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ASSET Seminar: “Lifelong Learning for Autonomous Systems: Progress and Challenges” (Eric Eaton, Penn)

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

ABSTRACT:  Research in lifelong or continual machine learning has advanced rapidly over the past few years, primarily focusing on enabling learned models to acquire new tasks over time while avoiding catastrophic forgetting of previous tasks. However, autonomous systems still lack the ability to rapidly learn new generalizable skills by building upon and continually refining their […]

CBE Seminar: “Energetic Constraints on Biological Assembly and Motion” (Murrell, Yale)

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

On small length-scales, the mechanics of soft materials may be dominated by their interfacial properties as opposed to their bulk properties. These effects are described by equilibrium models of elasto-capillarity and wetting. In these models, interfacial energies and bulk material properties are held constant. However, in biological materials, including living cells and tissues, these properties […]

MSE Seminar: “Bioinspired Polymers for Tissue Repair and Regeneration” (Phillip B. Messersmith University of California – Berkeley)

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

It is of great interest for materials scientists to study wet biological adhesives as inspiration for synthetic adhesives that can perform well in wet conditions. A compelling example is given by the adhesive proteins secreted by marine mussels, which have inspired the development of synthetic polymer adhesives and coatings for adhesion to wet surfaces. Mussel […]

ESE PhD Thesis Defense: “CyberCardia: Patient-specific Electrophysiological heart model for assisting left atrium arrhythmia ablation”

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

Atrial arrhythmia is a prevalent heart disease that results in weak and irregular contractions of the atria. It affects millions of people worldwide. Cardiac ablation is among the most successful treatment options. During the procedure, catheters are inserted into the left atrium to map the atrium geometry and record endocardium electrograms that are then converted […]

BE Seminar: “Robust CRISPR/Cas-based epigenome editing technologies for precision human cell engineering and mechanistic dissection of pathological gene expression” (Isaac Hilton, Rice University)

216 Moore Building

Recent advances in CRISPR/Cas-based epigenome editing technologies have enabled programmable control over human gene expression, chromatin states, and genomic organization. Consequently, these emerging technologies have created new opportunities to engineer human cells for therapeutic benefit and catalyzed innovative ways to functionally interrogate gene regulatory mechanisms in situ. Toward these ends, we have recently developed new […]

PRECISE Seminar: “Co-Optimizing Imaging, Computer Systems, and Biological Perception for Next-Generation Visual Computing Platforms”

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

Abstract Emerging platforms such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and autonomous machines, while are of a computing nature, intimately interact with both the environment and humans. They must be built, from the ground up, with principled considerations of three main components: imaging, computer systems, and human perception. This talk will make a case […]

Fall 2023 GRASP on Robotics: Leslie Kaelbling, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Doing for our robots what nature did for us”

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 on Zoom. ABSTRACT We, as robot engineers, have to think hard about our role in the design of robots and how it interacts with learning, both in "the factory" (that is, at engineering time) and in "the wild" (that is, […]

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “Uncovering Structure-function Relationships in Chromatin Architecture” (Daniel Emerson)

BRB 253

The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Jennifer Phillips-Cremins are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Daniel Emerson.   Title: Uncovering Structure-function Relationships in Chromatin Architecture   Date: October 20, 2023 Time: 1:00 PM Location: BRB 0253 Zoom link The Public is welcome to attend.

MEAM Seminar: “Granular and Photoelastic Avalanches”

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

Flowing granular materials arise everywhere around us, in industry from pharmaceutical processes to bulk good transport lines, and in nature from snow avalanches to captivating dune fields. In landslides, we have an interesting interplay between microscale (grain-grain contacts) and macroscale processes (continuum behavior). In order to understand critical macroscale processes such as stability of a […]

ESE Fall Seminar – “Acceleration by Stepsize Hedging”

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

Can we accelerate convergence of gradient descent without changing the algorithm --- just by optimizing stepsizes? Surprisingly, we show that the answer is yes. Our proposed Silver Stepsize Schedule optimizes strongly convex functions in $k^{\log_p 2} = k^{0.7864}$ iterations, where $p=1+\sqrt{2}$ is the silver ratio and $k$ is the condition number. This is intermediate between […]