BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “Quantitative Informatics Approaches to Characterize and Predict Childhood Genetic Epilepsies” (Peter Galer)

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

The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania along with Drs. Brian Litt and Ingo Helbig proudly announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Peter Galer. Title: Quantitative Informatics Approaches to Characterize and Predict Childhood Genetic Epilepsies Date: Wednesday September 18 Time: 1:00pm Location: Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology Advisors: Dr. Brian Litt & Dr. […]

Fall 2024 GRASP SFI: Dian Wang, Northeastern University, “Equivariant Learning for Robotic Manipulation”

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

This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT Despite recent advances in machine learning for robotics, current approaches often lack sample efficiency, posing a significant challenge due to the enormous time consumption to collect real-robot data. In this talk, I will present our innovative methods […]

CBE Seminar: “Autonomous Soft and Colloidal Matter Fueled by Chemical Reactions” (Taylor Woehl, University of Maryland)

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

Abstract: Biological systems utilize networks of biochemical reactions to drive autonomous and dynamic processes. Examples include the dynamic polymerization of microtubules and the dynamic min protein system in E. Coli. In contrast, synthetic soft and colloidal matter generally requires active stimulation to undergo reconfiguration, such as application of external fields or manual changes in solution […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Contacts with Dynamically Tunable Adhesion and Friction via Active Materials with Thermally Modulated Stiffness”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Contact interactions, including adhesion and friction, are critical to the design of many engineered systems. Currently, most systems rely on materials with static mechanical properties, requiring careful selection of materials to realize effective systems for specialized tasks. However, with advances in smart materials, system design is no longer limited to materials with static properties. There […]

MSE Seminar: “Materials, Mechanics, and Performance of Flexible Polymeric Actuators in Robotics” (Sameh Tawfick – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

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

My group is developing a roadmap for soft actuating materials to replace bulky electric motors in miniature robots requiring large mechanical work output. First, I will describe the materials microstructure and mechanics of polymeric coiled muscles made by twisting nylon fishing lines, and how these actuators use internal strain energy to achieve a “record breaking” performance. Then I […]

CIS Seminar: “Learning Controllers for multi-robot Teams”

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

We have recently demonstrated the possibility of learning controllers that are zero-shot transferable to groups of real quadrotors via large-scale, multi-agent, end-to-end reinforcement learning. We train policies parameterized by neural networks that can control individual drones in a group in a fully decentralized manner. Our policies, trained in simulated environments with realistic quadrotor physics, demonstrate […]

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “Extracting Insights From Electronic Health Records Using Optimized Large Language Models” (Kevin Xie)

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

The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Brian Litt are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Kevin Xie. Title: Extracting Insights From Electronic Health Records Using Optimized Large Language Models Date: September 20th, 2024 Time: 9:00 AM Location: Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology Advisor: Dr. Brian Litt Zoom […]

GRASP Industry Talk: Amazon Robotics – Scanless Technologies, “Amazon Robotics Tech Talk”

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

This will be an in-person event only with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen. This seminar will not be recorded or available on Zoom. Amazon Robotics Tech Talk & Networking Event   Amazon Robotics’ Scanless Technologies Team is excited to invite you to join us for a Tech Talk presentation followed by a Networking Event on Friday, 9/20 starting at 10:30am in Wu & Chen […]

ASSET & Warren Center Research Mixer

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

The ASSET and Warren Center will be hosting a research mixer to welcome new PhD students and expose new and current students to the wide range of research in Penn Engineering in AI/ML. The program will consist of (short) faculty talks, poster presentations by students/postdocs, and a reception to end the night!

PICS Colloquium: Motion-based rules and solitary waves: ameloblasts and birds

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

Information is usually expected to propagate across a population of active agents such as living cells or birds in a diffusive manner. Yet waviness in the microstructure of dental enamel implies coherent wave motion among the generative ameloblast cells over exceptionally long periods, from a week in the mouse to months in the human; and […]