Colloquia Announcements

Wednesday, 13th February 2019, 5:00pm, MM217

In this talk I will first provide an overview of cognitive neuroscience approaches by comparing and contrasting various invasive and non-invasive cognitive neuroscience techniques. I will then talk about using MRI to map large-scale structural and functional networks of the brain and how such approaches may be used to quantify developmental changes and identify differences in clinical conditions such as autism spectrum disorder.

This is another in the Department of Computer Science Pizza Seminar Series. Refreshments will be served at 4:30pm outside MM217.

Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 5:00pm, MM217

In the past 5 decades, rapidly increasing of computing power and development of computational fluid dynamics enable virtual simulations of various aerospace systems. Such simulations make many proof of concepts must faster at a much lower cost. This seminar will talk about the impact that high performance computing brings to aerospace engineering and the future perspective.

This is another in the Department of Computer Science Pizza Seminar Series. Refreshments will be served at 4:30pm outside MM217.

Wednesday, 30th January 2019, 5:00pm, MM217

Intervertebral disc (IVD) is the largest avascular structure in the human body and its main function is to support mechanical loading and to provide the flexibility for the spine system.Degenerative disc disease (DDD) is related to low back pain which affects more than 600 million people worldwide. One of the challenges in modeling DDD is that biological, chemical, electrical, and mechanical events in IVD are nonlinearly coupled. It is important to understand the biophysics and pathophysiology in IVD in order to develop a model successfully. A multiscale and multi-physics model for IVD has been developed recently. In this model, nonlinear interactions among biological (cell activity), chemical (osmolarity and pH), electrical (charges on matrix and solutes), and mechanical (loading and tissue swelling) events in the IVD are considered. Numerical results are obtained by solving a dozen of partial differential equations using a finite element method. Applications of this model to simulating degenerative progression of IVDs due to poor nutrition supply will be presented. In-silico clinical trials of cellular therapies for dis repair will also be discussed. The study provides not only new insights into the mechanisms of disc degeneration, but also new diagnostic means for disc degeneration.

This is another in the Department of Computer Science Pizza Seminar Series. Refreshments will be served at 4:30pm outside MM217.

Friday, 25th January 2019, 10:00am, UB330D

Incorporating a dynamic kick engine that is both fast and effective is pivotal to be competitive in one of the world'???'s biggest AI and robotics initiative: RoboCup. Using the NAO robot as a testbed, we developed a dynamic kick engine that can generate a kick trajectory with an arbitrary direction without prior input or knowledge of the parameters of the kick. The trajectories are generated using cubic splines, sextic polynomials, or cubic Hermite splines, and are executed while the robot is dynamically balancing on one foot. When the robot swings the leg for the kick motion, unprecedented forces might be applied on the robot. To compensate for these forces, we developed a Zero Moment Point (ZMP) based preview controller that minimizes the ZMP error. Although a variety of kick engines have been implemented by others, there are only a few papers on how kick engine parameters have been optimized to give an effective kick. Parameters such as kick configuration, limit of the robot, or shape of the polynomial can be optimized. We propose an optimization framework based on the Webots simulator to optimize these parameters. Experiments of the physical robot show promising results.

This is a Department of Computer Science MS Defence.

Wednesday, 23rd January 2019, 5:00pm, MM217

This presentation will discuss our three-layer dynamic data-driven application systems-based framework for the control and planning of smart energy systems. We will highlight the issues of network topologies in smart grids and then analyze the operations management of smart energy systems. Next, we will provide the details of our multi-fidelity simulation model for timely monitoring and system assessment. Last, we will briefly discuss the real-time decision-making module that adapts the operation plan from the optimization model using robust demand response, network reconfiguration and/or operation rescheduling models based on dynamically changing data from the smart grid. We will explain the results of the investigated framework based on our computational tests on IEEE-9, IEEE-30, IEEE-118 bus systems and the designed smart grid for the City of Coral Gables. The presentation will conclude with a discussion on the future for the smarter grids.

This is another in the Department of Computer Science Pizza Seminar Series. Refreshments will be served at 4:30pm outside MM217.

Wednesday, 16th January 2019, 5:00pm, MM217

Automation means reliability. Reducing human factor in software development increases project's overall quality. In this presentation we will introduce ways to increase automation on 7 different levels iteratively by adding conceptual git "lanes" (branches). It is a concept, that can be applied widely regardless the size of the project, number of programmers, language or environment. The only question is how much automation and thus reliability does your project need.

This is another in the Department of Computer Science Pizza Seminar Series. Refreshments will be served at 4:30pm in MM217.

Previous Colloquia Announcements