Smartsy App – brings objects to life – by just taking a picture 
Topic: Smartsy App – brings objects to life – by just taking a picture
Speaker: Dr. Diego Dugatkin
Date/Time: Saturday, 6/9/2012, 11:00 AM - 12:00 Noon
Location: NPU East Building, Room 109, 105 Fourier Avenue, Fremont, CA 94539

Abstract:
Ever wished your daily life enjoyed the immediacy of the information age? Imagine your smartphone providing this connection with the snap of a photo. Advances in visual recognition software, combined with evolving smart devices, allow us to do just that.

Integrating mobile apps with a cloud service, the visual recognition algorithms identify real objects in your environment, instantly connecting you to information, reviews, similar products, m-commerce, and much more. By bridging our real and virtual worlds, we open a whole new way for consumers, advertisers, and businesses to interact, thus creating a huge new business opportunity.

Smartsy launched its platform in early 2012, and has already secured accounts with prestigious companies such as L’Oreal, Volkswagen, and Hachette Group. Currently, the company claims 100,000 app downloads on Android and iPhone. The founding team includes specialists in media processing technologies with strong ties to academic research centers, and is actively recruiting top engineers to join the stellar development team.

Introduction to the speaker:
Diego Dugatkin, Ph.D., Chief Product Officer

Diego drives product at Smartsy. He has an M.S. and a Ph.D. degree from Caltech, both in electrical engineering. He also has 18 years of experience in product development, market strategy, and team leadership in successful high-tech companies, including Schlumberger, Ixia, FastSoft, and Aspera.

Diego combines seasoned technical knowledge and management skills with passion for driving products from inception to development, to effective market roll-outs.
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Telesis Selling - An introduction to an intelligent selling system and style for today’s customers and salespeople 
Topic: Telesis Selling - An introduction to an intelligent selling system and style for today’s customers and salespeople
Speaker: Mr. Robert Brunton - CPMR, CFP
Date/Time: Saturday, 04/07/2012, 3:30 - 4:30 PM
Location: Room 312, NPU South Building-A, 47655 Warm Springs Blvd., Fremont, CA 94539

Abstract:
In this seminar, you will learn to find and use information, knowledge, and your interests to create value and success for your customer, yourself, and your company.

The following topics will be discussed during this talk:
1) How to use sales tactics in a job search.
2) How to network for a job search or just simply expand your social circle, especially for international students.
3) What are the major sales channels, network platforms for a job search?
4) How to turn everyday contacts into friends and build lasting relationships.

Introduction to the speaker:
Robert has started and sold several businesses. He has won several sales awards and has helped many others reach their dreams. He will share his experience and introduce several methods to a successful job search and job success.
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The Financial Services Industry - A Real World Perspective 
Topic: The Financial Services Industry - A Real World Perspective
Speaker: Michael Kleinsmith, CFP®, CRPC® - Senior Vice President, Wealth Management Advisor
Date/Time: Saturday, 03/31/2012, 3:30 - 4:30 PM
Location: Room 308, NPU South Building-A, 47655 Warm Springs Blvd., Fremont, CA 94539

Abstract:
Merrill Lynch maintains a significant position in the financial services world, and has a strong history of service to its clients. As a leader in the industry, Merrill Lynch often advocates adaptations in Financial Advisor business practices well before the competition. Understanding the need for change is essential to success in this business, and I'll be sharing about how I've adapted to changes in the conduct of my business.

On a day-to-day basis, I'm tasked with serving my clients' financial needs, developing new business, as well as proposing and implementing appropriate practices in our office. Ongoing training, both to maintain professional licenses and to keep up with a changing industry, is essential. Anyone considering this challenging business should be expecting many hours of hard work, a constantly shifting environment, and a very rewarding career.

Introduction to the speaker:

Michael Kleinsmith, CFP®, CRPC® - Senior Vice President, Wealth Management Advisor
Both a Certified Financial Planner® and Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor®, Mike joined Merrill Lynch in 1990 following a career in engineering. Mike received a BS from the University of Michigan in Materials and Metallurgical Engineering and after relocating to the Bay Area, he received an MBA from San Jose State University. Mike and his wife, Jan (a former Merrill Lynch Financial Advisor) currently reside in Saratoga with their four children.
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Complete Software Engineering Revolution Based on Complexity Science 
Topic: Complete Software Engineering Revolution Based on Complexity Science
Speaker: Mr. Jay Xiong
Date/Time: Saturday, 02/25/2012, 1:00 - 2:00 PM
Location: NPU Administrative Building, Conference Room C, 47671 Westinghouse Dr., Fremont, CA 94539

Abstract:
Software is a nonlinear system where a small change may cause big impact to the entire system – the “Butterfly-Effect”. Unfortunately, almost all existing software development approaches are outcomes of Reductionism , where almost all software development activities are performed linearly, partially, and locally, such as software maintenance, which takes more than 75% of the total effort and total cost in a software product development. This wrong foundation makes almost everything wrong in software development, including software modeling, design, coding, testing, QA, documentation, maintenance, deployment, and project management. It is the root cause why software disasters happen often, and why the critical issues (low quality and productivity, and high cost and risk) exist with the old-established software engineering paradigm for 40+ years.

“The next century will be the century of complexity.” (Stephen Hawking, January 2000). Complexity science is the scientific research for nonlinear adaptive systems. It can be applied for establishing nonlinear, holistic, and global solutions for software development.

For efficiently solving those critical issues with software development, a Nonlinear Software Engineering paradigm (NSE) based on complexity science has been established and fully implemented, which brings revolutionary changes to almost all aspects in software engineering, and makes it possible to help software development organizations double their productivity, halve their cost, and improve the quality of their software products in several orders of magnitude at the same time.
Jay has plans to work with Dr. Hugh Ching, Advisor of the Research and Incubation Center of NPU, on Universal User Interface based on the work of Professor Lotfi Zadeh’s Computing with Words and Professor Chien Yi Lee’s Computing with Integers. Using Universal User Interface, Human-Language Programming based on completely automated software will start a complete software revolution, as the final generation of the three Generations of Software Standards: First Generation: IBM High Technical Barriers to Second Generation: Microsoft Plug and Play to Third and Final Generation: From Plug and Play to Human-Language Programming. The definition of Human-Language Programming is: "Human-Language Programming means that forever all human users will communicate with the computer exclusively in native human languages or human-understandable multimedia expressions." Jay’s work at NPU will raise his current work from the programs and source code level to the computer language level and from software automation to complete software automation.

Introduction to the speaker:
Jay Xiong is the President of NSEsoftware, LLC, USA (renamed from International Software Automation, Inc., USA) and the President of ISA Shanghai, Ltd. He has brought his 20 years of experience in CAD/EDA to software engineering automation with his innovative techniques for nonlinear software engineering, graphical representation, software testing, quality assurance, and maintenance. Trained at Zhong Shan University and in integrated circuit design at the Chinese Academy of Science, Jay Xiong invented the “Shortest Path Routing Algorithm Using Wave Diffraction” at the Hitachi Research Center in Japan. This major technical achievement brought him to the University of California, Berkeley as the foremost Chinese scientist in the Computer Aided Integrated Circuit Layout Project jointly sponsored by The National Science Foundation of the United States and the Chinese Academy of Science. He turned his research to software engineering automation and established Advanced Software Automation, Inc. (ASA) in 1989 and International Software Automation, Inc. (ISA) in 1992 in Silicon Valley. He is the designer of the Panorama product. “Panorama: developed by International Software Automation, Inc. encompasses a complete set of tools for object-oriented software development, including tools that assist test case design and test planning.” (Roger S. Pressman, "Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach"). By invitation, he offered a tutorial to WORLDCOMP’09 with the title “A Complete Revolution in Software Engineering Based on Complexity Science”(http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/worldcomp09/ws/tutorials/tutorial_xiong ). He is the author of the book, “New Software Engineering Paradigm Based on Complexity Science” (http://www.springer.com/physics/complexity/book/978-1-4419-7325-2 ).
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Cross-layer Medium Access Attaining Multi-User Diversity in Ad Hoc Networks 
Topic: Cross-layer Medium Access Attaining Multi-User Diversity in Ad Hoc Networks
Speaker: Dr. Marzieh Veyseh
Date/Time: Saturday, 02/25/2012, 3:30 - 4:30 PM
Location: NPU East Building, Room 117, 117 Fourier Ave, Fremont, CA 94539

Abstract:
With the rapid enhancements of ubiquitous WiFi networks and growing mesh and ad hoc networks, it’s important to improve quality and efficiency of data transmissions through advanced physical layers and MAC layer techniques, as well as exploitation of the synergies across the layers for a true cross-layer approach. This presentation specifically concentrates on the design, analysis, and performance evaluation of a cross-layer protocol for wireless ad hoc networks through utilization of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). The proposed protocol exploits the flexibilities that OFDMA offers in terms of frequency allocation to different nodes to attain concurrent data transmission, as well as multiuser diversity gain and adaptive distribution of the spectrum. This approach, using a Gibbs sampling technique, maximizes concurrency by enabling two hope away transmitters to send data over the same subchannels at the same time if the receivers are not in the range of the other transmitter. An overview of previous works, as well as OFDMA and Gibbs sampling is presented first. The proposed Multiuser Diversity Medium Access (MDMA) protocol is presented next. Then the analytical evaluation and the simulation results are illustrated to show the throughput advantages of our technique compared to previous schemes for traditional MAC protocols based on contention-based avoidance of multiple access interference (MAI).

Introduction to the speaker:
Dr. Marzieh Veyseh is a Network and Systems Researcher. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of California Santa Cruz in May 2011, and she has been a wireless network researcher at Hitachi America since April 2011. Her research at CCRG lab in Santa Cruz had led to novel communication protocols for wireless ad hoc networks and several publications in major journals and conferences including IEEE MASS, Globecom, ICC, and MILCOM. Prior to and during her Ph.D., her work at Situne Corporation resulted in major performance improvement in their mobile DVB receiver. She received a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from San Jose State University in 2005 and a B.S with honors in Electrical Engineering from Tehran University in 2002. She has received several honors including a Regent fellowship at the University of California, and has been a Tau Beta Pi member since 2003.
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