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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 […]

ASSET Seminar: “Towards a Design Flow for Verified AI-Based Autonomy” (Sajit A. Seshia, University of California, Berkeley)

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

ABSTRACT: Verified artificial intelligence (AI) is the goal of designing AI-based systems that have strong, ideally provable, assurances of correctness with respect to formally specified requirements. This talk will review the main challenges to achieving Verified AI, and the initial progress the research community has made towards this goal. A particular focus will be on […]

Fall 2023 GRASP SFI: Matthew D. Kvalheim, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, “Discovering engineering (im)possibilities with geometry and topology”

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

This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT I will describe engineering (im)possibilities discovered with geometry or topology. These provide or revoke “hunting licenses” for the search of quantities of interest in three contexts: feedback control, applied Koopmanism, and deep neural network autoencoders. Control-Lyapunov or barrier […]

CBE Seminar: “Transformer-based Hybrid Modeling and Control of Evolving, Nonlinear Processes” (Kwon, Texas A&M University)

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

Traditionally, the dynamic modeling of chemical processes has relied on first-principles models grounded in fundamental physics and chemistry laws. These models, primarily formulated through differential equations with constant parameters, enable the calculation of control actions optimizing process operations, taking both process and actuator limitations into account. However, the ever-evolving and nonlinear nature of chemical processes […]

MSE Seminar: “Advanced Analytical Characterization of Next Generation Energy Storage Systems” – Nik Singh – Toyota Research Institute of North America

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

Advances in hybrid and electric vehicle technologies combined with a demand for green initiatives have recently motivated necessary diversification in energy storage research. To achieve customer expectations for hybrid and electric vehicles, new battery systems with higher energy densities, power densities and cycle life than the current state-of-art Lithium (Li)-ion battery are needed. Further, to […]

PRECISE Seminar: Machines that Talk to the Brain and Think Like the Mind

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

Abstract Communicating with the brain enables us to advance our understanding of brain function, treat disorders, restore lost function, and when combined with artificial cognitive frameworks, can push the frontier of human capabilities. Key to realizing brain communication and replicating cognition are new computer architectures– systems that directly sense and stimulate the brain, and those […]