Lolita Jackson, Eng ’89, has had distinguished careers in both finance and government. She currently serves as Special Advisor for Climate Policy & Programs in the NYC Mayor’s office and is also lead for the administration regarding global work on divestment and climate finance. In this talk she will describe how climate science has informed […]
Soft elastic solids, such as elastomers and hydrogels, are used in many practical applications ranging from adhesives to biocompatible scaffolds for tissue engineering. Biological cells and tissues have very similar mechanical properties as those of soft materials. Such solids undergo large deformations and can respond to forces such as interfacial tension, gravity, and residual stresses […]
Complex oxides are fascinating material systems exhibiting a diverse set of electrical, magnetic, and thermal properties. In particular, ferroelectric oxides with an electrically switchable polarization and large dielectric and piezoelectric responses are considered as critical components for next-generation low-power logic devices, non-volatile memories, and nanoscale sensors and actuators, etc. Recent advances in thin-film synthesis techniques […]
The efficient use of electrical energy is a foundation of modern society. Power electronics is at the core of electrical energy conversion and greatly impacts a system’s size, performance, and cost. High-performance miniaturized power electronics can be a key enabling technology for many emerging applications, such as electric vehicles (EV), medical devices, and soft- and […]
Record-keeping has long played a critical role in society, from governing property ownership to establishing historical "truth". Today, our dependence on digital records is becoming absolute, from our personal wealth, commerce, and identities to sources of knowledge and news. This has elevated the importance of three competing dimensions: Who has control over how records are […]
Following Remarks by Penn President Amy Gutmann there will be a panel featuring: Andrea Mitchell - Chief Washington Correspondent and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent NBC News Jamil Smith - Emmy Award Winning Producer and Senior Writer Rolling Stone David Freedlander - Journalist and Author of The AOC Generation: How Millenials are Seizing Power and Rewriting […]
Coupled with powerful function approximators such as deep neural networks, reinforcement learning (RL) achieves tremendous empirical successes. However, its theoretical understandings lag behind. In particular, it remains unclear how to provably attain the optimal policy with a finite regret or sample complexity. In this talk, we will present the two sides of the same coin, […]
Physical Sciences in Oncology Center (PSOC@Penn) Spring 2021 Webinar Series. For webinar link, contact manu@seas.upenn.edu.
Abstract: Perceptions of digital technology have grown increasingly cynical over the last decade, fueled by crises from the Snowden leaks to Cambridge Analytica to disinformation campaigns. Critical thinking about who is accommodated and who is excluded by mainstream technology is crucial for living up to promises of technology as empowering, but what do these reflections […]
