RECHTIN LECTURE

The Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering has named its keynote lecture for the late Eberhardt Rechtin. Rechtin was a former Viterbi School professor, National Academy of Engineering member, and a founding father of systems architecting engineering as a distinct discipline. He played a key role in the development of U.S. space technologies and had a storied career in government and industry before coming to USC. He headed JPL’s Communications Group in the 60s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (later to become DARPA) soon after, and was named CEO of the Aerospace Corporation subsequent to that.

Bill Jia

2022 Bill Jia, Senior VP of Engineering at Meta/Facebook

"Latest Al Research at Meta and the Untold Technologies Behind Al"

USC Davidson Conference Center, Vineyard Room:
3409 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
November 3, 2022 at 3:30PM

ABSTRACT: In this talk, the latest Al research results and the applications at Meta will be discussed. We will show how these results can be used to improve our day-to-day life experiences. Further, we will disclose the untold foundational technologies which are the critical parts to enable all the Al research work - this includes the data centers, network, hardware and the software which are used to create and train the Al research models.

BIO: Bill Jia is Senior VP of Engineering at Meta/Facebook, overseeing Al Infrastructure/Platform, Data Infra/Platform, Software Performance and Capacity Engineering, and Hardware Engineering. Since joining Facebook in 2009, he has been responsible for defining overall Facebook product performance strategy, and optimizing and planning infrastructure for Facebook. Further, he is involved in defining Facebook's hardware platform and strategy. In addition, he has also focused on building the cutting-edge artificial intelligence and applied machine learning platform and infrastructure including PyTorch to analyze one of the largest data sets in the world and apply the Al/AML insights into products (Search, Ads, News Feed Photos, Videos, IG, etc.) to optimize user experience. Prior to Facebook, Bill spent around 4 years at Microsoft and was in charge of improving and optimizing various Microsoft online services. He received dual BS degrees from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and received his MS degree from National University of Singapore. Bill obtained his PhD degree in Operations Research from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2007.

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Past Speakers

David Westfall Bates

2020 David W. Bates, M.D., M.Sc.
Harvard University

"Collaborations Between Engineering And Healthcare: Results From The BWH Patient-Safety Learning Laboratory Studies."

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Juan Perez 2019 Mr. Juan Perez
Chief Information and Chief Engineering Officer, UPS. “IE + IT: A Match Made for Innovation.” Learn more >>

2016 Dr. Radhika Kulkarni
Vice President of Advanced Analytics R&D at SAS Institute Inc “Big Data & Big Analytics – Opportunities for Inter‐disciplinary Innovation” Learn more >>

2014
Dr. Neil Siegel
USC Viterbi IBM Professor of Engineering Management
Sector Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Northrop Grumman
“Applying Systems Engineering to Improve Healthcare”

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2014
Dr. Karl Kempf
Senior Fellow and Director of Decision Engineering at Intel Corporation
“Decision Science at Intel Corporation: Looking Back While Moving Ahead”

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2013
Brenda L. Dietrich

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2011
Dr. Denis Cortese
Emeritus President and CEO of Mayo Clinic
"A System of Healthcare for the USA"

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2010
Dr. Henry T. Yang

Chancellor University of California, Santa Barbara
"International Collaboration - A Reflection on the Creation of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities by Steven Sample"

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2009
Dr. Richard K. Miller
President of Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
"What Does Every Engineer Need to Know--Now?"

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2008
Dr. Wanda Austin
CEO of The Aerospace Corporation
"The Human Factor: Managing Technical Complexity and Creativity in the 21st Century"

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2007
Louis Martin Vega (inaugural lecture)
"Industrial Engineering in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities"

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Published on March 27th, 2017

Last updated on October 28th, 2022