Seminars

PhD Student Seminar Series
Organizers: MHI Ph.D. Scholars Shermin Arab, Kunal Datta, Ningfeng Huang, Vasilis Ntranos, Yan Yan,

Sponsored: Fall 2012 - present

The PhD Student Seminar Series organized by the 2014-2015 MHI Ph.D. Scholars focuses more on the entrepreneurial aspect of the Ph.D. The goal of the series is to provide current Ph.D. students with guest speakers who possess the knowledge and tools necessary to help them move forward with their entrepreneurial endeavors. As always this seminar aims to improve interaction and foster a tight-knit community among EE Ph.D. students regardless of their academic year or field of study. Ph.D. students of all academic years are welcome to attend.

2014-2015 PhD Student Seminar Series
Entrepreneurship Seminar Series for PhD Students

Richard Morganstern
RMVentures
Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - EEB 132

Mr. Morganstern is founding and managing partner of Morganstern, Mann & Smith, a mid sized Beverly Hills based law firm which focused on intellectual property and business litigation and counseling. He is the founder and chairman of International Financial Associates, a NASD licensed investment-banking firm, which focused on arranging funding, principally from foreign sources, for domestic early stage technology companies. He is also co-founder of Language Weaver Inc. a human communications solutions company and the leading supplier of statistically based natural language translation systems to domestic and foreign global enterprises and governmental entities. Language Weaver was founded to commercialize groundbreaking research conducted at The University of Southern California’s Information Science’s Institute.
He is a member of The Executive Committee and past President of the Tech Coast Angels (LA network). TCA is the leading source of early stage funding and guidance for emerging, high growth companies in Southern California. Its members have actively advised and invested over one hundred fifty million dollars in more than 290 portfolio companies. Affiliated venture capital firms and others have provided side by side and follow on funding in excess of one and one half billion dollars to these companies. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI). LACI is a forty thousand square foot incubation facility including a prototype lab, machine shop and wet lab. When completed in the second quarter of 2015 it will provide space for 100 companies to develop their products and go to market strategies in the clean tech ecosystem.
He is lecturer and faculty advisor UCLA Anderson School of Management Global Access Program. He is member of the Advisory Board of USC’s Center for Technology Commercialization; Guest lecturer for the California Institute of Technology Entrepreneurial Fellowship Program; Distinguished Speaker at USC’s Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies; Guest lecturer in political science at Russell Sage College.

Ashish Soni
Founding Director, Viterbi Startup Garage
Thursday, January 22, 2015 - EEB 132

Ashish is the Founding Director of the Viterbi Startup Garage, the Viterbi Students Institute for Innovation(VSi2), Executive Director of Digital Innovation, and Associate Professor of Engineering Practice at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He also founded and leads the USC Viterbi Startup Garage, the only technology incubator at a top engineering school launched in collaboration with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. He teaches courses related to high tech entrepreneurship, user experience design and innovation and recently launched one of the nation’s first educational programs in Digital Entrepreneurship. He was chosen as one of the top innovators in Southern California and was honored to be on the Socaltech 50 and TechWeekLA 100 lists in 2013. Mr. Soni is actively involved in the technology industry, advising startups, government agencies and Fortune 500 companies and has served on the advisory boards of early stage technology and media companies including Slingshot Labs, Brighter, Tilofy and myblife. He also serves on the Los Angeles Mayor’s Council of Technology and Innovation. Mr. Soni holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.
Ashish Soni Entrepreneurship Seminar Series, Presentation Slides, 1/22/15 - Part 1
Ashish Soni Entrepreneurship Seminar Series, Presentation Slides, 1/22/15 - Part 2

Ron Miller
President of Ron Miller and Associates LLC, President of Ron Miller Fiduciary Services PC, Managing Director of BCC Capital Partners
Thursday, November 20, 2014

Ron Miller is a graduate of USC (EE) and the Marshall Business School. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst© and Certified Corporate Trust Specialist© designations. He is a member of the Board of Directors for Bob Hope USO and a board advisor to enPlug; a member of Financial Executives International, CalCPAs, South Bay Estate Planning Council and various venture capital and private equity groups; and a past member of the Association for Corporate Growth, Los Angeles Venture Association, Forum for Corporate Directors, Association for Strategic Planning and Turnaround Management Association.
Ron has almost 30 years of experience advising thousands of business owners, CEOs, Boards, senior executives, investors on strategy, operations and financial matters. Prior to his current endeavors, he served as Financial Advisor at Merrill Lynch; President of the Digital Media Group of Los Angeles and Shockwave Consulting Group; Chief Operating Officer of a division of Mellon Financial (now BNYMellon); U.S. Chief Financial Officer of Industries International; Investment Banker with BCC Capital and GMAC; Management Consultant with SCA Consulting; and Portfolio Manager of the Small Cap Aggressive Growth Fund and Trustee for over 400 trust and separate accounts totaling over $20 billion in assets under management.
Ron Miller Entrepreneurship Seminar Series, Presentation Slides, 11/20/14

Edward Beres
Senior Technology Manager, Physical Sciences, USC Stevens Center for Innovation
Thursday, November 13, 2014

Edward Beres provided an introduction to entrepreneurship and covered the information that inventors should know about patents, technology commercialization, traits of successful start-up companies, as well as a brief description of the USC Stevens Center for Innovation.
2013-2014 PhD Seminar Series
Organizers: Sergul Aydore, Yuchi Che, Mohammad Reza Chitgarha, Harsha Honnappa, Saeid Jafari, Yanzhi Wang

The PhD Student Seminar Series was continued by the 2013-14 MHI Ph.D. Scholars with the goal of the series being to improve interaction and foster a tight-knit community among EE Ph.D. students. The series gave students the opportunity to establish new student-level collaborations among different research groups in the department and benefitted PhD Students by allowing them to give talks to a broad audience which trained them for job interviews, qualifying exams and other research talks. This seminar provided an informal environment where presenters gave a 20 minute talk about their research topics and got feedback from their fellow students.

2012-2013 PhD Seminar Series
Organizers: Moh Amer, Kartik Audhkhasi , Hao Huang, Osonde Osoba, Daphney-Stavroula Zois
The PhD Student Seminar Series was organized by the 2012-13 MHI Ph.D. Scholars. The goal of the series was to improve interaction and foster a tight-knit community among EE Ph.D. students. The series gave students the opportunity to establish new student-level collaborations among different research groups in the department. PhD Students benefitted by giving talks to a broad audience which trained them for job interviews, qualifying exams and other research talks. This seminar provided an informal environment where presenters gave a 20 minute talk about their research topics and got feedback from their fellow students. PhD students, regardless of their academic year, were encouraged to participate.

Proposal Writing by Professors Krishna Nayak and Steve Cronin