This calendar is your conduit to the events in Plan-It Purple that pertain specifically to the McCormick School of Engineering. If you would like to list an event on the calendar, please consult the list of department contacts.
Event List
This list shows seminars for May only. [Show all events]
ChBE Seminar: Andres Garcia, Georgia Institute of Technology
Thursday May 1, 2008 at 9:00 AM — Tech LR4
BioArtificial Materials for Enhanced Tissue Repair
Professor Andres Garcia
Georgia Institute of Technology
Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 9:00 AM
The Technological Institute, Lecture Room 4
2145 Sheridan Road
Refreshments will be served at 8:45 AM
Event URL: http://www.chem-biol-eng.northwestern.edu/news/seminars/
For more information, contact:
Allison Sillers
a-strick@northwestern.edu
847-491-2773
Chemical & Biological Engineering Colloquia
[Show detail]
Civil and Environmental Eng and Mechanical Eng Seminar: Dr. Thomas Hopp
Friday May 2, 2008 at 12:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Rd., Tech Institute, Room M152
Civil and Environmental Engineering and
Mechancial Engineering Feature
Northwestern Alumnus
Dr.Thomas Hopp
System Director, The Aerospace Corporation
Friday, May 2, 2008, Noon - 1:00pm
Room: M152, Tech
The Wideband Global SATCOM Program
Abstract: Dr. Hopp will present an overview of the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) Program. The Department of Defense’s SATCOM architecture will be described. WGS will provide high data rate communications support to all U.S. Services and Agencies across the spectrum of operations, from peacetime and disaster relief operations to full theater war. The program includes participation by the Australian Ministry of Defence as an international partner. The functions of the WGS system, and some of its technologies will be described. The engineering challenges involved in building and launching an operational military satellite system will be discussed. A brief summary of Dr. Hopp’s career development at The Aerospace Corporation will also be included.
Bio: Dr. Thomas Hopp is the System Director at The Aerospace Corporation for the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) Block II program. The Block II program is a $1.1Billion project to build, launch, and deploy three WGS satellites. The WGS satellites are the Department of Defense’s next generation of wideband communications satellites. Dr. Hopp is responsible for the management of The Aerospace Corporation’s effort in support of the program, a manpower budget of ~$15 Million. Since joining The Aerospace Corporation in 1987, he has held positions of increasing responsibility in both the Engineering and Space Programs Groups. Dr. Hopp has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University.
For more information, contact:
Arlene Preus
a-preus@northwestern.edu
847 467-6510
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
[Show detail]
CBB Seminar: Simultaneous estimation of trees & multiple sequence alignments - Dr. Tandy Warnow
Friday May 2, 2008 at 2:00 PM — Cook Hall, room 3118 A&B, 2220 Campus Drive
CBB Seminar: Simultaneous estimation of trees and multiple sequence alignments
Tandy Warnow - University of Texas at Austin
Professor - Computer Sciences
Abstract:
The inference of evolutionary history presents enormous computational and mathematical challenges which are particularly exacerbated when dealing with very large datasets (containing thousands of sequences) or when sequences evolve under complex models of evolution. In this talk, I will describe some of the recent progress in large-scale phylogenetics, focusing on simultaneous estimation of multiple sequence alignments and phylogenies.
For more information, contact:
Suzana Han
suzana@northwestern.edu
847-467-1972
McCormick - Computational Biology and Bioinformati
[Show detail]
Environmental Engineering & Science Seminars
Friday May 2, 2008 at 2:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Rd/ A230
Dr.Jim Waples from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will present his talk entitled "Applied Alchemy 101: Measuring transport rates in Aquatic Systems."
For more information, contact:
Neal Blair
n-blair@northwestern.edu
847-491-8790
McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering
[Show detail]
Seminar: Creating S&T Professional & Institutional Change via Subversion, Revolution, & Meteorology
Friday May 2, 2008 at 2:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Room, Tech Room L324
Dr. Debra Rolison
Surface Chemistry Branch
Navala Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
The inability of research universities to diversify their faculty is a national disgrace in that these universities recruit for students that reflect the face of America, but have not yet incorporated that pool of talent onto their faculty. Similar difficulties are apparent among the scientific staff of national/federal laboratories. The U.S. must escape our still too-white and too-male universe to stay at the forefront of science―a leader would not stand still for less. But how can one person change the world of science?―especially the concerned junior scientist at the undergraduate, graduate student, or postdoctoral level? Subvert the standard operating procedure. Create a microclimate that shows―over time―how new patterns of operation and inclusiveness yield productive, innovative science. Use the scientific capital and street credentials accrued over time, thanks to the humane microclimate and research productivity of one's team, to challenge the status quo with reasoned and bold arguments for change. Remember the importance of uppity behavior and applying "tipping point" mechanisms to move beyond initial reactions of dismissal (such as greeted my audacious suggestion in March 2000 to withhold federal funds from non-diversified chemistry departments through application of Title IX) to―over time―accepted inevitability. Ask the leaders of our S&T institutions the following: how good can American science, engineering, mathematics, and technology (STEM) be when we are missing two-thirds of the talent? Learn to demand that our world of science be one that truly relishes the talent residing across the American populace.
For more information, contact:
Professor Manijeh Razeghi
razeghi@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-7251
Center for Quantum Devices (CQD)
[Show detail]
EECS SEMINAR: "Unconstrained Multi-Projector Displays"
Monday May 5, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Technological Institute - Room L324
EECS SEMINAR
Aditi Majumder, Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of California, Irvine
"Unconstrained Multi-Projector Displays"
Early generations of tiled multi-projector displays were expensive, driven by cost prohibitive monolithic rendering machines which justified the use of expensive rigid optical and mechanical infrastructure to register the images from the many projectors. Current generation multi-projector displays use commodity projectors, are driven by inexpensive PC clusters, and hence are very affordable. To support scalability, common due to reduced cost, automatic camera-based registration techniques have been explored in the last decade. But, despite the low cost and the supposed flexibility imparted by the automated registration, these displays are still quarantined to hi-tech environments that can provide a critical mass of 'educated' users. This is due to two reasons. First, these displays are still very constrained in terms of the devices, environment and architecture used, resulting in an utterly complicated deployment, unreasonable to expect of 'layman' users. Second, perfect seamlessness is yet to be successfully achieved in these, especially when built of commodity products. This talk presents the advances made to remove such constraints and bring in an hitherto unrealized ease in deployment that can be achieved by almost anyone. Methodologies will be presented that allow imperfect/uncalibrated devices, flexible driving architecture, and new generation devices and still achieve perceptually seamless displays. Thus, we advance the frontiers towards self-calibrating, flexible, reconfigurable and hence truly scalable displays.
Aditi Majumder is an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science in University of California, Irvine. She received her BE in Computer Science and Engineering from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India in 1996 and PhD from Department of Computer Science, Universi
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Brooke Hildebrand
brooke@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-3451
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
[Show detail]
Seminar by: Kartik Sivaramakrishnan, North Carolina State University
Tuesday May 6, 2008 at 2:00 PM — Tech Bldg Room M228
Topic: A parallel interior point decomposition algorithm for block-angular semidefinite programs
Speaker: Kartik Sivaramakrishnan, Asst. Professor
Abstract: Semidefinite programming is widely regarded as "linear programming for the 21st century" and has a variety of applications in science and engineering. Interior Point Methods (IPMs) are currently the most popular techniques for solving SDPs. However, SDPs with matrix dimension n > 5000, and number of equality constraints m > 10,000 cannot be solved by current primal-dual IPM implementations on serial workstations.
We propose a "two-stage decomposition algorithm" to improve the scalability of primal-dual IPMs in solving large scale SDPs. In the 1st stage, we exploit the sparsity and/or symmetry in the underlying SDP to preprocess it into an equivalent SDP in the "block-angular" form. In the 2nd stage, we solve the preprocessed SDP in an iterative fashion between a quadratic
master problem and decomposed and distributed subproblems (smaller SDPs) in a parallel and distributed computing environment. We report our computational experiences with the algorithm on the distributed "Henry2" cluster at NC State University. We also compare our algorithm with the OpenMP version of CSDP, that is a parallel primal-dual IPM implementation for SDP.
For more information, contact:
Gwen Hoffman
g-hoffman2@northwestern.edu
(847) 491-3576
Industrial Engineering/ Management Sciences
[Show detail]
Seminar by: Barry Smith, Georgia Institute of Technology
Tuesday May 6, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Tech Bldg Room M228
Topic: ROAR: Robust Operational Aircraft Routing
Speaker: Barry Smith
Abstract: Due to the complexity of the planning process, airlines generally do not fully account for crew scheduling, maintenance planning and operations while building their flight schedules. As a result, timetables are inefficient and sometimes infeasible with respect to these processes. We developed an intra-fleet swapper that generates aircraft routing solutions to better accommodate the needs of crew, maintenance and operations. These solutions can be further improved by swapping across fleets. We developed a fast origin-destination revenue management model to estimate the revenue impacts of capacity changes due to these inter-fleet swaps. The best set of swaps is found by solving a quadratic mixed integer program. The resulting solutions are more robust relative to crew, maintenance and operations as well as more profitable.
For more information, contact:
Gwen Hoffman
g-hoffman2@northwestern.edu
(847) 491-3576
Industrial Engineering/ Management Sciences
[Show detail]
ChBE Seminar: M.Thackeray, Argonne National Laboratory
Thursday May 8, 2008 at 9:00 AM — Tech LR4
The Evolving Lithium Battery Economy - A Personal Perspective
Dr. Michael Thackeray
Argonne National Laboratory
Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 9:00 AM
The Technological Institute, Lecture Room 4
2145 Sheridan Road
Refreshments will be served at 8:45 AM
Event URL: http://www.chem-biol-eng.northwestern.edu/news/seminars/
For more information, contact:
Allison Sillers
a-strick@northwestern.edu
847-491-2773
Chemical & Biological Engineering Colloquia
[Show detail]
Mechanical Engineering Seminar: Prof. Eiji Osawa, Shinshu Univ, Japan
Thursday May 8, 2008 at 11:00 AM — 2133 Sheridan Rd. Ford Bldg, ITW auditorium, Rm 1.350
Recent Progress in the R&D of Single-Nano Diamond Particles
Abstract: In the past 40+ years, R&D in detonation nanodiamond has long suffered from the persistent covalent aggregation among primary particles. Although the nature of this tight assembly has not yet been thoroughly understood, it is most likely that, as in all other nanocarbons including soot (carbon black) and carbon nanohorn formed by the bottom-up processes, primary particles of nanodiamond were glued to each other through C-C bonding as they are formed under high-temperature high-pressure conditions to form secondary particles of 60-200 nm in size. It was impossible to disintegrate the covalent aggregates since its discovery in 1963 until 2002, when we applied wet stirred-media milling with zirconia beads to disintegrate them by brute force. The resulting colloid is diaphanous, although pitch black in high concentration, but surprisingly stable. Dried residue from the milled colloid is van der Waals aggregates of primary particles, and can be re-dispersed quickly in water and a few organic solvents by sonication to form stable colloidal solution which is transparent and forms no precipitates after long-standing.
Dispersed single-nano diamond (DSND) particles, as we temporarily call them, have a narrow size-distribution of 4.6±0.7nm irrespective of its origin and methods of determination. They behave distinctly different from the previously commercialized covalent aggregates (under the name of Ultradispersed Diamond) and exhibit long-dreamed size-dependent behavior of semi-quantum particles, a new breed in science and technology. Here we report some of our recent results obtained during preliminary scanning of the applicative possibilities of DSND particles.
For more information, contact:
Arlene Preus
a-preus@northwestern.edu
847 293-7417
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
[Show detail]
Environmental Engineering & Science Seminars
Friday May 9, 2008 at 2:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Rd./ A230
Professor Chris Wolverton from the department of Material Sciences & Engineering here at Northwestern will present his talk entitled "Discovery of Novel Hydrogen Storage Materials:An Atomic-Scale Computational Approach."
For more information, contact:
Neal Blair
n-blair@northwestern.edu
847-491-8790
McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering
[Show detail]
EECS "Meet the Faculty" SEMINAR: "Thermal-Aware Design Automation"
Friday May 9, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Technological Institute - Room L324
EECS "Meet the Faculty" Seminar
Dr. Seda Ogrenci Memik, Assistant Professor
Computer Engineering & Systems Division
Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
"Thermal-Aware Design Automation"
Steady miniaturization and large-scale integration lead to increasing power densities. As a result, on-chip temperatures are rising steadily as technology is scaling down. Making matters worse, power management techniques such as clock gating, voltage islands, and power gating may lead to drastic temporal and spatial variations of chip temperatures. As a result, temperature has become one of the most important challenges in design of integrated circuits.
Seda Ogrenci Memik's research group attacks the problem of thermal-aware design along three avenues. First, they tackle the problem at design time. They develop thermal-aware synthesis algorithms and tools for embedded processor design. For various stages of hardware/software co-synthesis, they aim to enable effective control of peak temperature and uniform thermal profiles. Particularly, they focus on incorporating thermal-awareness into synthesis (such as resource selection, allocation, and assignment, task scheduling, and memory allocation), and system management (such as DRAM system control). Second, they develop a self-adjusting paradigm to design structures with inherent resilience towards dynamic effects of temperature. Finally, they approach the problem from the management perspective. They developed a systematic approach to design of thermal monitoring infrastructures for microprocessors systems. This entails, design of thermal sensing schemes and allocation and placement of thermal sensors in a given system.
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Brooke Hildebrand
brooke@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-3451
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
[Show detail]
Seminar by: Marshall Fisher, University of Pennsylvania
Tuesday May 13, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Tech Bldg Room M228
Topic: Retail Assortment Optimization
Speaker: Marshall Fisher
Abstract: We consider the problem of choosing, from a set of N potential SKUs in a retail category, K SKUs to be carried at each store so as to maximize sales or a defined profit function.
Assortments can vary by store, subject to a maximum number of different assortments.
We describe an approach in which we view a SKU as a set of attribute values, use sales history of the SKUs currently carried by the retailer to estimate the demand for attribute values and from this, the demand for any potential SKU, including those not currently carried by the retailer. We also introduce a model of substitution behavior, estimate the parameters of this model and consider the impact of substitution in choosing assortments.
We use maximum likelihood estimation to fit the parameters of our model and describe several alternative heuristics for choosing SKUs. We describe application of this approach to optimize assortments for tow real examples, tires and snack foods, which produced sales lifts of 52% and 48% respectively. This is joint work with Ramnath Vaidyanathan, a PhD student in Operations and Information Management at Wharton.
For more information, contact:
Gwen Hoffman
g-hoffman2@northwestern.edu
(847) 491-3576
Industrial Engineering/ Management Sciences
[Show detail]
ChBE Seminar: O.Yaghi, UCLA
Thursday May 15, 2008 at 9:00 AM — Tech LR4
Molecular fuel tanks
Professor Omar Yaghi
University of California, Los Angeles
Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 9:00 AM
The Technological Institute, Lecture Room 4
2145 Sheridan Road
Refreshments will be served at 8:45 AM
Event URL: http://www.chem-biol-eng.northwestern.edu/news/seminars/
For more information, contact:
Allison Sillers
a-strick@northwestern.edu
847-491-2773
Chemical & Biological Engineering Colloquia
[Show detail]
BME Seminar: William Murphy, University of Wisconsin. "Bio-inspired Assembly of Functional Materials
Thursday May 15, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Tech M345
Control over the molecules that cells encounter in their local environment is a common theme in natural tissue development. Similarly, schemes to mimic development and “engineer” functional tissues are likely to benefit from control over the cell’s local signaling environment. This concept is particularly important in stem cell-based applications, in which local signaling can direct cell fate. We are interested in assembling biomaterials that are capable of actively communicating with stem cells. To achieve cell-material interaction, we use specific, reversible interactions to build biomaterials with new capabilities, including bio-responsiveness and regulated soluble signaling. Approaches highlighted in this talk will include non-covalent assembly of biomolecules (e.g. proteins, DNA) on engineered surfaces and within synthetic hydrogels.
Event URL: http://www.bme.northwestern.edu
For more information, contact:
Virginia Lorenzo
v-lorenzo@northwestern.edu
847-491-5635
McCormick - Biomedical Engineering Department
[Show detail]
CCSS Seminar Presentation
Friday May 16, 2008 at 12:00 PM — Ryan Hall/Nano Bldg. ,Room 4003
Date/Time: Friday, May 16, 2008, 12 noon
Guest Speaker: Chelsey Baertsch, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University
Title: "Ethanol oxidation over metal oxide catalysts: Mechanism fundamentals and applications for catalytic gas sensors"
Location: Ryan Hall, Room 4003
Host: Prof. Linda. Broadbelt, Chemical & Biol. Engrg.
Event URL: http://www.northwestern.edu/catalysis/calendar.html
For more information, contact:
Jasmine N. Tucker
j-tucker4@northwestern.edu
847-491-4354
Center for Catalysis and Surface Science
[Show detail]
Environmental Engineering & Science Seminars
Friday May 16, 2008 at 2:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Rd. /A230
Mr. Brian Staley of North Carolina State University will present his talk entitled"The Effect of Microbial Community Structure & Spaital Heterogeneity on Methanogensis Initation in Refuse."
For more information, contact:
Neal Blair
n-blair@northwestern.edu
847-491-8790
McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering
[Show detail]
EECS SEMINAR: "Development of a High Power Sum-Frequency Sodium Laser for ‘Laser Guide Star’ Appl.
Monday May 19, 2008 at 11:00 AM — Technological Institute - Room L324
EECS Seminar
Dr. Renu Tripathi
Palomar Observatory at Caltech
“Development of a High Power Sum-Frequency Sodium Laser for ‘Laser Guide Star’ Application”
Adaptive optics (AO) systems require a reference source in order to correct for the atmospheric distortion of light. Sufficiently bright stars are not available in all parts of the sky, which limits the usefulness of natural guide star adaptive optics. However, one can create an artificial guide star by shining a laser into the atmosphere. Lasers that can excite the D2 line in sodium (Na) atoms present in the mesosphere (about 50 km to 80-90 km altitude above Earth's surface) are of significant interest to the astronomical scientific community. The return signal received from backscattering serves as an artificial bright star. When imaged through a ground-based telescope onto a wavefront sensor, this provides a dynamic map of the atmospheric distortion or turbulence. This information is then used to adaptively correct the phase errors through feedback onto deformable mirrors used in the telescope to significantly improve their resolution.
During the talk, I will discuss my efforts to develop a high power sum-frequency sodium laser system based on sum-frequency mixing of two (1064 nm and 1319 nm) diode-pumped, pulsed and mode-locked Nd:YAG lasers. I will describe my continued effort in improving the system to obtain higher average optical power by virtue of better cavity design, efficient mode-locking and nonlinear wave-mixing. Currently, the laser operates with an average power of 8W at 500 Hz repetition rate and with 10% duty cycle. I will show the critical component development in the laser system and briefly discuss the projection from the launch telescope, laser beam quality and the photon number density in the return signal. I will also show some early results obtained using the table-top laser system operating in conjunction with the adaptive optics (AO) system at the Caltech’s Palomar observator
Event URL: http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/events/
For more information, contact:
Brooke Hildebrand
brooke@eecs.northwestern.edu
847-491-3451
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
[Show detail]
ChBE Student Seminars: A.Czyzewski & R.Sillers, Northwestern University
Thursday May 22, 2008 at 9:00 AM — Tech LR4
Title TBA
Ann Czyzewski
Northwestern University
Title TBA
Ryan Sillers
Northwestern University
Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 9:00 AM
The Technological Institute, Lecture Room 4
2145 Sheridan Road
Refreshments will be served at 8:45 AM
Event URL: http://www.chem-biol-eng.northwestern.edu/news/seminars/
For more information, contact:
Allison Sillers
a-strick@northwestern.edu
847-491-2773
Chemical & Biological Engineering Colloquia
[Show detail]
CBB Seminar: Synchronized firing and visual signaling in the primate retina - E. J. Chichilnisky
Friday May 23, 2008 at 2:00 PM — Cook Hall, room 3118 A&B, 2220 Campus Drive
CBB Seminar:
Synchronized firing and visual signaling in the primate retina
E. J. Chichilnisky - Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Associate Professor - Systems Neurobiology Laboratories
Abstract:
Synchronized firing has been hypothesized to play a role in the function of many neural circuits. In the retina, synchronized firing has been observed in several species, but its impact on visual signals remains unclear. First, no previous studies have examined synchronized firing in the retina of primates, the dominant model for human visual system function. Second, synchronized firing has been studied almost entirely on the basis of recordings from pairs of cells, but may occur at a much larger scale. Third, capturing the full structure of synchronized firing and its impact on visual processing presents substantial analytical challenges. As a consequence, the overall structure of synchronized firing and its impact on visual signals remains unclear. Using large-scale recordings from the primate retina in vitro, we have characterized the full structure of synchronized firing in populations of hundreds of retinal ganglion cells. Using two novel analysis methods, we find that the large-scale structure of synchronized firing can be explained
by simple interactions between neighboring cells in the network.
Further, accounting for this structure in decoding the retinal signal can yield up to 20% improvement in visual performance. Thus, synchronized firing in the primate retina may be understood with simple models and may represent a significant aspect of visual signaling to the brain.
For more information, contact:
Suzana Han
suzana@northwestern.edu
847-467-1972
McCormick - Computational Biology and Bioinformati
[Show detail]
Environmental Engineering & Science Seminars
Friday May 30, 2008 at 2:00 PM — 2145 Sheridan Rd. / A230
Ms. Luciana Zanella of Northwestern University will present her talk entitled "The Chemistry of a la Grande Jatte's fading color."
For more information, contact:
Neal Blair
n-blair@northwestern.edu
847-491-8790
McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering
[Show detail]
