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ASSET Seminar: “Demystifying the Inner Workings of Language Models”

Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 414 3333 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, United States

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) power a rapidly-growing and increasingly impactful suite of AI technologies. However, due to their scale and complexity, we lack a fundamental scientific understanding of much of LLMs’ behavior, even when they are open source. The “black-box” nature of LMs not only complicates model debugging and evaluation, but also limits trust […]

Spring 2025 GRASP SFI: Qinghua Liu, Microsoft Research, “When Is Partially Observable Reinforcement Learning Not Scary?”

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 Partial observability is ubiquitous in Reinforcement Learning (RL) applications, where agents must make sequential decisions despite lacking complete information about the latent states of the controlled system. Partially observable RL is notoriously challenging in theory—well-known information-theoretic results […]

CBE & BE Seminar: “Targeting the Brain and Behavior to Probe the Dynamics of Aging” (Claire Bedbrook, Stanford University)

Wu & Chen Auditorium

Bio & Abstract: Claire Bedbrook is an engineer and neuroscientist working to extend lifespan by modulating the brain. Claire was trained in chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology with Professor Frances Arnold and Professor Viviana Gradinaru, where she engineered molecular tools […]

ESE Spring Seminar – “Quantum Simulation of Electronic Materials with a Superconducting Qubit Array”

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

Arrays of coupled superconducting qubits are a compelling platform for analog quantum simulations of solid-state matter and many-body physics. These devices natively emulate the Bose-Hubbard model while offering a high degree of control, fast operation rates, and site-resolved readout. We discuss recent experiments using a 4-by-4 array of transmon qubits. By adopting a parametric coupling […]

IDEAS/STAT Optimization Seminar: “Theoretical foundations for multi-agent learning”

Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 414 3333 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, United States

As learning algorithms become increasingly capable of acting autonomously, it is important to better understand the behavior that results from their interactions. For example, a pervasive challenge in multi-agent learning settings, which spans both theory and practice and dates back decades, has been the failure of convergence for iterative algorithms such as gradient descent. Accordingly, […]

CIS Seminar: “Learning Theoretic Foundations for Modern (Data) Science”

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

In this talk, I will explain how fundamental problems in computational learning theory are at the heart of modern problems in machine learning and scientific applications and how algorithmic insights in mathematically tractable models can inspire new solutions in a wide variety of domains. I will explore two directions. First, I will explore algorithmic foundations […]

GRASP Industry Talk: Honda Research Institute, “Working with Imperfect Prediction on Autonomous Vehicles”

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

This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom. This seminar will NOT be recorded. ABSTRACT State of the art prediction can fail catastrophically when operating outside of the training distribution. We show methods that can be used to reduce these failures. We then outline how […]

PICS Colloquium: Unraveling Internal Friction in a Coarse-Grained Protein Model

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

Understanding the dynamic behavior of complex biomolecules requires simplified models that not only make computations feasible but also reveal fundamental mechanisms. Coarse-graining (CG) achieves this by grouping atoms into beads, whose stochastic dynamics can be derived using the Mori-Zwanzig formalism, capturing both reversible and irreversible interactions. In liquid, the dissipative bead-bead interactions have so far […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Leveraging Impedance-Related Properties for Free Self-Sensing in Actuators for Compact Robots”

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

Robotic systems, particularly at small scales, require efficient actuation and sensing solutions that maintain compactness. We are interested in systems where sensing and actuation are seamlessly integrated, specifically using impedance-related properties—such as electrical resistance, induced electromotive force (emf), and inductance— for free self-sensing in actuators without additional sensors. We explore three main example applications: (1) […]

Spring 2025 GRASP Seminar: Sarah Keren, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, “Encouraging Autonomous Agents to Behave Nicely”

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

This will be an in-person event only with attendance in Levine 307. This seminar will NOT be recorded. ABSTRACT Autonomous AI agents are deployed in increasingly complex and uncertain environments where they must account for the presence of other agents while trying to achieve their own objectives. Moreover, such agents may require assistance from other […]