USC’s Largest Wins in Computing and AI – USC Viterbi

USC has been an animating power for computing analysis because the late Nineteen Sixties.

With the appearance of the USC Data Sciences Institute (ISI) in 1972 and the Division of Pc Science in 1976 (born out of the Ming Hsieh Division of Electrical and Pc Engineering), USC has performed a propulsive position in every little thing from the web to the Oculus Rift to current Nobel Prizes.

Listed here are seven of these victories reimagined as cinemagraphs — nonetheless images animated by refined but exceptional actions.

1. The Delivery of the .com (1983)

Whereas working at ISI, Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel pioneered the Area Identify System, which launched the .com, .edu, .gov and .org web naming requirements.

As Wired famous on the twenty fifth anniversary, “With out the Area Identify System, it’s uncertain the web might have grown and flourished because it has.”

The DNS works like a cellphone e-book for the web, mechanically translating textual content names, that are straightforward for people to grasp and keep in mind, to numerical addresses that computer systems want. For instance, think about attempting to recollect an IP tackle like “192.0.2.118” as an alternative of merely “usc.edu.”

In a 2009 interview with NPR, Mockapetris mentioned he believed “the primary area title he ever created was ‘isi.edu’ for his employer, the (USC) Data Sciences Institute. That area title remains to be in use right this moment.”

2. The Invention of DNA Computing (1994)

“In a drop of water, a computation occurred.”

In 1994, Professor Leonard Adleman, who coined the time period “pc virus,” invented DNA computing, which entails performing computations utilizing organic molecules fairly than conventional silicon chips.

Adleman — who obtained the 2002 Turing Award, usually known as the Nobel Prize of pc science — noticed that a pc might be one thing apart from a laptop computer or machine utilizing electrical impulses. After visiting a USC biology lab in 1993, he acknowledged that the 0s and 1s of typical computer systems might be changed with the 4 DNA bases: A, C, G and T. As he later wrote, a “liquid pc” can exist by which interacting molecules carry out computations.

Because the New York Occasions famous in 1997: “Presently the world’s strongest supercomputer sprawls throughout almost 150 sq. meters on the U.S. authorities’s Sandia Nationwide Laboratories in New Mexico. However a DNA pc has the potential to carry out the identical breakneck-speed computations in a single drop of water.”

“We’ve proven by these computations that organic molecules can be utilized for distinctly non-biological functions,” Adleman mentioned in 2002. “They’re miraculous little machines. They retailer power and data, they minimize, paste and replica.”

3. USC Interplay Lab Pioneers Socially Assistive Robotics (2005)

Named No. 5 by Enterprise Insider as one of many 25 Most Highly effective Ladies Engineers in Tech, Maja Matarić leads the USC Interplay Lab, pioneering the sphere of socially assistive robotics (SAR).

As outlined by Matarić and her then-graduate researcher David Feil-Seifer 17 years in the past, socially assistive robotics was “envisioned because the intersection of assistive robotics and social robotics,” a brand new subject that “focuses on offering social assist for serving to individuals overcome challenges in well being, wellness, training and coaching.”

Socially assistive robots have been developed for a broad vary of person communities, together with infants with motion delays, youngsters with autism, stroke sufferers, individuals with dementia and Alzheimer’s illness, and in any other case wholesome aged individuals.

“We would like these robots to make the person happier, extra succesful and higher in a position to assist themselves,” mentioned Matarić, the Chan Quickly-Shiong Chair and Distinguished Professor of Pc Science, Neuroscience and Pediatrics at USC. “We additionally need them to assist lecturers and therapists, not take away their function.”

The sphere has impressed investments from federal funding businesses and expertise startups. The assistive robotics market is estimated to achieve $25.16 billion by 2028.

4. First Operational Quantum Computing System in Academia (2011)

Earlier than Google or NASA received into the sport, there was the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Heart (QCC).

Led by Daniel Lidar, holder of the Viterbi Professorship in Engineering, and ISI’s Robert F. Lucas (now retired), the middle launched in 2011. With the world’s first business adiabatic quantum processor, the D-Wave One, USC is the one college on this planet to host and function a business quantum computing system.

As USC Information famous in 2018, quantum computing is “the final word disruptive expertise…it has the potential to create the very best funding portfolio, dissolve city visitors jams and produce medication to market quicker. It could possibly optimize batteries for electrical automobiles, predictions for climate and fashions for local weather change.…Quantum computing can do that, and far more, as a result of it might crunch large information and variables and do it rapidly with benefit over classical computer systems as issues get larger.”

Not too long ago, QCC upgraded to D-Wave’s Benefit system, with greater than 5,000 qubits, an order of magnitude bigger than every other quantum pc. The upgrades will allow QCC to host a brand new Benefit technology of quantum annealers from D-Wave and would be the first Leap quantum cloud system in the USA. Right this moment, along with Professor Lidar — one of many world’s high quantum computing influencers — QCC is led by Analysis Assistant Professor Federico Spedalieri, as operations director, and Analysis Affiliate Professor Stephen Crago, affiliate director of ISI.

5. USC ICT Allows Speaking with the Previous…within the Future (2015)

New Dimensions in Testimony, a collaboration between the USC Shoah Basis and the USC Institute for Artistic Applied sciences (ICT), in partnership with Conscience Show, is an initiative to report and show testimony in a manner that can proceed the dialogue between Holocaust survivors and learners far into the longer term.

The mission makes use of ICT’s Mild Stage expertise to report interviews utilizing a number of high-end cameras for high-fidelity playback. The ICT Dialogue Group’s pure language expertise permits fluent, open-ended dialog with the recordings. The result’s a compelling and emotional interactive expertise that permits viewers to ask questions and listen to responses in real-time, lifelike dialog — even after the survivors have handed away.

New Dimensions in Testimony debuted within the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Training Heart in 2015. Since then, greater than 50 survivors and different witnesses have been recorded and introduced in dozens of museums round the USA and the world. It stays a strong utility of AI and graphics to protect the tales and lived experiences of culturally and traditionally important figures.

6. Among the many First ‘AI for Good’ Facilities in Increased Training (2016)

Launched in 2016, the Heart for AI in Society (CAIS) turned one of many pioneering “AI for Good” facilities within the U.S., uniting USC Viterbi and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck Faculty of Social Work.

Prior to now, CAIS used AI to forestall the unfold of HIV/AIDS amongst homeless youth. The truth is, a pilot examine demonstrated a 40% improve in homeless youth in search of HIV/AIDS testing as a result of an AI-assisted intervention. In 2019, the expertise was additionally used as a part of the biggest international deployment of predictive AI to thwart poachers and defend endangered animals.

Right this moment, CAIS fuses AI, social work and engineering in distinctive methods, resembling working with the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority to handle homelessness; battling opioid dependancy; mitigating disasters like warmth waves, earthquakes and floods; and aiding the psychological well being of veterans.

CAIS is led by co-directors Eric Rice, a USC Dworak-Peck professor of social work, and Bistra Dilkina, a USC Viterbi affiliate professor of pc science and the Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Early Profession Chair.

7. AI That Fights Trendy Slavery (2017)

Starting in 2017, a staff of researchers at ISI led by Pedro Szekely, Mayank Kejriwal and Craig Knoblock created software program known as DIG that helps investigators scour the web to establish doable intercourse traffickers and start the method of capturing, charging and convicting them.

Regulation enforcement businesses throughout the nation, together with in New York Metropolis, have used DIG in addition to different software program applications spawned by Memex, a Protection Superior Analysis Tasks Company (DARPA)-funded program geared toward growing web search instruments to assist investigators thwart intercourse trafficking, amongst different unlawful actions. The specialised software program has triggered greater than 300 investigations and helped safe 18 felony sex-trafficking convictions, in line with Wade Shen, program supervisor in DARPA’s Data Innovation Workplace and Memex program chief. It has additionally helped free a number of victims.

In 2015, Manhattan District Legal professional Cyrus R. Vance Jr. introduced that DIG was being utilized in each human trafficking case introduced by the DA’s workplace. “With expertise like Memex,” he mentioned, “we’re higher in a position to serve trafficking victims and construct sturdy circumstances towards their traffickers.”

“That is essentially the most rewarding mission I’ve ever labored on,” mentioned Szekely. “It’s actually made a distinction.”

Printed on July twenty eighth, 2022

Final up to date on July twenty eighth, 2022