Abstract: A Jupyter notebook, a preprint from arXiv, and a Stack Overflow code snippet. What do they all have in common? All convey complex ideas from a writer to an audience. However, the tools to create and read them have not kept pace with the complexity of their contents. What would it look like if […]
Abstract: Deep learning has shown promising results in robotics, but we are still far from having intelligent systems that can operate in the unstructured settings of the real world, where disturbances, variations, and unobserved factors lead to a dynamic environment. In the first part of the talk, I will show that model-based deep RL can […]
Join us as we host an open discussion on masculinity in different cultural contexts and the intersections of race, religion and other factors which influence how we view, interpret, and navigate masculinity. This is the first of four conversations in our ongoing discussion series for the Spring Semester. All gender identities welcome. The event is […]
Synthetic composite structures, known as metamaterials, have been increasingly applied in the past two decades in numerous applications for obtaining electromagnetic characteristics far beyond naturally occurring materials. In particular, epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) media are a special category of metamaterials which have been shown to exhibit exotic wave-matter interaction properties, rendering them suitable for numerous applications. Exploiting […]
This event will be held virtually via Zoom (check email or contact ksas@seas.upenn.edu). Two major challenges to the translation of cellular-based tissue-engineered therapies are the lack of adequate oxygen support post-implantation and the need for systemic immunosuppression to halt the strong inflammatory and immunological response of the host. As such, strategies that aim at addressing […]
Abstracts: Current hardware and software systems were conceived at a time when we had scarce compute and memory resources, limited quantity of data and users, and easy hardware performance scaling due to Moore's Law. These assumptions are not true today. Today, emerging web services require data centers that scale to hundreds of thousands of servers, […]
Abstract: Robot planning is needed for robots to perform purposeful missions in their environments. In realistic situations, planning does not simply involve getting to a desired destination without collisions, but often requires achieving a desired goal configuration in an optimal or near-optimal fashion. Common optimality criteria include minimum distance, minimum time, and minimum energy. To […]
While there exist a number of mechanically sophisticated exoskeletons, prostheses, and assistive robots, with articulations similar to those of the intact human arm and hand, these devices remain limited in their ability to augment human dexterity and safely interact with human users and collaborators. In particular, due to the limits of conventional sensing, robots remain […]
Please join us on February 19th at noon EST for a conversation with Stacey Abrams, moderated by Benjamin Todd Jealous and with remarks from President Amy Gutmann. The event is sponsored by the Annenberg School for Communication, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Paideia Program, and the Penn Provost's Office. Register Here. If […]
Abstract: We will describe two separate but related methodologies that have been implemented in the open source, finite element code ASPECT, which computational geophysicists use to model a wide variety of problems that arise in Earth and Planetary geophysics. The first technique is a volume-of-fluid (VOF) interface tracking algorithm that was originally designed to model […]
