Academic
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Traffic Signal Operations: Fundamental Concepts
Workshop | April 19 | 8 a.m.-5 p.m. | National University
6300 Canoga Ave, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Gordon Lum, Willdan Engineering; David Mahama, DKS Associates
This course covers the basic concepts and practical applications and operations of traffic signal timing systems for isolated and coordinated intersections. The course engages students through hands-on exercises and real-world examples of signal timing and operations. Some class exercises and demonstrations are taught in a computer lab. A basic knowledge of EXCEL is needed to complete the... More >
The class is for traffic engineers, planners, consultants, and technicians who are new to traffic signal timing. Experienced practitioners who desire a "refresher" course also benefit.
Multicultural Community Center Research Symposium
Conference/Symposium | April 19 | 9 a.m.-6 p.m. | 220 Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union
Reflecting on Practice Coaching Workshop
Workshop | April 17 – 19, 2017 every day | 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. | California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118
Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS)
Are you interested in establishing a learning community among staff at your zoo, aquarium, museum, or park that enhances teaching practice and fosters the growth and development of people and their ideas? If so, then please join UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science and the California Academy of Sciences for a Coaching Workshop to learn about Reflecting on Practice (RoP™), a modular professional... More >
Dissertation Talk: Hardness of approximation between P and NP
Seminar | April 19 | 10-11 a.m. | 380 Soda Hall
Aviad Rubinstein, UC Berkeley
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS)
The first question we computer scientists ask when facing a new algorithmic challenge is: is it NP-hard, or is it in P? Surprisingly, for many important problems, the answer is “neither!” I will discuss recent progress towards understanding the complexity of those problems.
Matrix Computations and Scientific Computing Seminar: Image Reconstruction in Snapshot Spectral GISC camera
Seminar | April 19 | 11 a.m.-12 p.m. | 380 Soda Hall
Shiyu Tan, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, CAS
The image information acquisition abilities of conventional cameras are usually much lower than the Shannon Limit since they do not make use of the correlation between pixels of an image. In this talk, we discuss the GISC (ghost imaging via sparsity constraints) spectral camera. The GISC camera applies a random phase modulator to encode the spectral images, and recovers them with convex... More >
MVZ LUNCH SEMINAR: Jim McGuire “Flying Lizard Phylogenomics and the Biogeography of Sulawesi"
Seminar | April 19 | 12-1 p.m. | 3101 Valley Life Sciences Building
Jim McGuire
MVZ Lunch is a graduate level seminar series (IB264) based on current and recent vertebrate research. Professors, graduate students, staff, and visiting researchers present on current and past research projects. The seminar meets every Wednesday from 12- 1pm in the Grinnell-Miller Library. Enter through the MVZ's Main Office, 3101 Valley Life Sciences Building, and please let the receptionist... More >
IRLE Spring Seminar: Absence, Substitutability, and Productivity: Evidence From Teachers
Seminar | April 19 | 12-1:30 p.m. | 2521 Channing Way (Inst. for Res. on Labor & Employment), IRLE Director's Room
Asma Benhenda, PhD Student and IRLE Visiting Scholar, Paris School of Economics
Institute of Research on Labor & Employment
It’s not unusual for employees to miss work from time to time. But little is known about how worker absences affect productivity, or how well employers cope with them. In schools, disruption can be especially harmful. Asma will present research that, using administrative data on French teachers and substitute teachers, analyzes the effect of teacher absences on the productivity of classrooms and... More >
RSVP by emailing Charlotte Rutty at charlotterutty@berkeley.edu
BioE Seminar: “Epigenetics and Evolution in the Age of Synthetic Biology”
Seminar | April 19 | 12-1 p.m. | 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building
Ahmad Khalil, Boston University
Spring 2017 Seminar Series
Wednesday, April 19
12noon - 1:00pm
290 Hearst Mining Building
Ahmad Khalil
Innovation Career Development Professor
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Associate Director, Biological Design Center
Boston University
Tenancy, Marriage, and the Boll Weevil Infestation, 1892-1930: Berkeley Demography Brown Bag Talk
Colloquium | April 19 | 12:10-1:10 p.m. | 2232 Piedmont, Demography Seminar Room
Chris Muller, Assistant Professor, Sociology, UC Berkeley
A lunch time talk and discussion session, featuring visiting and local scholars presenting their research on a wide range of topics of interest to demography.
Habits: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (BEUHS052)
Workshop | April 19 | 12:10-1:30 p.m. | Tang Center, University Health Services, Section Club
Leslie Bell, PhD, Employee Assistance, Be well at Work - Employee Assistance
Be Well at Work - Employee Assistance
Habits form the structure of our lives. Habits matter because 40% of what we do every day is governed by them. What we eat, how much we move our bodies, how much we sleep, how we treat the people in our lives are all determined largely by habits. Healthy habits help us to be healthy and happy. Unhealthy habits keep us from living the lives we want.
In this workshop we will explore how habits... More >
Power Analysis and Meta-Analysis are Falsely Reassuring Solutions for Concerns about Statistical Power
Colloquium | April 19 | 12:10-1:15 p.m. | 5101 Tolman Hall
Leif Nelson, Professor, Haas School of Business
Institute of Personality and Social Research
Transparency, disclosure, and preregistration have revealed that some statistically underpowered studies may be propped up by selective reporting and p-hacking. Conscientious researchers therefore have renewed investment in statistical power. One approach is to conduct traditional power analysis to correctly set the sample size. I argue that this tool is not helpful and often biased toward... More >
Topology Seminar (Introductory Talk): Astonishingly symmetric flat surfaces
Seminar | April 19 | 2:10-3 p.m. | 736 Evans Hall
Alex Wright, Stanford
The group SL(2,Z) of two by two integer matrices with determinant one acts on the torus $R^2/Z^2$ by affine maps. Similarly, a finite index subgroups of SL(2,Z) acts on any square-tiled surface. You might reasonably think that square-tiled surfaces are the only flat surfaces with an affine action of such a large group of matrices (called a lattice), but you'd be wrong. For example, Veech... More >
Data-Driven Methods for Sparse Network Estimation
Seminar | April 19 | 3-4 p.m. | 3110 Etcheverry Hall
Somayeh Sojoudi, Assistant Project Scientist, University of California, Berkeley
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME)
System identification is a fundamental area in control theory, which is concerned with finding mathematical models of dynamical systems from data. In this talk, we will develop new notions of sign-consistent matrices and inverse-consistent matrices to obtain key properties of graphical lasso.
Insights for Relationships and Health from Latino and East Asian Cultures: Equity and Inclusion Lecture
Colloquium | April 19 | 3-4:30 p.m. | 5101 Tolman Hall
Belinda Campos, PhD, UC Irvine
Social relationships can enhance the quality of life by conferring higher levels of subjective well-being, greater resilience against adverse circumstances, and better health. To obtain these benefits, humans must navigate a complex social world where self-interest must be balanced by other-interest. In this talk, I will present a series of studies that show that Latino and East Asian cultural... More >
Mixing of the mean-field, directed Potts model
Seminar | April 19 | 3:10-4 p.m. | 1011 Evans Hall
Insuk Seo, Morrey Visiting Assistant Professor, U.C. Berkeley Mathematics
We consider the mean-field Potts model with totally asymmetric dynamics. For the model with three spins, we observe three critical temperatures and four qualitatively different mixing behaviors of the dynamics. Three of them are metastable behavior, and one of them is the cutoff phenomenon. We discuss these interesting phenomena in this presentation.
Race and Place in the Empire City: New York, New York
Colloquium | April 19 | 3:30-5 p.m. | 575 McCone Hall
Professor Jacqueline Brown, Hunter College, CUNY
Applied Mathematics Seminar: General Diffusion in Biological Environments
Seminar | April 19 | 3:30-4:30 p.m. | 891 Evans Hall
Chun Liu, Penn State University
Almost all biological activities involve transport and distribution of ions and charged particles. The complicated coupling and competition between different ionic solutions in various biological environments give the intricate specificity and selectivity in these systems. In this talk, I will introduce several extended general diffusion systems motivated by the study of ion channels and ionic... More >
UC Berkeley Foodscape Map Launch
Workshop | April 19 | 3:30-5:30 p.m. | Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, Stephens Lounge
Berkeley Food Institute, Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, Student Environmental Resource Center, ASUC Senator Robinson
Join the “Building Equitable and Inclusive Food Systems at UC Berkeley” team for an unveiling of our interactive, participatory UC Berkeley Foodscape Map.
Overcoming Chromatin Barriers to Control Cell Fate
Seminar | April 19 | 4-5 p.m. | 114 Morgan Hall
Ken Zaret, University of Pennsylvania
Composite Membranes and Metal-Organic Framework Adsorbents for Industrial Gas Separations/Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Fluids using Microfluidics: Suspensions and Wormlike Micellar Solutions
Colloquium | April 19 | 4-6 p.m. | 180 Tan Hall
Jonathan Bachman, Ph.D. student in the Long Group; Margaret Hwang, Ph.D. student in the Muller Group
Topology Seminar (Main Talk): Dynamics, geometry, and the moduli space of Riemann surfaces
Seminar | April 19 | 4:10-5 p.m. | 3 Evans Hall
Alex Wright, Stanford
The moduli space of Riemann surfaces of fixed genus is one of the hubs of modern mathematics and physics. We will tell the story of how simple sounding problems about polygons, some of which arose as toy models in physics, became intertwined with problems about the geometry of moduli space, and how the study of these problems in Teichmuller dynamics lead to connections with homogeneous spaces,... More >
