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# SCD events

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## Airborne Wind Energy Conference 2013

10/09/2013 - 11/09/2013
Berlin, Germany

Airborne Wind Energy Conference 2013
Berlin, September 10-11, 2013
www.awec2013.de

## Quarterly Meeting of OPTEC WG3

9/09/2013
14:00 - 17:00
BOKU XX.XX

"Quarterly Meeting of OPTEC Working Group 3 on Parameter and State  Estimation"

The next WG3 meeting will present results from:
- Edwin Reynders
- ...

Also WG3 will start the book reading of the book by Tarantola: Inverse Problem Theory and Model Parameter Estimation, which is freelyavailable from the website of the author:
http://www.ipgp.fr/~tarantola/Files/Professional/Books/index.html
Feel free to join and read the first chapter by September 9!

The final schedule will be given later.

## International workshop ROKS-2013, July 8-10 2013, Leuven

8/07/2013 - 10/07/2013
Auditorium of the Arenberg castle

ROKS 2013

International workshop on advances in Regularization, Optimization, Kernel methods and Support vector machines: theory and applications

July 8-10, 2013, Leuven, Belgium
http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/sista/ROKS2013

SCOPE

One area of high impact both in theory and applications is kernel methods and support vector machines. Optimization problems, learning and representations of models are key ingredients in these methods. On the other hand considerable progress has also been made on regularization of parametric models, including methods for compressed sensing and sparsity, where convex optimization plays a prominent role. The aim of ROKS-2013 is to provide a multi-disciplinary forum where researchers of different communities can meet, to find new synergies along these areas, both at the level of theory and applications.

The scope includes but is not limited to:
- Regularization: L2, L1, Lp, lasso, group lasso, elastic net, spectral regularization, nuclear norm, others
- Support vector machines, least squares support vector machines, kernel methods, gaussian processes and graphical models
- Lagrange duality, Fenchel duality, estimation in Hilbert spaces, reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces, Banach spaces, operator splitting
- Optimization formulations, optimization algorithms
- Supervised, unsupervised, semi-supervised learning, inductive and transductive learning
- Multi-task learning, multiple kernel learning, choice of kernel functions, manifold learning
- Prior knowledge incorporation
- Approximation theory, learning theory, statistics
- Matrix and tensor completion, learning with tensors
- Feature selection, structure detection, regularization paths, model selection
- Sparsity and interpretability
- On-line learning and optimization
- Applications in machine learning, computational intelligence, pattern analysis, system identification, signal processing, networks, datamining, others
- Software

INVITED SPEAKERS

Francis Bach, INRIA
Stephen Boyd, Stanford University
Martin Jaggi, Ecole Polytechnique Paris
James Kwok, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Yurii Nesterov, Catholic University of Louvain UCL
Massimiliano Pontil, University College London
Justin Romberg, Georgia Tech
Bernhard Schoelkopf, Max Planck Institute Tuebingen
John Shawe-Taylor, University College London
Joel Tropp, California Institute of Technology
Ding-Xuan Zhou, City University of Hong Kong

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The ROKS-2013 program will feature invited plenary talks, oral sessions and poster sessions. Interested participants are cordially invited to submit an extended abstract (max. 2 pages) for their contribution. After the workshop a number of selected contributions will be invited for an edited book.

For further information see http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/sista/ROKS2013 .

IMPORTANT DATES

- Deadline extended abstract submission: March 4, 2013
- Notification of acceptance: April 8, 2013
- Deadline for registration: June 3, 2013
- International Workshop ROKS-2013: July 8-10, 2013

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Chair: Johan Suykens (KU Leuven)

Andreas Argyriou (Ecole Centrale Paris), Kris De Brabanter (KU Leuven), Moritz Diehl (KU Leuven), Kristiaan Pelckmans (Uppsala University), Marco Signoretto (KU Leuven), Vanya Van Belle (KU Leuven), Joos Vandewalle (KU Leuven)

## Summer School on Design and Security of Cryptographic Functions, Algorithms and Devices

30/06/2013 - 5/07/2013
Albena, Bulgaria

The summer school on Design and Security of Cryptographic Functions, Algorithms and Devices will take place in Albena (Bulgaria) from 30 June - 5 July 2013

The summer school is jointly organized by COSIC, KU Leuven; Incidence Geometry Group, UGent; ETRO, VUB and the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The school aims at bringing together PhD students, postdoc researchers and security experts from industry interested in the following topics:

• Boolean functions
• Block ciphers
• Hash functions
• Differential and linear cryptanalysis
• Implementation attacks
• Fault injection attacks
• Countermeasures
• Leakage-resilient cryptography
• White-box cryptography
• Security of embedded systems

The school will be organized as follows:

• 3 days of introductory lectures, including a half day with presentations by the participants in the school.
• 2 days parallel sessions with more advanced lectures on (1) Design and Cryptanalysis of SK algorithms and (2) HW/SW Security

## Third International Workshop on Cryptography, Robustness, and Provably Secure Schemes for Female Young Researchers (CrossFyre)

20/06/2013 - 21/06/2013
ESAT, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

CrossFyre 2013 is a 1 ½ day event that will take place from June 20th to June 21th, 2013 in Leuven, Belgium. The program will be announced shortly. You are kindly invited to attend and give a short presentation of your research topic to your fellow participants.

The main purpose of this workshop is to bring female researchers in the field of Cryptography and Information Security together to promote their research topics and their careers as women in engineering. We hope to encourage a tighter cooperation between women in Cryptography and Information Security, and to motivate joint papers.

Though the workshop is primarily aimed at female researchers, male researchers are also invited to take part. We also welcome undergraduate students to this workshop and strongly encourage supervisors to support participation, be it passive (mainly listening) or active (all students are encouraged to submit abstracts and give talks during the workshop).

Download the PDF to see the Call for Papers.

## Simon Stevin Lecture on Optimization in Engineering - Yurii Nesterov

13/06/2013
15:00 - 16:30
Thermotechnical Institute, Auditorium van de 2de hoofdwet

26th Simon Stevin Lecture on Optimization in Engineering

"Algorithmic Optimization: new challenges in the old field"

Yurii Nesterov
Department of Mathematical Engineering, Université catholique de Louvain (UCL)

Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract

During the last decades, Optimization Theory was one of the most developing fields of Computational Mathematics. Now it consists of several powerful approaches, which can treat problems of very big size up to a high accuracy. In many cases, an intelligent use of problem structure allows to overcome the efficiency bounds of the standard optimization theory. At the same time, new randomized algorithms open a possibility of solving problems of practically unlimited dimension. Theoretical complexity analysis of optimization methods became a powerful tool for designing the new schemes, which are able to prove their superiority both in theory and in practical computations. Awareness of all these developments is important for people interested in different applications of optimization technique.

In this lecture, we describe the state of art in Convex Optimization. We start from discussion of general principles of complexity analysis and explain the key elements of classification of optimization problems and efficiency of optimization schemes.

Biographical Information

Yurii Nesterov is professor at the Department of Mathematical Engineering at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL).

He studied at the Moscow State University where he obtained his master degree in 1977. He obtained his PhD degree in Applied Mathematics at the Institute of Control Sciences, Moscow, in 1984. Until 1992 he was researcher at the Central Economical and Mathematical Institute of USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1993 he became a professor at the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) at INMA, Université Catholique de Louvain, where he is until today. Yurii Nesterov made important contributions to many areas of optimization, in particular Black-Box Convex Optimization, the theory of self-concordant functions and Interior-Point Methods, General Nonlinear Optimization, Positive polynomials and sums of squares, and approximate solutions of combinatorial problems. Among his many honors, he received the "George B. Dantzig prize" in 2000, which is awarded triennially by SIAM and the Mathematical Optimization Society for research which by its originality, breadth and scope has a major impact on the field of mathematical optimization and he also got the "John von Neumann Theory Price" from INFORMS in 2009.

About the Lecture Series:

The "Simon Stevin Lecture Series on Optimization in Engineering" is set up in order to promote optimization in engineering. For this aim, every quarter of the year an outstanding international scholar is invited to report on latest progress in the development of optimization algorithms and their applications in engineering.

Simon Stevin (1548-1620) was a Flemish mathematician and engineer. Among other, he helped to advance the use of decimal fractions, was the first to explain the tides by the attraction of the moon, and discovered the hydrostatic paradox. He made numerous inventions, among them a wind propelled carriage with sails, the "land yacht", which once impressed Prince Maurice of Orange as it moved faster than horses, in around 1600 on the beach between Scheveningen and Petten. Simon Stevin was fond of promoting the use of science in daily life and in craftmanship, and translated various mathematical terms into dutch. Among other, he introduced the dutch word for mathematics, "wiskunde".

## PhD defense - Alexander Caicedo Dorado

7/06/2013
10:30 - 18:00
Jozef Heutz Auditorium, Landbouwinstituut Hoofdgebouw, Kasteelpark Arenberg 20, 3001, Leuven

Signal Processing for Monitoring Cerebral Hemodynamics in Neonates

10:30 - 10:40: Registration and Welcome

10:40 - 11:00: Prof. Sabine Van Huffel and Prof. Gunnar Naulaers
Introduction to Neonatal Brain Monitoring: Why? How?

11:00 - 11:30: Ir. Hans De Clercq
Wearable Electronics for Signal Acquisition at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

11:30 - 12:00: Prof. Martin Wolf
How to Measure Oxygenation by Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS)?

12:00 - 12:30: Dr. Ilias Tachtsidis
Non-Invasive In-Vivo Brain Biomarkers in Perinatal Hypoxia-Ischaemia

12:30 - 13:00: Prof. Frank van Bel
NIRS-monitored Cerebral Oxygenation: Clinical Application in the Neonate

13:00 - 14:00: Lunch Break

14:00 - 16:30: Alexander Caicedo
Signal Processing for Monitoring Cerebral Hemodynamics in Neonates -PhD Defense-

16:30 - 18:00: Reception

PhD was lead by:

• Prof. Dr. Sabine van Huffel
• Prof. Dr. Gunnar Naulaers

## OPTEC Internal Miniworkshop on Robust MPC

4/06/2013
14:00 - 18:00
ESAT 00.62

Aim of this internal and informal event is to bring together all OPTEC members that are interested in Robust Model Predictive Control. If you want to ask if you could participate, please contact Mario Zanon <mario.zanon@esat.kuleuven.be>. The agenda will consist of some prepared talks and discussions.

## COSIC Course 2013

3/06/2013 - 6/06/2013
Leuven

## Ph.D. course on convex optimization - Goele Pipeleers

3/06/2013 - 7/06/2013
9:00 - 12:30
ESAT 00.54 - Mechanical Dept. 04.43

"Convex Optimization"

Course Summary:  This course concentrates on recognizing and solving convex optimization problems
that arise in engineering, and covers the following topics:
- Convex sets, functions, and optimization problems.
- Optimality conditions, duality theory, theorems of alternative, and applications.
- Interior-point methods.
- Applications in engineering.

Course Schedule: 03/06/2013 - 07/06/2013, 9:00-12:30,
ESAT 00.54 (Aud.A) on Monday till Thursday
Mechanical Department 04.43 (Sem C) on Friday

Registration: For organizational reasons, please register on this doodle

For more detailed info you can look the course summary

## PhD defense - Jiqiu Cheng

22/05/2013
14:00
Lokaal 01.02, Aula van de Tweede Hoofdwet, Kasteelpark Arenberg 41, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium

Development of computational methods to detect copy number alterations in human genomes

Jury

• Prof. dr. ir. A. Bultheel, chairman
• Prof. dr. ir. Y. Moreau, promotor
• Prof. dr. ir. J. Vermeesch, co-promotor
• Prof. dr. ir. N. Buys
• Prof. dr. ir. B. De Moor
• Dr. ir. P. Van Loo
• Prof. dr. ir. O. C. Lingjaerde (Oslo university)

## Ph.D. Defence Kerem Varici - Design and Cryptanalysis of Symmetric Key Algorithms

22/05/2013
17:00
Aula van de Tweede Hoofdwet, 01.02, Kasteelpark Arenberg 41, 3001 Heverlee

## WG1 Seminar - Vyacheslav Kungurtsev

22/05/2013
14:30 - 15:15
room ESAT 00.62

"A Superlinearly Convergent SQP Method to Points Satisfying the Second-order Optimality Conditions"

Vyacheslav Kungurtsev

The primal-dual augmented Lagrangian merit function provides a link between augmented Lagrangian and stabilized SQP methods. In this talk I discuss an algorithm that incorporates this merit function in a procedure that includes a direction of descent and a direction of negative curvature. The use of the direction of negative curvature allows global convergence to points satisfying the second-order necessary optimality conditions to be shown. Furthermore, it can be proven that asymptotically, the algorithm becomes equivalent to stabilized SQP and is, therefore, superlinearly convergent to a primal-dual solution under weak regularity assumptions.

## WG1 Seminar - Pranay Sinha

22/05/2013
15:30 - 16:15
room ESAT 00.62

"Versatile, Modular, Extensible VTOL Aerial Platform with Assisted  Flight Mode Transitions"

Pranay Sinha, Transition Robotics Inc, California

This presentation summarizes the design and development process for the Quadshot, a novel aerial robotic platform with Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) capability. Highly dynamic maneuverability is achieved via a combination of differential thrust and aerodynamic surfaces (elevons). The relaxed stability, flying wing, tail-sitter configuration, Radio Controlled (RC) airframe is actively stabilized by onboard controllers in three complementary modes of operation, i.e. hover, horizontal flight and aerobatic flight. In hover mode the vehicle flies laterally, similar to a quadrotor helicopter, can maintain accurate position for aiming payload and land with pinpoint accuracy when equipped with a GPS unit. In horizontal and aerobatic modes it flies like an airplane to cover larger distances more rapidly and efficiently. The major optimization criterion for this vehicle was cost; the objective being to make it highly affordable for both researchers and hobbyists. In the absence of numerical optimization tools, expertise in their use and time constraints, design decisions were based primarily on qualitative and partially quantitative trade analyses. The resulting software, mechanical and electronic hardware design, control algorithms and aerodynamics associated with this airframe will be discussed. This presentation will also touch upon the feasibility of recreating such a design process assuming the availability of optimization tools such as SNOPT.

## Cosic Seminar: ALE: AES-Based Lightweight Authenticated Encryption - Elmar Tischhauser

22/05/2013
14:00 - 15:00
Aud. A - ESAT

ABSTRACT:
We propose a new Authenticated Lightweight Encryption algorithm
coined ALE. The basic operation of ALE is the AES round
transformation and the AES-128 key schedule. ALE is an online
single-pass authenticated encryption algorithm that supports
optional associated data. Its security relies on using nonces. We
provide an optimized low-area implementation of ALE in ASIC hardware
and demonstrate that its area is about 2.5 kGE which is almost two
times smaller than that of the lightweight implementations for
AES-OCB and ASC-1 using the same lightweight AES engine. At the same
time, it is at least 2.5 times more performant than the alternatives
in their smallest implementations by requiring only about 4 AES
rounds to both encrypt and authenticate a 128-bit data block for
longer messages. When using the AES-NI instructions, ALE outperforms
AES-GCM, AES-CCM and ASC-1 by a considerable margin, providing a
throughput of 1.19 cpb close that of AES-OCB, which is a patented
scheme. Its area- and time-efficiency in hardware as well as high
performance in high-speed parallel software make ALE a promising

## BIOMED workshop Performance of clinical prediction models

16/05/2013
14:00 - 17:00
KU Leuven, Department of Electrical Engineering, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, 3001 Leuven, room 00.62

Programme

14h00-14h30: Arnaud Installé, ESAT-SCD (SISTA)
14h30-14h40: Questions and Discussion

14h40-15h10: Ben Van Calster, Department of Development & Regeneration, KU Leuven 15h10-15h20: Questions and Discussion

15h20-15h40: Coffee Break

15h40-16h10: Kirsten Van Hoorde, ESAT-SCD (SISTA)
16h10-16h20: Questions and Discussion

16h20-16h50: Laure Wynants, ESAT-SCD (SISTA)
16h50-17h00: Questions and Discussion

## WG2/WG3 Seminar - Marco Reis

15/05/2013
14:00 - 15:00
CIT 00.01

"Image-based process monitoring: towards an integrated framework"

Prof. Marco Reis
(Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Coimbra, Portugal)

Image Analysis procedures have been increasingly applied in industry for handling problems where the quality of products depends upon characteristics that can be captured or inferred by means of image sensing devices. From our perspective, images are a particular case of a general class of data structures called “profiles”. In such an abstract description, a time-series of a process variable or the accurate surface contour of a mechanical piece measured through profilometry constitute examples of 1D profiles; a grey-level image or a time-course cDNA microarray experiment do correspond to 2D profiles; multispectral images or multivariate batch data are examples of 3D profiles (and the sequence can proceed to higher dimensions, for instance with measurements from hyphenated instruments). In this talk, we propose a transversal look to the variety of “profiles” we are currently handling in industry and propose frameworks for handling them in an integrated, coherent and scalable way, regarding the number of dimensions or modes in the profile.

slides

## Quarterly Meeting of OPTEC WG3

13/05/2013
14:00 - 16:00
CIT 01.06

"Quarterly Meeting of OPTEC Working Group 3 on Parameter and State Estimation"

The next WG3 meeting will focus on online estimation with presentations
by Milan Vukov (Moving Horizon Estimation) and Rien Quirynen (dedicated integration tools).

The final schedule will be given later.

## Ph.D. Defence Bart Mennink - Provable Security of Cryptographic Hash Functions

7/05/2013
13:30
Auditorium Arenberg Castle, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 3001 Heverlee

Cryptographic hash functions form the basis of the security of today's digital environment, and find applications in numerous cryptographic systems such as tamper detection, key derivation functions, and digital signatures. Ideally, hash functions behave like a random oracle, a function that returns random outputs for each new input, but in practice such a construction does not exist. Usually, a hash function is designed to give strong confidence that it is indeed secure, and it is presumed secure until it is broken. In 2004-2005, cryptanalytic breakthroughs have raised doubts about the security of many widely employed hash functions, such as MD5 and SHA-1. As a response, in 2007 the US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) announced a call for the design of a new SHA-3 hashing algorithm.

This dissertation deals with the fundamental security properties of hash functions. It is divided into two parts.

In the first part of the dissertation, we analyze existing hash functions and introduce design methodologies. We particularly search for the limits within the provable security framework, by considering minimalist designs with maximal security. Firstly, we look at double block length 3n-to-2n-bit compression functions based on block ciphers with an n-bit message and key space. We consider the MDC-4 hash function, and improve its collision and preimage security bounds. Next, we present a family of designs that make three cipher calls and achieve optimal collision security and very good preimage security. Furthermore, we consider the possibility of compression functions based on permutations, and provide a full security classification of all 2n-to-n-bit compression functions solely built of XOR operators and three permutations.

As a final contribution of this part, we propose the family of parazoa functions as a generalization of the sponge hash function design, and prove that parazoa functions are indifferentiable from a random oracle. The sponge is a popular hash function design and many derivatives, called sponge-like functions, appeared in literature. However, these sponge-like functions do not automatically enjoy the same security guarantees as the original sponge. Our generalized parazoa family applies to a wide class of sponge-like functions, and the indifferentiability proof for parazoa naturally carries over.

In the second part of the dissertation, we consider NIST's SHA-3 hash function competition from a provable security point of view. We provide a detailed survey of the five SHA-3 finalists, in which we analyze and compare their security guarantees. We consider collision, preimage, and second preimage resistance and indifferentiability of all finalists, and solve open problems where needed.

## SISTA Seminar - Diego Peluffo

2/05/2013
15:00
ESAT 00.62

"Kernel Spectral Clustering for dynamic data"

Diego Peluffo (Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Manizales)

Spectral clustering has taken an important place in pattern recognition due to its capability of accurately grouping data having complex structure. There are several spectral clustering approaches mainly related to graph partitioning. The most suitable techniques are those based on kernels.
Nevertheless, one of the biggest disadvantages of spectral clustering techniques is that most of them have been designed for static data analysis, that is to say, without taking into consideration the changes along the time (i.e., evolutionary information).

An approach, known as multiple kernel learning (MKL), has emerged to deal with different issues in machine learning, mainly, regarding support vector machines (SVM). The intuitive idea of MKL is that learning can be
enhanced when using different kernels instead of an unique kernel. Indeed, local analysis provided by each kernel is of benefit to examine the global structure of the whole data. From this idea, we introduce a dynamic kernel spectral clustering (DKSC) approach that is based on MKL. This approach uses the so-called kernel spectral clustering (KSC), which is based on KPCA formulation from least-square support vector machines and has shown to be a powerful tool for clustering hardly separable data allowing also out-of-samples extensions. MKL is used in such a manner that kernel matrices are computed from an input data sequence, in which each data matrix represents a frame at a different time instance. Afterwards, an accumulative kernel is calculated as a linear combination of the previously obtained kernels where the weighting factors are obtained by ranking each frame contained in the sequence. Such ranking is done by combining a relevance analysis procedure and a simple MKL approach.

## CIT Departemental lecture - WG1/WG3 seminar - Prof. Flavio Manenti

25/04/2013
16:00 - 17:00
CIT 01.06

"Multi-scale modeling and optimization of sulfur recovery units"

Prof. Flavio Manenti,
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Industrial Processes and Plants at
the Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica “Giulio
Natta”, Politecnico di Milano

Abstract

Process simulation is nowadays supported by many tools and commercial flowsheeting packagesinvolving unit operations, reactors, thermodynamic libraries, and physical-chemical propertydatabases. These tools make possible the steady-state or dynamic simulation of complex processesand overall plants. Nevertheless, they still have key-open-issues to be handled to perform accurateand efficient simulations and to deepen the process understanding as well.One of the hardest problems is the simulation of non-ideal reactors via detailed kinetic schemes.This lack in current simulators is mainly due to three reasons: (1) the need of comprehensive andwell-established kinetic schemes to characterize the complex reaction environment; (2) the need toface simulation issues at different scales (kinetic, reactor, and plant scales); and (3) the need ofpowerful solvers to handle the resulting large-scale, stiff, strongly nonlinear systems that come fromthe detailed kinetic modeling.After a basic description of the process and the state of the art of its process modeling and industrialbest practice as well, the seminar deepens the detailed modeling of the different scales above. Thus,the main phenomena governing the behavior of the thermal section are discussed, together with thereaction mechanisms for the main species of the overall kinetic scheme (2400 reactions and 140radical/molecular species). Then, the kinetic scheme is integrated in a reactor network of idealreactors able to simulate more complex non-ideal reactor systems. Existing tools and numericalmethods are described and different industrial configurations are considered, comparing the modelpredictions with the industrial data. Finally, certain modeling and optimization problems arebroached at the process scale. Specifically, the formation of coking at the catalytic converters and thedata reconciliation and plant optimization under poor-redundancy measures are taken into account.

Flavio Manenti

He is assistant professor of chemical and industrial processes and plants at the Dipartimento diChimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica “Giulio Natta”, Politecnico di Milano, where he receivedthe M.Sc. degree and the Ph.D. in chemical engineering. His research activities are on processmodeling and optimization, with 12 ongoing M.Sc. and Ph.D. student projects. He has co-authoredmore than 50 international publications on journals, proceedings, and book series and leaded morethan 20 R&D and technological transfer projects. He is the scientific coordinator of an internationalproject within the bilateral agreements with Argentina and the director of the REINFORCE(Renewable Energy and INtensification FOR Chemical procEsses) excellence cluster with 34partners. He is member of scientific committees of international congresses and associate editor ofan international peer-reviewed journal. He is responsible for undergraduate courses “Chemicalprocess dynamics and control”, “Chemical Plants” at Politecnico di Milano and lecturer atUniversità dell’Insubria.

## Ph.D. Defence Alfredo Rial Duran - Privacy-Preserving E-Commerce Protocols

24/04/2013
17:00
Aula van de Tweede Hoofdwet, 01.02, Kasteelpark Arenberg 41, 3001 Heverlee

## Symposium on ADVANCES IN PERINATAL MONITORING

24/04/2013
12:45 - 17:30
TU Eindhoven, Zwarte Doos

Perinatology is the medical field that is concerned with the health of mother and child before, during and after birth. Recent decades have seen important advances in perinatal monitoring technology, aimed e.g. at early detection of fetal asphyxia and impending premature birth, assessing fetal condition during delivery, assessing neonatal cerebral autoregulation status, and improving neonatal comfort. This symposium provides a survey of the state of the art and trends in this field, both from a technological and from a clinical perspective. The symposium serves also to honor Prof. Sabine Van Huffel, one of the leading specialists in perinatal monitoring, on the occasion of the award of her honorary doctorate by Eindhoven University of Technology.

Surrounding the symposium there will be an exhibition with scientific posters and real-life demonstrations (e.g. a smart neonatal mattress and jacket, serious obstetric game, electrophysiological pregnancy monitoring).

## PhD defense - Tillmann Falck

19/04/2013
14:00
Auditorium Oude Molen, Lokaal 00.07, Kasteelpark Arenberg 50, 3001-Heverlee

Nonlinear System Identification using Structured Kernel Based Modeling

Tillmann Falck (KU Leuven, ESAT-SCD)

Abstract: This thesis discusses nonlinear system identification using kernel based models. Starting from a least squares support vector machine base model, additional structure is integrated to tailor the method for more classes of systems. While the basic formulation naturally only handles nonlinear autoregressive models with exogenous inputs, this text proposes several other model structures. One major goal of this work was to exploit convex formulations or to look for convex approximations in case a convex formulation is not feasible. Two key enabling techniques used extensively within this thesis are overparametrization and nonquadratic regularization. The former can be utilized to handle nonconvexity due to bilinear products. During this work overparametrization has been applied to handle new model structures. Furthermore it has been integrated with other techniques to handle large data sizes and a new approach to recover a parametrization in terms of the original variables has been derived. The latter technique, nonquadratic regularization, is also suitable to construct convex relaxations for nonconvex problems. In this context the major contribution of this thesis is the derivation of kernel based model representations for problems with nuclear norm as well as group-l1 norm regularization.

In terms of new or improved model structures, this thesis covers a number of contributions. The first considered model class are partially linear models which combine a parametric model with a nonparametric one. These models achieve a good predictive performance while being able to incorporate physical prior knowledge in terms of the parametric model part. A novel constraint significantly reduces the variability of the parametric model part. The second part of this thesis, that exploits structure to identify a more specific model class, is the estimation of Wiener-Hammerstein systems. The main contributions in this part are a thorough evaluation on the Wiener-Hammerstein benchmark dataset as well as several improvements and extensions to the existing kernel based identification approach for Hammerstein systems. Besides targeting more restricted model structures also several extensions of the basic model class are discussed. For systems with multiple outputs a kernel based model has been derived that is able to exploit information from all outputs. Due to the reliance on the nuclear norm, the computational complexity of this model is high which currently limits its application to small scale problems. Another extension of the model class is the consideration of time dependent systems. A method that is capable of determining the times at which a nonlinear system switches its dynamics is proposed. The main feature of this method is that it is purely based on input-output measurements. The final extension of the model class considers linear noise models in combination with a nonlinear model for the system. This work proposes a convex relaxations to estimate the noise model as well as a model capturing the system dynamics by solving a joint convex optimization problem. The final contribution of this thesis is a reformulation of the classical least squares support vector formulation that allows the analysis of existing models with respect to their sensitivity to perturbations on the inputs.

Promotor: Prof. Dr. Johan A.K. Suykens
Co-promotor: Prof. Dr. Bart De Moor

## COSIC seminar: Javascript Crypto: W3C Web Cryptography API - Harry Halpin (W3C)

17/04/2013
14:30 - 15:30
ESAT 00.62

This talk will give an overview of the ongoing work by the W3C on a general purpose Javascript cryptography API in context of the larger desire to create trusted and encrypted cloud services with rich web applications. Today, cryptography is difficult to use and the Web is an insecure environment at best, but can this situation be improved and cryptography be put in the hands of ordinary developers and users? The W3C Web Cryptography API hopes to provide OpenSSL-like bindings for common cryptographic primitives, exposing as constant time functions the cryptographic code already in browsers via NSS and Windows Cryptography API. Currently, the latest draft of the spec is here:

https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcrypto-api/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview.html

This proposal is moving fast, and will likely be finalized by the end of 2013 and in all major browsers shortly thereafter, as browser vendors Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple, and Opera are all on board. Thus, it will likely be the de-facto Javascript Crypto library. Thus, neutral feedback from the academic cryptographic community is needed at this stage before implementation and testing begins across browsers. I will also explain how to join the Working Group and submit formal reviews that the Working Group is required by process to respond to.

Open Issues Include (see complete list here: http://www.w3.org/2012/webcrypto/track/)

- Should the number of algorithms be fixed or should a registry be enabled to allow algorithms to be registered?
- Should "broken crypto" (SHA-1, PKCS #1 v1.15) be exposed for the sake of backwards compatibility?
- If so, how can per algorithm security considerations be taken into account?
- Currently pre-provisioned keys are dealt with in a separate specification (https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcrypto-keydiscovery/raw-file/tip/Overview.html) and there is no way to export keys. How can key import/export be done safely?
- Key storage is done using "structured clone" with a same-origin restriction, which is currently only
- Private Keys can be set to non-extractable, but it is unclear if this can be really enforced. Yet the other option, of creating
a separate private key store for browsers with its own lifetime, runs the risk of being a new kind of "supercokies" with attendant privacy risks.
- There is no easy-to-use "high-level" API such as KeyCzar, although there is a draft https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcrypto-highlevel/raw-file/tip/Overview.html . Is this worth pursuing?
- Microsoft has put forward a BigNum proposal to enable zero-knowledge proofs and blind signatures. However, this is viewed as revealing too much possibly unsafe functionality. Can it be done?

Bio:

Dr. Harry Halpin is the staff contact of the W3C Web Cryptography Working Group and a postdoctoral research associate at MIT. He received his Ph.D. in Informatics focused on machine-learning and information retrieval at the University of Edinburgh - he is not a cryptographer. He is also President of the LEAP Encryption Access Project (leap.se) that hopes to provide secure services to activists and co-ordinates W3C work with international bodies such as the OECD, IETF, and the like.  He is also a visiting researcher at IRI du Centre Pompidou, where he is working on a book providing an overview of the history of the Web.

## PhD defense of Ivan Gligorijevic - Spike train discrimination and analysis in neural and surface electromyography (sEMG) applications

15/04/2013
16:30 - 17:00
auditorium of the Arenberg castle, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 3001 Heverlee

Jury

• Prof. dr. ir. Yves Willems, chairman
• Prof. dr. ir. S. Van Huffel, promotor
• Prof. dr. Bart Nuttin, promotor
• Prof. dr. ir. Carmen Bartic, promotor
• Prof. dr. ir. Mirjana Popovic (Belgrade University, Serbia)
• Prof. dr. ir. Maarten De Vos (University of Oldenburg, Germany)
• Dr. ir. Joleen H. Blok (Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Erasmus MC, The Netherlands)
• Prof. dr. ir. Marc Van Hulle
• Prof. dr. ir. Robert Puers

## COSIC seminar - Compressive Sampling, On-Focal Image Compression and Sub-Threshold Source Coupled Logic SRAM RNG - Milos Balac

12/04/2013
11:00 - 12:00
ESAT 00.62

Compressive Sampling is a new approach in acquiring and compressing signals. Today it is the focus of high number of researchers across the world. CS exploits the fact that signals are sparse or that they can be represented as such in some basis. Unlike the common techniques that are based on Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theory it doesn't need the whole information on the signal in order to be able to compress it and later to reconstruct it, therefore it uses only small number of measurements when compared to the size of the signal.
In this work compressive sampling is used for on-focal image compression. Sensing functions used for acquiring images are made of random variables (e.g.. Bernoulli Matrix populated with -1 and +1 values with equal probability p=1/2). In order to generate the Bernoulli matrix an RNG was designed. Sub-Threshold Source Coupled Logic SRAM was designed as a TRNG. It uses thermal noise as a source of randomness to generate random bits on its output. However, after the fabrication introduces
process and mismatch variations, STSCL SRAM requires calibration. However, this can easily be done with a good self calibrating circuit.
Designed TRNG generates Bernoulli Matrix perfectly for this application. However, it was also tested with randomness tests in MATLAB and NIST test suit in order to see if there is a possibility of using it in cryptographic applications (further work on this subject is needed). The STSCL SRAM TRNG designed in 90nm technology can generate 5Mbits/s.

## COSIC seminar - New Directions in Dividing: Le Fabuleux Destin d'MISTY1 (The Case of MISTY1) - Orr Dunkelman (University of Haifa)

28/03/2013
14:30 - 15:30
ESAT 00.62

MISTY1 is a block cipher designed by Matsui in 1997. It is widely deployed in Japan where it is an e-government standard, and is recognized internationally as a NESSIE-recommended cipher as well as an ISO standard and an RFC. Moreover, MISTY1 was selected to be the blueprint on top of which KASUMI, the GSM/3G block cipher, was based. Since its introduction, and especially in recent years, MISTY1 was subjected to extensive cryptanalytic efforts, which resulted in numerous attacks on its reduced variants. Most of these attacks aimed at maximizing the number of attacked rounds, and as a result, their complexities are highly impractical.

In this work we pursue another direction, by focusing on attacks with a practical time complexity. The best previously-known attacks with practical complexity against MISTY1 could break either 4 rounds (out of 8), or 5 rounds in a modified variant in which some of the $FL$ functions are removed. We present an attack on 5-round MISTY1 with all the FL functions present whose time complexity is 2^{38} encryptions. When the $FL$ functions are removed, we present a devastating related-key attack on the full 8-round variant, requiring only 2^{18} data and time.

While our attacks clearly do not compromise the security of the full MISTY1, they expose several weaknesses in MISTY1's components, and improve our understanding of its security. Moreover, future designs which rely on MISTY1 as their base, should take these issues into close consideration.

Joint work with Nathan Keller.

## 32nd Benelux Meeting on Systems and Control

26/03/2013 - 28/03/2013
9:00 - 17:00
Houffalize, Belgium

32nd Benelux Meeting on Systems and Control,
Houffalize, Belgium

March 26-28, 2013

http://saas.ulb.ac.be/bm2013/

Keynotes and courses by John Lygeros (ETH Zurich),
Jean-Christophe Poggiale (Aix-Marseille University)
Thierry Denoeux (Compiègne)
Franco Blanchini (Udine)

## OPTEC Seminar - Eduardo Camacho

26/03/2013
15:00 - 16:00
ESAT 00.62

"An overview of Model Predictive Control and its Application Problems"

Eduardo F. Camacho
Univ. of Sevilla  (Spain)

Abstract

Model Predictive Control (MPC) has developed considerably in the last decades, both in industry and in academia. Although MPC is considered to be a mature discipline, the field has still many open problems and attracts the attention of many researchers.

This talk  provides an overview of the theoretical and practical aspects of model predictive controllers. The talk discusses topics such as stability, robustness, constraints and MPC implementation issues when applied to time delay systems, multivariable processes and nonlinear processes. An application of MPC to a thermal solar plant is presented to illustrate some of the issues discussed in the talk.

## Ph.D. Defence Deniz Toz - Cryptanalysis of Hash Functions

21/03/2013
17:00
Aula van de Tweede Hoofdwet, 01.02, Kasteelpark Arenberg 41, 3001 Heverlee

This thesis deals with the analysis and design of cryptographic hash functions that are fundamental components of many cryptographic  applications such as digital signatures, authentication, key derivation, random number generation and many others. Due to this versality they are considered as the “Swiss army knives” of modern cryptology.

A hash function is a one-way mathematical function that takes a message
of arbitrary length as input and produces an output of fixed (smaller) length. In recent years, several of the approved cryptographic hash functions which are generally inspired by MD4 have been successfully attacked, and serious attacks have been published against the world-wide standard SHA-1. In response, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has opened a public competition to develop a new cryptographic hash algorithm, SHA-3, to replace the older SHA-1 and SHA-2 hash functions.

The first part of this thesis is focused on the analysis of the hash function JH, one of the finalists of this competition. We demonstrate attacks on JH showing that the algorithm is not as secure as claimed by its designer. We find a semi-free-start collision for the hash function and semi-free-start near- collisions for the compression function of reduced-round JH. Moreover, we present  distinguishers for the full internal permutation.

The second part of this thesis is focused on the design of hash functions. We propose a new family of sponge-based lightweight hash function called SPONGENT.  We first explain the design strategy of SPONGENT and then we present its security analysis by applying the most important state-of-the-art
methods of cryptanalysis and by investigating their complexity.

## WG3 Seminar - Michael Mangold

20/03/2013
14:00 - 15:00
CIT 01.01

"Recent advances in model reduction for population balance systems"

Michael Mangold
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical SystemsSandtorstrae 1, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany

Abstract

The evolution of particle populations, e.g. in crystallisation or polymerisation, is strongly a ffected by the flow conditions in the fluid phase (aggregation, breakage, attrition etc.). Process models that account for the relevant physical eff ects in an adequate way comprise Navier Stokes equations, energy balances, and mass balances for the liquid phase, as well as population balance equations for the particle phase. They are distributed in several external (space) and internal (property) coordinates and are computationally very demanding. A direct application of such models to process control and process design problems is infeasible due to the enormous computational burden. Hence there is a need for reduced control oriented models of low system order.
In this contribution, a model reduction technique for population balance systems coupled with fluid dynamics is presented [1, 2, 3]. A model of a laboratory scale urea crystalliser serves as an application example. A detailed reference model with two external and one internal coordinate implemented in OpenFOAM forms the starting point of the work. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) techniques are used to derive the reduced model. While POD is a well-established approach for model reduction of Navier Stokes equations, it has hardly been applied so far to particle systems. One of the additional difficulties compared to pure Navier Stokes equations are the more complicated nonlinear terms. An efficient and accurate treatment of the nonlinearities during runtime of the reduced model is non-trivial. It is found that the best point interpolation method recently introduced by Nguyen et al. [4] for parameterizedfunctions is an elegant way to solve this problem.
In an outlook, the application of the reduction technique to LDPE reactors is discussed. The fi nal objective is to model and control the formation of foulant layers.

References
[1] M. Krasnyk and M. Mangold. Reduction of a urea crystallizer model by proper orthogonal decom-position and best point interpolation. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 49:9887{9898,2010.
[2] M. Krasnyk, M. Mangold, and A. Kienle. Reduction procedure for parametrized uid dynamicsproblems based on proper orthogonal decomposition and calibration. Chemical Engineering Science,65:6238{6246, 2010.
[3] M. Krasnyk, M. Mangold, S. Ganesan, and L. Tobiska. Reduction of a crystallizer model withinternal and external coordinates by proper orthogonal decomposition. Chemical Engineering Science(accepted), 2011.
[4] N.C. Nguyen, A.T. Patera, J. Peraire. A \best-points" interpolation method for ecient approxima-tion of parametrized functions. Int. J. Numer. Methods Eng. 73:521{543, 2008.

Biographical information
Michael Mangold
1993 Diplom-Ingenieur degree in Technical Cybernetics from the University of Stuttgart
2000 Ph.D. degree from the University of Stuttgarttitle of thesis: "Nonlinear Analysis and Technical Application of Circulating Reaction Fronts"
since 1998 member of Max Planck Institute Magdeburg2006 Habilitation at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburgtitle of thesis: "Computer Aided Modeling, Analysis and Control of MembraneReactors and Fuel Cells"
2011 adjunct professor (auerplanmaiger Professor) for System Dynamics at theFaculty for Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of Otto vonGuericke University Magdeburg

## KU Leuven seminars on optimization in engineering - Andreas Argyriou

20/03/2013
14:00
ESAT 00.57

"Matrix Learning Problems and First-Order Optimization"

Andreas Argyriou (Ecole Centrale Paris)

In the past few years, there has been significant interest in nonsmooth convex optimization problems involving matrices, especially in the areas of machine learning, statistics and control. Instances of such problems are multitask learning and matrix completion, robust PCA, sparse inverse covariance selection etc. I will present PRISMA, a new optimization algorithm for minimizing a convex objective which decomposes into three parts: a smooth part, a simple non-smooth Lipschitz part, and a simple nonsmooth non-Lipschitz part. Our algorithm combines the methodologies of smoothing and accelerated proximal methods. Moreover, our convergence result removes the assumption of bounded domain required by Nesterov’s smoothing methods. I will show how PRISMA can be applied to the problems of max-norm regularized matrix completion and clustering, robust PCA and sparse inverse covariance selection, and compare to state of the art methods. Joint work with N. Srebro (TTI Chicago) and F. Orabona (TTI Chicago).

(OPTEC WG2 seminar)

## COSIC seminar - Update on SHA-256 - Florian Mendel (TU Graz, IAIK)

19/03/2013
14:00 - 15:00
ESAT 00.62

Since the breakthrough results of Wang et al. hash functions have been the target in many cryptanalytic attacks. These attack have especially shown that several well-known and commonly used algorithms such as MD5 and SHA-1 can no longer be considered to be secure. As a consequence, more and more companies and organizations were migrating to SHA-256. Hence, a detailed analysis of this hash
function is needed to get a good view on its security. Although the design principles of SHA-256 are very similar to SHA-1, it is still unknown whether the collision attacks on MD5 and SHA-1 can be extended to SHA-256.

Previous collision attacks on SHA-256 are based on the same basic idea: extending a local collision over 9 steps to more steps, resulting in collision attack on up to 24 (out of 64) steps of SHA-256. However, as already pointed out by Indesteege et al. this kind of attack is unlikely to be extended to more steps.

In this talk we discuss recent advances in the cryptanalysis of SHA-256. In particular, we will show how to find local collisions for SHA-256 (for more than 9 steps) by exploiting the nonlinearity of both the state update and message expansion, resulting in the best known collision attacks on reduced
SHA-256. To find such local collisions an automated tool to search for complex differential characteristics was used. Using this tool we show a collision attack on 28 steps of the hash function with practical complexity. Furthermore, by using a two-block approach we are able to turn a collision for the compression function into a collision for the hash function reduced to 31 steps with a complexity of about $2^{65.5}$. Finally, we present a collision for 38 steps of the compression function with practical complexity. We have verified all our attacks by providing practical examples whenever this was possible.

Some of the results will be presented at EUROCRYPT 2013.

## WG3 Seminar - Michael Mangold

19/03/2013
15:00 - 16:00
CIT 01.01

"Recent advances in parameter identification and optimal experimental design"

Michael Mangold
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical SystemsSandtorstrae 1, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany

Abstract

Virtually all mathematical models of chemical or biochemical processes contain unknown parameters that have to be identifi ed from experimental data. Parameter identi fication is therefore a central step during the development of mathematical models and a prerequisite for model based process control and process design.
Optimal experimental design (OED) in general tries to set experimental conditions that minimize uncer-tainties in the identi ed model parameter values, in the model structure, or in the model prediction. Onekey problem of OED is how to quantify these uncertainties. The most widely used approach employsthe Fisher information matrix. Although very efficient, this approach is based on a system linearisationand may give inaccurate results for nonlinear systems. The alternative to sample complete probabilitydistributions by Monte Carlo simulations is prohibitively expensive in most cases. Sigma point methodsmay be considered as a compromise between these two extremes, o ering higher accuracy than the Fisher information matrix while requiring less computation time than Monte Carlo methods.

The fi rst part of this presentation gives an overview on the application of sigma points to the solution of various problems in the area of OED. First, OED for parameter identi fication of a given model is considered [1]. It is shown that sigma points accurately predict the con fidence intervals of unknown parameters. Further the method can be used to compute global parameter sensitivities in connection with Sobol indices [2], or to compute and minimize confi dence intervals of the model states resulting from uncertainties in the model parameters [3]. Finally, application of sigma points to model discrimination problems [4] is discussed.
The second part of the presentation introduces a new method for parameter identification that is basedon inverse models and the system property of diff erential flatness. The treatment of noisy measurementsand the extension of the method to delay di fferential equations are discussed.

References

[1] R. Schenkendorf, A. Kremling, M. Mangold. Optimal experimental design with the sigma point method. IET Systems Biology, 3:10{23, 2009.
[2] R. Schenkendorf, M. Mangold. qualitative and quantitative optimal experimental design for parameter identi cation of a MAP kinase model In: Preprints of the 18th IFAC World Congress, pp. 11666{11671, 2011.
[3] R. Schenkendorf, A. Kremling, M. Mangold. Influence of non-linearity to the optimal experimental design demonstrated by a biological system. Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Dynamical Systems (accepted), 2012.
[4] R. Schenkendorf, M. Mangold. Optimal Experimental Design and Model Selection by a Sigma Point Approach.In: Proceedings MATHMOD2009 Vienna, 2009
[5] R. Schenkendorf, M. Mangold, U. Reichl. Parameter Identi cation Of Time-Delay Systems: A Flatness BasedApproach. In: Proceedings MATHMOD 2012 Vienna, 2012.

Biographical information
Michael Mangold
1993 Diplom-Ingenieur degree in Technical Cybernetics from the University of Stuttgart
2000 Ph.D. degree from the University of Stuttgarttitle of thesis: "Nonlinear Analysis and Technical Application of Circulating Reaction Fronts"
since 1998 member of Max Planck Institute Magdeburg2006 Habilitation at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburgtitle of thesis: "Computer Aided Modeling, Analysis and Control of MembraneReactors and Fuel Cells"
2011 adjunct professor (auerplanmaiger Professor) for System Dynamics at theFaculty for Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of Otto vonGuericke University Magdeburg

## Internal retreat

19/03/2013 - 20/03/2013
"De Jacht 500", Naamsesteenweg 581, 3001 Heverlee

Meeting for all people working directly with Prof. Moritz Diehl on simulation, optimization and control with explicit focus on applications such as High-Altitude Wind Power Generators. Each of the participants gives a presentation which is followed by more detailed discussions.

The program of this internal meeting can be found here.

## N. Trefethen: Numerical Computing with CHEBFUN and CHEBFUN2

13/03/2013
15:00 - 16:00
Celestijnenlaan 200A 00.225

"Numerical Computing with CHEBFUN and CHEBFUN2"

Nick Trefethen, Oxford University
Chebfun is a Matlab-based system for numerical computing with functions as opposed to just numbers.
This talk will describe and demonstrate Chebfun and also introduce the new extension to two dimensions
known as Chebfun2, developed by Alex Townsend (release date March 2013).

***************************************************************************
At the Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics division of K.U.Leuven, we welcome a special guest at the weekly seminar on March 13, 2013 at 13h.  Our guest for that day is Nick Trefethen,  professor of Numerical Analysis at Oxford and the former SIAM president. He will speak about "Numerical Computing with CHEBFUN and CHEBFUN2".

This seminar will be followed by a hands-on session that serves as a practical initiation to Chebfun, guided by lead developer Alex Townsend. To get a rough idea of the interest for this session, please contact Daan.Huybrechs@cs.kuleuven.be.

An overview of the seminar series, including a list of prospective dates and speakers, can be found on http://natw.cs.kuleuven.be

## SISTA Seminar - Marko Seslija

12/03/2013
14:00
ESAT 00.62

"Discrete Geometry Approach to Structure-Preserving Discretization of
Port-Hamiltonian Systems"

Marko Seslija (University of Groningen)

Abstract:
Computers have emerged as essential tools in the modern scientific
analysis and simulation-based design of complex physical systems. The
deeply-seated abstraction of continuity immanent to many physical
systems inherently clashes with a digital computer's ability of storing
and manipulating only finite sets of numbers. While there has been a
number of computational techniques that proposed discretizations of
differential equations, the geometric structures they model are often
lost in the process. In this talk, I will present a geometric framework
for the discretization of a class of physical systems (so-called
port-Hamiltonian systems) without destroying the underlying geometric
structure of the original system. The most important consequences of
such an approach are that many of the important results from
differential geometry can be transferred into the discrete realm and
thereby lead to numerically and physically faithful models.

## 19th Belgian Mathematical Programming Workshop

7/03/2013 - 8/03/2013
9:00 - 17:00
Floréal Club, avenue de Villez, 6 in La-Roche-en-Ardennes

"19th Belgian Mathematical Programming Workshop"
March 7-8, 2013.
Floréal Club, avenue de Villez, 6 in La-Roche-en-Ardennes.

Invited speakers:
Stan Van Hoesel (Maastricht University),
Marco Lübbecke (RWTH Aachen University)

Registration deadline: February 25, 2013

More details can be found on http://sites.uclouvain.be/BMPW/

## SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM ON NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE

7/03/2013
Novotel Hotel, Vuurkruisenlaan 4, Leuven, Belgium

You are kindly invited to participate in the SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM ON
NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE, THURSDAY, 7TH OF MARCH 2013, from 2:00PM until 5:30PM.

Location: Novotel Hotel, Vuurkruisenlaan 4, Leuven, Belgium.

More information you can find bellow or in the attached file.

ABSTRACT
In vivo Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Spectroscopic Imaging
(MRS(I)) are unique, indispensable techniques for non-invasive metabolic
imaging. Important areas where MRS(I) can make a difference are oncology
and neurology, where metabolic changes due to, e.g., tumour formation,
can be detected earlier and more sensitively than with morphological
imaging modalities alone. This symposium will introduce us to some of
the hottest topis regarding the acquisition, data preprocessing and
classification of MRS(I) data, as well as MR imaging quantification.

PROGRAM

14:00-14:35 Roland Kreis (Dept. Clinical Research and Radiology, Univ.
Bern): "MR spectroscopy investigations with and without water
suppression in brain, muscle and heart"

14:35-15:10 Johannes Slotboom (Dept. Radiology, Neuroradiology and
Nuclear Medicine, University of Bern, Switzerland): "Clinical Routine
MRS in the Neuroradiology"

15:10-15:45 Margarida Julià-Sapé (CIBER-BNN, Barcelona, Spain):
"Classification and decision-support systems for the analysis of brain
tumour MRS data"

15:45-16:15 COFFEE BREAK

16:15-16:50 Carole Frindel (CREATIS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon
I, France): "Computer vision tools for analysis and quantification of MR
images in the brain"

16:50-17:25 Dirk Loeckx (icoMetrix, Belgium): "Automatic image
registration and its role in multimodal image quantification"

## KU Leuven Seminars on Optimization in Engineering - Axel Busboom

5/03/2013
10:30 - 11:30
ESAT 00.62

"Controls at GE Global Research"

Dr. Axel Busboom
GE Munich

Abstract

The talk will provide an overview of GE Global Research, the corporate research organization of General Electric (GE), and particularly focus on research on controls. GE Global Research is over 100 years old and today is one of the world’s most diverse industrial labs. Algorithms for control, estimation and optimization are ubiquitous in products and systems as diverse as wind turbines, gas engines, locomotives, subsea oil and gas production facilities, or power converters. Systems theory and control is therefore an important and active area of applied research, with over 60 scientists working for GE Global Research in this space worldwide. The talk will give an overview of how controls research is organized at GE Global Research and show how technology transfer into the various GE businesses is achieved. Two example programs will be highlighted: 1. The “trip optimizer” program – a combined offline and real-time optimization software to maximize fuel efficiency of freight trains. 2. An overview of GE’s research on wind turbine controls, including model-based control, fault-tolerant control and farm-level control.

Bio

Axel Busboom received an M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University in 1994, and Dipl.-Ing. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Technology (RWTH) Aachen in 1995 and 1999, respectively. His background is in measurement and imaging systems, digital signal processing, and telecommunications. Axel Busboom held a number of technical and managerial positions in R&D at different organizations, including Ericsson Research (1999-2002) and the European Commission Joint Research Centre JRC (2005-2007).  He joined GE Global Research in Munich, Germany, in 2007, initially as Center-of-Excellence Leader for Instrumentation. Since April 2011 he has been leading the Controls and Embedded Systems Lab at GE Global Research.

## SecAppDev Course 2013

4/03/2013 - 8/03/2013
Faculty Club, Leuven

## "Nonsmooth optimization in machine learning"

4/03/2013
10:30 - 16:30
University of Liege

"Nonsmooth optimization in machine learning"

The workshop will take place in the academic room in the heart of the city. It will feature outstanding international speakers: Michael Jordan (UC Berkeley), Johan Suykens (KULeuven), and Francis Bach (ENS Paris/INRIA). The light format will allow for ample time of discussion and exchange throughout the day.

The workshop is sponsored by the FRFC project 'Nonsmooth manifold optimization" and by the IAP network "Dynamical Systems, Control and Optimization" DYSCO.

Registration is free but mandatory through the workshop website.

## KU Leuven Seminars on Optimization in Engineering - Maarten Breckpot

27/02/2013
15:00 - 16:00
ESAT 00.57

"Flood control with Model Predictive Control for river systems with water reservoirs"

Maarten Breckpot
KU Leuven, Electrical Engineering Department (ESAT-SCD)

Abstract:
Many control strategies can be found in literature for controlling river systems. One of these methods is Model Predictive Control (MPC) and it has already shown its efficiency for set-point control of reaches and irrigation channels. In this presentation we will show that MPC can also be used for flood control of river systems. The proposed controller uses the buffer capacity of water reservoirs in an optimal way when there is a risk of flooding and it recovers the used buffer capacity as fast as possible. The performance of the controller is tested on a river system consisting of multiple channels, gates and a water reservoir. The controller will be used in combination with a Kalman filter which estimates all the states of the river system based on a very limited number of measured water levels. It was observed that the influence of this estimator on the control performance was minimal.

## SISTA Seminar - Volkan Cevher

27/02/2013
11:00
ESAT AUD B

"Learning non-parametric basis independent models from point queries via low-rank methods"

Volkan Cevher (EPFL Lausanne)

Abstract: We consider the problem of learning multi-ridge functions of the form f(x) = g(Ax) from point evaluations of f. We assume that the function f is defined on an l2-ball in R{d}, g is twice continuously differentiable almost everywhere, and A in R{k x d} is a rank k matrix, where k is much greater than d. We propose a randomized, polynomial-complexity sampling scheme for estimating such functions. Our theoretical developments leverage recent techniques from low rank matrix recovery, which enables us to derive a polynomial time estimator of the function f along with uniform approximation guarantees. We prove that our scheme can also be applied for learning functions of the form: f(x) = \sum_{i=1}^{k} g_i(a_i^Tx), provided f satisfies certain smoothness conditions in a neighborhood around the origin. We also characterize the noise robustness of the scheme. Finally, we present numerical examples to illustrate the theoretical bounds in action.

## KU Leuven Seminars on Optimization in Engineering - Volkan Cevher

26/02/2013
15:00 - 15:45
ESAT 00.62

"Scalable quantum tomography via sparse projections onto the simplex"

Volkan Cevher,
Laboratory for Information and Inference Systems
EPFL Lausanne

Abstract

In this talk, we describe a scalable and accurate quantum tomography (QT) recovery framework with approximation guarantees. Our objective is to accurately recover a d x d complex positive semi-definite (PSD) matrix X with a known rank r from dimensionality reducing measurements as y=A(X)+e, where A is a subsampled Pauli operator, and e is some bounded perturbation.

The QT problem has three salient aspects that set it apart from the existing low-rank recovery problems:

1. Standard nuclear norm minimization approaches are not directly applicable in QT since X is a PSD density matrix and must have a trace of 1.

2. The Pauli measurement operator A in QT creates a major scalability bottleneck as the range of its adjoint is fully dense and the size of X is exponential in the number of quantum bits q (qubits): d=2^q.

3. The Pauli measurement operator A has the rank restricted isometry property (RIP) from O(rdlog^6d) measurements.

We show how to achieve provable QT recovery in linear space and quadratic time (in d) and computationally demonstrate 16-qubit recovery from 4rd Pauli measurements. To this end, we derive new sparse simplex projections, leverage randomized SVD’s, and propose a new online subspace reweighting technique. We also describe how our algorithmic developments apply to seemingly different problems, where convex relaxations of the sparsity and rank appear as constraints, such as measure learning, Markowitz portfolio optimization, and metric learning problems.

## BIOMED workshop Challenges in Biomonitoring

21/02/2013
14:00
ESAT 01.60

BIOMED workshop

Challenges in Biomonitoring

Thursday, February 21 2013, from 14h till 17h

PLACE:

KU Leuven, Department of Electrical Engineering, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, 3001 Leuven,  room 01.60

Programme:

14h00-14h30:  Prof. Qun Wan, Chengdu, China

14h30-14h50: Yipeng Liu, ESAT-SCD

14h50-15h00: Questions and Discussion

15h00-15h20:  Devy Widjaja, ESAT-SCD

15h20-15h40:  Tim Willemen, BMe and ESAT-SCD

15h40-15h50: Questions and Discussion

15h50-16h10: Coffee Break

16h10-16h30: Carolina Varon, ESAT-SCD

16h30-16h50: Milica Milosevic, ESAT-SCD

16h50-17h00: Questions and Discussion

## KU Leuven Seminars on Optimization in Engineering - Mathieu Claeys

20/02/2013
15:00 - 16:00
ESAT 00.62

"An introduction to the moment approach for optimal control"
Mathieu Claeys

This tutorial talk is devoted to the moment/sum-of-squares approach, which provides a general framework for global optimization of many problems, including optimal control.

In the first part of the talk, we will review the philosophy of the approach on the problem of global minimization of a polynomial function, for which the user-friendly GloptiPoly toolbox is readily available. The focus will therefore be on introducing the mathematical tools and the elegant transformations that are used behind the scene by the software: transformation of the original problem into a linear problem on measures, then manipulation of those measures by their moments to obtain tractable semi-definite relaxations.

The second part of the talk will show how to extend the approach for functional optimization problems such as optimal control. Measures arise quite naturally in this context, and the moment approach is therefore well suited to tackle those problems fruitfully. This will be shown on the two examples of bounded and impulsive control problems.

(slides)

## KU Leuven Seminars on Optimization in Engineering - Pierre Duysinx

20/02/2013
14:00 - 15:00
MTM 03.19 (Kasteelpark Arenberg 44, B-3001 Heverlee)

"Shape and topology optimization of structural components: formulations and efficient solution algorithms"

prof. Pierre Duysinx (Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, ULg)

ABSTRACT

To face the challenge of higher performance and better energy efficiency, engineers call for efficient and rational tools to handle large and complex design problems. Combining computer aided design and mathematical programming algorithms provides an efficient and rationale approach to engineering design. Structural optimization has been developed now for more than 30 years with a growing success. Leading edge research is still pushing ahead the frontiers trying to solve larger scale problems, more general formulations, including more physics.

Initiated by the pioneer work of Bendsøe and Kikuchi (1988), topology optimization is one of the most flexible and general approaches. The design problem is formulated as an optimum material distribution. Because of the bitmap description of the geometry, the formulation introduces a large number of design variables, so that a global performance function is generally preferred in the design problem statement. An interesting contribution consists in extending the scope of the minimum compliance problem to local design restrictions such as local material failure. We are also investigating strongly non-linear problems arising in MEMS design problems dominated by coupled electro mechanical behaviors.

More recently, the (topology) optimal material description has been challenged by the novel level set description of the geometry. This implicit description of boundaries enables a flexible description of the geometry allowing a certain modification of the topology but with a smoother description of the shape. The level set description is naturally combined with the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) to be able to relax the constraint of using conforming meshes, simplifying strongly the user interaction with the optimization process. The approach naturally enables a higher capability in handling various design constraints. For instance, level set description is applied to the shape optimization of flexible bodies subject to dynamics loading in complex multibody systems. Thus shape optimization using level set description provides a very nice complementary tool to topology optimization.

Finally a major characteristic of the research approach that is developed lies in the great attention paid to tailor efficient solution algorithms coping with the larger and larger scale optimization problems. The approach relies on the so-called sequential convex programming approach: the implicit and non-linear optimization problem is replaced by a sequence of explicit approximations. Then the convex sub-problems are solved by resorting to efficient math programming algorithms, in particular the dual maximization optimizer.

(slides)

## Forumavond "Engineering your health: utopie of realiteit?"

19/02/2013
18:30
Auditorium Arenbergkasteel

Hoewel niet altijd onderkend door de maatschappij, valt de bijdrage van vele ingenieurs tot de vooruitgang in de geneeskunde niet te onderschatten. De gebundelde krachten van de ingenieursfaculteit, de Faculteit Geneeskunde, IMEC en UZ Leuven zorgen zelf voor heel wat mooie voorbeelden en toepassingen op dit vlak. De bedoeling van deze forumavond is om een inzicht te geven in toekomstige technologische mogelijkheden en verwachtingen in de medische wereld, zowel vanuit het standpunt van de ingenieur als van de geneesheer.

De forumavond behandelt de complexiteit van ziektebehandeling en chirurgie en de rol die geneesheren en ingenieurs in het geheel spelen. Daarnaast wordt ook gesproken over de complexiteit van data- en signaalverwerking bij diagnose en behandeling van bepaalde ziektes en welke evoluties men mag verwachten in dit domein. Tot slot wordt een een toelichting gegeven rond de nieuwe discipline van synthetische biologie.

Daarna volgt een panelgesprek met alle sprekers om verder inzicht te krijgen in mogelijke spanningsvelden en oplossingen die de geneeskundigen en ingenieurs elkaar te bieden hebben.

Zeker en vast de moeite waard om te komen luisteren en kijken!

Volgende deskundige sprekers hebben hun medewerking verzekerd:

• Prof. Jan Goffin, dekaan van de Faculteit Geneeskunde, KU Leuven
• Prof. Bart Nuttin, Experimentele Neurochirurgie, UZ Leuven
• Prof. Sabine Van Huffel, Dept. Elektrotechiek - Faculteit Ingenieurswetenschappen, KU Leuven
• Prof. Bart De Moor, Wetenschappelijk directeur iMinds departement ' Future Health' , ESAT, KU Leuven

Start: 19.30 u., broodjes zijn voorzien vanaf 18.30 u. Na de forumavond is er gelegenheid tot napraten met de sprekers en de collega's tijdens een receptie.

## Ph.D. Defence Hirotaka Yoshida - Design and Analysis of Cryptographic Hash Functions

15/02/2013
17:00
Auditorium Kasteel, 01.07, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 3001 Heverlee

In our modern society, information and communication technology (ICT) is the basis for our daily lives. ICT covers anything that stores, retrieves, transmit or receive information electronically in a digital form. The Internet, Global System of Mobile (GSM) telecommunication, fiber-optic cables, wireless networks, supercomputers, and PCs are influential forms of ICT. The power of computers and communications has allowed systems using ICT to become important. In order for ICT systems to be reliable, security is a very relevant area for management to get right. To solve the security concerns, cryptographic applications can be used. Another important look at our society is that ubiquitous networking and computing have become reality in the course of just ten years. Lightweight devices such as mobile phones, IC cards, and RFID tags are being used at a large scale. Many things that one carries can even support a computation and communicationfunction. However, these lightweight devices have to cope with security problems. These problems in such devices have recently opened up an active research area called lightweight cryptography. The main challenge in this area is to design cryptographic primitives or protocols that should be implemented under restricted resources.Cryptographic hash functions play a very important role in the security of a wide variety of cryptographic applications. A cryptographic hash function is an algorithm that takes as input strings of arbitrary (typically very large) length and maps them to short output strings of fixed length. Since 2005, there has been substantial progress in cryptanalysis of widely-used hash functions such as MD5 and SHA-1. The SHA-2 hash function family was standardized by NIST in 2002. However, the SHA-2 design shares the same design principle of SHA-1, which might be considered a security concern. In response to the cryptanalysis of SHA-1, NIST started the SHA-3 competition in 2007. NIST selected 51 candidates to advance to the first round in 2008, and five SHA-3 finalists to advance to the final round in 2010. NIST finally selected Keccak as the winning algorithm in October 2012.

The research presented in this dissertation is closely related to the SHA-3 competition and to lightweight cryptography. Our first contribution is the design of two block cipher-based hash functions: the general purpose hash function Lesamnta and the lightweight hash function Lesamnta-LW. In the design of Lesamnta, the main question is whether we can design a new hash function that has advantages over SHA-2. We have tried to answer this question by designing Lesamnta that aims to offer clear arguments for a high security level and to achieve a high implementation flexibility on a broad range of platforms. Lesamnta was one of the first round candidates in the SHA-3 competition but it did not advance to the second round. In the design of Lesamnta-LW, we have tried to create a unique advantage over the previous lightweight primitives. As a result, it is software-oriented and mainly targeted to 8-bit processors while previous proposals are hardware-oriented.Our second contribution is a security analysis of hash functions. We have contributed actively to the security analysis of block-cipher based hash functions such as HAVAL, MAME, SHA-256, and Tiger. On the other hand, we have investigated the security of the second-round SHA-3 candidate Luffa. The main questions were how strong the diffusion layer is and how we can exploit the fact that no secret information is involved in the computation of a hash function. We have tried to answer to them by applying differential cryptanalysis with advanced optimization techniques to reduce the attack complexity. Our analysishas produced results which can be viewed as evidence for the security margin of these hash functions.

## COSIC seminar - For Some Eyes Only: Protecting Online Information Sharing - Filipe Beato (KU Leuven)

14/02/2013
14:00 - 15:00
ESAT 02.58

End-users have become accustomed to the ease with which online systems allow them to exchange messages, pictures, and other files with colleagues, friends, and family. This convenience, however, sometimes comes at the expense of having their data be viewed by a number of unauthorized parties, such as hackers, advertisement companies, other users, or governmental agencies.
A number of systems have been proposed to protect data shared online; yet these solutions typically just shift trust to another third party server, are platform specific (e.g., work for Facebook only), or fail to hide that confidential communication is taking place. In this paper, we present a novel system that enables users to exchange data over any web-based sharing platform, while both keeping the communicated data confidential and hiding from a casual observer that an exchange of confidential data is taking place. We provide a proof-of-concept implementation of our system in the form of a publicly available Firefox plugin, and demonstrate the viability of our approach through a performance evaluation.

## KU Leuven Seminars on Optimization in Engineering - Herman Bruyninckx

13/02/2013
14:00 - 15:00
ESAT 00.62

"Best and worst practices in component-based software for complex engineering systems"

Herman Bruyninckx
Department of Mechanical Engineering,PMA, KU Leuven.

Everywhere in the world, research is aiming at making robots more interactive (with humans but also with other robots or cognitive agents'') and, at the same time, equip them with more and more powerful mobile and redundant manipulation and process capabilities. To control such systems, ever more complex and efficient constraint optimization solvers are required. But none of the existing software infrastructures (in automation and industrial robotics, but also in academic research) is yet flexible and complete enough to support the wide variety of requirements: functional, running on all kinds of embedded and accelerated hardware, configurability, multi-vendor, interconnected to knowledge bases, etc. This presentation gives an overview of some ongoing work in this direction, starting from an annotated summary of best and worst practices that appear in the robotics software community over the last decade.

## MobCom: Annual Workshop

6/02/2013
9:30 - 18:30
iMinds, Zuiderpoort Office Park, Gaston Crommenlaan 8, B-9050 Gent-Ledeberg

## SISTA Seminar - Mustak Yalcin

6/02/2013
14:00
ESAT 01.60

Path Planning on Cellular Nonlinear Network using Active Wave Computing

Mustak E. Yalcin (Istanbul Technical University)

Active wave computing based algorithm for real-time robot navigation problem in dynamically changing environment has been already presented and tested in our previous works. A two- dimensional Cellular Neural/Nonlinear Network (CNN), consist of relaxation oscillators, has been used to generate the active wave in these works. In order to perform active wave computing based new algorithms, a practical network model (wave computer ) and its implementation are demanded. Therefore, in the first part of this talk, the wave computer and its implementation will be presented. In the second part, the algorithm to solve robot path finding problem using active wave computing techniques will be introduced. In order to improve the functionality of the active wave computing, novel techniques is required such as synchronization. In the third part of the talk, the Doppler Effect which provides a new qualification to the CNN-based wave computing techniques by putting the wave source’s motion into use will be introduced.

## Symposium 2013 Honorary doctorates

5/02/2013
10:00 - 18:00
Auditorium Arenberg Castle (morning) + Auditorium Thermotechnisch Instituut (afternoon)

Dear Colleague

We have the pleasure to invite you to the Symposium 2013 Honorary
doctorates 'brainstormers'  at ESAT- SCD-SISTA in honour of prof. Roska
and prof. Chua who are receiving a honorary doctorate on the occasion of
Patrons Saint day on February 4th at KU Leuven.

The symposium  will take place on Tuesday February 5th 2013.
http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~sistawww/eredoctoraat-brainstormers/index.php

Prof. Roska lecture entitled: Cellular Wave Computing for (artificial
and natural ) visual processing will take place in Auditorium Arenberg
Castle .

Prof. Chua lecture entitled: Memristor Hodgkin-Huxley , and Edge of
Chaos will take place in Auditorium Thermotechnisch Instituut .

A reception for all participants will follow in the Machinezaal
Thermotechnisch Instituut

If you would like to attend the lectures, please register on:

http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~sistawww/eredoctoraat-brainstormers/registration.php

We hope to welcome you on this unique special event.

Sincerely,

prof. dr. ir. Joos Vandewalle
Dept. Elektrotechniek, ESAT/SCD (SISTA)

## OPTEC Compact Course on Direct Multiple Shooting with YALMIP

30/01/2013
8:00 - 14:30
ESAT 02.53

OPTEC Compact Course on Direct Multiple Shooting with YALMIP

by Moritz Diehl, Rien Quirynen, Mario Zanon

Aim of this 6 hour course is to introduce PhD students with a
solid nonlinear and convex
optimization background to the field of continuous time
optimal control. The focus is on the direct Multiple Shooting (MS) method
of Bock and Plitt 1984 [Bock1984] in conjunction with
Sequential Convex Programming (SCP) [TranDinh2012b].

Main topic is the implementation of a
direct multiple shooting method in a MATLAB environment based
on the convex optimization solvers in YALMIP and fast integrators
from the ACADO Integrators Suite. Two application problems
are considered, a classical two state test example [Chen1998]
and a four state kite [Diehl2004f].

Course Schedule:

8:00 Lecture 1 by Moritz Diehl:
Convex Optimal Control and Sequential Convex Programming

8:30 Exercise 1:
Convex Optimal Control and Sequential Convex Programming

9:15 Lecture 2(a) by Mario Zanon:
The Classical Direct Multiple Shooting Method

9:45 Coffee Break in room 02.58

10:30 Lecture 2(b) by Rien Quirynen:
The ACADO Integrator Suite for Code Generated Integrators

11:00 Exercise 2:
Auto Generated Integrators, Direct Multiple Shooting, and SCP

12:00 Lunch break

13:00 Exercise 3:
Self Chosen Problems such as Non-Standard State and Parameter Estimation Problems, L1, Huber Penalty, Experimental Design, ...

14:00 Summary and Discussion of Preliminary Results

14:30 End

******

Solutions exercises:
Some MATLAB code for exercises 1 and 2 can be found here.

Course Registration:
Please fill in the following doodle for your registration and this as soon as possible.
http://www.doodle.com/tmik3arugg85abdu

## Data driven modeling for run-by-run process optimization

25/01/2013
13:00 - 17:00
Technologiepark 935, BE-9052 Zwijnaarde, Meeting room 1.16

Abstract:

In this workshop, we will give an overview of different techniques which have been developed in the framework of the POM2 project in order to maximize productivity of machines and minimize downtime. We will explain a step by step methodology for data driven modeling for run-by-run process optimization and apply it to a  wire processing application. We  have also invited an external speaker Fred Korpel,  Senior Process Research Engineer from Eastman Chemical Company who  will give a presentation about batch processing optimization in the chemical industry. Last but not least a poster session covering different related topics and techniques will be given combined with computer demos to show how these techniques can be practically deployed.

## SISTA Seminar - Samuel Xavier-de-Souza

24/01/2013
15:00
ESAT 00.62

"Scalable Global Optimization with Coupled Simulated Annealing"

Prof. Samuel Xavier de Souza (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte)

## SISTA newcomers introduction

23/01/2013
14:00
ESAT 02.58

* 14:00-15:30 : Short presentations by newcomers:

Joris Gillis, Rien Quirynen, Xin Wang, Marcus Gnoth, Arsin Gruenig, Sonja Rauski, Janick Frasch, Rodolfo Torrea Duran, Giuliano Bernardi, Aldona Niemiro-Sznajder, Amin Hassani, Vilen Jumutc, Xiaolin Huang, Gervasio Puertas, Raghvendra Mall, Lei Shi, Karen Vanderloock, Yang Liu, Wang Hui, Amir Hossein Ansari, Nicolas Sauwen, Diaz Verdugo Carmen, Guy Veraghtert

* 15:30-16:00 : Introduction to SISTA by Prof. Joos Vandewalle

* 16:00-18:30 : Reception organized by the newcomers

## COSIC seminar - Gone in 360 Seconds: Hijacking with Hitag2 - Roel Verdult (Radboud University Nijmegen)

18/01/2013
13:30 - 14:30
ESAT 00.62

An electronic vehicle immobilizer is an anti-theft device which prevents the engine of the vehicle from starting unless the corresponding transponder is present. Such a transponder is a passive RFID tag which is embedded in the car key and wirelessly authenticates to the vehicle. It prevents a perpetrator from hot-wiring the vehicle or starting the car by forcing the mechanical lock. Having such an immobilizer is required by law in several countries. Hitag2, introduced in 1996, is currently the most widely used transponder in the car immobilizer industry. It is used by at least 34 car makes and fitted in more than 200 different car models. Hitag2 uses a proprietary stream cipher with 48-bit keys for authentication and confidentiality. This article reveals several weaknesses in the design of the cipher and presents three practical attacks that recover the secret key using only wireless communication. The most serious attack recovers the secret key from a car in less than six minutes using ordinary hardware. This attack allows an adversary to bypass the cryptographic authentication, leaving only the mechanical key as safeguard. This is even more sensitive on vehicles where the physical key has been replaced by a keyless entry system based on Hitag2. During our experiments we managed to recover the secret key and start the engine of many vehicles from various makes using our transponder emulating device. These experiments also revealed several implementation weaknesses in the immobilizer units.

## Simon Stevin Lecture on Optimization in Engineering - Chih-Jen Lin

17/01/2013
16:00 - 17:30
Thermotechnical Institute, Auditorium van het 2de hoofdwet

25th Simon Stevin Lecture on Optimization in Engineering

"Optimization and machine learning "

Chih-Jen Lin
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering,National Taiwan University

poster, flyer

Abstract

Optimization plays an important role in many machine learning methods. However, the two areas have very different focuses. The gap has caused that, on the one hand, some machine learning tasks may not suitably use optimization techniques, and on the other hand, optimization researchers may wrongly consider irrelevant issues when applying their methodology to machine learning. In this talk I will discuss my experiences on kernel and linear classification. In particular, we discuss support vector machines (SVM), which involve some challenging  optimization problems. As a machine learning researcher with an optimization background, I will show lessons learned in the past and how we eventually construct some widely used machine learning software.

Biographical Information

Chih-Jen Lin is a distinguished professor at the department of computer science and information engineering at the National Taiwan University. He studied mathematics at the National Taiwan University where he obtained his Bachelor degree in 1993. He received his Master degree and his PhD from the department of industrial and operations engineering  of the University of Michigan in 1996 and 1998 respectively.  After some time as a research associate in Argonne national laboratory, in 1998 he became a professor at the  National Taiwan University, where he is now a distinguished professor. Chih-Jen Lin has received numerous other awards for his research and is, among other, a fellow of the IEEE.

Prof. Chih-Jen Lin will also give 2 tutorials on January 15th and 16th. see

"Support vector machines and kernel methods: status and challenges" (link)

"Large-scale Machine Learning in Distributed Environments" (link)

About the Lecture Series:

The "Simon Stevin Lecture Series on Optimization in Engineering" is set up in order to promote optimization in engineering. For this aim, every quarter of the year an outstanding international scholar is invited to report on latest progress in the development of optimization algorithms and their applications in engineering.
Simon Stevin (1548-1620) was a Flemish mathematician and engineer. Among other, he helped to advance the use of decimal fractions, was the first to explain the tides by the attraction of the moon, and discovered the hydrostatic paradox. He made numerous inventions, among them a wind propelled carriage with sails, the "land yacht", which once impressed Prince Maurice of Orange as it moved faster than horses, in around 1600 on the beach between Scheveningen and Petten. Simon Stevin was fond of promoting the use of science in daily life and in craftmanship, and translated various mathematical terms into dutch. Among other, he introduced the dutch word for mathematics, "wiskunde".

## KU Leuven Seminars on Optimization in Engineering - Chih-Jen Lin

16/01/2013
9:30 - 12:00
ESAT 00.62

"Large-scale Machine Learning in Distributed Environments"

Chih-Jen Lin
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering,National Taiwan University

Large-scale machine learning in distributed environments has emerged as an important research topic because data larger than a machine's capacity have become very common. We survey recent developments in this tutorial. First, we discuss when to and when not to apply distributed learning methods. Traditional machine learning algorithms focus on the computation, but we argue that in a distributed environment many other issues such as data locality must be taken into consideration. Second, we discuss distributed classification algorithms including linear and kernel Support Vector Machines (SVM), trees, and others. Third, we present approaches for distributed data clustering. Methods such as k-means, spectral clustering, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) will be covered. Through the discussion of classification and clustering methods, we also see the advantages/disadvantages of different distributed programming frameworks such as MapReduce and MPI. Finally, we briefly discuss future challenges to tackle large-scale data classification and clustering.

## KU Leuven Seminars on Optimization in Engineering - Chih-Jen Lin

15/01/2013
9:30 - 12:00
ESAT 00.62

"Support vector machines and kernel methods: status and challenges"

Chih-Jen Lin
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering,National Taiwan University

Support vector machines (SVM) and kernel methods are now important machine learning techniques. In this tutorial, we first introduce some basic concepts such as maximal margin, kernel mappings, and primal dual relationships. We then discuss the training by solving optimization problems and the practical use of SVM. Finally, we briefly mention some new research issues.

## 3C-based technologies to study the shape of the genome

14/01/2013
12:00
auditorium BMW5, Gasthuisberg

(SymBioSys PF - SISTA)

You are kindly invited to attend the following seminar:

“3C-­‐based technologies to study the shape of the genome”

By Wouter de Laat
Hubrecht Institute, The Netherlands
(http://www.hubrecht.eu/index.html)

Host: Prof. S. Aerts

## SISTA Seminar - Kristiaan Pelckmans

10/01/2013
11:00
ESAT 00.62

"Trading Recovery for Interpretability by Perturbing the Covariates"
Kristiaan Pelckmans (Uppsala University)

This work explores the effect of a heuristic to play up sparsity even further in traditional sparsity-promoting methods. The aim of this work is to provide interpretable solutions, even in cases where the experimental data does not satisfy the strong theoretical conditions (as RIP, null-space condition, etc.) which would guarantee recovery. A simple experiment is used to revisit some fundamental notions in the modern theory on compressed sensing. This work paves the way further to address problems of identifiability and robustness of modern data-driven methods for inferring interpretable models.

## COSIC seminar - Provable Security of Hash Functions - Reza Reyhanitabar (University of Wollongong, Australia)

4/01/2013
11:00 - 12:00
ESAT 00.62

In this seminar, after considering formalizations of different security notions for cryptographic hash functions and analysis of their relationships, we will proceed with reviewing three main categories of security proofs for hash functions: (1) provable security in idealized models, (2) provable security in the standard model, and (3) dual-model provable security. A hash function has dual-model provable security if it is simultaneously secure (in some specified sense such as collision resistance) in the standard model and provably pseudorandom oracle (PRO) in an idealized model. We will highlight several problems in regards to designing practical, provably secure hash functions.

Bio: Reza Reyhanitabar received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Wollongong (UOW) in Australia in 2010. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Computer and Information Security Research in UOW and a visiting fellow at COSIC in K.U. Leuven. His research interests are mainly in symmetric key cryptography with a focus on provable security of hash functions. He is a senior member of Australian Computer Society, and a member of Australian Information Security Association, Research Network for a Secure Australia, and IACR.

## Ph.D. Defence Dries Schellekens - Design and Analysis of Trusted Computing Platforms

4/01/2013
13:30
AUDITORIUM KASTEEL, 01.07, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 3001 Heverlee