On the one-year  anniversary of the inaugural ISI Newsletter, times are much more somber than 12 months ago. Most of the world is quarantined at home, and many of us are juggling work with home schooling and other activities we never dreamed we’d be experiencing.
As we watched the epidemic quickly grow into a pandemic, ISI was busy preparing for a potential “work from home.” When the decision was made to have everyone at ISI work remotely beginning March 16th, ISI staff and faculty were already equipped with laptops and other equipment and software to ensure they could continue their work from home as if still at ISI.
I’m pleased to report that our transition to working from home is going smoothly. Thanks to USC and ISI infrastructure and video-teleconferencing capabilities, our staff, students, and faculty are working as if physically at ISI. This has not only kept our work and meetings on schedule, but is also providing a sense of community among ISIers, beginning with a virtual wine and cheese gathering, which helped people feel less isolated.
While we don our masks and gloves, many of us wonder what the new normal will be. As you and your family ponder the same, please remember social distancing, masks, and gloves keep us and those around us safer.
We extend our wishes that you are all safe and healthy, and we hope you enjoy reading the latest news from USC ISI.
Craig Knoblock
Interim Keston Executive Director, USC Information Sciences Institute
Research Professor of Computer Science and Spatial Sciences |
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5 Tips to Stay Cyber Secure When Working Remotely
Personal hygiene is important to reduce the spread of COVID-19, but don't skimp on your cyber hygiene. ISI cybersecurity expert Clifford Neuman gives 5 key tips on how to keep your computer and connection secure when working remotely during the quarantine.
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Researchers Develop Platform to Improve Weather Forecasting
Climate change is making it more difficult for weather scientists to determine weather patterns. ISI researchers collaborated with scientists across the country to develop DyNamo, a new platform that helps forecast severe weather events in real time.
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How To Reduce Bias in AI? Selective Amnesia
AI affects your credit scores and loans, but it's not immune to bias. ISI scientists are helping it "forget" certain data through a new approach so it can make more accurate and fair predictions.
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USC Earth Scientists and AI Researchers Join Forces on New Semantic Web Technology
Researchers from ISI and USC Dornsife created a novel platform for standardizing paleoclimatology data to aid climate research. The researchers, which include ISI's Yolanda Gil and Deborah Khider, had their work featured in the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology journal and highlighted at AGU's Centennial conference.
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TALKING POINTS
“Where we are now in terms of deepfake detection is where spam filtering was 15 years ago. That's why we don't want to make decisions on behalf of people. We don't want to say, 'No, I'm not going to show you this on Facebook or Twitter, because we think that this is fake.' We just want to say, 'Be careful. Think about what you're seeing.'”
— USC ISI’s Wael AbdAlmageed talks with Chris Nichols on the CG Garage podcast about the intricacies of deepfakes |
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Bill Manning
Renowned computer scientist Dr. Bill Manning passed away on January 25, 2020. Manning was an integral part of B-Root, one of the 13 root servers in the world that are essential to supporting the infrastructure and traffic control of the internet, which has operated at USC/ISI since 1987.
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ISI Spotlight
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Yigal Arens
Dr. Yigal Arens, Senior Director for Administrative Affairs at ISI and research professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, was designated AAAI Senior Member status at this year’s Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference in February. Arens received the recognition for his notable scientific accomplishments in AI and his leadership at ISI.
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Photo Highlight
ISI was thrilled to host a visit to ISI by President Carol Folt and Provost Charles Zukoski. Here, research engineer Sriram Narayanan is pictured with President Folt, Provost Zukosi, and David Barnhart, Research Professor of Astronautics at USC Viterbi and director/co-founder of the USC Space Engineering Research Center (SERC) at the SERC headquarters.
Photo credit: Shannon Ward
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Kudos
Grid computing pioneer Carl Kesselman was co-awarded the 2020 Harry H. Goode Memorial Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his distinguished achievements and contributions in information processing.
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Kudos
Kristina Lerman and her research team, which includes Ph.D. student Nazanin Alipourfard and computer scientist Andres Abeliuk, had their research on the friendship paradox published in Nature Communications in February.
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Kudos
A big congrats to the ISIers who won awards presented at ISI Research Day in January! Award recipients are: Ulf Hermjakob, Dev Shenoy, Pedro Szekely, Jonathan May, Wael AbdAlmageed, Iacopo Masi, John Damoulakis, James Whalen, Priyatam Chiliki (pictured L-R), Joel Mathew, and Andrew Rittenbach (not pictured).
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— Featured Event—
APRIL
17
WEBINAR SERIES: Digital Technologies for COVID-19
Join ISI's Dr. Emilio Ferrara ("Charting COVID-19 Chatter on Social Media") and Dr. Kristina Lerman ("The Network Science of COVID-19") as they kick off a webinar series on digital technologies in this new era. Be sure to follow ISI on Twitter to stay up-to-date with future webinar topics and speakers.
More information here
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