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 […]

PRECISE Seminar: What can we learn about AI and data science from the vision field?

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

Abstract Remarkable advances in imaging, computation, and technology are rapidly moving us into an era where biomedical knowledge discovery is increasingly limited only by creativity. This has resulted in unprecedented opportunities to improve the diagnosis and treatment of disease. The vision field has been at the forefront of these advances in AI for healthcare because of the easy accessibility […]

Fall 2023 GRASP on Robotics: Seth Hutchinson, Georgia Institute of Technology, “Model-Based Methods in Today’s Data-Driven Robotics Landscape”

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 Data-driven machine learning methods are making advances in many long-standing problems in robotics, including grasping, legged locomotion, perception, and more. There are, however, robotics applications for which data-driven methods are less effective, and sometime inappropriate. Data acquisition […]

ESE Fall Seminar – “Stochastic Geometry for Networks”

Berger Auditorium (Room 13), Skirkanich Hall 210 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Stochastic geometry is a branch of probability theory that deals with the study of random spatial patterns. Random point patterns, termed point processes, are the most basic such objects that appear in numerous applications. After presenting a brief introduction to point processes, we will present our work on the stochastic modeling and analysis of wireless […]

ESE PhD Thesis Defense: “Learning, Privacy, and Reliable Communication in Large Data Networks”

Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This thesis explores advancements in three distinct domains: communications, privacy, and machine learning. Within the realm of communication, a comprehensive study is conducted on channel coding at low capacity, a critical aspect of Internet of Things (IoT) technology requiring reliable transmission over channels with minimal capacity. Despite existing finite-length analyses yielding inaccurate predictions and current […]