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    • Spring 2026 GRASP on Robotics: Roni Sengupta, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “From Pixels to Physics: Understanding and Manipulating Physics from Images”

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

    This event will be in-person ONLY in Wu and Chen Auditorium. ABSTRACT A hallmark of human vision is the ability to reason about the physics of the world: we can infer the shape of the object, how light reflects off the object, and how the object deforms under force. Yet today’s AI systems still lack […]

    PICS Colloquium: “Stochastic Reaction-Diffusion-Dynamics Modeling of whole systems: application to fibrin clot contraction and fibrin clot rupture” with Valeri Barsegov

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

    Abstract: Stochastic Reaction-Diffusion-Dynamics Model (SRDDM) for particle-based simulations of mechanochemical processes for thermodynamically large systems with high spatial and temporal resolution will be presented. The SRDDM couples the spatially inhomogeneous reaction-diffusion master equation to account for chemical reactions and molecular transport within the Langevin Dynamics (LD) framework to describe force-dependent dynamic processes at the whole […]

    PICS Colloquium: “Learning parsimonious models by covariance balancing” with Clarence Rowley

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    Abstract: Data-driven reduced-order models often struggle with high-dimensional nonlinear systems sensitive to low-variance coordinates, which are typically truncated. To address this, we use ideas from balanced truncation and active subspaces to identify low-dimensional coordinate systems that balance adjoint-based sensitivity information with state variance along trajectories. Our method, analogous to balanced truncation, replaces system Gramians with […]

    Eli Burstein Lecture in Materials Science: “Toward Intelligent Metamaterial Machines,” Katia Bertoldi – Harvard University

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

    Flexible mechanical metamaterials are engineered structures whose unique geometries allow them to display remarkable behaviors, especially in the nonlinear regime. These systems hold promise for enabling the next generation of smart materials and devices, offering capabilities such as shape morphing, programmable nonlinear responses, and energy manipulation. By embedding programmable mechanics, shape-shifting functions, and computational abilities […]

    ASSET Seminar: “Title TBD”

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

    Abstract TBD   Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/93936800903

    Spring 2026 GRASP on Robotics: George Konidaris, Brown University, “Unifying the Stack: A Principled Structuralist Approach to Intelligent Robot Control”

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

    This event will be in-person ONLY in Wu and Chen Auditorium. ABSTRACT There are two dominant approaches to designing intelligent robots. One, typified by language behavior models, leverages unstructured deep neural networks and learning from demonstration to generate behavior. These approaches have had several impressive successes but face scaling, trust, and explainability challenges. The second […]

    ASSET Seminar: “Title TBD”

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

    Abstract TBD   Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/95008740148

    Spring 2026 GRASP on Robotics: David Held, Carnegie Mellon University, “Precise and Generalizable Robot Manipulation”

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

    This event will be in-person ONLY in Wu and Chen Auditorium. ABSTRACT Robots in factories are still largely limited to structured environments with known object models. How can we bring robots into the more diverse, unstructured settings of our daily lives, where objects may be deformable or articulated and vary widely in shape and appearance, […]

    PICS Colloquium (Virtual): “Modelling active matter on large length and time scales” with Robert Jack

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

    Abstract: Active matter consists of particles that do work on their environment, for example by propelling themselves through a solvent. Fluids made from many interacting self-propelled particles have become popular as models of non-equilibrium matter: they are challenging for theory and computation because their steady states cannot be derived by minimizing a free energy, nor […]

    ASSET Seminar: “Title TBD”

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

    Abstract TBD   Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/97254514949

    • ASSET Seminar: “Title TBD”

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

    Abstract TBD   Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/94502467828

    Spring 2026 GRASP on Robotics: Nikolay Atanasov, University of California San Diego, “Elements of Generalizable Robot Autonomy”

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

    This event will be in-person ONLY in Wu and Chen Auditorium. ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a transformation in artificial intelligence fueled by the convergence of machine learning models, internet-scale data, and large training infrastructures. Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have enabled unprecedented progress in aligned vision-language processing, while Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models and deep reinforcement learning (RL) […]