MEAM Seminar: “Magnetic Fluid Hyperthermia with Magnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles: A Case Study in Multi-disciplinary Translational Biomedical Research”

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

Magnetic nanoparticles that are responsive to clinically safe magnetic fields offer multi-modal nanomedicine capabilities. To succeed, complexities of physics and engineering must be addressed to match physical and magnetic properties of magnetic nanoparticles with devices used to activate them. This requires thoughtful design and fabrication of both nanoparticles and devices, with appropriate testing in relevant […]

CIS Seminar: “Edge-Weighted Online Bipartite Matching”

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

Online bipartite matching is one of the most fundamental problems in the online algorithms literature. Karp, Vazirani, and Vazirani (STOC 1990) gave an elegant algorithm for unweighted bipartite matching that achieves an optimal competitive ratio 1-1/e. Aggarwal et al. (SODA 2011) later generalized their algorithm and analysis to the vertex-weighted case. Little is known, however, […]

Fall 2023 GRASP Seminar: Vladimir Kucera, Czech Technical University, “Czech Technical University in Prague”

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

*This seminar will be held in-person ONLY in Levine 307. The seminar will NOT be recorded. ABSTRACT The talk aims to present the Czech Technical University in Prague as a polytechnic school with a rich history and a lively present. The main milestones of its development, current faculties and institutes, human and financial resources, study […]

ASSET Seminar: “What Constitutes a Good Explanation?” (Lyle Ungar, Penn)

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

ABSTRACT:  Shapley values and similar methods are widely used to explain the importance of features in model predictions. Clarity in the semantics of these feature importances is subtle, but crucial: What do these explanations actually mean? And how are they useful? We illustrate using explanations of predictions in three domains: (a) medical outcomes, (b) image […]

Fall 2023 GRASP SFI: Samuel Sokota, Carnegie Mellon University, “Reinforcement Learning in Two-Player Zero-Sum Games”

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 I’ll discuss reinforcement learning in two-player zero-sum games. Historically, this area has lacked algorithms that perform well in large settings with imperfect information. I’ll describe a resolution for making self-play RL performant.

CBE Seminar: Britton Chance Distinguished Lecture, “A Language Whose Characters are Triangles” (Phillips, California Institute of Technology)

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

One of the most intriguing outcomes of casting our thinking about the world around us in mathematical terms is that phenomena that were thought to be quite distinct are instead revealed as being the “same.” Thinkers as long ago as Pliny the Elder made observations on active matter noting: "It is a peculiarity of the […]

MEAM Seminar: “Rheological Evaluation of Complex Fluids for Fluid Mechanics Studies”

Towne 315 220 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Recent development of computational fluid mechanics allows to simulate wide range of fluid mechanics problems, but it requires appropriate constitutive equations and rheological properties to represent behavior of complex fluid flows. Standard torque-type rheometer, which is conventional rheometer with assuming ideal constant shear profiles in a thin test fluid layer, however, essential problems on the […]

MSE Seminar: “Turbo-charging Silicon: Do we have the materials and devices?” (Deep Jariwala) University of Pennsylvania

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

Silicon has been the dominant material for electronic computing for decades and very likely will stay dominant for the foreseeable future. However, it is well-known that Moore’s law that propelled Silicon into this dominant position is long dead.  Therefore, a fervent search for (i) new semiconductors that could directly replace silicon or (ii) new architectures […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “No Watts Wasted: Spines and Tails for Agile Legged Locomotion”

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

Despite considerable advancements in recent years, legged robots still fall short in terms of agility when compared to their animal counterparts. This thesis takes a two pronged approach to creating more agile behaviors by pursuing the intuition that agile legged machines should use much of their available power during agile behaviors. The first approach leverages […]

BE Seminar: “Synthetic Genome Regulation for Cell and Tissue Engineering” (Timothy Downing, UC Irvine)

216 Moore Building

Molecular heterogeneity is emerging as a critical feature of multicellular life. While single-cell analyses have revealed the existence of cell-to-cell variation in the levels and activities of the molecules responsible for gene regulation, the source of such variation is still poorly understood. The Downing Lab studies how genome replication contributes to epigenetic heterogeneity across stem cell populations. We recently developed a new sequencing method (Repli-Bisulfite Sequencing) that enables analysis of DNA methylation within newly replicated strands of DNA […]