ASSET Seminar: Decision-Aware Learning for Global Health Supply Chains, Osbert Bastani (University of Pennsylvania)

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

ABSTRACT: Machine learning algorithms are increasingly used in conjunction with optimization to guide decision making. A key challenge is aligning the machine learning loss with the decision-making loss. Existing solutions have limited flexibility and/or scale poorly to large datasets. We propose a principled decision-aware learning algorithm that uses a Taylor expansion of the optimal decision […]

Fall 2022 GRASP SFI: Roberto Calandra, Meta AI, “Perceiving, Understanding, and Interacting through Touch”

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

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Touch is a crucial sensor modality in both humans and robots. Recent advances in tactile sensing hardware have resulted -- for the first time -- in the availability of mass-produced, high-resolution, inexpensive, and reliable tactile sensors. In this […]

MSE Seminar: “Understanding Degradation in Metal Halide Perovskite Solar Cells and Modules”

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

Halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been the focus of much research in recent years due to their extremely high photoconversion efficiencies and their ability to be synthesized by solution processing.  These materials crystallize in the perovskite, AMX3 crystal structure where A is a monovalent cation (e.g. methyl ammonium, MA, formamidinium, FA, and/or Cs), M is the […]

ESE Fall Colloquium – “Phase Transitions, Symmetry, and Reed-Muller Codes on BMS Channels”

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

This talk will begin by discussing phase transitions in high-dimensional statistical inference problems. Some effort will be made to distinguish between problems with random structure (e.g., random codes and sparse PCA) and problems with deterministic structure (e.g., highly symmetric codes such as Reed-Muller codes). For problems with deterministic structure, we will observe that symmetry can […]

ESE Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Resilient, Information Theoretic, Active Exploration for Multi-Robot Teams”

Room 313, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Over the past decades we have seen robots move from constrained and heavily designed industrial environments out into the world. Along with this shift there is a need for smaller, safer, and less expensive robots which can complete tasks autonomously in teams, sometimes covering large areas. Multi-robot teams can expand the capabilities of a single […]

Fall 2022 GRASP on Robotics: Radhika Nagpal, Princeton University, “Towards Collective Artificial Intelligence”

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

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT In nature, groups of thousands of individuals cooperate to create complex structure purely through local interactions — from cells that form complex organisms, to social insects like termites and ants that build nests and self-assemble bridges, to the […]

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “Multibreath Hyperpolarized Gas Imaging of Lung Ventilation and Gas Exchange in Humans for Diagnosis and Treatment Response Monitoring” (Hooman Hamedani)

Donner-Grice Auditorium

The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Rahim Rizi are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Hooman Hamedani. Title: Multibreath Hyperpolarized Gas Imaging of Lung Ventilation and Gas Exchange in Humans for Diagnosis and Treatment Response Monitoring Date: November 11th, 2022 Time: 1:00 PM-3:00 PM Location: Donner - Grice Auditorium, 2 Dulles […]

ESE Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Analysis and Control of Neural Network Dynamical Systems”

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

Integrating machine learning and control systems has achieved remarkable success in controlling complex dynamical systems such as autonomous vehicles. However, the resulting controlled system often has a neural network (NN) in the loop which represents the system dynamics, control policy, or perception. The nonlinearity and large scale of NNs make it challenging to provide formal […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Enabling Ultra-Low Viscosity Lubricants Through Fundamental Understanding of ZDDPs Anti-Wear Additives and their Tribofilm Growth Mechanisms: An In-Situ Study”

Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Lubricants with low viscosity have the potential to improve fuel efficiency in engines due to friction reduction. However, a reduction in viscosity increases the likelihood of wear. Zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP), the most widely used antiwear additive in engine oils, has been extensively studied over the last few decades. ZDDP forms surface-bound tribofilms at sliding contacts […]