Prof. Marco Cirant, Department of Mathematics, University of Padova, Italy
Tuesday, June 30, 2020, 09:00
- 12:00
KAUST
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In this short course, I will address some regularity aspects in the theory of Mean-Field Games systems, with special emphasis on stationary and uniformly elliptic problems. I will first describe some regularity results for linear uniformly elliptic PDEs and semi-linear PDEs of Hamilton-Jacobi type. Then, I will show how to use these tools to prove the existence (and in some cases uniqueness) of solutions to MFG systems.
Jun Chen, Department of Bioengineering, University of California Los Angeles
Monday, June 29, 2020, 19:00
- 20:30
KAUST
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Dr. Jun Chen is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles. His current research focuses on nanotechnology and bioelectronics for energy, sensing, environment and therapy applications in the form of smart textiles, wearables, and body area sensor networks.
Prof. Alessio Porretta, Mathematical Analysis, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
Thursday, June 25, 2020, 14:00
- 17:00
KAUST
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We introduce several PDE tools which are useful in the study of mean field game systems with local couplings. Due to the lack of regularity of solutions, refined compactness and renormalization arguments are needed for a general approach leading to existence and uniqueness results. If time is enough, congestion models will be treated by similar techniques.
Prof. Alessio Porretta, Mathematical Analysis, University of Rome Tor Vergata
Monday, June 22, 2020, 14:00
- 17:00
KAUST
Contact Person
We introduce several PDE tools which are useful in the study of mean field game systems with local couplings. Due to the lack of regularity of solutions, refined compactness and renormalization arguments are needed for a general approach leading to existence and uniqueness results. If time is enough, congestion models will be treated by similar techniques.
Dr. Emad Felemban, Associate Professor in Computer engineering of Umm Al-Qura University
Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 13:00
- 14:00
KAUST
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Recent real disastrous crowd incidents have shown that crowded places can be exposed to significant safety dangers and that the presence of many pedestrians can potentially result in injuries and fatalities at large scales if not planned and managed reasonably. This fact has resulted in significant challenges for managing the safety of large volumes of pedestrians in dense areas. In retrospect, many such real crowd disasters could have been avoided with better crowd management. Better tools and methodologies to predict crowd behavior during planning for potential emergencies would enable authorities to plan and prepare for improved public safety in crowded environments. Better still, real-time management of crowds might avert disasters if live event data could be used to make rapid predictions of crowd dynamics over the immediate future, allowing management to be optimized as an event unfolds. Such tools do not yet exist, and the technical demands of creating them are not trivial; they will require innovative approaches to both empirical research and modeling.
Prof Ping Chen, Institute of Semiconductor, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tuesday, June 16, 2020, 16:00
- 17:00
KAUST
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Dr. Ping Chen now works as a full Professor in the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing China). He received his bachelor’s degree of Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2003, and doctor’s degree of Microelectronics and Solid State Electronics from the Graduate School in University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2008. He worked in Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA) as a Visiting Scholar from 2017 to 2019.
Dr. Naresh Chand, Life Fellow of IEEE, Associate Vice President, Chapter Relations of the IEEE Photonics Society
Tuesday, June 09, 2020, 16:00
- 17:30
KAUST
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Dr. Naresh Chand is a Life Fellow of IEEE, Associate Vice President, Chapter Relations of the IEEE Photonics Society, and the Chair, Photonics Society, North Jersey Chapter. Dr. Naresh Chand was previously with US R&D Center of Huawei Technologies in NJ in 2011-2019 where he was working on developing low-cost advanced technologies for Ultra Broadband Optical Access Networks. Prior to this, he worked for BAE Systems (2003-11), Agere Systems and AT&T/Lucent Bell Laboratories (1986-2003), and Dept of Electronics, Government of India (1974-79).
Sunday, June 07, 2020, 16:00
- 18:00
KAUST
In this work, we develop a new framework of trajectory planning for AUVs in realistic ocean scenarios. We divide this work into three parts. In the first part, we provide a new approach for deterministic trajectory planning in steady current, described using Ocean General Circulation Model (OGCM) data. The latter are used to specify both the ocean current and the bathymetry. We apply a NLP to the optimal-time trajectory planning problem. To demonstrate the effectivity of the resulting model, we consider the optimal time trajectory planning of an AUV operating in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In the second part, we generalize our 3D trajectory planning framework to time-dependent ocean currents. We also extend the framework to accommodate multi-objective criteria, focusing specifically on the Pareto front curve between time and energy. The scheme is demonstrated for time-energy trajectory planning problems in the Gulf of Aden. In the last part, we address uncertainty in the ocean current field. The uncertainty in the current is described in terms of a finite ensemble of flow realizations. The proposed approach is based on a non-linear stochastic programming methodology that uses a risk-aware objective function, accounting for the full variability of the flow ensemble. Advanced visualization tools are used to amplify simulation results.
Prof. Rajendra Singh, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Friday, June 05, 2020, 16:00
- 17:30
KAUST
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Dr. Rajendra Singh is presently a Professor at the Department of Physics, IIT Delhi. He did M.Sc. (Physics) from D.B.S. College, Dehra Dun (affiliated to H.N.B. Garhwal University) in 1995. After that he joined Inter University Accelerator Centre (formerly Nuclear Science Centre), New Delhi for Ph.D. His Ph.D. work was related to the study of the effect of swift heavy ion irradiation on electrical properties of Si and GaAs. He completed his Ph.D. in 2001 with degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He then joined Walter Schottky Institute (WSI), Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany as a post doctoral fellow. There he worked on the design, fabrication and characterization of InP-based heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). He extensively used Class 100 Cleanroom facilities at WSI working on various processing tools such as photolithography, wet etching, reactive ion etching, UHV metallization and rapid thermal annealing. In January 2004 he joined the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Halle, Germany as a post doctoral fellow. There he worked in the area of direct wafer bonding and layer splitting of semiconductors for the fabrication of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and strained silicon-on-insulator (sSOI). He worked in a Class 10 Cleanroom facility at MPI Halle using processing tools such as wet benches, wafer bonding system, plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) and annealing furnaces.
Khaled Alshehri, Assistant Professor, KFUPM
Thursday, June 04, 2020, 13:00
- 14:00
KAUST
As end-consumers of electricity become more proactive and as many countries around the world push for a deeper penetration of renewable resources into the power grid, critical issues and challenges arise to the design and operation of deregulated electricity markets. In this presentation, we show how one can exploit tools from game theory to address some of these critical issues. Firstly, wholesale and retail markets are becoming more integrated due to the increasing adoption of distributed energy resources, creating a large gap in the current understanding of the impact of such small-scale energy resources on the larger power system operation and electricity market outcomes. This motivates us to develop a metric, called the Price of Aggregation, which quantifies the impact of integrating distributed energy resources in the retail-level on wholesale market efficiency.  Secondly, evidence from real markets indicate that large-scale adoption of wind energy in the transmission system leads to significantly higher price volatility in wholesale markets. To mitigate the effects of price volatility, we propose an add-on centralized clearing mechanism that is applicable to any wholesale market, with the aim of allowing any market participant to hedge against profit volatilities, without changing the existing market operations. Finally, we develop a multiperiod-multicompany demand response framework in retail markets, which captures the behavior of competing companies and their price-responsive end-consumers. Using real-life data, we demonstrate potential savings that can exceed 30% for end-consumers, in addition to revealing desirable mathematical properties and deep insights.
Prof Hieu Nguyen, Electrical and Computer Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Friday, May 29, 2020, 18:00
- 19:00
KAUST
Contact Person
Prof. Hieu Nguyen received the B.S. degree in Physics from Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2005), the M.S. degree in Electronics Engineering from Ajou University, South Korea (2009), and the PhD. degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University, Canada (2012). In September 2014, he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, New Jersey Institute of Technology. He has authored/co-authored 1 book chapter, 1 patent, 48 journal articles, and more than 70 conference presentations.
Thursday, May 28, 2020, 16:00
- 18:00
KAUST
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One of the main goals in computer vision is to achieve a human-like understanding of images. This understanding has been recently represented in various forms, including image classification, object detection, semantic segmentation, among many others. Nevertheless, image understanding has been mainly studied in the 2D image frame, so more information is needed to relate them to the 3D world. With the emergence of 3D sensors (e.g. the Microsoft Kinect), which provide depth along with color information, the task of propagating 2D knowledge into 3D becomes more attainable and enables interaction between a machine (e.g. robot) and its environment. This dissertation focuses on three aspects of indoor 3D scene understanding: (1) 2D-driven 3D object detection for single frame scenes with inherent 2D information, (2) 3D object instance segmentation for 3D reconstructed scenes, and (3) using room and floor orientation for automatic labeling of indoor scenes that could be used for self-supervised object segmentation. These methods allow capturing of physical extents of 3D objects, such as their sizes and actual locations within a scene.
Prof. Baishakhi Mazumder, Department of Materials Design and Innovation, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University at Buffalo
Friday, May 22, 2020, 16:00
- 17:00
KAUST
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No summary is available.
Prof. Jing Zhang, Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology
Friday, May 15, 2020, 21:00
- 22:00
KAUST
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Dr. Jing Zhang is currently the Kate Gleason Endowed Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. She obtained B.S. degree in Electronic Science and Technology from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2009), and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University (2013). Dr. Zhang’s research focuses on developing highly efficient III-Nitride and GaO semiconductor based photonic, optoelectronic, and electronic devices. Her research group is working on the development of novel quantum well active regions and substrates for enabling high-performance ultraviolet and visible LEDs/ lasers, as well as engineering of advanced device concepts for nanoelectronics.
Monday, May 04, 2020, 12:00
- 13:00
KAUST
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In my talk, I will present techniques that allow biologists to model a mesocale entity in a rapid way in the timeframe of a few minutes to hours. This way we have created the first complete atomistic model of the SARS-CoV-2 virion that we are these days sharing with the worldwide scientific community. Mesoscale represents a scalar gap that is currently not possible to accurately image with neither microscopy nor X-ray crystallography approaches. For this purpose, scientists characterize it by observations from the surrounding nanoscale and the microscale. From this information, it is possible to reconstruct a three-dimensional model of a biological entity with a full atomistic model. The problem is that these models are enormously large and are not possible to model with traditional methods from computer graphics within a reasonable time.
Sunday, May 03, 2020, 12:00
- 13:00
KAUST
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This talk aims to 1) provide an envisioned picture of 6G, 2) serve as a research guideline in the beyond 5G era, and 3) go over the recently proposed solutions to provide high-speed connectivity in under-covered areas to serve and contribute to the development of far-flung regions. The role of Internet and Communication Technology (ICT) in bringing about a revolution in almost all aspects of human life needs no introduction. It is indeed a well-known fact that the transmission of the information at a rapid pace has transformed all spheres of human life such as economy, education, and health to name a few. In this context, and as the standardization of the fifth generation (5G) of wireless communication systems (WCSs) has been completed, and 5G networks are in their early stage of deployment, the research visioning and planning of the sixth generation (6G) of WCSs are being initiated. 6G is expected to be the next focus in wireless communication and networking and aim to provide new superior communication services to meet the future hyper-connectivity demands in the 2030s.
Prof. Jae-Hyun Ryou, Mechanical Engineering, Texas Center for Superconducitity
Friday, May 01, 2020, 16:00
- 17:00
KAUST
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Thursday, April 30, 2020, 12:00
- 13:00
KAUST
Contact Person
In many problems in statistical signal processing, regularization is employed to deal with uncertainty, ill-posedness, and insufficiency of training data. It is possible to tune these regularizers optimally asymptotically, i.e. when the dimension of the problem becomes very large, by using tools from random matrix theory and Gauss Process Theory. In this talk, we demonstrate the optimal turning of regularization for three problems : i) Regularized least squares for solving ill-posed and/or uncertain linear systems, 2) Regularized least squares for signal detection in multiple antenna communication systems and 3) Regularized linear and quadratic discriminant binary classifiers.
Monday, April 27, 2020, 12:00
- 13:00
KAUST
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In this talk, we will discuss a new way of computing with quad meshes. It is based on the checkerboard pattern of parallelograms one obtains by subdividing a quad mesh at its edge midpoints. The new approach is easy to understand and implement. It simplifies the transfer from the familiar theory of smooth surfaces to the discrete setting of quad meshes. This is illustrated with applications to constrained editing of 3D models, mesh design for architecture and digital modeling of shapes which can be fabricated by bending flat pieces of inextensible sheet material.
Sunday, April 26, 2020, 12:00
- 13:00
KAUST
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This talk presents an overview of challenges, state-of the-art, and applications for distributed robotic systems. In distributed robotic systems, there is a group of robots that seek to achieve a collective task. Applications include environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and programmable self-assembly. Settings can range from a small team of cooperative robots to a swarm of many interacting agents. An essential feature of such systems is that individual robots make decisions based on available local information as well as limited communications with other robots. The challenge is to design local protocols that result in desired global outcomes. In contrast to a traditional centralized paradigm, both measurements and decisions are distributed among multiple actors.
Monday, April 20, 2020, 12:00
- 13:00
KAUST
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In this talk, I will present the potential of nano-islands grown by the atomic layer deposition (ALD) in addition to novel material combinations in scaled memory devices. Moreover, in order to relax the scalability requirement, I will introduce an integrated potential single device solution by infusing memory device which can monitor and remember our actions and the surrounding environment. Such a device performs the roles of both a MEMory and a senSOR at once and is referred to as a MEMSOR. The MEMSOR is directly programmed by external physical stimuli rather than an applied electric potential as in conventional devices. As a result, the MEMSOR leads to faster data analysis, lower footprint area, energy consumption, and ideally, the cost of the system. Finally, the MEMSOR device will be based on a MOSFET architecture with a mature manufacturing process, and thus it can be integrated with conventional Flash devices on the same silicon wafer with minimal additional process steps.
Monday, April 20, 2020, 12:00
- 13:00
KAUST
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In the lecture, we present a three-dimensional model for the simulation of signal processing in neurons. Part of this approach is a method to reconstruct the geometric structure of neurons from data measured by 2-photon microscopy. Being able to reconstruct neural geometries and network connectivities from measured data is the basis of understanding coding of motoric perceptions and long term plasticity which is one of the main topics of neuroscience. Other issues are compartment models and upscaling.
Sunday, April 19, 2020, 12:00
- 13:00
KAUST
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Recently, wireless power transfer has been used in mobile phones, electric vehicles, medical implants, wireless sensor networks, unmanned aerial vehicles, and so on. In this seminar, we will walk through circuit theory and simulations that illustrate the nature and constraints of the technology. We will also address contemporary topics related to application of wireless power transfer in electric vehicle applications.
Thursday, April 16, 2020, 16:00
- 17:30
KAUST
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The first part of this talk provides a brief introduction of the EMPC (motivation, challenges, and solutions). The second part of this talk proposes a regret-based robust EMPC paradigm for nonlinear systems subject to unknown but bounded disturbance. The main motivation of the proposed work is the possible improvement of the economic performance when one considers the regret function as the objective function for the robust EMPC algorithm instead of the worst cost. The third part of this talk introduces an integrated framework that combines a Neural Network (NN) algorithm with an MPC scheme that can guarantee closed-loop stability in the presence of deception cyberattacks (e.g., min-max cyberattack). Both discrete-time and continuous-time nonlinear systems will be utilized throughout the talk to demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed control methods. Finally, future research directions will be presented at the end of the talk.