PICS Colloquium: “Bridging scales in aerosol modeling with particle-resolved simulations”

PICS Conference Room 534 - A Wing , 5th Floor 3401 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

The aerosol lifecycle consists of processes that act on the micro-scale, yet the aerosols’ climate impacts are perceived on regional or global scales. Capturing this multiscale nature of the atmospheric aerosol poses considerable challenges for aerosol models since computational constraints limit the detail of aerosol representation, yet these details matter in determining large-scale aerosol impacts. […]

ESE PhD Thesis Defense: “Leveraging Models to Improve Data Efficiency: Navigation, Reinforcement Learning, and Lie Group Convolutions”

Greenberg Lounge (Room 114), Skirkanich Hall 210 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Consider a system which takes data as an input, processes the data with a model, and outputs a decision for a particular objective. We call the measure of the amount of data used to complete the objective with some performance metric as data efficiency.  Across many domains, it is advantageous to reduce the amount of […]

MEAM Seminar: “Nano and Polymers and Mechanics and Data”

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

For polymer composites, nanocomposites and polymer thin film systems, the local properties of polymers can be altered by the chemical and physical interactions with substrates and embedded particles over a length scales exceeding 100nm. The mechanisms and impact of confined polymers remains still an active area of research and debate. Here we will review methods […]

Future Leaders in Mechanobiology: Piere Rodriguez Aliaga

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

Launched in May 2021, the Future Leaders in Mechanobiology is a monthly seminar series featuring up-and-coming leaders in mechanobiology–PhD students and postdocs from a wide range of fields, backgrounds, and institutions. By providing an international stage to share one’s work and opportunities to interact with researchers at all career stages, we aim to create an inclusive and […]

ASSET Seminar: Thinking fast with Transformers – Algorithmic Reasoning via Shortcuts (Surbhi Goel, University of Pennsylvania)

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

PRESENTATION ABSTRACT: In this new era of deep learning, the emergent algorithmic reasoning capabilities of Transformer models have led to significant advancements in natural language processing, program synthesis, and theorem proving. Despite their widespread success, the underlying reasons for their efficacy and the nature of their internal representations remain elusive. In this talk, we take […]

Spring 2023 GRASP SFI: Jeffrey Lipton, Northeastern University, “Robotics and Digital Manufacturing”

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. This week's presenter will be in-person as well. ABSTRACT Robotics and manufacturing are intricately linked. Each new generation of robotic fabrication tools has transformed manufacturing, enabling greater complexity and customization of the world around us. With the recent developments […]

CBE Quinn Distinguished Lecture: “Reclaiming Engineering in the Minds of the Public: The Unheralded, Underappreciated, and Misunderstood Method that Built our Modern World” (Bill Hammack, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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

Abstract: Naively the public assumes the products of engineers arise from the scientific method, as reflected in an old joke among engineers about the relationship of science and engineering: “if it’s a success, then it’s a scientific miracle, if a disaster, then an engineering failure.” This joke highlights that successful technologies are invisible: The hallmark […]

MEAM Master’s Thesis Defense: “Preliminary Design of an Origami-Inspired Pulmonary Artery Band”

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

Every year, infants are born with life-threatening congenital heart defects that need to be corrected with reconstructive heart surgery. In cases where blood flow through the main pulmonary artery is excessive, patients typically undergo palliative treatments such as pulmonary artery banding, which aims to reduce this blood flow to a more manageable level. While traditional […]

MSE Seminar: “Controlling Phase Separation in Elastomeric (Poly)peptides in the Production of Micro-and Nano-Structured Materials” (University of Delaware)

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

Macromolecular materials that are capable of selectively and efficiently localizing cells, factors, and/or drugs offer important approaches for mediating biological events and in the development of hybrid materials. We have employed a combination of biosynthetic tools, bioconjugation strategies, and biomimetic assembly to produce thermoresponsive (poly)peptides derived from sequences of resilin, elastin, and collagen. These materials […]