondo Beach, California, as USC played Notre Dame in South Bend for the first time. The Howard Jones-coached Trojans—big underdogs to a team that hadn’t lost in three seasons—trailed by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter before storming back and winning 16-14 on a field goal with a minute remaining. That moment, she later told her sons, was when she determined that they would attend the University of Southern California.

This is why in donating $1 million to create a scholarship in perpetuity at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Bruce Hueners, president and CEO of Palomar Technologies in Carlsbad, California, decided to call it the Hueners Family Endowment for Scholarship. He wanted the gift to include his mother and the Trojan legacy she conceived. Bruce Hueners and his brother, Dave, ’74, M.S. ’75, graduated from USC Viterbi. Bruce Hueners’ sons Richard and Greg followed his path to USC, as well, respectively earning their degrees from the Marshall School of Business and Price School of Public Policy.

“When you get to a certain age, you look at what you could leave behind you that will last,” said Bruce Hueners, 63. “If my mom could have known about this scholarship, she would really have been proud.”

Another reason Hueners wanted to create a scholarship at USC Viterbi is that he and his brother wouldn’t have been able to attend the school if they hadn’t received scholarships of their own. Jean was a single mother who worked as a teller at Bank of America.

“It’s nice of him to include the whole family in the endowment,” said Dave Hueners, a deputy director and building official for the city of Thousand Oaks, California, where he has worked for 35 years. “I think both of us reflect back upon what a great woman our mom was. I remember the day we graduated—we took a picture in front of Tommy Trojan, him in his ROTC uniform, me in my cap and gown, and our mother between us. She had quite a nice grin on her face knowing that the goal of her life to see that day had been realized.”

Bruce Hueners started at Palomar Technologies as a mechanical engineer in 1981, when it was a division of Hughes Aircraft. The company designs, manufactures, sells and services globally automated high-precision assembly systems. As he puts it, they make the machines that make computers.

38 Spring 2015

“My machines make about 80 percent of the electronics that go into cell towers worldwide,” Hueners explained. “If you’re talking on your cellphone, sending a text or searching the Web, eight times out of 10 your signal is going through a device built by one of my machines.”

After holding nearly every job at the place over three decades, Hueners got the rare opportunity to own the company. During the economic crisis in the summer of 2008, he led the management team to buy out the majority owners at Citicorp. He has since taken Palomar out of debt and into sustained profitability.

Like USC, Palomar has become a family business. His sons Richard and Evan work for the company, with Richard a vice president of sales and marketing in the Singapore office. Palomar has subsidiaries in Singapore and Germany.

Hueners, who recently joined the USC Viterbi Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (AME) advisory board, looks forward to bringing his expertise in mutual areas of focus such as robotics, manufacturing and the Pacific Rim. “We much enjoy his positive energy, active contribution and insightful comments based on substantial overlap with the current and likely future areas of technical growth and innovation within the department,” said USC Viterbi Professor Geoff Spedding, AME department chair.

When he isn’t working, Hueners prefers to dress in jeans and tennis shoes for his low-key lifestyle in Carlsbad. His hobbies include woodworking and gardening. He finds building cabinetry from his garage and keeping his Tifgreen hybrid

Bermuda grass to golf-course quality helps him clear his head and come up with ideas.

Hueners credits the discipline, knowledge and confidence he gained at USC Viterbi for his success.

“The dedication of the professors and the Trojan family really had an indelible impression on me,” he said. “I have found the USC bond to be an enduring, global relationship that is genuine and vibrant everywhere I travel. I consider myself greatly privileged to be an alumnus of the finest university in the land.”

“The dedication of the professors and the Trojan family really had an indelible impression on me,” said Bruce Hueners '74, CEO of Palomar Technologies.

IN MEMORIAM

MAJ. GEN. HAROLD J. GREENE Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, a USC Viterbi School of Engineering alumnus with three degrees from the university, died in the line of duty in Kabul, Afghanistan, in August. He was the highest-ranking soldier lost in the line of duty since the Vietnam War. Greene, M.S. ’89 in materials science, M.S. ’90 in mechanical engineering, Ph.D. ’92, also in mechanical engineering, was in Afghanistan helping the local army develop better ways to acquire and provide resources for troops, according to USA Today.

“General Greene served our country with honor and distinction. He served with unparalleled dedication and offered the highest sacrifice, his own life,” said Yannis C. Yortsos, dean of USC Viterbi. “We are honored and proud to count him as our own. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”

Florian Mansfeld, now a professor emeritus of materials science, served as Greene’s academic adviser at USC. He remembers a warm student, a bit older than his classmates, but friendly with everyone.

“Everybody liked him. He had a great sense of humor,” Mansfeld said. “He worked very fast and was always willing to help the other students.”

After leaving USC, Greene’s expertise in airframe materials translated to a job helping the Army investigate helicopter crashes. Having developed a strong bond, Greene hired Mansfeld as a consultant, and they worked together to improve the safety of helicopters by understanding what causes failures. From there, he rose through the ranks of the Army, ultimately earning promotion to two-star general in 2012.

In his more than 30 years with the Army, Greene earned numerous commendations and awards, including the Distinguished Service Medal.

Greene was deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in 2014.

ALBERTO BEHAR Alberto Behar, a USC Viterbi alumnus and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist who worked on the Mars Curiosity Rover expedition, died Jan. 9, when the single-engine plane he piloted crashed shortly after takeoff from Van Nuys Airport. Behar was 47.

Behar earned his M.S. in computer science in 1994 and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1998.

Professor Emeritus George Bekey mentored him during his time here.

“I will always remember his intense dedication to field robotics, particularly space robotics,” said Professor Gaurav Sukhatme, chair of the computer science department. Behar and Sukhatme were both Ph.D. students in Bekey’s group in the 1990s.

At JPL and at Arizona State University, Behar developed robotic instruments that investigated Antarctic lakes and volcanoes and helped determine that Mars’ surface once had water, the Los Angeles Times reported.

A Right To Clean Water Three USC Viterbi alumni travel to rural Rwanda to install a water purifying system for cleaner water and healthier communities.

By Marc Ballon

When Jay Todd Max, B.S. ’13, M.S. ’14, visited rural Rwanda with a group of students in summer 2012 to build a preschool, he was struck by the lack of clean water and its deleterious impact on the local population.

While Max and the other American studentvolunteers drank bottled water, local residents fetched water from a dirty lake that often sickened and incapacitated them. UNICEF estimates that worldwide some 768 million people lack access to clean drinking water. About 1.6 million people die every year from cholera and other diarrheal diseases caused by a lack of safe drinking water and basic sanitation, with 90 percent of those under the age of 5, the World Health Organization reports.

Dismayed by what he saw in Rwanda, Max decided to do something about it. “I believe access to clean water is a basic human right,” said Max, now 24.

Returning to USC, he partnered with fellow engineering students Viv Pitter, B.S. ’13, and Kirsten Rice, B.S. ’13, M.S. ’14, to come up with a solution.

Working under the auspices of Massoud Pirbazari, USC Viterbi Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineer and the founder of Safe Water for All Nations (SWAN), the trio developed a low-cost water filtration system big enough to serve a village.

That led to their forming in 2013 the Community Water Project, an organization dedicated to bringing clean water to rural areas in the developing world. With the help of Simon Burrow, a social entrepreneurship expert, the students wrote a business plan in that year’s Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition. Their model: build inexpensive bio-sand filtration systems in conjunction with local communities; charge a nominal but affordable fee to villagers for clean water; and use that money to protect, maintain and expand the system.

With Burrow’s encouragement, the members of Community Water Project decided to test their ideas in the field. Through Indiegogo, they raised $20,000. They also secured a $5,000 grant from National Geographic, which is “proud to support [their] efforts to provide sustainable, safe water in rural communities,” said Dr. John Francis, vice president of research, conservation and exploration for the National Geographic Society.

In October, team members went to Nyarubuye, Rwanda, to build a system that would provide clean water for more than 500 families. Construction finished two months later. With the help of 10 hired villagers, they built a large filter with concrete, rebar, sand and stone; installed a water

pump inside a newly constructed pump house; and built a clean-water storage tank.

In a show of appreciation, 200 residents “clapped, cheered and shouted morakoze (thank you)” at a project meeting, said Rice, who herself became infected with worms from contaminated water during her stay in Rwanda.

What’s next for the Community Water Project?

The principals plan to incorporate as a nonprofit and identify a future project.

Said Max: “We hope to harness biological filtration to provide clean water throughout the developing world wherever it’s needed.”

Jay Todd Max, B.S. ’13, M.S. ’14, believes “access to clean water is a basic human right.”

39

ALUMNI

MaD INVENTOr

A

murmuring robot on wheels greeted recent visitors to a Port of Los Angeles warehouse. Once inside, the assembled were entertained by a man wearing a silver spacesuit strumming an electric guitar between bolts of lightning timed to the music. Not far away, a squad of future Captain Kirks piloted remote-controlled flying saucers. All of these were framed by a bevy of more traditional amusements, including sword swallowers, fire-eaters and jugglers on stilts.

“I used to have a normal job,” said Eric Gradman, co-founder of Two Bit Circus, the company responsible for this extravaganza, which he calls STEAM Carnival (the acronym stands for science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics).

His formal title now is Mad Inventor.

“We’re trying to reimagine out-of-home entertainment,” said Gradman, who graduated in 2002 from USC Viterbi with a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering and, two years later, earned a master’s in computer science.

The Mad Inventor’s “normal” job was building robots for the U.S. military. His real passion, though, was far more basic: tinkering with gadgets in his garage. That’s how Gradman came up with his take on making technology creative: “I realized that what I was producing was art.”

40 Spring 2015

Eric Gradman explores the amalgamation of engineering and art.

By David Haldane

Enter Brent Bushnell, a fellow engineer and former gaming executive enamored of the art and entertainment potentials of technology. Partnered to create amusements for a Los Angeles-based social gathering called Mindshare that both now describe as “a drinking club with an art problem,” Gradman and Bushnell discovered their shared affinity and voilà!—Two Bit Circus was born. “There was simply no way we could go back to real jobs,” Gradman said.

The three-year-old startup, which now employs more than 30 engineers, programmers, mechanics and art designers at its headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, hopes to update and revitalize the amusement industry by, among other things, inventing, producing and selling an array of technological amusements and games; creating and hosting “immersive” private or community events; and producing what Gradman calls “interactive theater” featuring puzzles, performances and video-propelled competitions.

To kick it all off and offer a preview of what’s to come, the two entrepreneurs organized the October carnival in Warehouse 9 at the Port of Los Angeles. Filling 90,000 square feet with dozens of technological games, attractions, performances and workshops, the five-day event attracted more than 13,000 browsers paying $25 a head.

“We wanted to show people a good time and have them leave with an idea of what they

can make,” Gradman said. Additional interest has already come from more than 50 cities, including London, he said, sparking plans to take the event international.

“At one point I was feeling pretty burned out on it. Combining engineering with performance art was incredibly re-inspiring.”

Gradman attributes his unusual career, in part, to his experiences at USC Viterbi. “I feel like I got a great engineering education,” he said, “that gave me the skills to build robots and all these other incredible things.”

Ted Faber, a computer scientist at the USC

Information Sciences Institute (ISI), remembers Gradman as “one of my favorite” students. “Eric was clearly far more creative and motivated than most undergraduates at USC,” Faber said. “He got involved in every sort of activity on and off campus that tickled one of his broad interests.

He is one of a kind, and I could not be happier that he has chosen to devote so much of his time to encouraging others to find the kind of joy he’s found in engineering and art.”

Gradman’s views about the amalgamation of those two disciplines, he said, were shaped by working as a circus performer while attending USC. As an acrobat, aerialist and fire-eater, the future Mad Inventor saw firsthand how magical performance could be. And as a budding engineer, he developed some insights into that field as well. “So often,” he said, “creativity is missing from engineering. At one point I was feeling pretty burned out on it. Combining engineering with performance art was incredibly re-inspiring.”

The inspiration was deepened by the reaction

to what Gradman describes as an “awesome” technologically inspired music video he produced in 2011. “Teachers and parents started contacting us,” he said, “and that was the seed.”

At the STEAM Carnival, visitors said they enjoyed Gradman’s unique entertainment offerings. “This is really neat,” said Erin Hutton, who came from Seal Beach in Orange County to experience the carnival with her two sons, Jaiden, 8, and Jayson, 6. “They are putting things together and using their imaginations.”

Ana Ortega, a San Pedro resident who teaches first grade in Los Angeles and has 6and 7-year-old children of her own, couldn’t agree more. “They have inquiring minds, and this gets their brains thinking,” she said. “They start seeing things as connected to science.”

With so many schools cutting science curriculums, Ortega added, events like the carnival are increasingly critical. “This is very important,” she said. “I hope it catches on.”

TwO BITs CIRCUS’S GREaTEST HiTS —1— LASER MAZE This is a traditional maze with high-tech stakes — participants are forced to jump, crouch, stretch, bend, duck or run to avoid piercing laser beams that will make them losers with a single touch.

—2— COPTER COURSE Seated on the sidelines with hands on the controls but hearts in their cockpits, players guide radio-controlled helicopters through an intricate obstacle course defined by wind, hoops and moving targets. May the best pilot win.

—3— LASER BURST This game takes the classic idea of tossing balls at milk bottles a few steps further.

Instead of throwing balls, competitors use their whole bodies — especially feet — to blast giant laser rings at a series of unfortunate targets.

—4— MAGIC MIRROR Ever wondered what you’d look like as your favorite celebrity, perhaps Rhianna, Ringo, John F. Kennedy or Selena Gomez? Now you can find out: Simply stand on a platform, gaze into the mirror, and a computer will match up your features. Want a picture? Just press the button.

—5— ENORMOUS EYE

USC Viterbi alumnus Eric Gradman combines engineering and art to make magic.

PHOTO: NOE MONTES

Should you feel a need to scare the living daylights out of anyone within fainting distance, this is the attraction for you. Just look into an eyepiece, press the button and — what do you know — a gigantic image of your eyeball is projected onto a screen! Not suggested for people who’ve been drinking.

41

EDITORIAL

FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR ACCIDENT: LESSONS LEARNED FOR U.S. NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

BY NAJMEDIN MESHKATI

Many think that the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident was an inevitable event caused by the Great Japan earthquake and tsunami.

However, every investigation has concluded that the accident was mostly preventable, and that the natural hazards acted only as a triggering mechanism for the ensuring disaster. In the words of Dr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa, chairman of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC), Fukushima was “a man-made disaster" and “made in Japan.”

Because Japan’s nuclear industry failed to absorb the lessons learned from the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents, “it was this mind-set that led to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.”

The U.S. Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to study the causes of the accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini nuclear plants and to identify lessons for the nuclear power plants in the United States. In June 2012, NAS assembled an interdisciplinary committee of 21 experts, including myself, that worked to produce a 400-page report that was released last June. I believe these lessons are of paramount importance for the safety of America’s 62 commercially operating nuclear power plants, with 100 nuclear reactors in 31 states.

All accident investigations conclude that the heroic efforts of the group of selfless human oper-

42 Spring 2015

ators of the Fukushima plants made a profound difference. Their personal sacrifices and dedication, exemplified by staying in their plants and continuing to work in dire conditions, while not knowing whether their families survived the earthquake and tsunami, are of epic proportion.

They worked relentlessly to bring the reactors to the cold shutdown state, which stopped further propagation of the accident that could have led to much more serious meltdowns and the release of radioactive fallouts that could have contaminated a large region of Japan.

It is inevitable that unexpected and “beyond design basis” events will occur. That’s because system designers cannot anticipate all possible scenarios of failure and prepare for every contingency. Despite advances in technology and automation, human operators must remain in charge of the day-to-day controls and monitoring of nuclear power plants for the foreseeable future; they constitute both the first and last layer of defenses.

This is one of the most important lessons of the Fukushima accidents. Without respecting and understanding the vital role of human factors in technological systems and proactively facilitating their performance during unexpected events, especially nuclear safety will only be a distant mirage and recovery will be an unat-

tainable dream. Our committee report has most succinctly codified this important fact: “The Fukushima Daiichi accident reaffirms the important role that people play in responding to severe nuclear accidents and beyond-design-basis accidents more generally.... Recovery ultimately depended on the ingenuity of the people on the scene to develop and implement alternative mitigation plans in real time.…There is growing evidence that people are a source of system resilience because of their ability to adapt creatively in response to unforeseen circumstances.…The Fukushima Daiichi accident reaffirmed that people are the last line of defense in a severe accident.”

Najmedin Meshkati (M.S. EMT ’78, Ph.D. ISE ’83) is a USC Viterbi professor in the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

He conducts research on technological systems safety and has visited many nuclear power stations around the world, including Chernobyl (1997) and Fukushima Daiichi and Daini (2012). He served as a member (2012–2013) and a technical adviser (2013–2014) on the U.S. National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Committee on Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety and Security of U.S. Nuclear Plants. His commentary here should not necessarily be construed as the committee’s representative position.

Net Neutrality and the Future of the Internet 1 Outlets like WIRED are calling the Feb. 26 FCC ruling "a historic win for the Internet." What happened here?

The FCC re-classified the Internet as a "common carrier" - a regulated service like telephone services. The FCC had previously classified the Internet as an unregulated "information service" - i.e., more like Google or Wikipedia. The change will ensure that Internet service will be protected as a consumer right, with no discrimination based on content or customer. Some worry that this new classification will bring heavy governance and the opportunity to tax, e.g., as is done with phones for Universal Access. I had some similar concerns, but now believe that this is the best way to protect the consumer from the natural monopolies of ISPs. 2 It might be valuable to take a trip down memory lane. What are some of the key events in the history of the Internet that brought us to this point?

The Internet began in 1969 as a distributed experiment, which, by its very nature, requires coordination. That includes a common set of protocols and a set of assigned values. The assigned values were coordinated by USC ISI’s Jon Postel until the Internet outgrew its experimental roots and became a commercial and international interest in the mid-1990s. From that time until 2003, Internet traffic consisted largely of web surfing and email, generating sporadic traffic that could often tolerate large delays.

Around 2003, the advent of file sharing and streaming video significantly increased traffic and created a desire for predictable capacity, which quickly led to ISPs [Internet service providers] differentiating traffic based on type, and that’s when the issue of network fairness came to the forefront. Since that time, ISPs have argued for the right to charge these heavy traffic sources and customers have argued for the right to use the Internet without bias.

In 2005, the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] jumped in with its Open Internet order, which was implemented in 2009, that tried to establish that one, ISPs must transparently dis-

5 questions for Joe Touch, director of the Postel Center at the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute (ISI).

To read the entire discussion on net neutrality, visit magazine.viterbi.usc.edu/neutrality.

close terms of service and network performance provided; two, ISPs must not block lawful content, applications or devices that don’t harm the Internet; and three, lawful traffic should not be “unreasonably discriminated.” On Jan. 14, 2014, Verizon won a case against the FCC in the Supreme Court that the FCC had no established right to regulate broadband; [the Court] struck down the last two Open Internet principles, retaining only “transparency.” Since then, the FCC has been exploring ways to address the Court’s concerns, to assert its right to regulate the Internet as a communications service and to re-establish the latter two rights of the original Open Internet order.

3 Let’s say an average American sees a headline about net neutrality in the news. Can you make the case about why they should care?

Consumers should be concerned when there are monopolies or potential biases that aren’t in their interest. Imagine your hometown roads: You pay for them and you use them to get to other places and to let others come to you. Imagine now that your city sells most of those roads for UPS trucks. That’s great when you have a UPS delivery, but what if you choose FedEx? The issue isn’t whether UPS can build bigger roads to the Interstate highways, it’s whether roads everywhere can be bought out by UPS and what that does to its competitors. Do we end up with only one delivery company? Who chooses? UPS? The government?

Do we all start painting every truck brown?

The stakes are many: consumer choice, market diversity, government control, freedom of speech, application innovation and technology stability. It’s a distributed system that took 30 years to build, and we’re all riding on it. It’s useful to note that 30 percent of U.S. consumers have no choice of ISP—they can’t switch to another provider if they don’t like their ISP’s priorities. We see what happens without neutrality repeatedly— battles between cable providers and TV networks repeatedly lead to blackouts, such as CBS vs. Time Warner in August 2013.

4 What are three misconceptions that most people have about net neutrality?

Network neutrality doesn’t mean all traffic is always equal, that ISPs can’t charge for increased bandwidth or that the Internet is a commune.

Control traffic needs to be treated with priority, and it might even be possible to treat some traffic with a higher priority if that’s what the user wants. ISPs can charge for more lanes and can even let users decide what’s more important, but they shouldn’t be selling privileged access to lanes on the customer side—the customer pays for that side of the network, and only they should decide what’s important by what they consume.

Network neutrality isn’t based on an abstract philosophy of anti-discrimination. It’s based on the reality that there is a commons and it needs regulation to be protected.

5 I want you to present three scenarios—possible realities of what our children’s Internet might be like.

There’s the future I hope for, where the Internet will fade into the background and become the foundation for other things. The Internet won’t be a “thing” you get “on,” it’ll just be. We don’t dial-up anymore, and in the future we won’t think about whether we’re on Wi-Fi or 3G/LTE. It’ll just be on, everywhere, and we won’t think about it as a separate thing. Sure, we’ll still manage our information, tag it for various people or reasons, push and pull it in various ways, but we won’t care anymore about how. It’ll happen if we keep the Internet open, and it’ll start to happen when bandwidth becomes something we have in abundance, like we have enough memory, disk space, and processor speed now.

There’s the future I fear, where “walled gardens” fracture the Internet into a set of fiefdoms.

Facebook already does this, and some Google services do as well—they require a login and treat their application as the ecosystem in which the world interacts. That’s where we’d be headed if net neutrality fails—we split into the haves and the have-nots. Money would buy access for some and deny it to others. That’s bad for the Internet because it undermines exactly the free interchange of information that led to things like Facebook and Google in the first place.

There’s the future we’re living in, where both of the above exist in tension. To me, that’s a failure of leadership and education. Economics and government both should teach us that free and open competition rely on regulation where there is a shared resource—the commons. It’d be truly disappointing to see that ignored.

43

CHANGING THE CONVERSATION

OPE OSOBA USC Viterbi post-doctoral researcher and lecturer, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering

MANY LIVES OF ENGINEERS 44 Spring 2015

“Capoeira combines hard physical training, elements of dance and music, and a strong sense of community.”

—MICHELLE POVINELLI, USC Viterbi associate professor, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering

PHOTOS: LUKE FISHER

“Most of my research involves finding the limits to phenomena rather than examining phenomena within known limits. Several times in my life I have contemplated my own limits—a few years ago I wondered, 'Could I complete a marathon?' For a long time the Boston Marathon seemed very far out of reach, but with a typical engineering approach — including Excel spreadsheets, least-square fits and energy calculations — I finally qualified on my 19th marathon by a whopping 31-second margin.”

—PAUL DAVID RONNEY, USC Viterbi professor, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

45

CHANGING THE CONVERSATION

“While many people feel that art and engineering are complete opposites, I find them to be quite similar. Both utilize visual thinking as well as research and the testing of ideas to combine past knowledge with hands-on exploration.”

—LILI LASH-ROSENBERG, USC Viterbi junior, Biomedical Engineering

original art pieces by Lili Lash-Rosenberg

46 Spring 2015

PHOTOS: NOE MONTES

“Riding is a sport of dedication, hard work and patience. At times, it can be easy to find excuses for why things aren't going well, blaming your horse or the methods you've practiced for so long. But at the end of the day you have to be confident in yourself.… In many ways, engineering is like that. It relies a lot on how confident you are in yourself, and how dedicated you are to accepting help and practicing over and over until you fully understand the material.”

—SEAN SUMMERS, USC Viterbi senior, Mechanical Engineering; president, USC Racing Formula SAE Team

47

THE LAST WORD

Q & A : JAMIE MONTGOMERY You’ve been hosting the Montgomery Summit now for over a decade. In that time, what’s the biggest change you’ve seen in the startup ecosystem of Los Angeles?

The breadth and velocity of company creation have dramatically increased in Southern California. Companies can be rapidly formed and built at less than a tenth the cost of a decade ago utilizing cloud architecture and leveraging mobile platforms. These trends benefit a market like Los Angeles that has creative and design talent that can leverage these platforms.

The conference is often compared to a South by Southwest for Southern California. Last year, you even had the likes of Deepak Chopra and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. What is your vision for the conference’s future?

We will continue to highlight and celebrate creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Our vision is to do something that others can’t or won’t do by creating a highly curated, invite-only, impactful 48 hours. The magic is the alchemy of talent and interests of our guests and our program.

We will likely never be the size of SXSW, but we hope to be unique and incredibly impactful.

You’ve had the opportunity to attend the USC Viterbi Startup Garage Demo Day and other activities. What have been your impressions of the school’s role in that L.A. startup ecosystem?

The startup ecosystem is rapidly evolving, and there is a huge opportunity for Viterbi to lead just as Stanford does in the Bay Area. Los Angeles has the largest number of engineering graduates of any region in the country — 10,000-plus annually, which is 30 percent higher than either the Bay Area or Boston. USC should be at the center of this community in providing entrepreneurs, engineers, management and capital [through its endowment].

This market will look real different in 10 years, and I hope that USC looks back and feels very positive about their investments in programs, facilities, ventures and their people — faculty and students.

The Los Angeles Times noted recently that in the last three years Hollywood has become the “most powerful magnet attracting technology entrepreneurs to set up in the Southland.” Do you agree?

There are a lot of reasons to be a technology entrepreneur in Southern California — the creative environment, the availability of talent, climate, lifestyle and great universities like USC. Los Angeles is the design center of the world. Design is extremely important in technology and will be a major factor in our long-term success. However, Hollywood plays its role. In terms of “stars,” we have invited Gwyneth Paltrow’s company, Goop, Zooey Deschanel’s company, Hello Giggles, and Jessica Alba’s com-

48 Spring 2015

P H OTO : D AV I D A H N T H O L Z

A conversation with investment banker Jamie Montgomery, managing director of March Capital Partners and founder of Montgomery Summit, "the SXSW of Los Angeles."

pany, Honest Company, to participate this year at the conference. There are some great new content companies and business models emerging, but we should not undersell the other reasons why great companies are being built here.

Southern California saw the fastest rate of startup creation of any major U.S. region in the first half of 2014. What is fueling that growth, and where is the trend going?

Southern California reminds me of New York City a few years ago, just coming into its own. The growth is fueled by a few successes, availability of seed capital, a creative environment, availability of talent both technical and business, and a business-friendly mayor [Eric Garcetti]. There is no question that he will be as important to Los Angeles as Mayor Michael Bloomberg was to New York. This might be our moment in the sun — let’s make sure we don’t screw it up!

If you’re talking to a local startup in Santa Monica, how do you make the case to embrace the “Beach” versus the “Valley”?

Our goal as a venture investor is to lead locally and compete nationally. We want our portfolio companies to be world class so it is not an either/ or choice for them. If this is home for them, we will do everything possible to make them successful. L.A. is no longer a hard sell — there are enough proof points.

I know you have an economics background, but I’m curious to get your views on engineers.

Thirty-three percent of S&P 500 CEOS were engineering majors, compared to only 11 percent in business administration (the next largest cohort). As leaders, what unique value proposition do you think engineers bring to the table?

It is natural and should be expected that 33 percent of S&P 500 CEOs were engineering majors.

Approximately 40 percent of the S&P 500 is comprised of information technology, industrials and energy companies. The career path typically entails program and project management, as these sectors have large capital expenditure programs with a lot of technology risks. The engineering discipline is critical to their decision making. The number may actually be too low — the percentage of engineering majors running major corporations is probably higher in France, Germany, Japan and China. We work with much smaller companies and there are always engineers on the founding team. Our challenge is to find a product and market match. Without the product we have nothing to work with. We need USC Viterbi! Keep up the great work!

Have you remembered USC Viterbi in your estate plan?

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Bequests play an important role in USC’s efforts to educate students from all walks of life, advance its academic priorities, and expand its positive impact on the community and world.

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Please feel free to contact us if we can answer questions or be of help:

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