Venue: National Che Kiang University Hall,  3rd floor, Campus Library, Zijingang CampusSpeaker: G. Thomas Goodnight, Professor of Communication, Annenberg School, University of Southern CaliforniaBiograghy:G. Thomas Goodnight served as Director of Doctoral Studies at the Annenberg School, USC, from 2003 to 2013.  During this time the program grew from 20 students in residence to over a 100. It became and remains a top ranked international communications program.  Goodnight also directed an outstanding doctoral program at Northwestern University, on faculty from 1975 through 2002.  He has advised over fifty doctoral candidates. He sits as a senior fellow for the Public Diplomacy Center at USC.  For the spring of 2017, he serves as a visiting scholar at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, the University of Pennsylvania. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Communication & Journalism, he met with communication faculty building a doctoral program at Católica University, Santiago Chile. Additionally, he has been a visiting scholar at Fudan and Meiji Universities.  In 2014 he received the NCA Distinguished Scholar Award, and in 2013, the Alta Argumentation Senior Scholar award. In 2006, the International Society for the Study of Argument accorded him recognition for lifetime contributions.  He has been named one of the top five scholars in the area of argumentation over the past fifty years.Dr. Goodnight’s research includes social, historical, linguistic, and network approaches to argumentation, rhetoric and communication. Specific topics for research, teaching, and project design include:  Rhetoric. Public Address & Political Economy. Studies in the Public Sphere. Rhetoric of Science. Biopolitics & Biomes. Argumentation and Network Pragmatics. Communication Philosophy, Aesthetics & Inquiry.  Critical Cosmopolitanism, IOs, NGOs and IDPs. Social Theory, Controversy, and Bubbles. New Institutional Theory & Discourse. Civic Engagement: Social Entrepreneurship & Activism.  Presently, Goodnight volunteers with the Good Steward Global Initiative.  Working with an interdisciplinary team, Goodnight brings to East Los Angeles USC’s Penny Harvest initiative. Goodnight research, advises, and teaches with colleagues from Sociology, Philosophy, Political Science, International Relations, Management, Anthropology and Public Health. This year and next his field work and collaborations take him to Uganda, Switzerland, Venice, Ontario, Chile and China as well as to numerous conferences across the states.  In the last year, he has directed dissertations on post-traumatic stress, autism, and neo-soul.

Venue: Room 205, Administrative Building, School of Medicine, Zijingang CampusSpeaker: Yishi Jin, Principal Investigator, Distinguished Professor, Neurobiology, University of California San Diego

Topic: Flexible Division and Unification Control Strategies for Resilience Enhancement in Networked MicrogridsTime: 14:00 p.m., Monday, Nov. 11thSpeaker: Mohammad Shahidehpour, Member of US National Academy of EngineeringVenue: Room 201, Electric Engineering Building Abstract: Networking a series of autonomous microgrids (MGs) is a strategic effort toward the resilience enhancement in extreme conditions. We consider flexible division and unification control strategies to help networked MGs prepare adequately for extreme events and adapt comprehensively to subsequent changing conditions, which enhance the system resilience. Networked MGs can switch between two distinct modes of division and unification by utilizing a sparse communication network without requiring any additional communication infrastructures or controllers. In division mode, each MG is regulated by its local master controller (MC) for active power sharing, which ensures that disruptions are handled effectively by local energy resources without utilizing those in adjacent MGs. Thus, any islanding or resynchronization of individual MGs would not introduce further disruptions to the remaining networked system. In unification mode, the remaining networked MGs, which are still functional, share all available energy resources and adapt to continuously changing operating conditions in order to respond to extreme events. The proposed control algorithm for devising a flexible networked MG system is a cost-effective scheme that can fully exploit the system operation flexibility corresponding to different operation stages for enhancing the resilience. The proposed control strategies are applied to a networked MG system and the performance is tested using time-domain PSCAD/EMTDC simulations.About the speaker:Dr. Mohammad Shahidehpour is a University Distinguished Professor, Bodine Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Director of the Robert W. Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). He has also been the Principal Investigator of $60M research grants and contracts on power system operation and control. His project on Perfect Power Systems has converted the entire IIT Campus to an islandable microgrid. His CSMART (Center for Smart Grid Applications, Research, and Technology) at IIT has promoted the smart grid cybersecurity research for managing the resilience of wireless networked communication and control systems in smart cities. His SPIKE initiative facilitated the design and the implementation of affordable microgrids in impoverished nations. He is the recipient of the 2009 honorary doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.  Dr. Shahidehpour was the recipient several technical awards including of the IEEE Burke Hayes Award for his research on hydrokinetics, IEEE/PES Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award, IEEE/PES Ramakumar Family Renewable Energy Excellence Award, IEEE/PES Douglas M. Staszesky Distribution Automation Award, and the Edison Electric Institute’s Power Engineering Educator Award. He has co-authored 6 books and 650 technical papers on electric power system operation and planning, and served as the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid.  Dr. Shahidehpour is a Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Speaker: Jianyu Yu, professor of Research Institute of Economics and Management, Southwestern University of Finance and EconomicsVenue: Room 418, School of Economics, Yuquan CampusAbstract: Agricultural cooperatives (coops) play an important role in coordinating production of different stakeholders along the agri-food production chain. However, empirical evidence in both developed and developing countries shows that coops are inefficient in providing quality and high-value added products. Question arises why coops still prevail in coordinating quality provision of retailers in the agri-food chain? In this paper, we develop a model to investigate the efficiency of contract and organizational arrangement when farmers' individual quality is not observed by the DS firm. We focus on two prevailing cases in agri-food sector: 1) DS firm directly deals with individual farmers based on a secret (non comitment) contract; 2) DS firm deals with farmers by contracting with a farmer-owned coop. Secret contracts create inefficiency (lower quality and lower quantity) because of the opportunistic behavior of DS firm; while coop may also entail inefficiency because the free-riding problem. We show how the DS firm can design a contract that corrects the free-riding distortion of a coop and achieves the efficiency when DS firm observe individual quality. This paper thus provides a new explanation on the positive role of coop in quality provision along agri-food chain.Introduction: Currently Jianyu Yu is a professor at the Research Institute of Economics and Management, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. she received her PhD at Toulouse School of Economics, France in 2009.  My research focuses on topics in industiral organization, with special insterest in the agricultural and food sector and agricultural policy. She has published several papers inEurpoean Review of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Retailing, Economics Letters.

Speaker: Kevin Tan Shyong Wei, Zhang Yongliang, Associate professor of Yong Loo School of Medicine, National University of SingaporeVenue: Room 701, Administrative Building, School of Medicine, Zijingang Campus

Speaker: Dr. Ilia DroujinineVenue: Conference Hall Room 245, CLSConvener: Prof. YU Luyang

Speaker: Prof. Rebecca E. Parales, University of California, DavisVenue: Conference Hall Room 245, CLSConvener: Prof. GAO Haichun

Speaker: Chris Bojke, professor of Health Economics, School of Medicine, University of LeedsVenue: Room 716, Administrative Building, School of Medicine, Zijingang Campus

Venue: Room 205, Administrative Building, School of Medicine, Zijingang CampusSpeaker: Prof. Dr. Nils Brose, Max Planck Insititute for Experimental Medicine