ESE Spring Seminar – “From Exact Laws to Design Principles of Quantum Information Machines”

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

Many-body quantum systems are the most powerful computers allowed by Nature. How do they work? Can we control them? Are they useful? In this talk, I discuss how recent results in quantum information theory translate into quantum engineering solutions. I introduce a geometric information measure that rigorously evaluates the difference between two complex configurations of arbitrarily […]

BE Seminar: “Engineered Systems for Controlling Cellular Microenvironments: From Synthetic Extracellular Matrices to Multidimensional Disease Models” (April M. Kloxin)

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

This seminar will be held in person and via zoom - check email for link. The properties of the microenvironment in which cells reside, from structure to mechanics and biochemical content, increasingly are recognized as important drivers of cell function and fate, including in the onset and progression of disease (e.g., late cancer recurrence and […]

GRASP on Robotics: Kevin Lynch, Northwestern University, “Robot manipulation research in the Center for Robotics and Biosystems”

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

*This seminar will be held in-person in Wu and Chen Auditorium as well as virtually via Zoom. Research at the Center for Robotics and Biosystems at Northwestern University encompasses bio-inspiration, neuromechanics, human-machine systems, and swarm robotics, among other topics.  In this talk I will give an overview of some of our recent work, with a particular […]

PICS Colloquium: “Preserving microscale features in continuum models of fiber network materials”

Zoom - email kathom@seas.upenn.edu

Fiber networks at different length scales represent a prevalent microstructure of highly deformable materials and biological matter. At the microscale, these fiber networks are key for the function of biological systems, while at the macroscale they endow materials with striking characteristics, such as unusual kinematic behavior and high defect tolerance. Resolving the microstructure in discrete […]

GRASP Seminar: Robert J. Wood, Harvard University, “Soft robotics for delicate and dexterous manipulation”

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

This seminar will be held virtually via Zoom. Robotic grasping and manipulation has historically been dominated by rigid grippers, force/form closure constraints, and extensive grasp trajectory planning. The advent of soft robotics offers new avenues to diverge from this paradigm by using strategic compliance to passively conform to grasped objects in the absence of active control, and with […]

MEAM Seminar: “From Mollusk Shells to Dense Architectured Materials to Granular Crystals: How Building Blocks and Weak Interfaces Create High Mechanical Performance”

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

Regular building blocks of controlled shape and size can be assembled to create fully dense “architectured” materials and structures. When the building blocks are very stiff and when they interact through much softer materials or even only by frictional contact, the blocks can slide, rotate, separate or interlock collectively, providing a wealth of tunable mechanisms, […]

ESE Spring Seminar – “Emergent Active Photonic Platforms for Next-Generation Mid-Infrared and Ultrafast Photonics”

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

As two basic properties of light, wavelength and timescale are central to numerous photonic applications. Compared to visible and near-infrared, the longer wavelength mid-infrared spectral regime contains unique thermal visual information and chemical fingerprints of the environment.  On a different front, femtosecond light sources and systems can enable ultrafast information processing, sensing, and computing. Yet, […]