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MEAM Seminar: “Nanocellulose Fibers as Reinforcement to Improve Strength and Toughness in Structural Materials”

Zoom - Email MEAM for Link peterlit@seas.upenn.edu

Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) are a naturally abundant polymer and have superior mechanical properties, high aspect ratios, are transparent and biodegradable, which make them attractive to be used in structural materials. As a reinforcing phase, CNFs have the potential to improve the mechanical properties of polymer materials. While there are active research efforts aimed at incorporating […]

ESE PhD Dissertation Defense: “Balancing Fit and Complexity in Learned Representations”

Thesis Title: Balancing Fit and Complexity in Learned Representations Abstract: This dissertation is about learning representations of functions while restricting complexity. In machine learning, maximizing the fit and minimizing the complexity are two conflicting objectives. Common approaches to this problem involve solving a regularized empirical minimization problem, with a complexity measure regularizer and a regularizing […]

MEAM MSE Thesis Defense: “Design and Characterization of an Origami-Inspired Robot that Swims via Jet Propulsion”

Zoom - Email MEAM for Link peterlit@seas.upenn.edu

Underwater swimmers present unique opportunities for using bodily reconfiguration for self-propulsion. Origami-inspired designs are low-cost, fast to fabricate, robust, and can be used to create compliant mechanisms useful in energy-efficient underwater locomotion. This thesis demonstrates an origami-inspired robot that can change its body shape to ingest and expel water, creating a jet that propels it […]

PSOC Webinar: Indrajit Tah & Chris Price

https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752

Join Zoom Meeting: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/99334915941?pwd=eDRXV1lITDlySXFyRHUyUzdmRldoQT09 Meeting ID: 993 3491 5941 Passcode: 189247 PSOC@Penn Summer Webinars 2021 Contact manu@seas.upenn.edu with any questions Indrajit Tah 12:00-12:30 PM Chris Price 12:30-1:00 PM

CBE PhD Dissertation Defense | “Structures Formed By Colloids at Curved Fluid Interfaces”

Zoom - Email CBE for link

Abstract:  Colloidal particles accumulate and organize at fluid interfaces via capillary interactions. We study pair interactions and structure formation around spherical particles with pinned contact lines. Particles attract to apparent contact and organize in near trapped structures that reflect the underlying curvature field. We have derived pair potentials to describe these interactions. The particles distort […]

MEAM Seminar: “A Methodology for Self-Replicating Robots from Ice”

Zoom - Email MEAM for Link peterlit@seas.upenn.edu

In the late 1940s, John von Neumann first introduced the concept of self-replication as a way of furthering cellular reproduction research. By the late ‘50s and ’60s this research diverges along two separate paths: cellular automata replication with a focus on biological systems and robotics/machine replication. Generally the work in robotic systems focuses on the […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “From Deployments of Elder Care Service Robots to the Design of Affordable Low-Complexity End-Effectors and Novel Manipulation Techniques”

Zoom - Email MEAM for Link peterlit@seas.upenn.edu

Older adults are forming a much larger percentage of the population leading to a strain in the healthcare sector. It is expected that the population aged 65 and over in the United States alone will double in the next 30 years, and similarly worldwide. Despite the abundance of facilities to accommodate the growing older adult […]

CBE PhD Dissertation Defense | “Bijels for Continuous Reactive Separation”

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Abstract:  Several chemical processes involve the use of mutually immiscible molecules, for example a water-soluble catalyst is used in combination with oil-soluble reagents to produce water soluble products. There are two possible strategies to run these processes. A mutual solvent can be used to promote mixing of the otherwise immiscible molecules; however, such a system […]

CBE PhD Dissertation Defense | “Diverse Roles of Nuclear Intermediate Filaments in Proliferating Cells”

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Abstract:  Embryonic tissues and cancer have in common the fact that they are both highly proliferative tissues rapidly moving through the cell cycle, as opposed to most other differentiated tissues in an adult. DNA damage can arrest some embryonic cells but genetic instability is a hallmark of cancer. This thesis studies the contrasting role of […]

MEAM PhD Thesis Defense: “Modular Robots Morphology Transformation and Task Execution”

Zoom - Email MEAM for Link peterlit@seas.upenn.edu

Self-reconfigurable modular robots are composed of a small set of modules with uniform docking interfaces. Different from conventional robots that are custom-built and optimized for specific tasks, modular robots are able to adapt to many different activities, and handle hardware and software failures by rearranging their components. This reconfiguration capability allows these systems to exist […]