Lecture Series

Lecture 60: Iranian Culture: Its Sense and Sensibilities in a Post-modern World

When: Thursday April 11, 2013 – 7:30 PM
Where: Montgomery Community College (Rockville Campus) – Humanity Building (HU), Conference Room 009 (Get Directions, Campus Map )

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Speaker: Dr. Hossein Seif Zadeh, PhD
Language: Farsi

Synopsis:

Concerned with the diminishing social cohesion in Iranian social life, Professor Seifzadeh will de-construct some of the key tendencies of Iranian culture in three domains of mind, social context, and behavior. Dr. Seifzadeh will provide an analysis of our existential social psyche in a nation long in history and cultural influences. The main question, thus, becomes whether or not as a thriving community, we –as Iranians-are able to reconcile the cosmopolitan demands of a post-modern era and globalization with that which is uniquely Iranian.

About the Speaker:

Professor Seifzadeh has accomplished his Ph.D. at University of California-Santa Barbara. His post-doctorate was at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, at Harvard University, where he served twice as a research fellow and twice at the Middle Institute in DC. He has more than 200 articles in Persian and English, in addition to 22 published books. 3 books over Iranian foreign policy plus 1 on an “Iranian approach to theory-building” is under review for getting permit for publishing in Iran. He has attended many conferences around the world, and now is a part-time lecturer of politics at Montgomery college-Rockville.

Fee (including dinner): $5 Students, $15 Public

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Lecture 59: Diabesity: Where is our modern lifestyle taking us?

When: Thursday March 14, 2013 – 7:30 PM
Where: Montgomery Community College (Rockville Campus) – Humanity Building (HU), Conference Room 009 (Get Directions, Campus Map )

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Speaker: Arash Etemadi, MD, PhD

Synopsis:

Obesity is a rising modern pandemic: today more than one-third of the American adults are obese, and another third are overweight. While the rising trends in the prevalence of obesity seem to have reached a plateau in the US and some European countries, many developing countries are still experiencing a surge. The rise in the prevalence of childhood obesity has probably been faster, with the rates almost tripling in the US since 1980, and reaching 16.9% among children and adolescents in 2010. In the year 2010, almost 43 million preschool children were obese, and almost 80% of them lived in developing countries. Obesity, directly or indirectly, is responsible for a large proportion of the leading causes of preventable death including heart disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer. Obesity and diabetes are very closely related as parts of a spectrum called “the metabolic syndrome”, and thus are sometimes referred to as “diabesity”. This presentation reviews the epidemiology of “diabesity”, its complications and prevention, from a public health perspective.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Arash Etemadi is currently a visiting fellow at National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH. He has received his MD, MPH and PhD in epidemiology from Tehran University. After his PhD, he did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Maastricht (Netherlands), and then was appointed as Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Tehran University. In 2010 he joined the National Cancer Institute to work on esophageal cancer studies. Dr. Etemadi has served as an editor for several biomedical journals, and has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles mainly focusing on obesity, diabetes and cancer.

Fee (including dinner): $5 Students, $15 Public

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Lecture 58: Modeling & Control of Complex Dynamical Systems with Neural Networks

When: Thursday Feb 21, 2013 – 7:30 PM
Attention: This month’s lecture will be held on the 3rd Thursday of February since the Valentine’s Day falls on Feb 14th.
Where: Montgomery Community College (Rockville Campus) – Humanity Building (HU), Conference Room 009 (Get Directions, Campus Map )

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Speaker:Reza Jafari, PhD
Reza Jafari

Synopsis:

In the last two decades, more attention has been given to Neural Networks and their applications. The ability of Neural Networks to solve complex problems in control, system identification, signal processing, communication, pattern recognition, etc. is well understood. Feed-forward Neural Network with feed-back connections is called Recurrent Neural Network. Recurrent Neural Networks are more powerful than feed-forward networks because of internal feed-back connections; this comes at the expense of more difficult training and the potential for instabilities. It has become more and more important to have efficient methods for determining the stability of Recurrent Neural Networks. The main contribution of this research is to develop improved methods for determining the stability of Recurrent Neural Networks.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Reza Jafari is currently the faculty member of Electrical Engineering Technology at ECPI University, Northern Virginia. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and second MS in Applied Mathematics both from the Oklahoma State University. He received his first MS degree in Mechatronics from the American University of Sharjah. He received his BS degree from Tehran University in 2001. He was the reviewer for different Journal papers for publication in IEEE transactions. His area of research is focused on Recurrent Neural Networks for system identification & control.

Fee (including dinner): $5 Students, $15 Public

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