There will be two exciting IEEE SPS Distinguished Lectures coming this summer.

They are virtual and are free for all to join!

Speaker: Professor Anna Scaglione, Arizona State University
Date/Time: June 19, 2020, 10:00 AM (GMT+8) 
Title: Modeling and learning social influence from opinion dynamics under attack (DistSP-Opt)
Speaker’s bio and homepage

Abstract: Opinion dynamics models aim at capturing the phenomenon of social learning through public discourse. While a functioning society should converge towards common answers, the reality often is characterized by divisions and polarization. This talk reviews the key models that capture social learning and its vulnerabilities. In particular, we review models that explain the effect of bounded confidence and social pressure from zealots (i.e. fake new sources) and show how very simple models can explain the trends observed when social learning is subject to these phenomena. Their influence exposes trust different agents place on each other and introduce new learning algorithms that can estimate how agents influence each other.ems you consider.

Speaker: Professor Rui Zhang, National Singapore University
Date/Time: July 3, 2020, 10:00 AM (GMT+8)
Title: Signal Processing and Optimization in UAV Communication and Trajectory Design (ML-Com)
Speaker’s bio and homepage

Abstract: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones have found numerous applications in wireless communication, as either aerial user terminal or mobile access point (AP). Compared to conventional terrestrial wireless systems, UAVs’ communications face new challenges due to their high altitude above the ground and great flexibility of movement, bringing several crucial issues such as how to exploit line-of-sight (LoS) dominant UAV-ground channels while mitigating resulted strong interference, meet distinct UAV communication requirements on critical control messages versus high-rate payload data, cater for the stringent constraints imposed by the size, weight, and power (SWAP) limitations of UAVs, as well as leveraging the new degree of freedom via controlling the UAV trajectory for communication performance enhancement. In this talk, we will provide an overview of the above challenges and practical issues in UAV communications, their state-of-the-art solutions (with an emphasis on promising signal processing and optimization techniques used in them), as well as important directions for future research.