Arpi Mardirossian

In the ISE 530: Introduction to Operations Research course that I teach at USC, the students recently completed class projects. They all did a fantastic job! Take a look at their presentations:

Team Masters of Blackjack discovered a method for playing blackjack that would dramatically improve winnings when playing blackjack. The method consists of following existing guidelines or cheat sheets, always starting with a minimum required bet, and doubling the next bet after a loss. Click here to view their presentation.

Team Innovative Slackers developed an application to help with making the decision of buying verses leasing a car. Their approach incorporates not only financial considerations, but also vehicle and lifestyle preferences. Click here to view their presentation.

Team Four Constraints did a case study of a local Coffee Bean to determine whether the number of staff members employed was optimal. They discovered that Coffee Bean was over staffing and they could, in certain shifts, reduce their workforce in half! Click here to view their presentation.

Team Crime Alert studied the archives of crime reports for USC and the surrounding areas in order to predict the hot spots for future crime. They discovered three distinct areas with a high crime rate and determined which one of these areas is most likely to have a high rate of crime. Click here to view their presentation.

Team Lords of OR studied the movie recommendation algorithm used by Netflix and proposed a new, improved algorithm that incorporates collaborative filtering with a content-based approach. Click here to view their presentation.

Team Fantastic Four designed a new and improved shuttle bus system for the USC campus. They determined the optimal number and locations of shuttle stops, routes and schedule. Click here to view their presentation.

Team Workers Union optimized the process of worker wage determination. They clustered workers into groups and dynamically offered each group different wages based worker group desirability and on demand for work. Click here to view their presentation.

I am proud to announce the launch of the Freddie Katz site (designed and developed in collaboration with Tocarte). Freddie Katz is a NYC based producer/sound engineer/axe slinger!

On 06.24.2010 and 06.25.2010 we shot video footage for the music visualization application at the Zemeckis Center. We got some excellent footage (I will post some samples soon) and had fun working with all the wonderful dancers.

Music visualization can be successfully used to dramatically enhance the music listening experience by providing a visual pairing that presents aesthetically pleasing imagery, reinforces emotions and moods evoked by the music, and reveals information about the features and structure of the music. The most basic and instinctive visualization of music is dance. Dance is defined as: “moving rhythmically to music, using prescribed or improvised steps and gestures”. I am currently developing my vision of a dance based music visualization for Classical KUSC.

This visualization application will dynamically synchronize stylized dances (dancer silhouettes on a variety of backgrounds) to music to create the effect that a dancer is dancing to the user’s music selection. We have recorded video footage against a green screen of professional dancers in a variety of dance styles including hip hop, break dancing, classical Indian, Brazilian, salsa, African and bollywood. For each dancer, we have recorded a set of dance sequences of varying lengths. These sequences will be chained together in different combinations to create a variety of dances. These dances can potentially be paired with any piece of music. A dance will be synchronized to a piece of music by compressing and contracting portions of the video to align the underlying beats of the dance to that of the music.

I have the pleasure to be working with some brilliant and dedicated USC collaborators:
Michael Annetta (grad student – MFA in Interactive Media)
Ravi Nitin Balajee (grad student – MS in Electrical Engineering)
Elaine Chew (faculty member – Industrial and Systems Engineering)
Andreas Kratky (faculty member – School of Cinematic Arts)
James Taylor (grad student – MFA in Interactive Media)

I have been working with Tocarte on the development of a high performance annotation solution that makes images more discoverable and connected. The system also helps optimize both productivity and accuracy of crowd-sourced workers. It goes beyond simple free-text tags and associates strong IDs to unique, well-defined concepts and metadata.

I am very proud to announce the launch of the Children’s Music Fund site (designed and developed in collaboration with Tocarte). Children’s Music Fund is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide musical instruments and music therapy to children, adolescents, and young adults with chronic and life altering illnesses, and to support research on the effects of music therapy.

I am proud to announce the launch of the Leah Ellenberg Ph.D. and Associates site which I designed and developed. Leah Ellenberg Ph.D. and Associates is a Clinical Neuropsychology practice offering comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations and consultation for children, adolescents and adults.