Fall 2022 GRASP SFI: Ross Hatton, Oregon State University, “Snakes & Spiders, Robots & Geometry”

Room 307, Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

*This will be a HYBRID Event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and Virtual attendance via Zoom here… ABSTRACT Locomotion and perception are a common thread between robotics and biology. Understanding these phenomena at a mechanical level involves nonlinear dynamics and the coordination of many degrees of freedom. In this talk, I will discuss geometric approaches […]

Fall 2022 GRASP Seminar: Tomas Pajdla, Czech Technical University, “Solving Minimal Problems in the Age of Machine Learning”

Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom.   ABSTRACT I will discuss several our recent advances in understanding minimal problems in computer vision using numerical algebraic geometry tools, i.e., Homotopy continuation and monodromy, as well as machine learning. I will talk about our classification of minimal […]

MEAM Seminar: “Materials and Manufacturing Solutions for Sustainable Energy”

Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

In response to the grave and escalating threat of climate change, the US Department of Energy has announced a series of ambitious Energy Earth Shot Initiatives. These target an 80% reduction in the cost of clean hydrogen by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The first of the initiatives focuses on establishing a green […]

LRSM Special Lecture: “Pursuing a Scientific Career at a National Laboratory”

Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

If you are finishing your PhD or your postdoctoral tenure you may be asking yourself, What’s next? Should I pursue an academic career, as my thesis adviser or postdoctoral supervisor has done? Or should I look elsewhere, perhaps at industry, or government? These are great questions that most of us have asked ourselves at the […]

BE Seminar: “Studying the Neural basis of Natural Spatial, Social and Acoustic Behaviors – in Freely Behaving and Flying Bats” (Michael Yartsev, UC Berkeley)

Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid seminar that will take place in Glandt Forum (Singh Center) and via Zoom (check email for link and passcode). Our lab seeks to understand the neural basis of complex spatial, acoustic and social behaviors in mammals. To do so, we take a neuroethological approach that leverages the specialization of the bat […]

ASSET Seminar: What Transfers in Transfer Learning?, Eric Wong (University of Pennsylvania)

Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Abstract: Recently, the transfer learning paradigm has seen a surge of interest due to its impressive capabilities in vision and language. Models are pretrained on ever-growing datasets with enormous parameter counts, trending towards being monolithic and opaque. How can we understand the underlying process? This talk will provide, to some degree, insight on how data […]

Fall 2022 GRASP SFI: Sonia Chernova, Georgia Institute of Technology, “Semantic-Driven Robot Assistance and User Interaction”

Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Reliable operation in everyday human environments – homes, offices, and businesses – remains elusive for today’s robotic systems.  A key challenge is diversity, as no two homes or businesses are exactly alike.  However, despite the innumerable unique aspects […]