Abstract: Introduce the graduate seminar series and welcome students.
Speaker Bio: Biography: Sarika Khushalani Solanki received B.E. and M.E. degrees from India in 1998 and 2000 respectively. She received Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Mississippi State University, USA in 2006. She is currently an Associate Professor in Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, since August 2009. Prior to that, she worked for Open Systems International Inc, Minneapolis, MN as a Senior Engineer for three years. She has served as reviewer in National Science Foundation and Department of Energy and is past president of IEEE Distribution Systems Analysis Subcommittee and IEEE Career Promotion and Workforce Development Subcommittee and is editor of Transactions in Smart Grid. She is a recipient of Honda Fellowship award and NSF Career Award. Her research interests are Smart Grid, Power Distribution System, computer applications in power system analysis and power system control.
Speaker: Martin Dunlap
Date: January 23rd, 2023
Time: 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Place: Zoom
Abstract: He will introduce the services and resources available through the WVU Libraries. These library resources may be critical to your graduate research.
Speaker Bio: He joined WVU in 1998 and has spent 10+ years working in the swamps of Florida as an environmental consultant. Since then he has worked in libraries first in Cleveland, Ohio and then here at WVU in various capacities. He recently got promoted to be the Engineering Librarian at WVU.
Speaker: WVU IT
Date: NA
Time: NA
Place: At your desk
Abstract: There is an online plagiarism tutorial at https://wvu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6W3rGjsAaEenYgd
Here are the steps:
View videos.
Take a self-test.
Repeat steps for each module.
Take the Plagiarism Avoidance Test.
How do you progress through this tutorial?
View videos or read material in a module. Take a self-test after reading and viewing materials in a module. This self-test is for practice and taking it will open the next module. Repeat steps for each module, five modules in all. After viewing / reading the material in each module and taking the self-tests, take the Plagiarism Avoidance Test.
Speaker: Emily Porter
Date: Monday, February 6, 2023
Time: 5:00 PM
Place: Zoom-https://wvu.zoom.us/j/9188836315.
Abstract:Microwave medical technologies have promising potential for applications spanning health monitoring, detection, and diagnosis of disease, and even treatment. These technologies are low-cost, non-/minimally-invasive, non-ionizing, safe and well-tolerated, and can be made wearable or portable. In this talk, the motivation and basic foundations of microwave techniques are discussed, followed by the challenges of designing high quality basic research to support such medical device development. Key factors influencing the design and development of next generation microwave medical devices will be discussed. In particular, the difficulties faced when measuring and reporting the dielectric properties of biological tissues are emphasized, focusing on the importance of achieving accurate and representative measurements. Promising microwave-based medical technologies designed to address high-priority clinical needs will be highlighted. Lastly, proposed future activities in this area will be discussed.
Bio: Dr. Emily Porter is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where she is associated with both the bioECE and Electromagnetics & Acoustics research areas. Dr. Porter was granted her Ph.D. in 2015 from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She also has an M.Eng. and a B.Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, completed in 2008 and 2010, respectively. More recently, Dr. Porter was an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow and then an EU Marie-Curie Research Fellow with the Translational Medical Device Laboratory at National University of Ireland Galway, from 2015-2019. In 2021, she was awarded the IEEE Lot Shafai Mid- Career Distinguished Achievement Award for her contributions to microwave medical technologies, standardizing the methodology for measuring the dielectric properties of biological tissues, and advocating for women in engineering. Her research interests lie in applied electromagnetics, and particularly aimed at developing electromagnetic (EM)-based solutions with applications in diagnostic, therapeutic, supportive or assistive medical technologies.
Speaker: Guillermo Avendaño-Franco
Date: Monday, February 13, 2023
Time: 5:00 PM
Place: Zoom-https://wvu.zoom.us/j/9188836315
Abstract: In this talk, we examine the area of High-Performance Computing (HPC).
HPC is an exciting area at the frontier of developments in hardware and software.
Beyond science and technology, HPC has a fundamental role in the current
geopolitical clashes between superpowers in the struggle for a multipolar world.
We will explore how HPC has been the driving force of computing since the dawn
of computer machines more than a century ago. We will see how the area has
changed during this century and look toward the future based on current trends.
The changes on the high end of supercomputing will have an impact on scientific
questions that those behemoths of silicon can answer.
The area has been enriched in recent years with the success of machine learning
algorithms and big data. Areas now summed to the traditional HPC workflows
based on large numerical simulations with classical algorithms supported mostly
on dense and sparse linear algebra.
Bio: Guillermo Avendaño specializes in computational science and the solution of
scientific problems using advanced computer architectures. His toolbox ranges
from numerical algorithms and parallel programming to artificial intelligence and
machine learning. He holds a bachelor's degree in Physics from Universidad de
Antioquia in Colombia and a Ph.D. from Université catholique de Louvain in
Belgium. He is currently responsible for offering consultancy in computational
science for researchers at WVU and facilitating the use of WVU Research
Computing infrastructure.
Speaker: Prashanna Gyawali
Date: Monday, March 13, 2023
Time: 5:00 PM
Place: Zoom-https://wvu.zoom.us/j/9188836315
Abstract: Over the last decade, there has been a phenomenal success in AI algorithms, driven mainly by supervised deep learning, across various domains, including computer vision and NLP. However, similar performance in health and medicine remains challenging due to current models’ ineptness to generalize across unseen data (e.g., new patient cohort). First, unlike other domains, it’s expensive to curate training datasets with well-annotated labels for the healthcare domain. Further, depending upon data modalities, different data attributes such as patient’s age, sex, race, and anatomical variations often confound with the predictive task, exhibiting disparities in performance across various patient subgroups. Furthermore, adopting AI models in a real-world clinical setting would require robust explanation and interpretation. In this talk, I will present work on these critical aspects of healthcare AI. First, I will present my work on learning unbiased deep learning models by disentangling (or separating) representations. Second, I will discuss the importance of interpretability in healthcare and the challenges current deep learning models face. I will then present my recent work to address some of the difficulties around interpretability. Finally, I will envision future directions such as multimodal learning.
Bio: Prashnna K Gyawali recently completed his postdoctoral training in the School of Medicine at Stanford University, working with Prof. Zihuai He and Prof. James Zou. He received his Ph.D. in Computing and Information Sciences from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), advised by Prof. Linwei Wang. His research lies at the intersection of machine learning and healthcare. He is interested in developing robust and fair AI models for real-world problems in health and medicine – primarily to improve models’ generalizability to diverse patient groups. During his Ph.D., he interned at Google Health and Verisk Analytics. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed research articles, including at premier conferences such as ICDM, MICCAI, ICLR, and IPMI, and in impactful journals like IEEE Transactions of Biomedical Engineering, Nature Communications, and Computers in Biology and Medicine
Speaker: Jacob Tyo
Date: Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Time: 5:00 PM
Place: ESB G83
Abstract: In this talk, Mr. Tyo will share his experience of developing https://www.performancephoto.co, a web application that makes event photos searchable and easy to find. He will explain how he leveraged the power of AI technology (specifically ChatGPT and Bing Chat) to create a unique service that makes finding photos of themselves, their friends, or their favorite performers instantly, without having to look through thousands of photos. The talk will also address how using large language models improved the security of this website, highlighting a few caveats. Finally, Mr. Tyo will reflect on how this project demonstrates the arrival of a new age of software engineering and some cybersecurity and privacy implications. Join this seminar to discover how ChatGPT can revolutionize your individual power and creativity.
Bio: Jacob Tyo is an Electronics Engineer at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and a Ph.D. student in the Machine Learning Department of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests lie broadly in meta-learning, natural language processing, reinforcement learning, and computer vision. He is also the founder of Performance Photo, a web application that makes event photos searchable and easy to find. He holds an MS and a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from West Virginia University, and an MS in Machine Learning Research from Carnegie Mellon University. In his spare time, he enjoys dirtbike racing, rock climbing, and playing music.
Speaker: Jonathan Beaver
Date: Tuesday, April 11, 2023
Time: 5:00 PM
Place: ESB G83
Abstract: This talk will cover career opportunities in cybersecurity, with a focus on opportunities within startups and small businesses. Unlike large and established companies, small businesses, especially startups, require employees to perform multiple roles and deal with unique challenges, often in cybersecurity and IT. This can help you to gain valuable experience working with a wide variety of cybersecurity applications, allowing you to build your skills and advance your career. It will also focus on real examples of what happens during the day-to-day operations in a startup as a cybersecurity team member. The goal of the talk is to provide individuals thinking about careers in cybersecurity with the information that will allow them to be prepared for what a position with a startup or small business would entail and ways to be successful in it.
Bio: Jonathan Beaver is a senior security architect with Trilogy Innovations, Inc. Having spent 20+ years in software and security with small businesses and startups, he previously served as the CIO and CISO at a FinTech startup outside of Pittsburgh, PA. He has a Masters and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional.