CIS Seminar: ” Empowering Large Language Models with Efficient and Automated Systems”

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

Large Language Models (LLMs) have brought remarkable advancements to the computing industry. However, a high barrier exists between the LLMs and the vast majority of researchers and practitioners, brought by the engineering challenges with the enormous model sizes and the substantial compute requirements. In this talk, I’ll discuss my research on system innovations to democratize […]

CIS Seminar: “Practical Machine Learning for Networked Systems”

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

The growing complexity and heterogeneity of networked systems have spurred a plethora of machine learning (ML) solutions, each promising a tantalizing improvement in performance. However, their path to real-world adoption is fraught with obstacles due to concerns from system operators about ML's generalization, transparency, robustness, and efficiency. My research takes a holistic approach to enabling […]

Spring 2024 GRASP SFI: Eric Jang, 1X Technologies, “Data Engines for Humanoid Robots”

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

This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom.  ABSTRACT 1X’s mission is to create an abundant supply of physical labor through androids that work alongside humans. I will share some of the progress 1X has been making towards general-purpose mobile manipulation. We have scaled up the […]

MEAM Seminar: “Physics and Engineering of Moisture-Capturing Hydrogels for Freshwater and Heat Harvesting”

Towne 319 220 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, United States

Humidity in the air is a vast water and energy resource available in any location. Air in the atmosphere contains six times more freshwater than that of all rivers and lakes. This moisture also carries over a thousand times more power than the global electricity demand. For over two centuries, numerous water sorbent materials have […]

CIs Seminar: “Privacy-Preserving Systems for a Data-Driven World”

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

The potential of data to transform science and society has spurred unparalleled efforts to collect it in increasingly sensitive and granular forms, which has raised a variety of societal concerns about how this data is handled and used. Though today, at-rest and in-transit encryption are standard practices, these alone are insufficient to address the security […]

Spring 2024 GRASP on Robotics: Zac Manchester, Carnegie Mellon University, “Composable Optimization for Robotic Motion Planning and Control”

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 Contact interactions are pervasive in real-world robotics tasks like manipulation and walking. However, the non-smooth dynamics associated with impacts and friction remain challenging to model, and motion planning and control algorithms that can fluently and efficiently reason about […]

2024 Celebration of Diversity

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

The Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion is hosting another Celebration of Diversity gala. The gathering is intended to showcase students, staff, and faculty from Penn Engineering in their cultural richness and heterogeneity. The event will consist of guest speakers, special performances, presentations from student affinity groups, and a variety of cuisines for all to […]

Tedori-Callinan Distinguished Lecture: “Origami”

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

We study the geometric mechanics of origami assemblages and investigate how geometry affects behavior and properties. Understanding origami from a structural standpoint allows for conceptualizing and designing feasible applications across scales and disciplines of engineering. We review the basic mathematical rules of origami and use 3D-printed origami legos to illustrate those concepts. We then present […]

ESE Spring Seminar – “Developing next-generation wireless, bioelectronic cellular medicine”

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

Recent advances in engineering science have led to new classes of medical devices with emergent mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties that offer new opportunities for interfacing with living cells. I will discuss conceptual advances in microfabrication, device physics, power transfer and microscale transport phenomena that enable novel biosensors and cell delivery systems, with an emphasis […]

CIS/IDEAS Seminar: “Flow matching and optimal transport with applications to cell trajectories and protein design”

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

ABSTRACT: Flow matching models learn a (possibly stochastic) mapping between source and target distributions. Common paradigms include diffusion models, score matching models, and continuous normalizing flows. In this talk I will first present methods for improved training of flow matching models using ideas from optimal transport. I will then show how these improved methods can […]