Every Picture Tells a Story: Visual Cluster Assessment in Square and Rectangular Relational Data
2015-12-07 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Toronto) | Room 1180, Bahen Center for Information Technology, University of Toronto
Monday December 7, 2015 at 4:00 p.m. Professor Emeritus James Bezdek will be presenting “Every Picture Tells a Story: Visual Cluster Assessment in Square and Rectangular Relational Data”.
Speaker: Emeritus James Bezdek
Past President of NAFIPS, IFSA and the IEEE CIS
Day & Time: Monday, December 7, 2015
4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Location: Room 1180
Bahen Center for Information Technology
40 St. George Street, Toronto
Organizer: IEEE Toronto Signals & Computational Intelligence Chapter
Distinguished Lecturer Program
Contact: Lorenzo Livi, Email:llivi@scs.ryerson.ca
Abstract: The VAT/iVAT, algorithms are the parents of a large family of visual assessment models.
Part 1. Definitions of the three canonical problems of cluster analysis: tendency assessment, clustering, and cluster validity. History of Visual Clustering. Applications: role-based compliance assessment, eldercare time series data, and anomaly detection in wireless sensor networks.
Part 2. Extension to siVAT, scalable iVAT for big data. This is the basis of clusiVAT and clusiVAT+ for clustering in big data (Topic 4 below). Application: image segmentation. Extension to coiVAT for assessment of co-clustering tendency in the four clustering problems associated with rectangular relational data. Application: response of 18 Fetal Bovine Serum Treatments to the treatment of fibroblasts in gene expression data.
Biography: Jim received the PhD in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University in 1973. Jim is past president of NAFIPS (North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society), IFSA (International Fuzzy Systems Association) and the IEEE CIS (Computational Intelligence Society): founding editor the Int’l. Jo. Approximate Reasoning and the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems: Life fellow of the IEEE and IFSA; and a recipient of the IEEE 3rd Millennium, IEEE CIS Fuzzy Systems Pioneer, and IEEE technical field award Rosenblatt medals. Jim’s interests: woodworking, optimization, motorcycles, pattern recognition, cigars, clustering in very large data, fishing, co-clustering, blues music, wireless sensor networks, poker and visual clustering. And of course, clustering in big data. Jim retired in 2007, and will be coming to a university near you soon.

Applications of Miniaturized-Element Frequency Selective Surfaces in Designing Microwave Lenses, Reflectarrays, and Polarization Converters
2015-12-11 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Toronto) | Room BA1210, Bahen Center for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street, Toronto
Friday December 11, 2015 at 4:00 p.m. Prof. Nader Behdad of University of Wisconsin – Madison, will be presenting “Applications of Miniaturized-Element Frequency Selective Surfaces in Designing Microwave Lenses, Reflectarrays, and Polarization Converters”.
Speaker: Prof. Nader Behdad
University of Wisconsin – Madison
Day & Time: Friday, December 11, 2015
4:00 p.m.
Location: Room BA1210, Bahen Center for Information Technology
40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 2E4
Organizer: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics and Radiation Chapter
Contact: Sean Victor Hum
Abstract: Over the past several years, we have conducted research on a class of frequency selective surfaces with building blocks that consist of cascaded arrays of non-resonant, sub-wavelength periodic structures. Due to the small lateral dimensions and thicknesses of their unit cells, these structures are referred to as miniaturized-element frequency selective surfaces (MEFSSs). As spatial filters, MEFSSs can be designed to provide a wide range of response types with arbitrary levels of selectivity. MEFSSs capable of operating at extremely high incident power levels have also been developed and experimentally demonstrated for operation as spatial filters in HPM systems. Finally, MEFSSs having suppressed harmonics over extremely broad bandwidths have been developed for reduction of radar signatures of antennas and other objects.
In addition to acting as spatial filters, the building blocks of MEFSSs can be used to serve other purposes as well. For example, by using the unit cells of a band-pass or a low-pass MEFSS as a spatial phase shifter or a spatial time-delay unit (TDU), wideband, true-time-delay lenses and reflectarrays may be designed. By using anisotropic versions of these spatial TDUs, wideband linear-to-circular polarization converters or polarization selective surfaces can be designed. In this presentation, I will first briefly discuss the principles of operation of MEFSSs and present examples of spatial filters developed for different applications. Subsequently, I will discuss three specific applications where the unit cells of MEFSSs are used as transmissive or reflective time-delay units. These include the development of wideband true-time-delay microwave lenses and reflectarrays as well as broadband linear-to-circular polarization converters designed using anisotropic time delay units.
Biography: Nader Behdad received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (Tehran, Iran) in 2000 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A.) in 2003 and 2006 respectively. He was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA, from 2006 to 2008, and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA, from 2009 to 2013, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research expertise is in the area of applied electromagnetics with emphasis on electrically-small antennas, antenna arrays, antennas for biomedical applications, biomedical applications of RF/microwaves, periodic structures, frequency selective surfaces, passive high-power microwave devices, metamaterials, and biomimetics and biologically inspired systems in electromagnetics.
Prof. Behdad was a recipient of the IEEE R. W. P. King Prize Paper Award in 2014, the IEEE Piergiorgio L. E. Uslenghi Letters Prize Paper Award in 2012, the CAREER Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2011, the Young Investigator Award from the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 2011, and the Young Investigator Award from the United States Office of Naval Research in 2011. He received the Office of Naval Research Senior Faculty Fellowship in 2009, the Young Scientist Award from the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) in 2008, the Horace H. Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship from the University of Michigan in 2005-2006, the best paper awards in the Antenna Applications Symposium in Sep. 2003, and the second prize in the paper competition of the USNC/ URSI National Radio Science Meeting, Boulder, CO, in January 2004. His graduate students were the recipients of the ten different awards/recognitions at the IEEE Pulsed Power & Plasma Science in 2013, IEEE AP-S/URSI Symposium in 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014, and the Antenna Applications Symposium in 2008, 2010, and 2011. He serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters and served as the co-chair of the technical program committee of the 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting.

The Wonderful World of Nonlinearity: Modeling and Characterization of RF and Microwave Circuits
2016-01-18 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Toronto) | Room GB405, Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street, Toronto, M5S 1A4
Monday January 18, 2016 at 5:00 p.m. Jose C. Pedro, Professor at the University of Aveiro, will be presenting a Distinguished Microwave Lecture, on “The Wonderful World of Nonlinearity: Modeling and Characterization of RF and Microwave Circuits”.
Speaker: Jose C. Pedro
University of Aveiro
Day & Time: Monday, January 18, 2016
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Location: Room GB405, Galbraith Building
35 St. George Street, Toronto, M5S 1A4
Organizer: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics and Radiation Chapter
Contact: George V. Eleftheriades
Abstract: Despite the many studies that have been undertaken to understand the wonderful world of nonlinearity, most undergraduate electrical engineering programs are still confined to linear analysis and design tools. As a result, the vast majority of microwave designers still cannot profit from the significant technological advancements that have been made in nonlinear circuit simulation, active device modeling and new instrumentation for performance verification. So, they tend to conduct their designs relying on experience, empirical concepts, and many trial and error iterations in the lab.
This talk will reveal the ubiquitous presence of nonlinearity in all RF and microwave circuits and the recent efforts made to understand, model, predict, and measure its diverse manifestations. We aim to bring microwave engineers’ attention to newly available techniques, and attract researchers to pursue further studies on this scientifically exciting topic.
Starting with some elementary properties of nonlinear circuits (like nonlinear signal distortion, harmonic generation, frequency conversion and spectral regrowth), we will show that nonlinearity is present in all wireless circuits, either to perform a desired signal operation or as unintentional distortion. In this way, we will show how oscillators, modulators or mixers could not exist without nonlinearity, while power-amplifier designers struggle to get rid of its distortion effects.
After this theoretical overview, we will introduce some recent advancements in nonlinear microwave circuit analysis tools and illustrate different types of models that are currently being used to represent and predict device, circuit, and system performance. Finally, we will focus the talk on the key metrics that are used to characterize nonlinear behavior, as well as newly developed lab instruments and their ability to assess device performance.
Biography: José C. Pedro received the diploma, doctoral and habilitation degrees in electronics and telecommunications engineering, from University of Aveiro, Portugal, in 1985, 1993 and 2002, respectively.
From 1985 to 1993 he was an Assistant Lecturer at University of Aveiro, and a Professor since 1993. Currently he is a Full Professor at the same University, and a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Telecommunications.
His main scientific interests include active device modeling and the analysis and design of various nonlinear microwave circuits, in particular, the design of highly linear multi-carrier power amplifiers and mixers. He is the leading author of Intermodulation Distortion in Microwave and Wireless Circuits (Artech House, 2003), has authored or co-authored more than 200 papers in international journals and symposia, and served the IEEE in the Portuguese MTT/AP/ED Joint Chapter, the MTT-11 Technical Committee and as a reviewer and Associate Editor for the MTT Transactions and reviewer for the MTT-IMS and the EuMC.
Prof. Pedro has served his university department as the Coordinator of the Scientific Council and as the Department Head.
Prof. Pedro received the Marconi Young Scientist Award in 1993 and the 2000 Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) Measurement Prize. In 2007 he was elected Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to the nonlinear distortion analysis of microwave devices and circuits. Currently, he is an IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer.

Linearization Techniques for Push-Pull Amplifiers
2016-01-28 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | University of Toronto, Bahen Centre, Room BA1230
Thursday January 28, 2016 at 11:10 a.m. Dr. Rinaldo Castello, IEEE Fellow, will be presenting “Linearization Techniques for Push-Pull Amplifiers”.
Speaker: Dr. Rinaldo Castello
IEEE Fellow
University of Pavia, Italy
Day & Time: Thursday, January 28, 2016
11:10 a.m.
Location: University of Toronto, Bahen Centre, Room BA1230
Organizer: Solid-State Circuits Society
Contact: Dustin Dunwell
Abstract: Amplifiers that need to drive heavy loads (low resistances and/or large capacitances) or to handle high current signals with good efficiency generally use a push-pull output stage. This intrinsically creates large open-loop distortion components that need to be compressed through feedback to insure high closed-loop linearity. Minimizing close loop residual distortion involves three steps that will be discussed. First, eliminate all open-loop source of distortion not intrinsic to the proper operation of the push pull structure. Second, choose the amplifier topology that gives the maximum close loop compression of the open-loop distortion components for a given bandwidth. Third, maximize the open-loop gain in the signal band and/or the unity gain bandwidth of the amplifier for a given topology while insuring stability in the presence of variable loads.
Biography: Rinaldo Castello (S’78–M’78–SM’92–F’99) graduated from the University of Genova (summa cum laude) in 1977 and received the M.S. and the Ph. D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in ‘81 and ‘84. From ‘83 to ‘85 he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1987 he joined the University of Pavia where he is now a Full Professor. He consulted for ST-Microelectronics, Milan, Italy up to 2005 in ‘98 he started a joint research centre between the University of Pavia and ST and was its Scientific Director up to ‘05. He promoted the establishing of several design centre from multinational IC companies in the Pavia area among them Marvell for which he has been consulting from 2005. Rinaldo Castello has been a member of the TPC of the European Solid State Circuit Conference (ESSCIRC) since 1987 and of the International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) from ‘92 to ‘04. He was Technical Chairman of ESSCIRC ’91 and General Chairman of ESSCIRC ‘02, Associate Editor for Europe of the IEEE J. of Solid-State Circ. from ’94 to ’96 and Guest Editor of the July ’92 special issue. From 2000 to 2007 he has been Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid State Circuit Society. Prof Castello was named one of the outstanding contributors for the first 50 and 60 years of ISSCC and a co-recipient of the Best Student Paper Award at the 2005 Symposium on VLSI of the Best Invited Paper Award at the 2011 CICC and of the Best Evening Panel Award at ISSCC 2012. He was one of the two European representatives at the Plenary Distinguished Panel of ISSCC 2013 and the Summer 2014 Issue of the IEEE Solid State Circuit Magazine was devoted to him. Rinaldo Castello is a Fellow of the IEEE.

The Art of Successful Presentation
2016-01-28 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
Thursday January 28th, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. Dr. Alex. Ferworn, Associate Chair and Graduate Programs Director at Ryerson University, will be presenting “The Art of Successful Presentation”.
Speaker: Dr. Alex Ferworn
Associate Chair and Graduate Programs Director, Ryerson University
Director, Program in Disaster and Emergency Management
Day & Time: Thursday, January 28, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Room LG04, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
Ryerson University, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Abstract: The fear of needles (trypanophobia) is the 20th most prevalent phobia. The fear of public speaking (glossophobia) is ranked at 13th. Does this mean that some people would rather be stuck with needles than make a public presentation? Based on the experience of Prof. Ferworn, this may be true. Some fear of making a presentation can be mitigated by knowing what to do. In this presentation, Prof. Ferworn will discuss how to make a successful presentation by providing simple guidelines so that no one must stick themselves with needles in order to feel better about talking publicly.
Biography: Prof. Ferworn received his PhD in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, his MSc in Computing and Information Science from the University of Guelph and his B.Tech in Applied Computer Science from Ryerson University, where he is a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science, Associate Chair and Graduate Programs Director. He is also Director of a number of Certificate programs including the Program in Disaster and Emergency Management. Ferworn is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Computing and Software, Faculty of Engineering at McMaster University. Prof. Ferworn has been collaborating with the USAR and CBRNe Response Team (UCRT) of the Ontario Provincial Police since 2005. He has worked extensively with USAR teams in Canada and the United States on a broad range of technology issues related to Computational Public Safety. He does not own a dog.

Imaging Tissue and Treating Cancer with Microwaves
2016-01-28 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Toronto) | Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King’s College Rd Room, SF1105
Thursday January 28, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. Professor Susan Hagness, University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be presenting “Imaging Tissue and Treating Cancer with Microwaves”.
Speaker: Professor Susan Hagness
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Day & Time: Thursday, January 28, 2016
3:00 p.m.
Location: Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King’s College Rd
Room SF1105
Organizer: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics and Radiation Chapter
Contact: Costas D. Sarris
Abstract: The endogenous (and possibly exogenously influenced) dielectric properties of tissue at microwave frequencies vary across different tissue types and physiological states. These properties may be exploited to differentiate tissues via low-power microwave imaging and to selectively heat diseased tissue at higher power levels. This presentation will highlight recent theoretical and experimental advances in low-cost microwave theranostics – that is, diagnostic and therapeutic microwave-based technologies – with an emphasis on breast imaging and targeted cancer treatment. On the diagnostic side, 3-D quantitative microwave imaging technology has the potential to address several important clinical needs in breast imaging, including evaluating breast density as part of a patient’s individualized risk assessment, screening women who are at higher risk for cancer, and monitoring changes in breast tissue in response to prevention and treatment protocols. On the therapeutic side, minimally invasive microwave ablation using miniaturized antennas as interstitial heating probes is emerging as a less invasive alternative to surgical resection and more effective and versatile alternative to conventional thermoablative techniques for the treatment of primary tumors.
Biography: Susan C. Hagness received the B.S. degree with highest honors and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern University in 1993 and 1998, respectively. Since 1998, she has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she currently holds the title of Philip D. Reed Professor and serves as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs in the College of Engineering. She is also a Faculty Affiliate of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a member of the UW Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Hagness was the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) presented by the U.S. White House in 2000. In 2002, she was named one of the 100 top young innovators in science and engineering in the world by the MIT Technology Review magazine. She is also the recipient of the UW-Madison Emil Steiger Distinguished Teaching Award (2003), the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Early Career Achievement Award (2004), the URSI Isaac Koga Gold Medal (2005), the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering Outstanding Paper Award (2007), the IEEE Education Society Mac E. Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award (2007), the UW System Alliant Energy Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Award (2009), the Physics in Medicine and Biology Citations Prize (2011), the UW-Madison Kellett Mid- Career Award (2011), and the UW-Madison College of Engineering Benjamin Smith Reynolds Award for Excellence in Teaching Engineers (2014). She was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 2009. She has held numerous leadership positions within the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) and the United States National Committee (USNC) of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI). She was the Technical Program Chair of the 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting in Chicago, IL, and most recently completed a term as Chair of the IEEE AP-S Fellows Evaluation Committee.

IBM Internet of Things Point of View and Strategy
2016-01-28 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Toronto) | Room VIC608, Victoria Building, Ryerson University, 285 Victoria Street, Toronto
Thursday January 28, 2016 at 6:30 p.m. Jim Caldwell, Director of IBM Internet of Things, Continuous Engineering Solutions Development, will be presenting “IBM Internet of Things Point of View and Strategy”.
Speaker: Jim Caldwell
Director, IBM Internet of Things, Continuous Engineering Solutions Development
Day & Time: Thursday, January 28, 2016
6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Location: Room VIC608
Victoria Building, Ryerson University
285 Victoria Street, Toronto
Map: http://www.ryerson.ca/maps
Contact: d.cecic@ieee.org
Abstract: The Internet of Things is predicted to have an economic impact of more than $11 Trillion per year by 2025. It has become a focus of discussion by technologists, the business press and the general public. Clearly something is happening but what? And what should businesses and institutions do about it? This presentation will survey the topic from IBM’s perspective. We will discuss what the Internet of Things is. We will also discuss IBM’s point of view and strategy, some examples of offerings and client engagements. Finally, we will conclude with some key questions and research challenges.
Biography: As Director, IBM Internet of Things, Continuous Engineering Solutions Development, Mr. Caldwell is responsible for the development of a set of software tools and solutions used in the design and development of “things”. This includes motor vehicles, aircraft and electronic devices. He is also a member of the leadership team for IBM’s Collaborative Lifecycle Management toolset used in the design and development of large software systems industry wide.
Previously, as Director of Software Group (SWG) Technical Strategy, Mr. Caldwell was responsible for working across SWG to continually update and communicate the SWG technical strategy. This included working with SWG divisional leaders (technical and business) on key elements of strategy and cross IBM initiatives. It also included selection, development and delivery of incubator programs and joint programs with IBM research.
Prior to that, Mr. Caldwell served as Director of WebSphere Application Infrastructure Product Management where he was responsible for business management of the infrastructure portion of IBM’s WebSphere portfolio of e-business products. This included WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Commerce Server, WebSphere Voice Server and Embedded ViaVoice. He drove business decisions across all disciplines within these groups including development, services, business development, and marketing.
In his more than 25 years at IBM, Mr. Caldwell has held technical, managerial and executive roles in IBM’s software businesses including Director, WebSphere Commerce Development in which he helped grow IBM’s Commerce offering from an incubator activity to the market leader. Mr. Caldwell is a Mathematics graduate from the University of Waterloo and is currently based in IBM’s Toronto Software Laboratory.

Agile Methodologies in the Enterprise
2016-02-04 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Toronto) | Room LG04, Ryerson University, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Thursday February 4th, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. Dr. Salah Sharieh, Senior Technical Innovator, will be presenting “Agile Methodologies in the Enterprise”.
Speaker: Salah Sharieh
Senior Technical Innovator
Doctor of Philosophy, McMaster University
Day & Time: Thursday, February 4, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Room LG04, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
Ryerson University, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Abstract: The only constant is change and technology is changing very fast. To build an enterprise software is inherently complex and lengthy with a need for flexibility to adjust to the changing needs of customers and market conditions. Agile methodologies are often presented as the solution for these problems.
Adopting a new concept often proves harder than it seems at first but having the right people with the right tools to support the change can make it easier. Introducing Agile into large organization has advantages and disadvantages such as accelerating delivery and shortening the feedback cycle. On the other hand, these types of methodologies have higher dependency on people skills rather than processes which makes it harder to achieve the desired value.
After further analysis, it appears that only some parts of agile methodologies work well. In this topic, we will talk about the challenges that CIOs face with adapting agile methods and what can be done to increase the likely hood of useful adoption and implementation in large organizations. In addition, we will talk about vendors’ role in agile projects and how they might contribute to the failure or the success of a project. Finally, we will compare and contrast Agile with iterative approaches.
Biography: Dr. Salah Sharieh is a Senior Technical Innovator with extensive experience in business and technology. He has developed his business savvy through working with Fortune 500 companies. Salah also holds the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from McMaster University. He has more than twenty peer reviewed publications and has contributed to several books. He also is a technical reviewer for several journals and conferences and is a member of the CIO association of Canada. Recently Salah led the National Occupation Standards for Cyber Security.
In the last 20 years, Salah Sharieh founded several companies, some of which were later acquired by larger organizations. He has delivered high profile solutions and provided vision and leadership to several industries including financial, telecommunication, manufacturing, and the public sector. Under Salah’s leadership, start-up companies evolved from concept to companies providing products and solutions for businesses across Canada, the United States, and Europe.

Semi-automated Genome Annotation and an Expanded Epigenetic Alphabet
2016-02-11 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Toronto) | Room LG04, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, Ryerson University, Toronto
Thursday February 11th, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. Michael Hoffman, Principal Investigator at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, will be presenting “Semi-automated genome annotation and an expanded epigenetic alphabet”.
Speaker: Michael Hoffman
Principal Investigator at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
Assistant Professor in the Departments of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
Day & Time: Thursday, February 11, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Room LG04, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
Ryerson University, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Please check before the seminar
Contact: llivi@scs.ryerson.ca
Abstract: First, we will discuss Segway, an integrative method to identify patterns from multiple functional genomics experiments, discovering joint patterns across different assay types. We apply Segway to ENCODE ChIP-seq andDNase-seq data and identify patterns associated with transcription start sites, gene ends, enhancers, CTCF elements, and repressed regions. Segway yields a model which elucidates the relationship between assay observations and functional elements in the genome.
Second, we will discuss a new method to discover transcription factor motifs and identify transcription factor binding sites in DNA with covalent modifications such as methylation. Just as transcription factors distinguish one standard nucleobase from another, they also distinguish unmodified and modified bases. To represent the modified bases in a sequence, we replace cytosine (C) with symbols for 5-methylcytosine (5mC), 5-hydroxylmethylcytosine (5hmC), 5-formylcytosine (5fC). Similarly, we adapted the well-established position weight matrix model of transcription factor binding affinity to an expanded alphabet. We created an expanded-alphabet genome sequence using genome-wide maps of 5mC, 5hmC, and 5fC in mouse embryonic stem cells. Using this sequence and expanded-alphabet position weight matrixes, we reproduced various known methylation binding preferences, including the preference of ZFP57 and C/EBPβ for methylated motifs and the preference of c-Myc for unmethylated motifs. Using these known binding preferences to tune model parameters enables discovery of novel modified motifs.
Biography: Michael Hoffman is a principal investigator at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Medical Biophysics and Computer Science, University of Toronto. He researches the application of machine learning techniques to epigenomic data. He previously led the National Institutes of Health ENCODE Project’s large-scale integration task group while at the University of Washington. He has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he conducted computational genomics studies at the European Bioinformatics Institute. He also has a B.S. in Biochemistry and a B.A. in the Plan II Honors Program at The University of Texas at Austin. He was named a Genome Technology Young Investigator and has received several awards for his academic work, including a NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award.

Systematic Design of Analog Circuits Using Pre-Computed Lookup Tables
2016-02-26 11:00 - 13:00 (America/Toronto) | BA1210, University of Toronto
Friday February 26th, 2016 at 11:10 a.m. Dr. Boris Murmann, Associate Professor at Stanford University, will be presenting “Systematic Design of Analog Circuits Using Pre-Computed Lookup Tables”.
Speaker: Dr. Boris Murmann
Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
IEEE Fellow, and Program Vice-Chair at ISSCC 2016
Day & Time: Friday, February 26th, 2016
11:10 a.m. – 12:40 p.m.
Location: BA1210, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, University of Toronto
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Dustin Dunwell
Abstract: The majority of textbook material on analog circuit design is based on the square-law model for MOS transistors. While this model remains useful for teaching, it has become too inaccurate for design in nanoscale CMOS. In circuit simulators, this problem has been solved using complex models equations with hundreds of parameters. Since these descriptions are impractical for manual use, designers tend to shy away from hand-analysis-based optimization and resort to a design style built on iterative and time-consuming “tweaking” in a simulator. This tutorial presents a systematic design methodology that bridges the gap between simulation, hand analysis and script-based optimization. The approach hinges upon Spice-generated look-up tables containing the transistor’s equivalent model parameters (gm, gds, etc.) across a multi-dimensional sweep of the terminal voltages. We interpret and organize these data based on the transistor’s inversion level, employing gm/ID as a proxy and key parameter for design. This width-independent metric captures a device’s efficiency in translating bias current to transconductance and spans nearly the same range in all modern CMOS processes (~3…30 S/A). When combined with other width-independent figures of merit (gm/Cgg, gm/gds, etc.) thinking in terms of gm/ID (rather than gate overdrive) allows us to study the tradeoffs between bandwidth, noise, distortion and power dissipation in a normalized space. The final bias currents and device sizes follow from a straightforward denormalization step using the current density ID/W. Since this entire flow is driven by Spice-generated data, we maintain close agreement between the desired specs and the circuit’s simulated performance. We will detail the inner workings of this approach, and showcase its capabilities using a variety of practical examples.
Biography: Boris Murmann joined Stanford University in 2004, where he currently serves as an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 2003. From 1994 to 1997, he was with Neutron Microelectronics, Germany, where he developed low-power and smart-power ASICs in automotive CMOS technology. Dr. Murmann’s research interests are in the area of mixed-signal integrated circuit design, with special emphasis on data converters and sensor interfaces. In 2008, he was a co-recipient of the Best Student Paper Award at the VLSI Circuits Symposium in 2008 and a recipient of the Best Invited Paper Award at the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC). He received the Agilent Early Career Professor Award in 2009 and the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award in 2012. He has served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits and as the Data Converter Subcommittee Chair of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). He currently serves as the program vice-chair for the ISSCC 2016. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Photonics for Microwave Systems and Ultra-Wideband Signal Processing
2016-02-29 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Toronto) | GB 120, University of Toronto
Monday February 29th, 2016 at 3:10 p.m. Professor Willie Ng, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, will be presenting “Photonics for Microwave Systems and Ultra-Wideband Signal Processing”.
Speaker: Professor Willie Ng
Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California
IEEE Fellow
Day & Time: Monday, February 29th, 2016
3:10 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: GB 120, Galbraith Building, University of Toronto
35 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 1A4
**Refreshments will be served**
Contact: Junho Jeong
Abstract: This seminar will describe the development and application of photonics technology in microwave antenna systems and ultra-wideband signal processing. It will cover our recent work on the characterization of high frequency modulators and mode-locked lasers, photonic-assisted analog-to-digital conversion, as well as RF-photonic filtering. The seminar will also describe how the broadband capabilities of photonics and wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) technologies can be utilized for high dynamic range antenna remoting and true-time-delay beamforming that cover multiple microwave bands.
Biography: Dr. Willie W. Ng is currently a Research Professor ofl Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). Prior to joining USC in 2013, he spent close to three decades at HRL Laboratories, Malibu, CA, where he was a Principal Research Scientist, Program Manager and Department Manager. Under DARPA and U.S. Air Force sponsorships, he led HRL teams that demonstrated a variety of photonic devices/subsystems designed for microwave antenna systems and ultra-wideband signal processing, including RF-photonic filtering and photonics-assisted analog-to-digital conversion. He has given many invited talks in IEEE/OSA Conferences and DARPA Symposiums, and is the author and co-author of over 100 journal articles and conference papers. He holds 26 U.S. patents in the area of photonics technology, with many pending. Cited for pioneering contributions to microwave photonics, he was one of six individuals selected to receive the Excellence in Technology Award in 2005 from the Raytheon Company. Prior to HRL, he was a Member of the Technical Staff at the Rockwell Science Center, Thousand Oaks, Calif., where he developed GaInAsP/InP buried heterostructure lasers and power converters. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio), and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, Calif.) under the guidance of Prof. A. Yariv. His thesis work was on the demonstration of GaAlAs/GaAs Distributed Bragg Reflector lasers and Bragg waveguides. He is a fellow of the IEEE, and serves on the 2013-2015 CLEO (Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics) Technical Committee.

Convexity, Sparsity, Nullity and all that… in Data Analysis
2016-03-07 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Toronto) | Room VIC300, Ryerson University, 285 Victoria St, Toronto
Monday March 7th, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. Prof. Hamid Krim, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering of North Carolina State University, will be presenting a distinguished lecture, “Convexity, Sparsity, Nullity and all that… in Data Analysis”.
Speaker: Prof. Hamid Krim
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC, US
Day & Time: Monday, March 7th, 2016
3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Room VIC300, Ryerson University
285 Victoria St, Toronto
Map: https://goo.gl/maps/EAvPDLGSqrt
Contact: Mehrnaz Shokrollahi
Abstract: High dimensional data exhibit distinct properties compared to its low dimensional counterpart; this causes a common performance decrease and a formidable computational cost increase of traditional approaches. Novel methodologies are therefore needed to characterize data in high dimensional spaces. Considering the parsimonious degrees of freedom of high dimensional data compared to its dimensionality, we study the union-of-subspaces (UoS) model, as a generalization of the linear subspace model. The UoS model preserves the simplicity of the linear subspace model, and enjoys the additional stability to address nonlinear data. We show a sufficient condition to use l1 minimization to reveal the underlying UoS structure, and further propose a bi-sparsity model (R0Sure) as an effective algorithm, to recover the given data characterized by the UoS model from errors/corruptions. As an interesting twist on the related problem of Dictionary Learning Problem, we discuss the sparse null space problem (SNS). Based on linear equality constraint, it first appeared in 1986 and has since inspired results, such as sparse basis pursuit, we investigate its relation to the analysis dictionary learning problem, and show that the SNS problem plays a central role, and may naturally be exploited to solve dictionary learning problems. Substantiating examples are provided, and the application and performance of these approaches are demonstrated on a wide range of problems, such as face clustering and video segmentation.
Biography: Hamid Krim received his BSc., MSc. and PhD. in Electrical Engineering. He was a member of Technical staff at AT&T Bell Labs, where he has conducted R&D in the areas of telephony and digital communication systems/subsystems. Following an NSF post-doctoral fellowship at Foreign Centers of Excellence, LSS/University of Orsay, Paris, France. He later joined the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, MIT, Cambridge, MA as a Research Scientist, where he was performing and supervising research. He is presently Professor of Electrical Engineering in the ECE department, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, leading the Vision, Information and Statistical Signal Theories and Applications group. His research interests are in statistical signal and image analysis, and mathematical modelling, with a keen emphasis on applied problems in classification and recognition using geometric and topological tools. He is currently serving on the IEEE editorial board of SP, and the TCs of SPTM and Big Data Initiative, as well as an AE of the new IEEE Transactions on SP on Information Processing on Networks, and of the IEEE SP Magazine. He is also one of the 2015-2016 Distinguished Lecturers of the IEEE SP Society.

Software Development for Aerospace Activities
2016-03-10 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Toronto) | Room LG04, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
Thursday March 10th, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. Dr. Elliott Coleshill, Professor at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology, will be presenting “Software Development for Aerospace Activities”.
Speaker: Dr. Elliott Coleshill, Professor
Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology
School of Information and Communications Technology
Day & Time: Thursday, March 10th, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Room LG04, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
245 Church Street, Ryerson University, M5B 2K3
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Abstract: Due to the need for real-time operations, fault tolerance and reaction to internal/external sensory input, robotics and spacecraft systems contain some of the most sophisticated and complex software developed. These systems are required to operate in harsh environments, act autonomously and support human life in critical and non-critical situations.
This presentation will walk through the life cycle of software system design for aerospace projects from design and development to verification, validation and real-time operations. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, Dr. Coleshill will share stories about his experience working on the International Space Station and satellite systems to track marine ship traffic around the globe.
Biography: Dr. Ellliott Coleshill has over 15 years of experience working in the Canadian space industry. Dr. Coleshill completed a PhD in 2010 and a Masters in 2003 from the University of Guleph, with research in image processing, machine vision and robotics. Prior to attending the University of Guelph, he graduated from the Ryerson Applied Computer Science program in 2000 with research in autonomous robotic control.
Dr. Coleshill started his career in the space industry at MDA. From 2000 to 2004 he was part of a team that designed and developed the integration and test environment for the International Space Station Mobile Servicing System (Canadarm2/Dextre). In 2004 Dr. Coleshill transitioned into the Systems group where he worked as a software safety engineer, engineering support lead at the Canadian Space Agency during docked robotic operations on the International Space Station and several small research and development concept demonstrations. In August, 2005 Dr. Coleshill received a NASA Space Flight Awareness Honoree Award in recognition of his dedication, commitment and his achievements in support of NASA’s space program. From 2005 to 2007 Dr. Coleshill was the technical lead for designing and developing the concepts and system upgrades for Canadarm2 free flyer capture operations used today for SpaceX operations. In 2007, the Canadian Space Agency presented him with a Certificate of Distinction for his free flyer concept checkout procedures.

Silicon Photonic Microring Resonator-Based Transceivers for Compact WDM Optical Interconnects
2016-03-11 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Toronto) | BA1210, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, University of Toronto
Friday March 11th, 2016 at 4:10 p.m. Dr. Samuel Palermo, Associate Professor at Texas A&M University, will be presenting “Silicon Photonic Microring Resonator-Based Transceivers for Compact WDM Optical Interconnects”.
Speaker: Dr. Samuel Palermo, Associate Professor
Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Texas A&M
IEEE Member and Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems
Day & Time: Friday, March 11th, 2016
At 4:10 p.m., with social hour after the talk at Prenup Pub
Refreshments will be served at the pub
Location: BA1210, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, University of Toronto
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Dustin Dunwell
Abstract: The rapid growth of I/O bandwidth in applications such as datacenters and supercomputers motivate the development of interconnect architectures that can dramatically scale bandwidth density in an energy-efficient manner. This talk examines the potential of silicon photonic microring resonator-based optical transceivers for compact wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical interconnects. An overview of the photonic devices typically found in a ring resonator optical interconnect platform is provided and the design of transceiver circuits which address key challenges related to the modulators and drop filters is described. The possibility of further improvements in bandwidth density via efficient implementations of >50Gb/s PAM4 modulation with the microring modulators is detailed.
Biography: Samuel Palermo received the B.S. and M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University, College Station, TX in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA in 2007. From 1999 to 2000, he was with Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX, where he worked on the design of mixed-signal integrated circuits for high-speed serial data communication. From 2006 to 2008, he was with Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, OR, where he worked on high-speed optical and electrical I/O architectures. In 2009, he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Texas A&M University where he is currently an associate professor. His research interests include high-speed electrical and optical interconnect architectures, high performance clocking circuits, and integrated sensor systems.
Dr. Palermo is a recipient of a 2013 NSF-CAREER award. He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and IEEE. He currently serves as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and System – II and has served on the IEEE CASS Board of Governors from 2011 to 2012. He was a coauthor of the Jack Raper Award for Outstanding Technology-Directions Paper at the 2009 International Solid-State Circuits Conference and the Best Student Paper at the 2014 Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems. He received the Texas A&M University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Outstanding Professor Award in 2014 and the Engineering Faculty Fellow Award in 2015.

Virtual and Augmented Reality in Medical Education: A New Wave
2016-03-31 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Toronto) | LG04 Ryerson, University 245 Church Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3
Thursday March 31st, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. Dr. Abdulaziz Saud Alshafai, Research Fellow of Surgical Education of the Neurosurgery Division at St. Michael’s Hospital, will be presenting “Virtual and Augmented Reality in Medical Education: A New Wave”.
Speaker: Dr. Abdulaziz Saud Alshafai, MD, MBBS
Research Fellow of Surgical Education
Neurosurgery Division
St. Michael’s Hospital
Day & Time: Thursday, March 31st, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: LG04 Ryerson University
245 Church Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3
Contact: Maryam Davoudpour
Learning Objectives: To familiarize the audience with basic multimedia educational theory and principles.
To gain appreciation for the application of new technologies ( Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality) in medical education.
To develop some insight regarding the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration and development.
Biography: Dr. Alshafai is a medical graduate from University of Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Specially interested in the surgical field, education and new technology innovations. He has joined St. Michael’s Hospital for a research fellowship in Surgical Education under the supervision of Professor Michael Cusimano in the division of Neurosurgery whilst pursuing a Masters of Medical Education at the University of Maastricht in The Netherlands. His current work involves the usage of virtual reality and three dimensional (3D) printing in medical education, emphasizing on the application of educational theories and principles.
As a long time video-games enthusiast he also holds holds a special interest for the gamification of education and the use of video games as a medium for educating students.

IEEE Standards Development EcoSystem and ComSoc Standards and Standards related Activities
2016-04-04 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Toronto) | BA1230, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street, Toronto
Monday April 4th, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. Dr. Alexander D. Gelman, Director of Standardization Programs Development, IEEE Communication Society, will be presenting “IEEE Standards Development EcoSystem and ComSoc Standards and Standards related Activities”.
Speaker: Dr. Alexander D. Gelman
Director of Standardization Programs Development
IEEE Communication Society
Day & Time: Monday, April 4th, 2016
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Location: BA 1230, Bahen Centre for Information Technology
40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Refreshments in BA 1200 at 5:30 p.m.
Contact: Eman Hammad
Abstract: In this presentation the IEEE and ComSoc Standards Activities are positioned and explained as a part of the IEEE total value proposition and the IEEE role in technology evolution from a concept to R&D and to standards and deployment. IEEE Standards Activities ecosystem will be explained. We will address the role and modus operandi of IEEE Standards Association and the role of Technical Societies and Councils, Industry and Academia in the IEEE standardization activities. It will be a tutorial of how the IEEE Standardization cuisine works and how any materially or professedly interested party can participate in the standardization process. We will highlight the unique IEEE standardization process and IEEE standards-related policies. Sample communications and networking standardization and pre-standardization projects in such areas as PLC, Smart Grid, IoT, SDN, Big Data and 5G will be addressed. ComSoc standards–related technical activists, such as conferences and publications will be discussed.
Biography: Alexander D. Gelman received M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the City University of New York. Presently he is CTO of NETovationsconsulting group that supports industry in competitive research and intellectual property management in areas of communications and networking. During 1998-2007 Alex worked the Chief Scientist of the Panasonic Princeton Research Laboratory, managing research programs in consumer communications and networking; during 1984-1998 worked at Bellcore, most recently as Director-Internet Access Architectures Research. Alex has numerous publications and several patents. He pioneered multi-point Multimedia Communications and DSL applications for managed services (IPTV). Alex holds some of the earliest system patents inVoDand DSL areas, e.g. on xDSLInternet Access Router. He managed research projects that included competitive industrial research as well as standardization in industry consortia and global standards development organizations. Alex is a seasoned IEEE and ComSocvolunteer. He is a cofounder the IEEE conference on Consumer Communications and Networking (CCNC), helped to acquire for ComSocthe International Symposium on Power Line Communications (ISPLC), the IEEE Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing, IEEE-SIIT and IEEEBlackSeaComconferences; served on the inaugural Steering Committee for Transactions on Multimedia and the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME) and IEEE-CSCN; initiated a Communications Standards Supplement to the IEEE Communications Magazine asan incubation phase for IEEE Communications Standards Magazine; chaired the Technical Committee on Multimedia Communications,served four terms as ComSocVice President. Alex initiated several standardization projects and initiated the ComSocStandards Board, served as ComSocDirector of Standards. During his term ComSocreceived the IEEE Standards Association Entity Standards Sponsor award. Alex served on IEEE-SA BoGand on Standards Board and its New Standards, Standards Review, Patents and Industry Connections committees, e.g. representing TAB in 2008, 2010, and in 2012. In 2008 Alex chaired TAB’s Ad Hoc Committee on Standards. Alex architected ComSocStandards Activities Council and was elected the first ComSocVice President -Standards Activities. Alex is a recipient of MMC TC Distinguished Service award and ComSocDonald W. McLellan Meritorious Service Award. And IEEE-SA Standards Medallion.

Segmentation-Aware Convolutional Nets
2016-04-14 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Toronto) | Room ENG 288, George Vari Centre for Computing and Engineering, 245 Church St., Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3
Thursday April 14th, 2016 at 2:15 p.m. Adam Harley will be presenting “Segmentation-Aware Convolutional Nets”.
Speaker: Adam Harley
Day & Time: Thursday, April 14th, 2016
2:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Location: Room ENG 288
Computer Science Department
George Vari Centre for Computing and Engineering
Ryerson University
245 Church St., Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3
Organizer: IEEE Magnetics Chapter, IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Joint Chapter and Computer Science Department Ryerson University
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Abstract: In this talk, I will propose a new deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) architecture that learns pixel embeddings, such that pairwise distances between the embeddings can be used to infer whether or not the pixels lie on the same region. Experimental results show that when this embedding network is used in conjunction with a DCNN trained on semantic segmentation, there is a systematic improvement in per-pixel classification accuracy. The contributions of this work consist in straightforward modifications to convolution routines. As such, they can be exploited for any task involving convolution layers, including object recognition, image retrieval, and video understanding.
Biography: Adam Harley received a BA (Honours) degree in psychology from Ryerson University in 2012, and was awarded the Canadian Psychological Association’s Certificate of Academic Excellence for his undergraduate thesis. Subsequently he began a computer science undergraduate degree at Ryerson, where he was awarded the NSERC USRA. In 2014 he joined Ryerson’s MSc program in computer science. During the MSc he did research at INRIA in France, as part of a Mitacs-Globalink research award. He is a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship for 2015. His main areas of research interest are computer vision and artificial intelligence.

Molecular Communication: Theoretical Limits and Experimental Implementations
2016-04-28 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Toronto) | BA 1190, 40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON
Thursday April 28th, 2016 at 2:00 p.m. Dr. Nariman Farsad, Post-doc Fellow, Stanford University, will be presenting “Molecular Communication: Theoretical Limits and Experimental Implementations”.
Speaker: Dr. Nariman Farsad
Post-doc Fellow, Stanford University
Day & Time: Thursday, April 28th, 2016
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Location: Room BA 1190
Bahen Centre for Information Technology
University of Toronto, St. George Campus
40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Eman Hammad
Abstract: Molecular communication is a new and bio-inspired field, where chemical signals are used to transfer information instead of electromagnetic or electrical signals. In this paradigm, the transmitter releases chemicals or molecules and encodes information on some property of these signals such as their timing or concentration. The signal then propagates the medium between the transmitter and the receiver through different means such as diffusion, until it arrives at the receiver where the signal is detected and the information decoded. This new multidisciplinary field can be used for in-body communication, secrecy, networking microscale and nanoscale devices, infrastructure monitoring in smart cities and industrial complexes, as well as for underwater communications. Since these systems are fundamentally different from telecommunication systems, most techniques that have been developed over the past few decades to advance radio technology cannot be applied to them directly.
In this talk, we first explore some of the fundamental limits of molecular communication channels. In particular, we explore the fundamental capacity limits of the molecular timing channels, where information is encoded in the time of release of chemical signals. We also evaluate how capacity scales with respect to the number of particles released by the transmitter. Then, optimal detection in molecular timing channels is briefly discussed. We conclude the talk by presenting some of the recent experimental implementations of molecular communication systems.
Biography: Nariman Farsad received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science and engineering from York University, Toronto, Canada in 2010 and 2015, respectively. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he is a recipient of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postdoctoral Fellowship. Nariman has won the second prize in 2014 IEEE ComSoc Student Competition: Communications Technology Changing the World, the best demo award at INFOCOM’2015, and was recognized as a finalist for the 2014 Bell Labs Prize. He has been an Area Associate Editor for IEEE Journal of Selected Areas of Communication–Special Issue on Emerging Technologies in Communications, and a Technical Reviewer for a number of journals including IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, and IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He was also a member of the Technical Program Committees for the ICC’2015, BICT’2015, GLOBCOM’2015, and GLOBCOM’2016.

Cloud Radio-Access Networks: Coding Strategies, Capacity Analysis, and Optimization Techniques
2016-05-06 15:30 - 16:30 (America/Toronto) | Room BA 1230, 40 St. George Street, Toronto
Friday May 6th, 2016 at 3:30 p.m. Prof. Wei Yu, IEEE Fellow, will be presenting an IEEE Distinguished Lecture, “Cloud Radio-Access Networks: Coding Strategies, Capacity Analysis, and Optimization Techniques”.
Speaker: Prof. Wei Yu
IEEE Fellow
IEEE Information Theory Society Board of Governors (2015-17)
IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer (2015-16)
Day & Time: Friday, May 6th, 2016
3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Location: Room BA 1230
Bahen Centre for Information Technology
University of Toronto, St. George Campus
40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Eman Hammad
Abstract: Cloud radio access network (C-RAN) is an emerging wireless cellullar architecture in which the base-stations (BSs) take advantage of high-capacity backhaul links to upload signal processing and computation to a cloud-computing based central processor. The C-RAN architecture offers an enabling platform for the centralized joint encoding and joint decoding of user messages and a capability for intercell interference mitigation across the BSs. In this talk, we address the capacity analysis and optimization technique for C-RAN while specifically taking into account the finite capacity constraint on the backhaul links. In the uplink, the C-RAN architecture can be modeled as a multiple-access relay channel. We analyze a compress-and-forward scheme in which the BSs quantize the received signals and send the quantized signals to the central processor using Wyner–Ziv coding. We also propose a successive convex optimization approach for optimizing the quantization noise covariance matrix. In the downlink, the C-RAN architecture can be modeled as a broadcast relay channel. We compare the message-sharing strategy versus compression-based strategy for this setting, and show how compressive sensing and weighted minimum mean-squared error (WMMSE) techniques can be used to solve a network utility maximization problem involving joint user scheduling, BS clustering and beamforming in a user-centric message-sharing C-RAN design.
Biography: Wei Yu (S’97-M’02-SM’08-F’14) received the B.A.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada in 1997 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. Since 2002, he has been with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he is now Professor and holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Information Theory and Wireless Communications. His main research interests include information theory, optimization, wireless communications and broadband access networks.
Prof. Wei Yu currently serves on the IEEE Information Theory Society Board of Governors (2015-17). He is an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer (2015-16). He served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (2010-2013), as an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications (2009-2011), as an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2004-2007), and as a Guest Editor for a number of special issues for the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications and the EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing. He was a Technical Program co-chair of the IEEE Communication Theory Workshop in 2014, and a Technical Program Committee co-chair of the Communication Theory Symposium at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) in 2012. He was a member of the Signal Processing for Communications and Networking Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (2008-2013). Prof. Wei Yu received a Steacie Memorial Fellowship in 2015, an IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award in 2015, an IEEE ICC Best Paper Award in 2013, an IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award in 2008, the McCharles Prize for Early Career Research Distinction in 2008, the Early Career Teaching Award from the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, University of Toronto in 2007, and an Early Researcher Award from Ontario in 2006. He is recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters.
Prof. Wei Yu is a Fellow of IEEE. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Ontario.

Engineering Career Fair 2016
2016-05-12 10:00 - 16:00 (America/Toronto) | Exam Centre, University of Toronto, 255 McCaul Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1W7
On behalf of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Ontario, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO) York Chapter, Ontario Society Of Professional Engineers (OSPE), ACCES Employment, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Toronto, Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) Toronto, Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Central Ontario, Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineers (CSME), Air & Waste Management Association (A&WMA) Ontario, Environmental Careers Organization of Canada (ECO Canada), Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists we invite you to the Engineering Career Fair.
Day & Time: Thursday, May 12th, 2016
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Exam Centre, University of Toronto
255 McCaul Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1W7
Visit https://engineering-career-fair-2016.eventbrite.ca for more information and registration.
If you’re a recent grad looking to kick off your career or an experienced engineer looking for a change in professional scenery, here’s an opportunity! This career fair will host numerous engineering companies, organizations and societies of many fields looking to recruit the right candidate. Polish that resume and cover letter. Do your research because that candidate could be you! Organizations that have shown interest thus far include:
• Access Machinery
• Adecco
• AECOM
• Altera (now part of Intel)
• Athena Automation
• Bondfield Construction
• CLEAResult
• CPP Investment Board
• Deco Automotive is a division Cosma International, operating unit of Magna International
• Forge Consulting Group
• Husky Injection Molding Systems
• Index Exchange
• Internat Energy Solutions Canada
• Octopus
• Nanoleaf
• NeuronicWorks
• Noranco
• Nulogy Corporation
• Stelpro
• Telus
• Thales Canada Inc.
• The Nanoleaf Team
• Top Hat
• Toronto Hydro
• Toyota
• Tundra Technical Solutions
• Ydelay
Registration is completely free as is attending the Engineering Career Fair in person. As it stands the list of interested hosting companies will continue to grow and final confirmation updates will be provided to our registered attendees as we approach the final date of the fair.
Our team and its cooperating companies are delighted to bring this career-changing opportunity to your attention but if you’re seeking to land that available job position then the last and only step required of you is attending! If interested, we look forward to seeing you there on May 12th. Thank you and have a great day!
As an Attendee, how can I prepare for the Engineering Career Fair?
Written By: Mayurthen Suppiah (ASME Ontario Section VP)
Understand why you are attending.
Analyze the career fair you will be entering and ask yourself why you are going? Are you there to land a job? Have an insider look over products specific companies will be showcasing? Begin networking with companies and fellow engineering attendees? Once you answer this question proceed to the following steps. The proceeding article steps will assume you are attending to land a professional engineering work position.
Research the career fair.
Register for the career fair as an attendee ahead of time and get online inside information of which employer companies will be attending. Figure out which companies appeal to your needs and come prepared. Understand what these companies are looking for, represent and appeal to them. Be prepared to converse and mutualise interests with employers to give yourself an advantage over the traditional applicant who simply enters to provide their CV/resume to any company they visit.
Mutualise interests with employers.
A lasting impression will work wonders in the employer’s mindset during and after the fair. Be prepared to converse and show the employer that you understand and represent what they are looking for. Conversing includes asking questions back to the employer, showcasing that you are interested in more than just landing the job. Indicating that you care for the employer’s needs and what the employer represents increases your chances of leaving a positive impression.
Come prepared and dress professionally.
Update your CV/resume and covering letter (if applicable). This information will link your records and experience with the employer’s needs. Ensure that everything is up-to-date and properly edited. Feel free to ask colleagues, career informational advisors and use online guides to assist your cause. A clean image is the best image. Ensure you enter the career fair looking like a professional engineer and not a last minute registration trying to land a quick job.
Introduce the proper mindset and be presentable.
You can’t leave the career fair any worse than entering it. Relax and be prepared to answer both common and company-specific interview questions. Envision your goal prior to each interaction and execute to the best of your ability. You should be as ready and content with yourself as you can be by this point. Good luck!

Time Varying Circuits for Radio Receiver Applications
2016-05-26 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Toronto) | Room BA 1210 Bahen Centre for Information Technology University of Toronto, St. George Campus 40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Thursday May 26th, 2016 at 2:10 p.m. Dr. Sudhakar Pamarti, Associate Professor at the University of California, will be presenting “Time Varying Circuits for Radio Receiver Applications”.
Speaker: Dr. Sudhakar Pamarti
Associate Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
Day & Time: Thursday, May 26th, 2016
2:10 p.m.
Location: Room BA 1210
Bahen Centre for Information Technology
University of Toronto, St. George Campus
40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Dustin Dunwell
Abstract: Sharp, programmable, linear, integrated filters are enabling components for software defined and cognitive radio applications. However, they are difficult to realize: SAW and MEMS based filters are sharp and linear but not very programmable; active filters can be sharp and programmable but are not very linear; sampled charge domain filtering is sharp and programmable but the burden of the linearity is on the front end voltage-current converter. This talk descirbes an alternative approach that uses time-varying (as opposed to time-invariant) circuits to realize sharp, programmable, linear, integrated filters. The technique exploits sampling aliases to effectively realize very sharp, linear filtering prior to sampling. This talk will describe the basics of this time-varying circuit design approach and illustrates its application to radio front-ends and spectrum scanners. Measurement results from recent prototype integrated circuits will also be presented.
Biography: Dr. Sudhakar Pamarti is an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received the Bachelor of Technology degree in electronics and electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1995, and the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, San Diego in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Prior to joining UCLA, he has worked at Rambus Inc. (‘03-`05) and Hughes Software Systems (‘95-`97) developing high speed I/O circuits and embedded software and firmware for a wireless-in-local-loop communication system respectively. Dr. Pamarti is a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award for developing digital signal conditioning techniques to improve analog, mixed-signal, and radio frequency integrated circuits. Dr. Pamarti serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

Internet of Things, building blocks, challenges and research directions
2016-05-31 11:30 - 12:30 (America/Toronto) | Room ENG288, 245 Church Street, Toronto, ON, Canada
Tuesday May 31st, 2016 at 11:30 a.m. Dr. Fatima Hussain will be presenting “Internet of Things, building blocks, challenges and research directions”.
Speaker: Dr. Fatima Hussain
Day & Time: Tuesday, May 31st, 2016
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Location: Room ENG 288
Computer Science Department, George Vari Centre for Computing and Engineering, Ryerson University
245 Church St., Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3
Organizer: IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE), IEEE Magnetics Chapter, IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement/Robotics & Automation Joint Chapter and Computer Science Department Ryerson University
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a novel paradigm that is rapidly growing in modern wireless telecommunications. IoT means a world-wide network of interconnected objects uniquely addressable, sustainable and enhance able. It is defined as integration of several technologies, and communications solutions based on standard communication protocols. The main strength of the IoT idea is the high impact it will have on several aspects of everyday-life and behavior of potential users. This promising technology comes with great challenges and leads to numerous research directions for industry as well academia.
Biography: Fatima Hussain received her PhD and MASc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with specialization in “Wireless Communication” from Ryerson University, Canada. She holds MEng. and BSc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with specialization in “Controls System” and “Telecommunication Systems”, respectively from University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan. She is acting as a reviewer for IEEE Access journal and IET Journal from couple of years. She is working as a post-doctoral fellow in NCART lab, Ryerson University, on a design and implementation of “Smart Parking System”.

Electricity - Displacing Fossil Fuels in Other Sectors
2016-06-15 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Toronto) | Room BA 4287, 40 St. George Street, Toronto, M5S 2E4
June 15, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. Paul N. Acchione, Past President and Chair of the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, will be presenting “Electricity – Displacing Fossil Fuels in Other Sectors”.
Speaker: Paul N. Acchione
Past President and Chair of the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE)
Management Consultant at Market Intelligence & Date Analysis Corporation
Day & Time: Wednesday, June 15, 2016
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
A light supper will be served 6:00-6:15
Location: Room BA 4287
Bahen Centre for Information Technology (BA)
40 St. George Street
Toronto M5S 2E4
University of Toronto – St. George Campus
Organizer: Toronto – IEEE Industry Applications and Power Electronics Joint Chapter
Contact: Gail, Email: alavi@ieee.org
All IEEE members and non-members are welcome to participate with no admission charge.
Please register at:
https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/39745
Abstract: The seminar discusses which combination of electricity prices and carbon prices are needed to enable electricity to displace fossil fuels in other sectors.
· Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions from Ontario’s Electricity Sector
· Electricity versus Natural Gas for Home Heating/AC
· Electricity versus Gasoline for Transportation
· Ontario’s Surplus Carbon-Free Electricity
· Potential for Fossil Fuel Displacement by Electricity
· Energy Policy Implications
Biography: Paul has a B.A.Sc. and M.Eng. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto. Paul is a licensed professional engineer in Ontario and is a member of ASME, ANS, IEEE and ISA and a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. Paul has over 44 years of engineering and management experience in the power generation industry. He worked for 31 years with Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and its predecessor companies. Paul was the 2013-14 President and Chair of the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) and is a volunteer with OSPE’s Energy Task Force. Paul is a Management Consultant at Market Intelligence & Data Analysis Corporation.

Optimization and Research: Applications, Opportunities, and Challenges
2016-06-20 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Toronto) | Room ENG 288 245 Church St., Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3
June 20, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at UOIT, will be presenting “Optimization and Research: Applications, Opportunities, and Challenges”.
Speaker: Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, UOIT
Day & Time: Monday, June 20, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Room ENG 288
245 Church St., Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3
Organizer: IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE), IEEE Magnetics Chapter, IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement/Robotics & Automation Joint Chapter and Computer Science Department Ryerson University
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Abstract: In this research seminar, the speaker will explain his recent optimization research work and accomplishments, categorized in the following two main groups of contributions: theoretical/developmental and practical. The first group will cover his contributions in large-scale optimization, opposition-based computation, many-objective optimization, image-based large-scale visualization and interaction, incremental cooperative coevolution, micro-differential evolution, 3D visualization of many-objective Pareto-front, preserving constraint handling, decision making in high-dimensional objective space, and multi-modal optimization. In the practical category, the speaker will explain several real-world applications to demonstrate effectiveness of optimization in medical image processing, renewable energy systems, forensic science, scheduling, and wireless sensors network. This seminar will be beneficial for faculty and students who conduct ‘research in optimization’ or ‘optimization in research’.
Biography: Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan received his B.Sc. and M.S. degrees both with honors in software engineering. In 2007, he received his Ph.D. degree in the field of evolutionary computation from Systems Design Engineering Department, University of Waterloo. Inspired from opposition-based differential evolution algorithm (ODE), more than 450 papers have been published. Before joining to the faculty of engineering and applied science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Canada, as a tenure-track faculty member, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University (SFU), Canada. He was granted tenure earlier and also was promoted to an associate professor position in 2013. His research includes evolutionary computation, image processing, machine learning, and opposition-based soft computing. Dr. Rahnamayan was awarded the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), President’s Graduate Scholarship (PGS), NSERC’s Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship, NSERC’s Industrial R&D Fellowship (IRDF), NSERC’s Visiting Fellowship in Canadian Government Laboratories (VF), and the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) Fellowship for two times. He has published more than 100 papers, Dr. Rahnamayan has received several prestigious research grants, such as, NSERC Discovery Grant and also Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative Fund. He recently visited the Michigan State University (MSU) and BEACON Research Center for two years in order to conduct research on large-scale and multi-objective optimization and visualization.

Quantum-confined oxide heteronanostructures: Low-cost design, electronic structure, interfacial properties & device applications for solar energy conversion
2016-06-24 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | BA 1200, 40 St George Street, Toronto
June 24, 2016 at 11:10 a.m. Professor Lionel Vayssieres, of Xi’an Jiaotong University, will be presenting “Quantum-confined oxide heteronanostructures: Low-cost design, electronic structure, interfacial properties & device applications for solar energy conversion”.
Speaker: Professor Lionel Vayssieres
International Research Center for Renewable Energy (IRCRE), Xi’an Jiaotong University
Day & Time: Friday, June 24, 2016
11:10 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Location: Room BA 1200
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Junho Jeong
Refreshments will be served prior to the lecture.
Abstract: Given that conventional technologies which attempt to improve the performance of existing materials and devices for solar energy conversion and solar fuels generation by further development along the same incremental approach are reaching their limits, it is crucial to develop novel materials where bulk limitations are overcome by changing the fundamental underlying physics and chemistry, by e.g. nanostructuring design and quantum confinement effects. As important is a comprehensive fundamental and applied knowledge of their interfacial properties and electronic structure in relation with their structural and optical properties to quantitatively optimize their efficiency. Our strategy to address such crucial requirements is to fabricate materials and devices based on metal oxide (hetero)nanostructures consisting of surface chemistry-controlled quantum dots and rods building-blocks utilizing low-cost and large scale aqueous chemical growth. The electronic structure and structural, optical, and photoelectrochemical properties of such novel visible light-active oxide semiconductors based on vertically oriented quantum rod-arrays have been thoroughly investigated at synchrotron radiation facilities by X-ray spectroscopies. Direct correlation between dimensionality and surface chemistry, bandgap and band edges, orbital character and symmetry, surfaces states, electrical and defect properties have been unraveled and will be demonstrated on various oxide structures of high relevance for this field. An overview of decades of achievements as well as recent advances in novel materials design strategy will be demonstrated along with the latest breakthrough in highly efficient structure for low cost solar hydrogen generation by direct water splitting at neutral pH using the largest free natural resources on Earth, e.g. the Sun and seawater.
Biography: Born in 1968, Prof. Vayssieres obtained a MSc in Physical Chemistry in 1990 and a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry in 1995 from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France for his research work on the Interfacial & thermodynamic growth control of metal oxide nanoparticles in aqueous solutions. He has been invited as a visiting scientist at: UT Austin; the UNESCO Centre for Macromolecules & Materials, Stellenbosch University and iThemba LABS, South Africa; the Glenn T. Seaborg Center, Chemical Sciences Division, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Texas Materials Institute; The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland; the University of Queensland, Australia, and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was an independent scientist at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Japan for 8 years. He has authored 100+ publications in major international journals and book series cited 9150+ times since the year 2000 (4500+ since 2011, Google Scholar); Top 1% Scientists in Materials Science (Thomson Reuters). All time 8 ESI Highly Cited papers (5 as first and corresponding author) in Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics, and Environment/Ecology. He has given 344 talks in 30 countries: 166 lectures at international conferences/workshops (45 plenary/keynote, 98 invited, 21 contributed, 2 tutorials) including one of the last MRS Spring Symposium X lecture held in San Francisco in 2015 as well as 178 seminars at universities, governmental and/or industrial research institutes. He is currently a full time 1000-Talent Professor, co-founder and scientific director of the International Research Center for Renewable Energy (IRCRE) at Xi’an Jiaotong University, China as well as, since 2003, a guest scientist at the Chemical Sciences Division at Berkeley National Lab and the founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Nanotechnology.

Ground Truth Bias in External Cluster Validity Indices
2016-06-28 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Toronto) | ENG 106, 245 Church Street, Toronto, ON
June 28, 2016 at 2:00 p.m. IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecturer James C. Bezdek will be presenting “Ground Truth Bias in External Cluster Validity Indices”.
Speaker: James C. Bezdek
IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecturer
Day & Time: Tuesday, June 28, 2016
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Room ENG 106, George Vary Engineering & Computing Centre
245 Church St., Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3
(Intersection of Church and Gould)
Map: http://www.ryerson.ca/maps/
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour, Dr. Glaucio Carvalho, Dr. Alireza Sadeghian
Organizers: Signals & Computational Intelligence Chapter, Magnetics Chapter, Instrumentation & Measurement/Robotics & Automation Chapter
Abstract: This talk begins with a short review of clustering that emphasizes external cluster validity indices (CVIs). A method for generalizing external pairbased CVIS (e.g., the crisp Rand and Jacard indices) to evaluate soft partitions is described and illustrated. Three types of validation experiments conducted with synthetic and real world labeled data are discussed: “best c” (internal validation with labeled data), and “best I/E” (agreement between an internal and external CVI pair).
As is always the case in cluster validity, conclusions based on empirical evidence are at the mercy of the data, so the reported results might be invalid for different data sets and/or clustering models and algorithms. But much more importantly, we discovered during these tests that some external cluster validity indices are also at the mercy of the distribution of the ground truth itself. We believe that our study of this surprising fact is the first systematic analysis of a largely unknown but very important problem ~ bias due to the distribution of the ground truth partition.
Specifically, in addition to the well known bias in many external CVIs caused by monotonic dependency on c, the number of clusters in candidate partitions, there are two additional kinds of bias that can be caused by an unusual distribution of the clusters in the ground truth partition provided with labeled data. The most important ground truth bias is caused by imbalance (unequally sized labeled subsets). We demonstrate these effects with randomized experiments on 25 pair-based external CVIs. Then we provide a theoretical analysis of bias due to ground truth for several CVis by relating Rand’s index to the Havrda-Charvat quadratic entropy.
Biography: Jim received the PhD in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University in 1973. Jim is past president of NAFIPS (North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society), IFSA (International Fuzzy Systems Association) and the IEEE CIS (Computational Intelligence Society): founding editor the Int’l. Jo. Approximate Reasoning and the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems: Life fellow of the IEEE and IFSA; and a recipient of the IEEE 3rd Millennium, IEEE CIS Fuzzy Systems Pioneer, and IEEE technical field award Rosenblatt medals. Jim’s interests: woodworking, optimization, motorcycles, pattern recognition, cigars, clustering in very large data, fishing, co-clustering, blues music, wireless sensor networks, poker and visual clustering. And of course, clustering in big data. Jim retired in 2007, and will be coming to a university near you soon.

The Application of Optimization to Model Predictive Control
2016-07-04 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Toronto) | Room ENG 288, 245 Church St., Toronto
July 4, 2016 at 12:00 p.m. Dr. Ruth Milman, Assistant Professor at UOIT, will be presenting “The Application of Optimization to Model Predictive Control”.
Speaker: Dr. Ruth Milman
Assistant Professor – Department of Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering
Faculty Applied Science and Engineering, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Day & Time: Monday, July 4, 2016
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: Room ENG 288
245 Church St., Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Organizers: IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE), IEEE Magnetics Chapter, IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement/Robotics & Automation Joint Chapter and Computer Science Department Ryerson University
Abstract: Model predictive control (MPC) is the application of an optimal control scheme over a finite horizon. At each sample interval a cost function is minimized over a finite horizon and a resulting open loop controller is calculated. The control for the current sample interval is applied and the whole process is repeated at the next sample interval. By repeating the process at each sample interval, the resulting control scheme, which is technically open loop, inherits the benefits of a closed loop controller. These include some stability and robustness properties. By nature, MPC is computationally intensive and only makes sense when a there are constraints which must be enforced by the system. As would be expected, adding constraints into the system even further intensifies the computational requirements.
By nature, MPC is an optimal control strategy. If a true optimal control is computed when solving the minimization problem, then the solution is independent of the choice of the optimizer. It is only when time constraints force the need for suboptimal controls to be used that the actual algorithm plays a role in the quality of the resulting controller. Despite (or because of) this, the choice of optimization schemes plays a critical role in the real time application of MPC for a simple but important reason – the computational time it takes to solve for the optimal solution. MPC is a flexible framework which allows for control in the face of both linear or nonlinear systems, and can be applied to systems with either hard or soft constraints. How each problem is set up is critical to the choice of optimizer. These choices can drastically impact the computational effort which is required to solve for the resulting controller. As such, the choice and application of optimization schemes to MPC is of critical importance to the resulting performance of the systems.
Biography: Dr. Ruth Milman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering with the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. She has been with UOIT since June 2007, where she works in the Department of Electrical and Software Engineering, focusing in the field of control theory. Her research interests include optimization and computationally efficient algorithms for model predictive control as well as the application of both linear and nonlinear MPC to autonomous systems. She has worked on path planning for robotic applications in environments with both moving and stationary obstacles. She has worked extensively in the areas of nonlinear and optimal control theory and has developed algorithms for computation of the optimization problem that underlies Model Predictive control. Prior to coming to UOIT she did post-doctoral research at the University of Toronto from 2005 to 2007.
Ruth Milman obtained her PhD in 2004 from the Systems Control Group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Toronto, Canada. Her dissertation focused on improving the speed and computational efficiency of a Linear Model Predictive Controller. As part of this she developed a novel algorithm for solving the quadratic programming subproblem in MPC. She obtained her MASC in 1997 from the Systems Control Group in the University of Toronto and her BASc (Honours) in Computer Engineering in 1995 from the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto.

What can physical-layer security do for you?
2016-07-04 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Toronto) | Room ENG LG21, 245 Church St., Toronto
July 4, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. Matthieu Bloch, Associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, will be presenting “What can physical-layer security do for you?”.
Speaker: Matthieu Bloch
Associate Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Day & Time: Monday, July 4, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Room ENG LG21
245 Church St., Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3
All are welcome – No registration necessary
Abstract: The conventional approach to ensure confidential communications relies on public-key/private-key protocols, which operate on error-free data after the physical-layer has been established. While the effectiveness of this approach in traditional settings is unquestionable, new systems are emerging where treating confidentiality as an overlay feature of top of reliability may not be the most appropriate solution. In particular, modern wireless networks, which comprise heterogeneous nodes with limited computational and energy resources, would benefit from the integration by design of confidentiality in the physical-layer, especially if this can be done in a cost-effective way. In this talk, we will provide a perspective on what physical-layer security can realistically do for wireless communication systems. Our objective will be not only to review the challenges faced by physical-layer security but also to present some of our recent research activities in the areas of information theory, coding theory, and wireless systems that suggest potential solutions to overcome these challenges.
Biography: Matthieu Bloch is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received the Engineering degree from Supélec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France, the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 2003, the Ph.D. degree in Engineering Science from the Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, France, in 2006, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. In 2008-2009, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN. Since July 2009, Dr. Bloch has been on the faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and from 2009 to 2013 Dr. Bloch was based at Georgia Tech Lorraine. His research interests are in the areas of information theory, error-control coding, wireless communications, and cryptography. Dr. Bloch is a member of the IEEE and has served on the organizing committee of several international conferences; he was the chair of the Online Committee of the IEEE Information Theory Society from 2011 to 2014. He is the co-recipient of the IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Information Theory Society 2011 Joint Paper Award and the co-author of the textbook Physical-Layer Security: From Information Theory to Security Engineering published by Cambridge University Press.

Finding Common Ground: Channel Analysis and Receiver Models for Diffusive Molecular Communication
2016-07-27 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Toronto)
July 27, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. Adam Noel, Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa, will be presenting “Finding Common Ground: Channel Analysis and Receiver Models for Diffusive Molecular Communication”.
Speaker: Dr. Adam Noel
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Ottawa
Day & Time: Wednesday, July 27, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Room BA 1200
40 St. George Street, Toronto, M5S 2E4
Contact: Eman Hammad
Abstract: Diffusive molecular communication (MC) is a promising strategy for the transfer of information in synthetic networks of “small” devices (on the scale of living cells or smaller). If such devices could communicate, then it would potentially enable applications such as cooperative diagnostics in medicine, bottom-up fabrication in manufacturing, and sensitive environmental monitoring. Results in this domain can also contribute to our understanding of diffusive signaling in natural biological systems and the diseases that develop when the signaling malfunctions. Diffusion based MC for synthetic networks faces challenges such as infinite inter-symbol interference and constrained computational resources in “simple” transceivers, but also interesting opportunities such as the possibility to manipulate the channel response via chemical means. This presentation highlights our contributions to the modeling and analysis of diffusion-based MC systems, including derivations of the channel impulse response and the development of simulation tools. We describe our recent work to find a unifying analytical framework for the two most common but distinct receiver models, where molecules are either absorbed by the receiver surface or passively diffuse through it. We also discuss some of our on-going work to bridge the gap between the realism of existing analytical models and the availability of relevant experimental data.
Biography: Adam Noel is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa. His Ph.D. and postdoctoral work are on the study of molecular communication, where he has focused on channel modeling, system design, and simulation methods. He has received the support of NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships and is currently holding an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship. He also received a Best Paper Award at IEEE ICC 2016. Dr. Noel received the B.Eng. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2009 from Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, and both the M.A.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 2011 and 2015, respectively. In 2013 he was a Visiting Scientist at the Institute for Digital Communication at Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen, Germany.

Artificially Intelligent Imaging (AI2): System to Circuit to Device Level Implementations of Smart CMOS Imaging, A Generalized Approach for Non-Application Specific Intelligence Design (NAS-ID)
2016-08-11 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Toronto) | Room ENGLG 05 George Vari Engineering Building
August 11, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. Dr. Faycal Saffih, Department of Electrical Engineering, UAE University, will be presenting “Artificially Intelligent Imaging (AI2): System to Circuit to Device Level Implementations of Smart CMOS Imaging, A Generalized Approach for Non-Application Specific Intelligence Design (NAS-ID)”.
Speaker: Dr. Faycal Saffih
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering
UAE University
Day & Time: Thursday, August 11, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Room ENGLG 05
George Vari Engineering Building
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ryerson University
Contact: Dimitri Androutsos
Abstract: In this talk we will present the development of intelligence (vs intelligent) implementations from top-down and bottom-up approaches and from Electrical engineering design and Biological Biomimicry to Solid-state Physics prediction. Smart CMOS imaging is the application of choice where these multi-disciplinary studies interacts to suggest a novel approach for research to design intelligent devices needed in a verity of advanced technological devices and systems for a variety of applications such as biomedical and renewables systems and devices to name a few.
Biography: Dr. Fayçal Saffih (IEEE Member since 2000) received the B.Sc. (with Best Honors) degree in Solid-State Physics from the University of Sétif-1, Sétif, Algeria, in 1996, the M.Sc. degree in Digital Neural networks from Physics Department, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1998, and the Ph.D. degree in Smart CMOS Imaging from Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada. Taking a decade journey between academia and industry, Dr. Saffih enriched his experience multidimensionally spanning Microelectronics from devices up-to systems, and industry from R&D department to Entrepreneurship start-up, all of which from West USA (OR) to Singapore’s prestigious A*star Agency for Science, Technology and Research. Recently, Dr. Saffih endeavored into renewable energy research and business starting from Stanford certification in 2013 and currently undertaking an Online program from Renewables Academy (RENAC), Germany Dr. Faycal Saffih is currently an assistant professor at the Electrical Engineering Department of the UAE University and a regular visiting scholar at the University of Waterloo, University of Alberta among others. His research is on intelligence extraction and implementation on devices and systems particularly smart CMOS image sensors.
