• Rigorous and Glamorous in 100 Words or Less 2.0 – An Abstract-Writing Workshop

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    It’s hard to write an abstract. It’s harder to write a glamorous one that tells your story without overselling your results. Last year, we hosted a virtual abstract-writing workshop where our P.I., Konrad Kording, reviewed and refined students’ abstracts live. Back by popular demand, the workshop returns — this time with a bonus! Participants can use […]

    Academic Innovation Speaker Series: “A’s for All” (as time and interest allow)

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

    Traditional grading paradigms often fail to cater to diverse learning paces and styles, potentially sidelining those needing more time to learn the material. "A's for All" (as time and interest allow) is an innovative pedagogical philosophy that builds on grading for equity, mastery learning, growth mindset, and competency-based approaches. It gives every student the opportunity […]

    Fall 2025 GRASP SFI: Minghan Zhu, University of Pennsylvania, “3D Robot Vision for Structured World Understanding”

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

    This presenter is one of the winners of the 2025 GRASP vote for internal PhD or postdoc SFI Speakers! This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom.  ABSTRACT Deploying robots in diverse real-world environments is a fundamental challenge. While recent AI advances are impressive, robots still struggle […]

    CBE Seminar: “New Technologies for Delivery of Nucleic Acids and Proteins to Plants” (Markita Landry, UC Berkeley)

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    Wu & Chen Auditorium

    Abstract:  Genetic engineering of plants is at the core of sustainability efforts, natural product synthesis, and agricultural crop engineering. Plant bioengineering requires delivery of biomolecules for genetic or post-transcriptional manipulation of plants, however, current delivery methods either suffer from host range limitations, low transformation efficiencies, tissue regenerability issues, tissue damage, or unavoidable DNA integration into […]

    MSE Seminar: “Ion Transport in Hydrated Anion Conducting Polyelectrolytes” – Paul F. Nealey – Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering of the University of Chicago, Senior Scientist at Argonne National laboratory

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

    The realization of next-generation electrochemical technologies demands anion-conducting polymers that break the fundamental trade-offs between conductivity, stability, and swelling. Ion transport in these materials is a complex, emergent property that arises from the coupling of water dynamics, nanoscale morphology, and polymer chemistry across multiple length and time scales. In this talk, I will present a […]

    Responsive Materials Meet Intelligence

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

    Fold It. Stretch It. Build it. Shape it. Responsive Materials Meet Intelligence. Keynote Speakers: H. Jerry Qi Woodruff Endowed Professor George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology Talk title: “Photocuring: grayscale digital light processing printing for pixel-level property manipulations” Jenny Sabin Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture Chair, Department […]

    LAMP Seminar: “Mechanics of Contact, Friction, and Fracture (by design) – Towards the Interaction between the Natural and Built Environment”

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    LRSM Reading Room 3231 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Contact, friction, and fracture are fundamental processes governing the emergent (mechanical) behaviors of various complex (material) systems, from as large as tectonic slip to as small as third-body wear. In this talk, we briefly discuss (1) challenges in understanding the (nonlinear) mechanics of these processes, specifically focusing on those designed into metamaterials, and (2) novel […]

    MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Real Time Local Wind Inference for Robust Autonomous Navigation”

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    Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Urban air mobility and autonomous package delivery represent promising avenues for integrating aerial robots into everyday life. However, operating these systems safely and efficiently in windy urban environments remains a major challenge due to the complexity of urban wind flow fields. Existing methods for predicting and navigating wind fields rely on precise environmental knowledge, distributed […]

    ASSET Seminar: “Reality Checks”

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    Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 414 3333 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, United States

    Despite its success, leaderboard chasing has become something researchers dread and mock. When implemented properly and executed faithfully, leaderboard chasing can lead to both faster and easily reproducible progress in science, as evident from the amazing progress we have seen with machine learning, or more broadly artificial intelligence, in recent decades. It does not however […]

    Fall 2025 Robotics MSE Thesis Lightning Talks and Poster Session

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

    This is an in-person event with in-person attendance in Levine 307. 10:00am – Lightning Talks and Poster Session Welcome Remarks Dr. Ani Hsieh – ROBO Program Chair Kashish Garg Advised By: Dr. Vijay Kumar Aero-Simian: A Bio-Inspired, Brachiating-Flying Robot             JiYoon Kang Advised By: Dr. Mark Yim Birddy: A Multimodal, […]