Spring 2023 Hybrid-Seminar Series Mondays 1.00-2.00 pm (EST) Towne 225 / Raisler Lounge “For Zoom link, please contact <manu@seas.upenn.edu>”
Many human health problems are associated with alteration of tissue mechanics and often require mechanical stimulation to promote the healing process. While it is now well established that the mechanics of the cellular microenvironment regulate various biological processes, most studies have focused only on the effect of stiffness, leaving other mechanical parameters such as viscoelasticity […]
Two-dimensional (2D) materials offer a rich platform for studying quantum phenomena, because their properties can be profoundly altered through heterostructure stacking and defect manipulation, while the resulting electronic and magnetic structure can be directly imaged via surface-sensitive probes. I will discuss several examples that highlight the remarkable potential of engineered two-dimensional (2D) materials for exploring […]
Please join Ruzena Bajcsy, Susan Davidson, Stephanie Weirich and Linh Phan for a panel discussion. Reception to Follow ABSTRACT: Women have always been part of computing at Penn, from the women who programmed the ENIAC, to the first woman faculty member, Ruzena Bajcsy, who arrived in 1972 as the CIS department was being formed, to […]
ABSTRACT: An important goal of the field sensorimotor robot learning is to do away with cumbersome expertise-intensive task specification, so that general-purpose robots of the future might learn large numbers of new skills. In this talk, I will discuss our recent work on algorithms that exploit goals as a versatile and accessible task specification interface. Goals might […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week's presenter will be in-person as well. ABSTRACT A key challenge to the widespread deployment of robotic manipulators is the need to ensure safety in arbitrary environments while generating new motion plans in real-time. This talk describes a […]
Structural materials that are damage tolerant, lightweight, multifunctional, and sustainable are highly desirable for many engineering applications. Such combinations of properties are often found in the biological world. Organisms from nature construct a variety of different biological structural materials for protection, predation, body support, camouflage, etc. Despite the fact that these materials are made from […]
This seminar will be held in person only; snacks will be provided. Immunomodulatory therapies have advanced to clinical trials over the past decade for the treatment of a range of diseases and disorders, from cancer to diabetes to transplant rejection. However, the efficacy of these therapies remains limited, as challenges associated with off-target drug toxicity, […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week's presenter will be in-person as well. ABSTRACT Robots are getting smarter at converting complex natural language commands describing household tasks into step-wise instructions. Yet, they fail to actually perform such tasks! A prominent explanation for these […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Berger Auditorium (Skirkanich Floor B) and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week's presenter will be in-person as well. ABSTRACT This talk will summarize key recent advances in autonomous surface and aerial mobility for Mars exploration, then discuss potential future missions and technology needs for Mars […]
The capability to predict high-Reynolds-number turbulent flows is essential for many natural and engineering flows such as external aerodynamics of wind turbines and aircraft wings, flow over the hull of marine vehicles, atmospheric boundary-layer flow over complex landscapes and cityscapes. However, due to extreme disparity of scales present in high-Reynolds-number wall-bounded turbulent flows, any attempt […]
The emerging field of soft robotics, which incorporates unconventional or compliant materials in autonomous systems, has simultaneously reshaped traditional robotics applications and introduced new use cases for robots. However, many useful classes of materials remain relatively unexplored, and furthermore, the vast majority of soft robotics research has targeted actuation and sensing, with power and control […]
Lately there has been much talk in universities and the public about "the great disengagement." As we emerge from the pandemic era, many students and instructors alike are experiencing a lack of energy and motivation, and we are seeking encounters in the classroom that are transformative, rather than simply transactional. In this talk, Daeyeon Lee […]
ABSTRACT: Many regression and classification procedures fit a function f(x;w) of predictor variables x to data 〖{x_i,y_i}〗_1^N based on some loss criterion L(y,f(x;w)). Often, regularization is applied to improve accuracy by placing a constraint P(w)≤t on the values of the parameters w, where P is a monotonic increasing function of the absolute values of the […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week's presenter will be in-person as well. ABSTRACT In this talk, I will describe the transition from a research-intensive PhD to a position at a teaching-focused undergraduate institution in the context of my own career trajectory. Key topics […]
Interfaces in heterostructures often exhibit emergent physical properties that are absent in the constituent layers. These heterostructures, together with their compatibility with nanofabrication, are promising for constructing functional quantum devices. I will illustrate the capability of such heterostructure engineering by taking two examples. I will first explain our discovery of a versatile method for synthesizing […]
The development of approaches to design and manufacture complex 3D functional mesoscopic structures in advanced materials is a topic of increasing research interest. Previous options in forming 3D mesostructures are, however, constrained by a narrow accessible range of materials or 3D geometries. In this talk, I will first introduce a versatile, mechanical approach to deterministically […]
ABSTRACT: The training data that modern machine learning models ingest has a major impact on these models’ performance (as well as failures). Yet, this impact tends to be neither fully appreciated nor understood at a fine-grained enough level. In this talk, we will discuss some of the key ways in which training data influences not […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week's presenter will be in-person as well. ABSTRACT Biological systems with deformable bodies exhibit remarkable abilities. However, compliant/soft robots still can not match the capabilities of their biological analogs in terms of adaptability, physical robustness, and autonomy partially […]
Wednesday, April 12, 2023 5:00 PM Wu and Chen Auditorium Anna Siefken Department of Energy Office of Technology Transitions President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act provided DOE billions of dollars to invest in and support large-scale demonstration and deployment of clean energy technologies over the next decade. These historic investments are intended […]
Critical elements such as rare-earth (RE) metals that are subject to supply risks and are incorporated in critical materials, play a central role in the function of these materials. They dictate the properties that control the function of critical materials, including both molecules and materials, used in a broad range of technologically important and energy […]
This seminar will be held in person in Glandt Forum; snacks will be served. "MAPing Principles and Applications to Endogenous Repair" Microporous annealed particle (MAP) scaffolds are materials composed of hydrogel microparticle (HMP) building blocks. Thus, rather than use polymers as the building block that form the hydrogel, we use particles. This makes MAP scaffolds […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week's presenter will be in-person as well. ABSTRACT Spatial perception —the robot’s ability to sense and understand the surrounding environment— is a key enabler for robot navigation, manipulation, and human-robot interaction. Recent advances in perception algorithms […]
For polymer composites, nanocomposites and polymer thin film systems, the local properties of polymers can be altered by the chemical and physical interactions with substrates and embedded particles over a length scales exceeding 100nm. The mechanisms and impact of confined polymers remains still an active area of research and debate. Here we will review methods […]
Launched in May 2021, the Future Leaders in Mechanobiology is a monthly seminar series featuring up-and-coming leaders in mechanobiology–PhD students and postdocs from a wide range of fields, backgrounds, and institutions. By providing an international stage to share one’s work and opportunities to interact with researchers at all career stages, we aim to create an inclusive and […]
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT: In this new era of deep learning, the emergent algorithmic reasoning capabilities of Transformer models have led to significant advancements in natural language processing, program synthesis, and theorem proving. Despite their widespread success, the underlying reasons for their efficacy and the nature of their internal representations remain elusive. In this talk, we take […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week's presenter will be in-person as well. ABSTRACT Robotics and manufacturing are intricately linked. Each new generation of robotic fabrication tools has transformed manufacturing, enabling greater complexity and customization of the world around us. With the recent developments […]
Macromolecular materials that are capable of selectively and efficiently localizing cells, factors, and/or drugs offer important approaches for mediating biological events and in the development of hybrid materials. We have employed a combination of biosynthetic tools, bioconjugation strategies, and biomimetic assembly to produce thermoresponsive (poly)peptides derived from sequences of resilin, elastin, and collagen. These materials […]
This seminar will be held in person in Glandt Forum; snacks will be served. "Opportunities and Support for the BME Research Community from NSF" The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports work in all fields of science and engineering, including biomedical engineering. That said, biomedical engineering researchers can face challenges in finding the right ‘home’ and […]
With the global population projected to reach 9.1 billion people by 2050 there is a need to develop highly efficient agricultural systems that can reliably maximize crop yield. Precision Agriculture (PA) systems enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) offer a potential solution through improvements in labor, resource, and time efficiency to improve agricultural output. […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week's presenter will be virtual. ABSTRACT A broad range of next-generation applications will be enabled by low-energy autonomous vehicles including insect-size flapping wing robots that can help with search and rescue, chip-size satellites that can explore […]
Spring 2023 Hybrid-Seminar Series Mondays 1.00-2.00 pm (EST) Towne 225 / Raisler Lounge “For Zoom link, please contact <manu@seas.upenn.edu>”
Wind turbines and wind farms present unique challenges—fluid mechanically—as they combine extremely high Reynolds numbers with additional time scales imposed by the rotation, and three-dimensional effects. This implies that resolved numerical solutions are too computationally expensive and investigations in conventional wind tunnels are impossible due to the flow speeds and rotational rates needed in order […]
Abstract: Scientific discoveries, fueled by data collected during the course of care, are promising to radically change how we think about health, disease, prevention and treatment. However, the very systems that are responsible for this tsunami of data are crippling many aspects of the care delivery system. In particular, the burden of documentation, the challenges […]
Abstract: Digital biomaterials are designed through an integrated approach of large-scale computational modeling, material informatics, and artificial intelligence/machine learning to optimize and leverage novel smart material manufacturing for advanced mechanical properties. Through the use of nanotechnology and additive manufacturing, and bio-inspired methods, we can now mimic and improve upon natural processes by which materials evolve, […]
