Fall 2023 GRASP SFI: Andy Zeng, Google DeepMind, “From words to actions”

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

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT The rise of recent Foundation models (and applications e.g. ChatGPT) offer an exciting glimpse into the capabilities of large deep networks trained on Internet-scale data. They hint at a possible blueprint for building generalist robot brains that can […]

CBE Seminar: “Statistical Teleodynamics: A Unified Theory of Emergent Arbitrage Equilibrium Phenomena in Active and Passive Matter” (Venkatasubramanian, Columbia University)

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

The physics of active matter, such as bacterial colonies and bird flocks, exhibiting interesting self-organizing dynamical behavior has gained considerable importance in recent years. Recent theoretical advances use techniques from hydrodynamics, kinetic theory, and non-equilibrium statistical physics. However, for biological agents, these don’t seem to recognize explicitly their critical feature, namely, the role of survival-driven […]

MSE Seminar: “Nanomaterials Enable Delivery of Genetic Material Without Transgene Integration in Mature Plants” University of California – Berkeley

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

Genetic engineering of plants is at the core of sustainability efforts, natural product synthesis, and agricultural crop engineering. The plant cell wall is a barrier that limits the ease and throughput with which exogenous biomolecules can be delivered to plants. Current delivery methods either suffer from host range limitations, low transformation efficiencies, tissue regenerability, tissue […]

BE Seminar: “Synthetic mucins: from new chemical routes to engineered cells” (Jessica R. Kramer, University of Utah)

216 Moore Building

Mucus is essential for life and serves as a barrier to hydrate, lubricate, and protect tissues. Mucin glycoproteins are the major component of mucus. There are 20+ mucin genes with variable expression patterns, splicing, and post-translational glycosylation that result in structures with discrete biochemical functions. Mucins play roles in infection, immunity, inflammation and cancer. Such […]

ASSET/IBI Symposium on Trustworthy AI for Health Care

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

Organizers: Rajeev Alur (Penn Engineering), John Holmes (PSOM), Insup Lee (Penn Engineering), Qi Long (PSOM), Marylyn Richie (PSOM) Event Description: Artificial intelligence and machine learning promise to revolutionize nearly every field, sifting through massive amounts of data to find insights that humans would miss, making faster and more accurate decisions and predictions as a result. Applying […]

MSE PhD Defense: “Highly Controlled Transition Metal and Transition Metal Oxide Nanocrystals for Enhanced Catalytic and Magnetic Properties” Daniel Rosen

LRSM Reading Room 3231 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA, United States

This work presents the precise synthesis, characterization, and property analysis of transition metal and transition metal oxide nanocrystals (NCs). Specifically, the interface between catalytic and magnetic properties is explored using precisely defined NCs. The methods of NC synthesis and characterizations are discussed including an in-depth discussion of Extended X-ray Absorption Fins Structure (EXAFS) based nanothermometry […]

Fall 2023 GRASP on Robotics: Al Rizzi, Boston Dynamics AI, “Developing Robots that are both Physically and Cognitively Capable”

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

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT Dr. Rizzi will provide an overview of the recently established Boston Dynamics AI Institute and its developing research efforts. This will include a discussion of the motivation for developing highly capable dynamic robots, a brief history of […]

PICS Colloquium: “Wind, Waves, and Wakes: Large Eddy Simulation of Full-Scale Offshore Wind Farms under Realistic Atmospheric and Oceanic Conditions”

PICS Conference Room 534 - A Wing , 5th Floor 3401 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Ambitious targets on aggressive timelines have been heralded for the development of offshore wind energy in the United States, especially in New Jersey with a target of 11 GW (nearly 2/3 of current generation) of offshore wind energy capacity by 2040. With these targets and timelines, immense effort is required to minimize risk (financial risk, […]

MEAM Seminar: “Bringing Microrobots into Biomedicine”

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

Recent progress in diverse disciplines such as soft matter physics, nanoparticle synthesis, nanomedicine, and microbiology has enabled rich opportunities for translation of small-scale robots into medical applications. These robotic systems are providing innovative, high-precision, therapeutic and diagnostic approaches for the treatment of diseases associated with microbial biofilms and are rapidly moving from proof-of-concept studies to […]

CIS Seminar: “An Alternative View on AI: Collaborative Learning, Incentives, and Social Welfare”

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

Artificial intelligence (AI) has focused on a paradigm in which intelligence inheres in a single, autonomous agent.  Social issues are entirely secondary in this paradigm.  When AI systems are deployed in social contexts, however, the overall design of such systems is often naive---a centralized entity provides services to passive agents and reaps the rewards.  Such […]