Fall 2018

September 10, 2018 to September 11, 2018

Streaming Analytics for the Smart Grid

Speaker: Le Xie (Texas A&M University)

How to conduct real-time analytics of streaming measurement data in the power grid? This talk offers a dynamic systems approach to utilizing data of different time scale for improved monitoring of the grid cyber and physical security. The...

September 17, 2018 to September 18, 2018

Regret of Queueing Bandits

Speaker: Sanjay Shakkottai (University of Texas, Austin)

We consider a variant of the multiarmed bandit (MAB) problem where jobs or tasks queue for service, and service rates of different servers (agents) may be unknown. Such (queueing+learning) problems are motivated by a vast range of service...

October 15, 2018 to October 16, 2018

Augmented Lagrangians and Decomposition in Convex and Nonconvex Programming

Speaker: Terry Rockafellar (University of Washington)

Multiplier methods based on augmented Lagrangians are attractive in convex and nonconvex programming for their stabilizing and even convexifying properties. They have widely been seen, however, as incompatible with taking advantage of a...

October 22, 2018 to October 23, 2018

Distributed Statistical Estimation of High-Dimensional Distributions and Parameters under Communication Constraints

Speaker: Ayfer Ozgur (Stanford University)

Modern data sets are often distributed across multiple machines and processors, and bandwidth and energy limitations in networks and within multiprocessor systems often impose significant bottlenecks on the performance of algorithms....

October 29, 2018 to October 30, 2018

Computing with Assemblies

Speaker: Christos Papadimitriou (Columbia University)

Computation in the brain has been modeled productively at many scales, ranging from molecules to dendrites, neurons, and synapses, all the way to the whole brain models useful in cognitive science. I will discuss recent work on an...

November 13, 2018 to November 14, 2018

Functional Representation of Random variables and Applications

Speaker: Abbas El Gamal (Stanford University)

The functional representation lemma says that given random variables X and Y, there exists a random variable Z, independent of X, and a function g(x,z) such that Y=g(X,Z). This lemma has had several applications in information theory aimed...

November 19, 2018 to November 20, 2018

Modeling Electricity Markets with Complementarity: Why It's Important (and Fun)

Speaker: Benjamin Hobbs (Johns Hopkins University)

Electric power: done wrong, it drags the economy and environment down; done right, it could help to create a more efficient, brighter, and cleaner future. Better policy, planning, and operations models--both simple analytical, and complex...

November 26, 2018 to November 27, 2018

Transportation Systems Resilience: Capacity-Aware Control and Value of Information

Speaker: Saurabh Amin (MIT)

Resilience of a transportation system is its ability to operate under adverse events like incidents and storms. Availability of real-time traffic data provides new opportunities for predicting travelers’ routing behavior and implementing...

December 10, 2018 to December 11, 2018

Symmetry, Bifurcation, and Multi-Agent Decision-Making

Speaker: Naomi Leonard (Princeton University)

Prof. Leonard will present nonlinear dynamics for distributed decision-making that derive from principles of symmetry and bifurcation. Inspired by studies of animal groups, including house-hunting honeybees and schooling fish, the nonlinear...