Events

Nov 15 - Nov 21, 2020

• 

  On Unbiased Estimation of the Score Function for a Class of Partially Observed Diffusions

  Nov 19, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  In this talk we consider the problem of estimating the score function (or gradient of the log-likelihood) associated to a class of partially observed diffusion processes, with discretely observed, fixed length, data and finite dimensional parameters. We construct an estimator that is unbiased with no time-discretization bias. Using a simple Girsanov change of measure method to represent the score function, our methodology can be used for a wide class of diffusion processes and requires only access to a time-discretization method such as Euler-Maruyama. Our approach is based upon a novel adaptation of the randomization schemes developed by Glynn and co-authors along with a new coupled Markov chain simulation scheme. The latter methodology is an original type of coupling of the coupled conditional particle filter. We prove that our estimator is unbiased and of finite variance. We then illustrate our methodology on several challenging statistical examples. This is a joint work with Jeremy Heng (ESSEC, Singapore) and Jeremie Houssineau (Warwick, UK)
• 

  Start your Research Journey at KAUST - Master and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Statistics

  Aigars Ekers, Assistant Dean, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering

  Nov 18, 16:00 - 17:00

  KAUST

  Did you know that courses are taught in English at KAUST? Did you know that the faculty and students are from more than 100 countries? Did you know that you will be fully funded when studying at KAUST? What you will learn from this webinar: Life at KAUST: What are KAUST and CEMSE? Degrees and Academic Programs Research Areas and Lab Facilities Eligibility and Admission Requirements KAUST Fellowship: Benefits of studying at KAUST How to Apply?
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  Federated Learning of a Mixture of Global and Local Models

  Filip Hanzely, Ph.D., Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Nov 16, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  We propose a new optimization formulation for training federated learning models. The standard formulation has the form of an empirical risk minimization problem constructed to find a single global model trained from the private data stored across all participating devices. In contrast, our formulation seeks an explicit trade-off between this traditional global model and the local models, which can be learned by each device from its own private data without any communication. Further, we develop several efficient variants of SGD (with and without partial participation and with and without variance reduction) for solving the new formulation and prove communication complexity guarantees.
• 

  Waves Functional Materials - 2020-11-15

  Ying Wu, Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Nov 15, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  waves Functional Materials

  Wave functional materials are artificial materials that can control wave propagation as wish. In this talk, I will give a brief review on the progress of wave functional materials and reveal the secret behind the engineering of these materials to achieve desired properties. In particular, I will focus on our contributions on metamaterials and metasurfaces. I will introduce the development of effective medium, a powerful tool in modeling wave functional materials, followed by some illustrative examples demonstrating the intriguing properties, such as redirection, emission rate enhancement, wave steering and cloaking.

Nov 8 - Nov 14, 2020

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  The method of intrinsic scaling - Session 4

  Jose Urbano, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal

  Nov 12, 16:00 - 17:30

  KAUST

  The mini-course is an introduction to intrinsic scaling, a powerful method in the analysis of degenerate and singular parabolic PDEs. The local Hölder continuity of bounded weak solutions will be derived from scratch for the model case of the degenerate p-Laplace equation. Our approach is entirely self-contained and focused on the essence of the method, leaving aside technical refinements needed to deal with more general equations.
• 

  Optimization applied to energy systems, autonomous vehicles, and matching

  Ricardo Manuel Pinto de Lima, Research Scientist, Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Nov 12, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  In this talk, we start by introducing optimization and interesting optimization applications. We review some optimization formulations and focus on applications studied in our research, such as energy systems, and trajectory planning of autonomous underwater vehicles. After the introduction, we address the self-scheduling and market involvement of a virtual power plant using adaptive robust optimization under uncertainty in the wind speed and electricity prices.
• 

  Control Theoretic Approaches to Computational Modeling and Risk Mitigation for Large Crowd Management

  Mohammed M. Alrashed, M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 11, 20:00 - 21:00

  KAUST

  resource management risk assessment computational models

  Abstract We develop a computational framework for risk mitigation in high population density events. With an increased global population, the frequency of high population density events is naturally increased. Therefore, risk-free crowd management plans are critical for efficient mobility, convenient daily life, resource management, and most importantly mitigation of any inadvertent incidents and accidents such as stampedes. The status-quo for crowd management plans is the use of human experience/expert advice. However, most often such dependency on human experience is insufficient, flawed
• 

  Exploring Entity Relationship in Pairwise Ranking: Adaptive Sampler and Beyond

  Lu Yu, Ph.D., Computer Science

  Nov 11, 16:00 - 18:00

  KAUST

  Living in the booming age of information, we have to rely on powerful information retrieval tools to seek the unique piece of desired knowledge from such a big data world, like using personalized search engines and recommendation systems. In this thesis, we aim at advancing the development of the methodologies and principles of mining heterogeneous information networks through learning entity relations from a pairwise learning to rank optimization perspective. More specifically we first show the connections of different relation learning objectives modified from different ranking metrics including both pairwise and list-wise objectives. We prove that most of popular ranking metrics can be optimized in the same lower bound. Secondly, we propose the class-imbalance problem imposed by entity relation comparison in ranking objectives, and prove that class-imbalance problems can lead to frequency clustering and gradient vanishment problems. As a response, we indicate out that developing a fast adaptive sampling method is very essential to boost the pairwise ranking model. To model the entity dynamic dependency, we propose to unify the individual-level interaction and union-level interactions, and result in a multi-order attentive ranking model to improve the preference inference from multiple views.
• 

  Civil drones traffic management: Wireless communication for safe UAV

  Prof. Sofie Pollin, KU Leuven

  Nov 10, 16:00 - 17:15

  KAUST

  UAV

  In this webinar, we describe the common terminology for these two communities. First, the traffic management system architecture, requirements, terminology, and services are discussed. A quick overview of existing technologies that can be useful for aerial deconfliction. Next, the focus will shift to wireless technologies used for the tactical (while flying) deconfliction: ADS-B, p2p LoRa, WiFi, FLARM.
• 

  The method of intrinsic scaling - Session 3

  Jose Urbano, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal

  Nov 10, 16:00 - 17:30

  KAUST

  The mini-course is an introduction to intrinsic scaling, a powerful method in the analysis of degenerate and singular parabolic PDEs. The local Hölder continuity of bounded weak solutions will be derived from scratch for the model case of the degenerate p-Laplace equation. Our approach is entirely self-contained and focused on the essence of the method, leaving aside technical refinements needed to deal with more general equations.
• 

  A Novel HVDC Architecture for Offshore Wind Farm Applications

  Otavio Dezem Bertozzi Junior, MS Student, Physical Science and Engineering

  Nov 10, 15:00 - 16:00

  KAUST

  Novel HVDC architecture Offshore wind

  Advances in power electronics have enabled many renewable energy applications. Wind energy harnessing is very promising and offshore farm installations have grown considerably in the past years. In this thesis, we introduce a novel power converter solution for the parallel connection of high-power offshore wind turbines, suitable for HVDC collection and transmission. For the parallel operation of energy sources in an HVDC grid, DC link voltage control is required. The proposed system is based on a full-power rated uncontrolled diode bridge rectifier in series with a partially-rated fully-controlled thyristor bridge rectifier. The thyristor bridge acts as a voltage regulator to ensure the flow of the desired current through each branch, where a reactor is placed in series for filtering of the DC current. AC filters are installed on the machine side to mitigate harmonic content. The mathematical modeling of the system is derived and the control design procedure is discussed. Guidelines for equipment and device specifications are presented. The concept is validated through simulation, and an experimental framework for testing of the system is suggested.
• 

  The equations of polyconvex thermoelasticity

  Myrto Galanopoulou, Ph.D. Student, Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Nov 9, 17:00 - 19:00

  KAUST

  In my thesis, I consider the system of thermoelasticity endowed with polyconvex energy. After presenting the equations in their mathematical and physical context, I embed the equations of polyconvex thermoviscoelasticity into an augmented, symmetrizable, hyperbolic system which possesses a convex entropy. This allows to prove many important stability results, such as convergence from thermoviscoelasticity (with Newtonian viscosity and Fourier heat conduction) to smooth solutions of the system of adiabatic thermoelasticity, and convergence from thermoviscoelasticity to smooth solutions of thermoelasticity in the zero-viscosity limit. In addition, I establish a weak-strong uniqueness result in the class of entropy weak solutions and in a suitable class of measure-valued solutions, defined by means of generalized Young measures that describe both oscillatory and concentration effects. Also, I construct a variational scheme for isentropic processes of adiabatic polyconvex thermoelasticity: I establish existence of minimizers which converge to a measure-valued solution that dissipates the total energy, while the scheme converges when the limiting solution is smooth.
• 

  Quantile Function Modeling and Analysis for Multivariate Functional Data

  Gaurav Agarwal, Ph.D., Statistics

  Nov 9, 16:00 - 18:00

  KAUST

  This thesis presents a set of quantile analysis methods for multivariate data and multivariate functional data, with an emphasis on environmental applications, and consists of four significant contributions.
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  Interactive Visual Data Analysis

  Eduard Gröller, Associate Professor of Practical Informatics at the Vienna University of Technology

  Nov 9, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Visualization and visual computing use computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of (abstract) data to amplify cognition. In recent years data complexity concerning volume, veracity, velocity, and variety has increased considerably. This is due to new data sources as well as the availability of uncertainty, error, and tolerance information.
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  UAV Enabled IoT Network Designs for Enhanced Estimation, Detection, and Connectivity

  Osama Bushnaq, Ph.D. (former), Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 9, 11:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  The Internet of Things (IoT) is a foundational building block for the upcoming information revolution and imminent smart-world era. Particularly, the IoT bridges the cyber domain to everything and anything within our physical world which enables unprecedented ubiquitous monitoring, connectivity, and smart control. In this Ph.D. defense, we present Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) enabled IoT network designs for enhanced estimation, detection, and connectivity. The utilization of UAVs can offer an extra level of flexibility which results in more advanced and efficient connectivity and data aggregation for the IoT devices.
• 

  Developing smart systems to connect communities.

  Ahmed Eltawil, Associate Dean for Research, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering

  Nov 8, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  smart systems connect communities

  In this talk, we address fundamental questions that should be asked when contemplating future smart and connected systems, namely, How, Where and What? How can we design computing and communication nodes that best utilize resources in a way that is cognizant of both the abilities of the platform, as well as the requirements of the network? Where are the nodes deployed? By understanding the context of deployment, one can architect unique solutions that are currently unimaginable. With the transformation to diverse applications such as body area networking, critical infrastructure monitoring, precision agriculture, autonomous driving etc., the need for innovative solutions becomes even more amplified. What benefit can be inferred from the data gathered by nodes in the capacity of computing, communication and sensing? The talk will discuss how recent advances in wireless computing and communication nodes can be harnessed to serve the multitude of deployment scenarios required to empower communities of the future with smart and connected systems.

Nov 1 - Nov 7, 2020

• 

  The method of intrinsic scaling - Session 2

  Jose Urbano, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal

  Nov 5, 16:00 - 17:30

  KAUST

  The mini-course is an introduction to intrinsic scaling, a powerful method in the analysis of degenerate and singular parabolic PDEs. The local Hölder continuity of bounded weak solutions will be derived from scratch for the model case of the degenerate p-Laplace equation. Our approach is entirely self-contained and focused on the essence of the method, leaving aside technical refinements needed to deal with more general equations.
• 

  Exploring Non-Linear Interactions in Multivariate Time Series

  Hernando Ombao, Professor, Statistics

  Nov 5, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Linear Multivariate extremes Bayesian computational statistics

  Advances in imaging technology have given neuroscientists unprecedented access to examine various facets of how the brain “works”. Brain activity is complex. A full understanding of brain activity requires careful study of its multi-scale spatial-temporal organization (from neurons to regions of interest; and from transient events to long-term temporal dynamics). Motivated by these challenges, we will explore some characterizations of dependence between components of a multivariate time series and then apply these to the study of brain functional connectivity.
• 

  The method of intrinsic scaling - Session 1

  Jose Urbano, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal

  Nov 3, 16:00 - 17:30

  KAUST

  The mini-course is an introduction to intrinsic scaling, a powerful method in the analysis of degenerate and singular parabolic PDEs. The local Hölder continuity of bounded weak solutions will be derived from scratch for the model case of the degenerate p-Laplace equation. Our approach is entirely self-contained and focused on the essence of the method, leaving aside technical refinements needed to deal with more general equations.
• 

  Using Massive MIMO Arrays to Reject Radar-Generated Interference and to Perform Integrated Sensing and Communications

  Prof. Stefano Buzzi, University of Cassino and Lazio Meridionale, Italy

  Nov 3, 16:00 - 17:15

  KAUST

  MIMO

  This webinar will explore the potentiality of massive MIMO arrays in a scenario where radar and communication tasks coexist. The first part of the talk will be devoted to the discussion of a scenario where a wireless network is to co-exist with an external radar system sharing the same frequency band. The second part of the talk will be instead focused on a scenario where a base station equipped with a large scale antenna array simultaneously perform the task of radar surveillance of the surrounding environment and of data communication with mobile users.
• 

  Spatio-Temporal Prediction and Stochastic Simulation for Large-Scale Nonstationary Processes

  Yuxiao Li, Ph.D., Statistics

  Nov 2, 16:00 - 18:00

  KAUST

  Environmental statistics plays an important role in many related applications, such as weather-related risk assessment for urban design and crop growth. However, modeling the spatio-temporal dynamics of environmental data is challenging due to their inherent high variability and nonstationarity. This dissertation focuses on the modeling, simulation, and prediction of spatio-temporal processes using statistical techniques and machine learning algorithms, especially for nonstationary processes.
• 

  Making RPCs first class datacenter citizens

  Marios Kogias, Researcher, Microsoft Research

  Nov 2, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  I’ll cover thee different RPC policies implemented on top of R2P2. Specifically, we’ll see how R2P2 enables efficient in-network RPC load balancing based on a novel join-bounded-shortest-queue (JBSQ) policy. JBSQ lowers tail latency by centralizing pending RPCs in the middle box and ensures that requests are only routed to servers with a bounded number of outstanding requests. Then, I’ll talk about SVEN, an SLO-aware RPC admission control mechanism implemented as an R2P2 policy on P4 programmable switches. Finally, I’ll describe HovercRaft, a new approach to building fault-tolerant generic RPC services by integrating state-machine replication in the transport layer.
• 

  Design and topological optimization of nanophotonic devices

  Ronghui Lin, Ph.D. Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 2, 10:30 - 12:30

  KAUST

  Nanophotonic research has a huge influence on various aspects of modern society, such as communication, commercial products, biochemistry, and information processing. A central topic in the research of nanophotonics is the geometrical optimization of the nanostructures since the geometries are deeply related to the Mie resonances and the localized surface plasmon resonances in dielectric and metallic nanomaterials. When many nanostructures are assembled to form a metamaterial, the tuning of the geometrical parameters can bring even more profound effects, such as bound states in the continuum (BIC) with infinite quality factors (Q factors). Moreover, with the development of nanofabrication technologies, there is a trend of integrating nanostructures in the vertical direction, which provides more degrees of freedom for controlling the device performance and functionality. In this dissertation, we explore how the geometrical changes of the nanostructures influence the nanophotonic devices, furthermore, we utilize machine learning techniques to actively control the topologies of the devices to enhance their performances.
• 

  Ultraviolet semiconductor technologies for COVID-19 and beyond

  Xiaohang Li, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 1, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Ultraviolet semiconductor technologies COVID-19

  COVID-19 is a wake-up call for public health and safety. Since the pandemic began, the ultraviolet (UV) technologies have been widely employed in numerous places to contain and eliminate the viruses. Although UV light is nonchemical and does not contaminate the environment, however, most of the UV light today comes from the toxic mercury lamps. In our lab and many institutions in the world, researchers are developing semiconductor-based UV technologies that are compact, reliable, and nontoxic. This seminar shows the research background and briefly discusses the research progress made by our team in a few key areas including material growth, physics, and device fabrication for UV lasers, LEDs, and photodetectors.

Oct 25 - Oct 31, 2020

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  On the approximation of the spectrum of differential operators

  Daniele Boffi, Associate Dean for Faculty, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering

  Oct 29, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Eigenvalue problems associated with partial differential equations are key ingredients for the modeling and simulation of a variety of real world applications, ranging from fluid-dynamics, structural mechanics, acoustics, to electromagnetism and medical problems. We review some properties related to the approximation of eigenvalue problems. Starting from matrix algebraic problems, we present a series of examples and counterexamples showing that even extremely simple situations can produce unexpected results.
• 

  Webinar on Resource Allocation in Cloud-Radio Access Networks and Fog-Radio Access Networks for B5G Systems

  Omar Knio, Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Oct 27, 15:45 - 17:15

  KAUST

  Fog-Radio Access cloud-radio access

  First Speaker: Megumi Kaneko, National Institute of Informatics, Japan. Talk Title: Resource Allocation in NOMA-Based Fog Radio Access Networks. In this talk, I will first describe the potential benefits offered by the integration of NOMA in an FRAN architecture for achieving the specific objectives of use cases envisioned in B5G, in terms of throughput, latency, reliability and energy efficiency. Second Speaker: Bruno Clerckx, Imperial College London, United Kingdom. Talk Title: Rate-Splitting Multiple Access and its Applications to Cloud-Enabled Platforms. This talk argues that to efficiently cope with the high throughput, reliability, heterogeneity of Quality-of-Service (QoS), and massive connectivity requirements of future multi-antenna wireless networks, multiple access and multiuser communication system design need to depart from the two extreme interference management strategies, namely fully treat interference as noise (as commonly used in 5G, MU-MIMO, CoMP, Massive MIMO, millimetre wave MIMO) and fully decode interference (as in NOMA).
• 

  Spatio-Temporal Statistical Modeling with Application to Wind Energy Assessment in Saudi Arabia

  Wanfang Chen, Ph.D., Statistics

  Oct 26, 15:00 - 17:00

  KAUST

  In this thesis, I firstly provide a comprehensive assessment of wind energy resources and associated spatio-temporal patterns over Saudi Arabia in both current and future climate conditions, based on a Regional Climate Model output. A high wind energy potential exists and is likely to persist at least until 2050 over a vast area of Western Saudi Arabia, particularly in the region between Medina and the Red Sea coast and during Summer months. Since an accurate assessment of wind extremes is crucial for risk management purposes, I then present the first high-resolution risk assessment of wind extremes over Saudi Arabia.
• 

  Compressed communication in Distributed Deep Learning - A Systems perspective

  Panagiotis Kalnis, Professor, Computer Science

  Oct 26, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Deep learning

  Network communication is a major bottleneck in large-scale distributed deep learning. To minimize the problem, many compressed communication schemes, in the form of quantization or sparsification, have been proposed. We investigate them from the Computer Systems perspective, under real-life deployments. We identify discrepancies between the theoretical proposals and the actual implementations, and analyze the impact on convergence.
• 

  Beyond Solid-State Lighting: Miniaturization and Integration of Nitride-based Visible LEDs

  Zhe Zhuang, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Oct 25, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Solid-State Lighting Miniaturization Integration Nitride-based Visible LEDs

  This talk will give an overview of the research of III-nitride based visible light-emitting diodes (LEDs) from the KAUST Energy Conversion Devices and Materials (ECO Devices) Laboratory (https://ecodevices.kaust.edu.sa/Pages/Overview.aspx). III-nitride based visible LEDs have achieved tremendous success in the field of solid-state lighting and dominated the lighting markets in the past decades. This technique becomes mature, and the luminous efficacy of LED devices approaches the theoretical maximum limit.

Oct 18 - Oct 24, 2020

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  Efficiency Assessment of Approximated Spatial Predictions for Large Datasets

  Yiping Hong, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Statistics

  Oct 22, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  mathematics applied statistics Social Network Analysis

  Our suggested criteria are more useful for the determination of tuning parameters for sophisticated approximation methods of spatial model fitting. To illustrate this, we investigate the trade-off between the execution time, estimation accuracy, and prediction efficiency for the TLR method with intensive simulation studies and suggest proper settings of the TLR tuning parameters.
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  Aerospace Systems Research at KAUST, an uplifting experience

  Eric Feron, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Oct 21, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Aerospace Systems research KAUST

  Aerospace Engineering is the source of much dreaming and worrying in most people's imagination. As such, it constitutes a marvelous support for the development and application of numerous disciplines, chief among them are aerodynamics, structures, flight and orbital mechanics. With time however, information technologies are progressively becoming the costliest activity within the aerospace engineering systems design phase. Indeed, they stand as the core elements of avionics systems, airline operations, air traffic control, spacecraft engineering, and planetary exploration, among others. Such subjects have been bringing much joy and teaching many lessons to your speaker for the past 30 years and will keep doing so, hopefully, for the next three decades.
• 

  Visible Light Communications Technology and Machine Learning - 2020-10-20

  Paul Anthony Haigh, Newcastle University, United Kingdom and Dr. Bo Tan, Tampere University, Finland

  Oct 20, 15:45 - 17:15

  KAUST

  machine learning Visible light communications

  In this webinar we will give an overview of several key technologies related to our special issues in Frontiers of Communications and Networks; (1) visible light communications (VLC) and (2) applications of machine learning in optical and wireless communication systems.
• 

  Automatic Biomedical Hypothesis Generation by Learning from Dynamic Graphs

  Prof. Xiangliang Zhang

  Oct 18, 14:00 - 15:00

  KAUST

  This talk will introduce two novel models we developed for automatic HG generation in two different settings, positive-negative learning and positive-unlabeled learning. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model on three real-world datasets constructed from biomedical publications.

Oct 11 - Oct 17, 2020

• 

  The Infinity Laplacian (Session IV)

  Prof. José Miguel Urbano, Department of Mathematics, University of Coimbra, Portugal

  Oct 15, 16:00 - 17:30

  KAUST

  The mini-course is an introduction to the analysis of infinity-harmonic functions. We detail the proof of the equivalence between enjoying comparison with cones and solving the infinity-Laplace equation in the viscosity sense, thus making a seamless connection with the previous mini-course. Further material includes the existence of infinity-harmonic functions in the case of an unbounded domain and an easy and self-contained proof, due to Armstrong and Smart, of the celebrated uniqueness theorem of Jensen.
• 

  Epidemiological modeling and optimal control

  David Ketcheson, Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Oct 15, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  optimal control optimal control theory

  Compartmental epidemiological models are one of the simplest models for the spread of a disease. They are based on statistical models of interactions in large populations and can be effective in the appropriate circumstances. Their application historically and in the present pandemic has sometimes been successful and sometimes spectacularly wrong. In this talk I will review some of these models and their application. I will also discuss the behavior of the corresponding dynamical systems, and discuss how the theory of optimal control can be applied to them. I will describe some of the challenges in using such a theory to make decisions about public policy.
• 

  Post-processing and Feature Extraction Methods for Smart Biomedical Signal Monitoring: Algorithms and Applications

  Abderrazak Chahid, Ph.D. Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Oct 14, 16:00 - 17:00

  KAUST

  Digital health solutions improve healthcare services and help achieve sustainable and higher standards of health and well-being. These solutions are mainly based on Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to record, interpret, and diagnose bio-signals such as Electrocardiogram (ECG) or Magnetoencephalography (MEG). In my thesis, a novel signal/image post-processing algorithm is proposed based on the Semi-Classical Signal Analysis method (SCSA) to enhance biomedical data quality. In addition, new feature extraction algorithms are proposed, based on the SCSA and the new Quantization-based Position Weight Matrix (QuPWM), which opens new tracks toward smart biomedical diagnosis and decision-making assistance in different fields such as predicting true Poly(A) regions in a DNA sequence, multiple hand gesture prediction.
• 

  3D Near Isotropic Antenna in Package for IoT Applications

  SU Zhen, Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Oct 14, 16:00 - 18:00

  KAUST

  Billions of IoT devices will need to communicate with each other in a wireless fashion in the future. Thus, new antenna designs, which perform irrespective of their orientation and position, and can be mass manufactured at lower costs are required. This work presents the theory and design of antennas with near isotropic radiation performance which can be additively manufactured on the packaging of the circuits.
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  Efficient Ensemble Data Assimilation and Forecasting of the Red Sea Circulation

  Habib Toye Mahamadou Kele, Ph.D. Student, Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Oct 13, 16:15 - 17:00

  KAUST

  This dissertation presents our efforts to build an operational ensemble forecasting system for the Red Sea, based on the Data Research Testbed (DART) package for ensemble data assimilation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation ocean model (MITgcm) for forecasting. The Red Sea DART-MITgcm system efficiently integrates all the ensemble members in parallel, while accommodating different ensemble assimilation schemes. The promising ensemble adjustment Kalman filter (EAKF), designed to avoid manipulating the gigantic covariance matrices involved in the ensemble assimilation process, possesses relevant features required for an operational setting. We developed new schemes aiming at lowering the computational burden while preserving reliable assimilation results. The ensemble data assimilation system is implemented and tested on Shaheen, our world-class supercomputer, and will form the basis of the first ever operational Red Sea forecasting system that is currently being implemented to support Saudi Aramco operations in this basin.
• 

  The Infinity Laplacian (Session III)

  Prof. José Miguel Urbano, Department of Mathematics, University of Coimbra, Portugal

  Oct 13, 16:00 - 17:30

  KAUST

  The mini-course is an introduction to the analysis of infinity-harmonic functions. We detail the proof of the equivalence between enjoying comparison with cones and solving the infinity-Laplace equation in the viscosity sense, thus making a seamless connection with the previous mini-course. Further material includes the existence of infinity-harmonic functions in the case of an unbounded domain and an easy and self-contained proof, due to Armstrong and Smart, of the celebrated uniqueness theorem of Jensen.
• 

  Integrated access and backhaul for 5G and beyond

  Dr. Behrooz Makki and Dr. Filip Barać

  Oct 13, 16:00 - 17:30

  KAUST

  5G

  In this talk, we review the main backhauling techniques, and present the main motivations/standardization agreements on IAB. Moreover, we present comparisons between the IAB networks and the cases where all or part of the small access points are fiber-connected.
• 

  Dynamic Programming Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization

  Michal A. Mankowski, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Computer Science

  Oct 13, 15:00 - 16:00

  KAUST

  combinatorial optimization global sequence alignment multi-stage optimization algorithm

  In this dissertation, we consider extensions of dynamic programming for combinatorial optimization. We introduce two exact multi-objective optimization algorithms: the multi-stage optimization algorithm that optimizes the problem relative to the ordered sequence of objectives (lexicographic optimization) and the bi-criteria optimization algorithm that simultaneously optimizes the problem relative to two objectives (Pareto optimization).
• 

  Visualization and segmentation in Geology and Oil exploration

  Daniel Patel, Bergen University College, Norway

  Oct 12, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  The talk will consist of two parts. First an introduction to important subsurface structures in relation to hydrocarbon extraction are given, followed by an overview of techniques to segment out and visualize these structures. The talk will include topics such as ground truth visualization of measured seismic data, automated object extraction for getting computer assistance in segmenting important structures in the seismic data such as horizons and faults and creation, and visualizing and visual fusion of multiattribute seismic data using the GPU.
• 

  MXenes for Electronic and Sensing Applications

  Professor Husam Alshareef, Material Science and Engineering, KAUST

  Oct 11, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  MXenes Electronic Sensing Applications

  This talk will focus on the device applications of MXenes and MXene-derived functional materials. Our group has been developing device concepts that capitalize on the rich and promising properties of MXenes. For example, the excellent electrical conductivity of MXenes makes them good candidates as contact materials electronics (printed, wearable, and stretchable electronics) both as local and global contacts. We have demonstrated that MXenes can be used as electrical contacts in thin-film electronics, CMOS devices, quantum-dot transistors, LEDs, and solar cells.

Oct 4 - Oct 10, 2020

• 

  The Infinity Laplacian (Session II)

  Prof. José Miguel Urbano, Department of Mathematics, University of Coimbra, Portugal

  Oct 8, 16:00 - 17:30

  KAUST

  The mini-course is an introduction to the analysis of infinity-harmonic functions. We detail the proof of the equivalence between enjoying comparison with cones and solving the infinity-Laplace equation in the viscosity sense, thus making a seamless connection with the previous mini-course. Further material includes the existence of infinity-harmonic functions in the case of an unbounded domain and an easy and self-contained proof, due to Armstrong and Smart, of the celebrated uniqueness theorem of Jensen.
• 

  ExaGeoStat: Moving Towards Large-Scale Geostatistical Modeling on Manycore Systems

  Sameh Abdulah, Research Scientist, Hierarchical Computations on Manycore Architectures

  Oct 8, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Adaptive modeling

  We present Exascale GeoStatistics (ExaGeoStat) software, a high-performance library implemented on a wide variety of contemporary hybrid distributed-shared supercomputers whose primary target is climate and environmental prediction applications.
• 

  6G: A new frontier for the design of NOMA

  Prof. Zhiguo Ding, University of Manchester

  Oct 6, 16:00 - 17:15

  KAUST

  6G

  The aim of this talk is to provide an overview of the latest research results and innovations in NOMA technologies as well as their emerging applications. Future research challenges regarding NOMA in B5G and 6G are also presented.
• 

  The Infinity Laplacian (Session I)

  Prof. José Miguel Urbano, Department of Mathematics, University of Coimbra, Portugal

  Oct 6, 16:00 - 17:30

  KAUST

  The mini-course is an introduction to the analysis of infinity-harmonic functions. We detail the proof of the equivalence between enjoying comparison with cones and solving the infinity-Laplace equation in the viscosity sense, thus making a seamless connection with the previous mini-course. Further material includes the existence of infinity-harmonic functions in the case of an unbounded domain and an easy and self-contained proof, due to Armstrong and Smart, of the celebrated uniqueness theorem of Jensen.
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  Extensions of Dynamic Programming for Combinatorial Optimization and Data Mining - 2020

  Mikhail Moshkov, Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Oct 5, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  We developed extensions of dynamic programming which allow us (i) to describe the set of objects under consideration, (ii) to perform a multi-stage optimization of objects relative to different criteria, (iii) to count the number of optimal objects, (iv) to find the set of Pareto optimal points for the bi-criteria optimization problem, and (v) to study the relationships between two criteria.
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  Monolithic Integration of InAs Quantum Dot Lasers on Si Substrates

  Yating Wan, Postdoctoral fellow at of University of California, Santa Barbara

  Oct 4, 18:00 - 19:00

  KAUST

  monolithic Quantum Dots laser

  Here, I will talk about recent advances in the field of QD lasers with a focus on direct growth on Si. Si photonics has found widespread application, particularly for high volume applications and for co-integration with CMOS electronics. I will start with an overview of the field, followed with a summary of device performance and fundamental physics basis for the improved response.
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  Recent Advances in Sensor Design

  Khaled Salama, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Oct 4, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Recent sensor analog design optimization

  In this talk we will discuss the work conducted at KAUST sensors lab and KAUST sensor initiative