Penn Engineering Events

ESE PhD Thesis Defense: "Leveraging Models to Improve Data Efficiency: Navigation, Reinforcement Learning, and Lie Group Convolutions"
2023-04-17 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Greenberg Lounge (Room 114), Skirkanich Hall, 210 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, 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 data to achieve the same or better level of performance. In this thesis, we exploit the model of the system in order to improve the data efficiency across three distinct domains of interest: robot navigation in ellipsoidal worlds, reinforcement learning, and Lie group convolutions.

MEAM Seminar: "Nano and Polymers and Mechanics and Data"
2023-04-18 10:00 - 11:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, 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 to explore nanoscale polymer properties near surfaces, with a focus on scanning probe methods to quantitatively measure mechanical response and the interesting mechanics problems that arise. In multiphase soft materials, local changes in the sample modulus, tip-sample interactions and stress field interaction effects impact the acquired force curves. Coupling experimental data with simulations of indentations enable the structural effects of the particle-polymer-tip system to be accurately estimated and removed, revealing the effects of confinement on property gradients. Capturing and archiving this data allows case studies which connect the property-structure-property domains through a combination of machine learning and physics-based modeling. We demonstrate the ability to identify the most critical features influence properties and the ability to acquire new insights from ensembles of unrelated data. The importance of data, data resources and leverage of this knowledge in new physics based and interpretable machine learning methods is discussed. Overall this work illustrates new approaches combining physics and data based models and experiments to tackle materials design principles for the complex, high dimensional problems inherent in the multi-phase polymer space.

Future Leaders in Mechanobiology: Piere Rodriguez Aliaga
2023-04-19 11:00 - 12:00 | 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 valuable series for early-stage researchers and the mechanobiology community as a whole.
Future Leaders in Mechanobiology will meet via Zoom on the third Wednesday of the month, at 11am ET (8am PT, 10am CT), and all are welcome to attend. Recordings of past talks and the future schedule can be found below.
Register here: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98208519228?pwd=[REDACTED]

ASSET Seminar: Thinking fast with Transformers – Algorithmic Reasoning via Shortcuts (Surbhi Goel, University of Pennsylvania)
2023-04-19 12:00 - 13:30 | Levine 307, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, 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 the lens of learning the dynamics of finite-state machines (automata) as the underlying algorithmic reasoning task and shed light on how shallow, non-recurrent Transformer models emulate these recurrent dynamics. By employing tools from circuit complexity and semigroup theory, we characterize “shortcut” solutions that allow a shallow Transformer to precisely replicate $T$ computational steps of an automaton with only $o(T)$ layers. We show that Transformers are efficiently able to represent these “shortcuts” using their parameter-efficient ability to compute sparse functions and averages. Furthermore, through synthetic experiments, we confirm that standard training successfully discovers these shortcuts. We conclude with highlighting the brittleness of these “shortcuts” in out-of-distribution scenarios.
This talk is based on joint work with Bingbin Liu, Jordan T. Ash, Akshay Krishnamurthy, and Cyril Zhang.

CIS Presents: "A Celebration of Norman Badler’s Legacy at Penn"
2023-04-19 13:30 - 17:30 | Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology, 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States

Spring 2023 GRASP SFI: Jeffrey Lipton, Northeastern University, "Robotics and Digital Manufacturing"
2023-04-19 15:00 - 16:00 | Levine 307, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, 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 in additive manufacturing new forms of mechanical metamaterials have become possible, changing how we make our robotic devices. In this talk we will explore how we can use robots to create novel materials and manufacturing methods, and how we can use novel materials and manufacturing methods to enhance the capabilities of robots? I will demonstrate a mathematical framework for making torque responsive materials, and how these materials form the basis for low-cost robotics. We will explore how 3D printing can enable use to rapidly repurpose robotic systems to solve pressing manufacturing needs, and finally how mobile robotics can enable us to make new forms of scalable manufacturing solutions.

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)
2023-04-19 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, 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 of good engineering is invisibility — we rarely think of our furnace, or a jet’s engine, or the purity of a pharmaceutical because the methods to manufacture all these have been honed to perfection. This, though, also hides the creative work of engineers because the public assumes the secret of engineering lies in the mastery of arcane realms of knowledge — sophisticated calculus and powerful computing science implemented by a dispassionate, almost mechanical person — yet the power of engineers to change the world lies in their method, a method used long before sophisticated mathematics and computers. This talk lifts the veil to show, in all its glory, the engineering method, which, once understood, highlights the creativity of engineers, demonstrates their work is the pinnacle of human reasoning, and lays a foundation about how to think about technology — how to decide its proper use and aid it in fulfilling its promise. Using rich examples, this talk strips bare the tools often confused for the engineering method – scientific knowledge, mathematical manipulation – to expose what lies at the heart of the method: a surprisingly simple notion called a “rule of thumb.”
Bio:
Bill Hammack is a Grainger Distinguished Chair in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned a B.S. at Michigan Technological University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — all in chemical engineering. He taught for a decade at Carnegie-Mellon University before returning to the University of Illinois where he has taught since 1998. From August 2005 to August 2006 he served as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. His work focuses on explaining engineering and technology to the general public. For a decade he broadcast commentaries on public radio, and over the last decade has developed a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers and over seventy million views. His work has been recognized with awards from a diverse group of engineering and science societies, including the “trifecta” of science journalism: the Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers, the Grady-Stack Award from the American Chemical Society, and the Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics. And most recently the Council of Scientific Society President’s Carl Sagan Award for the Public Appreciation of Science, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Ralph Coats Roe Medal, and the Hoover Medal, awarded by a collection of engineering societies. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022.

MEAM Master's Thesis Defense: "Preliminary Design of an Origami-Inspired Pulmonary Artery Band"
2023-04-20 10:00 - 11:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, 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 pulmonary artery banding has improved the survivability of infants with this affliction, it often requires more than two open heart surgeries to be successful due to patient growth, loosening of the band, and other complications. To address these shortcomings, we propose a novel, multistable pulmonary artery band inspired by origami. In addition to being cost effective and simple to deploy, this novel pulmonary artery band can be configured for magnetic control to reach its multiple stable states, potentially eliminating the need for more than two open heart surgeries for pulmonary artery banding treatment. This work details the preliminary design process of this pulmonary artery band. We begin by examining the properties of its origami fold pattern and how the device is fabricated. Next, we mechanically characterize the fold pattern and use these measurements to inform the design of magnetic infrastructure to enable magnetic untethered control. We then cover the design of a mock circulation loop developed for simulating blood flow in a patient’s body. Finally, we assess the pulmonary artery band’s ability to constrict flow through simulated in-vivo testing with the mock circulation loop. Through this testing, we were able to demonstrate proof of concept of the proposed device functioning as a pulmonary artery band.

MSE Seminar: "Controlling Phase Separation in Elastomeric (Poly)peptides in the Production of Micro-and Nano-Structured Materials" (University of Delaware)
2023-04-20 10:30 - 12:00 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, 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 can be designed to control localization of biomolecules with tunable microscale mechanics, and materials with select properties have demonstrated promise for healing vascular graft materials in vivo. In addition, these types of materials not only show controllable micro- and nanoscale morphologies, but also have promise for targeted drug delivery to damaged tissue in vivo.

BE Seminar: "Opportunities and Support for the BME Research Community from NSF" (Laurel Kuxhaus, NSF)
2023-04-20 15:30 - 16:30 | Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology, 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
This seminar will be held in person in Glandt Forum; snacks will be served.
“Opportunities and Support for the BME Research Community from NSF”
The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports work in all fields of science and engineering, including biomedical engineering. That said, biomedical engineering researchers can face challenges in finding the right ‘home’ and scope for their work at NSF. This presentation will provide a broad overview of the mission of NSF and how it relates to the biomedical engineering community, including emerging initiatives and responses to the current disruption of the research enterprise. Descriptions of select programs at the National Science Foundation that fund work relevant to the biomedical engineering community will be covered. Best practices in proposal preparation and practical tips to optimize interaction with your program director will also be discussed. Bring your questions along!

MEAM Seminar: "Design, Characterization, and Fabrication of Low-Cost, Passive, and Biodegradable Sensors for Precision Agriculture"
2023-04-21 10:00 - 11:00 | Moore 212
With the global population projected to reach 9.1 billion people by 2050 there is a need to develop highly efficient agricultural systems that can reliably maximize crop yield. Precision Agriculture (PA) systems enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) offer a potential solution through improvements in labor, resource, and time efficiency to improve agricultural output. PA systems enable this by providing a detailed understanding of the state of the field (e.g., soil moisture, pH, temperature, etc.) so that these resources can be properly deployed spatially and temporally. To realize these systems, sensors that give information about the state of the field are required. However, for the technology to be scalable and practically implemented, these sensors must balance performance and cost. These requirements limit the materials and methods that can be used to develop the technology, including many that are common in modern sensor development. Additionally, the challenge of biocompatibility and biodegradability must be addressed.In this talk, a passive RF sensing system is presented for the detection of soil moisture. This sensing system is developed on a fully biodegradable cellulose nanofibril (CNF) based composite substrate that can used for the rapid fabrication of high fidelity electrical structures via screen printing. The surface, electrical, and diffusion properties of the substrate are characterized. By utilizing screen printing, capacitive structures are fabricated that can detect moisture content over a wide range of humidity and soil moisture conditions.

Spring 2023 GRASP on Robotics: Vivienne Sze, MIT, "Efficient Computing for Autonomy and Navigation"
2023-04-21 10:30 - 11:45 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week’s presenter will be virtual.

ABSTRACT
A broad range of next-generation applications will be enabled by low-energy autonomous vehicles including insect-size flapping wing robots that can help with search and rescue, chip-size satellites that can explore nearby stars, and blimps that can stay in the air for years to provide communication services in remote locations. Autonomy capabilities for these vehicles will be unlocked by building their computers from the ground up, and by co-designing the algorithms and hardware for autonomy and navigation. In this talk, I will present various methods, algorithms, and computing hardware that deliver significant improvements in energy consumption and processing speed for tasks such as visual-inertial navigation, depth estimation, motion planning, mutual-information-based exploration, and deep neural networks for robot perception. We will also discuss the importance of efficient computing to reduce carbon emissions for sustainable large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles.
Much of the work presented in this talk was developed in the Low-Energy Autonomy and Navigation (LEAN) interdisciplinary group at MIT (http://lean.mit.edu), which is co-directed by Vivienne Sze and Sertac Karaman.

PSOC Seminar: "Leveraging dynamic biomaterials platforms to elucidate mechanisms of mechanical memory in disease and aging" (Christopher Madl, Penn)
2023-04-24 13:00 - 14:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Spring 2023 Hybrid-Seminar Series
Mondays 1.00-2.00 pm (EST)
Towne 225 / Raisler Lounge
“For Zoom link, please contact <manu@seas.upenn.edu>”

MEAM Seminar: “Laboratory Investigations of Wind Turbine Wakes at Field Reynolds Numbers”
2023-04-25 10:00 - 11:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Wind turbines and wind farms present unique challenges—fluid mechanically—as they combine extremely high Reynolds numbers with additional time scales imposed by the rotation, and three-dimensional effects. This implies that resolved numerical solutions are too computationally expensive and investigations in conventional wind tunnels are impossible due to the flow speeds and rotational rates needed in order to satisfy the dynamic similarity requirements. At Princeton, we achieve the conditions a large wind turbine experiences, experimentally, by compressing the air around a model-scale turbine up to 238 bar. This yields conditions similar to those experienced by a field-sized turbine using a model that is only 20 cm in diameter. High pressure enables tests at high Reynolds numbers but at low velocities, which implies that realistic non-dimensional frequencies can be tested even with such a small model. This unique feature is used both to study rotating wind turbines and their wakes, as well as the unsteady aerodynamics that are involved in these machines.

2023 Franklin Medal Symposium Honoring Nader Engheta: "Sculpting Waves with Complex Structures" (Villanova Livestream)
2023-04-26 09:00 - 13:00 | PA
*This is an event hosted by Villanova University. To gain access to the livestream, you must register to attend.*
Featuring presentations by a select group of world-class experts, this symposium celebrates the groundbreaking contributions of Dr. Nader Engheta in complex electromagnetic structures, plasmonics, optical nanocircuitry, and wave-based computing. The speakers discuss the current and future trends in the physics of light/matter interaction and present the latest innovations in electromagnetic and optical materials which promise to have broad applications in ultrafast computing, communication technologies, and high-resolution imaging.
Learn more about this event (agenda, speakers, etc.).
Register with Villanova University to access the livestream.

ASSET Seminar: AI and Medicine: One Possible Future for Augmented Care, Kevin B Johnson (University of Pennsylvania)
2023-04-26 12:00 - 13:30 | Levine 307, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract:
Scientific discoveries, fueled by data collected during the course of care, are promising to radically change how we think about health, disease, prevention and treatment. However, the very systems that are responsible for this tsunami of data are crippling many aspects of the care delivery system. In particular, the burden of documentation, the challenges of information retrieval, and the regulatory pressure on the healthcare system are responsible for burnout and even attrition among healthcare professionals. This talk will briefly summarize the history of the present-day EHR, describe some recent and promising advances using AI, and propose some approaches to re-engineering our system of digitally-enhanced care to augment the cognitive capabilities of today’s healthcare providers.

CBE Seminar Series: "Multiscale Bioinspired Material Intelligence" (Markus J. Buehler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
2023-04-26 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract:
Digital biomaterials are designed through an integrated approach of large-scale computational modeling, material informatics, and artificial intelligence/machine learning to optimize and leverage novel smart material manufacturing for advanced mechanical properties. Through the use of nanotechnology and additive manufacturing, and bio-inspired methods, we can now mimic and improve upon natural processes by which materials evolve, are manufactured, and how they meet changing functional needs. In this talk we show how we use mechanics to fabricate innovative materials from the molecular scale upwards, with built-in bio-inspired intelligence and novel properties, while sourced from sustainable resources, and breaking the barrier between living and non-living systems. Applied specifically to protein materials, this integrated materiomic approach is revolutionizing the way we design and use materials, and has the potential to impact many industries, as we harness data-driven modeling and manufacturing across domains and applications. The talk will cover several case studies covering distinct scales, from spider webs and silk, to collagen, to biomineralized materials, as well as applications to food and agriculture, and focuses on mechanistic insights using scaling laws and size effect studies.
Bio:
Markus J. Buehler is the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT (an Institute-wide Endowed Chair), a member of the Center for Materials Science and Engineering, and the Center for Computational Science and Engineering at the Schwarzman College of Computing. He holds academic appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering. In his research, Professor Buehler pursues new modeling, design and manufacturing approaches for advanced biomaterials that offer greater resilience and a wide range of controllable properties from the nano- to the macroscale. His interests include a variety of functional material properties including mechanical, optical and biological, linking chemical features, hierarchical and multiscale structures, to performance in the context of physiological, pathological and other extreme conditions. His methods include molecular and multiscale modeling, design, as well as experimental synthesis and characterization. His particular interest lies in the mechanics of complex hierarchical materials with features across scales (e.g. nanotubes, graphene and natural biomaterial nanostructures including protein materials such as intermediate filaments and hair, collagen, silk and elastin, and other structural biomaterials). An expert in computational materials science and AI, he has pioneered the field of materiomics, and demonstrated broad impacts in the study of mechanical properties of complex materials, including predictive materials design and manufacturing. Between 2013-2020, Buehler served as Department Head of MIT’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. He has held numerous other leadership roles at professional organizations, including a term as President of the Society of Engineering Science (SES).

Abstraction in Language and Systems: A Symposium in Honor of Barbara Liskov
2023-04-27 09:30 - 12:30 | Berger Auditorium (Room 13), Skirkanich Hall, 210 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
ABSTRACTION IN LANGUAGES AND SYSTEMS

Laureate symposium honoring Barbara Liskov, recipient of the 2023 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science

Featuring:
Barbara Liskov, Ph.D., Laureate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lorenzo Alvisi, Ph.D.
Cornell University
Maurice Herlihy, Ph.D.
Brown University
Andrew Myers, Ph.D.
Cornell University

Location:
University of Pennsylvania
Berger Auditorium
Skirkanich Hall
210 S 33rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
www.upenn.edu

LEARN MORE

Contact: Prof. Mitch Marcus, University of Pennsylvania

Sponsored by:
The Franklin Institute and the University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science and School of Engineering and Applied Science

ASSET Seminar: Neurosymbolic Programming for Science, Swarat Chaudhuri (University of Texas at Austin)
2023-05-03 12:00 - 13:30 | Levine 307, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT:
Neurosymbolic programming (NSP) is an emerging area of computing that bridges the fields of deep learning and program synthesis. Like in classical machine learning, the goal here is to learn functions from data. However, these functions are represented as programs that use neural network modules as well as symbolic primitives and are induced using a mix of symbolic search and gradient-based optimization.
In this talk, I will give an elementary introduction to NSP and show how methods in this area have natural applications in accelerating scientific discovery. Specifically, using applications in behavioral neuroscience, I will show that NSP offers natural ways of incorporating prior knowledge into data-driven scientific discovery and interpreting discovered knowledge. I will conclude with a discussion of some of the open technical challenges in NSP in general and NSP-for-science in particular.

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Next-generation Analyses of T Cell Receptor Repertoires" (Michael Malone)
2023-05-04 10:00 - 12:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Jenny Jiang are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Michael Malone.

Title: Next-generation Analyses of T Cell Receptor Repertoires
Date: May 4, 2023
Time: 10am – 12pm
Location: Raisler Lounge, 225 Towne Building

The public is welcome to attend.

Zoom info:

Join Zoom Meeting https://upenn.zoom.us/j/91374286405?pwd=[REDACTED] Meeting ID: 913 7428 6405 Passcode: [REDACTED] One tap mobile +16465588656,,91374286405# US (New York) +13017158592,,91374286405# US (Washington DC) Dial by your location +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) Meeting ID: 913 7428 6405 Find your local number: https://upenn.zoom.us/u/ad5ezT97KB

BE Seminar: "Bioengineered Platforms for Mechanistic Understandings and Therapeutic Interventions" (Shyni Varghese, Duke University)
2023-05-04 15:30 - 16:30 | Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology, 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
This talk will be held in person in Glandt Forum; snacks will be served.
Regenerative medicine is an interdisciplinary field that has significant promise for treating compromised tissues and organs. In our laboratory, we use a number of tools including biomaterials, organoids, quantitative modeling, and animal models to gain new fundamental understandings and identify therapeutic targets. In this talk, I will show several examples from our lab illustrating the use of such platforms to address key problems in tissue repair with aging and disease progression. First, I will discuss our efforts in creating synthetic analogs of the extracellular matrix to direct stem cell commitment in vitro and in vivo with a focus on bone tissue repair and employing such platforms to understand molecular mechanisms underlying bone homeostasis and identifying new therapeutic targets (Shih et al., PNAS 111: 990, 2014; 114: 5419 2017; Kang H et al., Biomacromolecules 16: 1050, 2015; Shih et al., Sci. Adv. 5: eaax1387, 2019). Next, I will discuss how these understandings can be leveraged to develop therapeutic interventions to promote tissue repair and mitigate pain (Zeng et al., Adv. Mater. 32, 2020). Finally, I will end the talk by discussing our ongoing efforts in studying the effect of aging on neuroinflammation.

[VIRTUAL] Spring 2023 Robotics MSE Capstone Presentation
2023-05-04 16:00 - 16:30 | https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752
This is a virtual event via Zoom.
Zachary Block, Amar Mohanty, Keyan Zhai
Advised by Dr. Mark Yim
“Automated At-Home Fall Assessment for the Elderly Using Computer Vision”

Spring 2023 Robotics MSE Thesis Presentations
2023-05-05 12:30 - 16:00 | Towne 337
This is a hybrid event that will take place in Towne 337 and via Zoom.

12:30pm – Welcome Remarks
Dr. Ani Hsieh – ROBO Program Chair
12:35pm – Haoran Tang
Advised by: Dr. Pratik Chaudhari
“Navigating the Task Manifold”
1:05pm – Ankit Prabhu
Advised by: Dr. Vijay Kumar
“Robots in Timberland: Towards Fine-Grained Semantic Mapping by UAVs in Forests for Diameter Estimation”
1:35pm – Xiatao Sun
Advised by: Dr. Vijay Kumar
“Imitation Learning for Autonomous Quadrotor Flight“
2:05pm – Bo Wu
Advised by: Dr. Kostas Daniilidis
“The Role of Mapping in Modern Robot Navigation Tasks”
2:35pm – Maya Guru
Advised by: Rahul Mangharam
“Ethics and Liability Considerations of Autonomous Vehicle Driving Policies”

3:05pm – Jinxu Zhang
Advised by: Jianbo Shi
“Detection and Curation of Generated Images from Diffusion Model”
3:35pm – Kaihan Zhu (CIS)
Advised by: Jianbo Shi
“Experiment on Super Resolution Through UNet and Diffusion Transformer”

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Resident Macrophages in Tendon Growth and Development" (Catherine Bautista)
2023-05-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Class of 62 Auditorium, John Morgan Building, 3620 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA, 19104
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Nathaniel Dyment are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Catherine Bautista.

Title: Resident Macrophages in Tendon Growth and Development
Date: May 8, 2023
Time: 10:00am
Location: JMB Class of ’62 Auditorium

Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/94981950758?pwd=[REDACTED]

The public is welcome to attend.

2023 Heilmeier Award Lecture: Dr. Dani S. Bassett
2023-05-08 13:00 - 14:00 | Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology, 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
“On Being Curious”
What is curiosity? Is it an emotion? A behavior? A cognitive process? Curiosity seems to be an abstract concept — like love, perhaps, or justice — far from the realm of those bits of nature that science can possibly address. However, contrary to intuition, leading theories of curiosity from history, philosophy, and psychology are surprisingly amenable to formalization in an emerging branch of mathematics known as network science. Such a formalization allows theories of curiosity to be explicitly tested and validated in linguistic and behavioral data. In understanding the foundational processes of curiosity, we can turn to pressing societal questions that can only be addressed through interdisciplinary work that foregrounds a critical consciousness. How can we practice, mentor, and teach curiosity? In what ways might we value and support diverse curiosities? What is an ethical curiosity?

ESE PhD Thesis Defense: "Event-based Perception for Ground Vehicle Control"
2023-05-10 09:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Autonomous vehicles rely on environmental perception to inform the system on how to act. Vision sensors, such as conventional cameras, have been at the forefront of the perception of most mobile platforms. However, conventional cameras have limitations such as high data rates, low dynamic range, and high latency. Dynamic vision sensors, such as event cameras, address and overcome those shortcomings by recording changes in the logarithm of light intensity at pixel level asynchronously and independently. With the benefits of high dynamic range, low power consumption, low latency, and high temporal resolution, event cameras excel as vision sensors for autonomous ground vehicle applications. This dissertation highlights the use of event cameras to inform control decisions for autonomous ground vehicles. Additionally, it introduces a new 1/10th scale autonomous testing platform, Ryder.

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Engineering stem cells and organoids on a chip for the study of human health and disease" (Sunghee Estelle Park)
2023-05-10 13:00 - 15:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Dan Huh are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Sunghee Estelle Park.
Title: Engineering stem cells and organoids on a chip for the study of human health and disease
Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Time: 1:00 pm
Location: Towne 225 Raisler Lounge
The public is welcome to attend.

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: "Aluminum Scandium Nitride (AlScN) Films for Microelectromechanical Systems"
2023-05-10 15:00 - 16:00 | Towne 307, 220 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Advancements in wireless and sensor technology have resulted in increasing demand for piezoelectric MEMS devices in wireless handsets and base stations, automobile technology, health monitoring sensors, and environmental sensors. Due to its high-quality factor (Q), Young’s modulus, sound velocity, and low mechanical and dielectric losses, AlN is an advantageous resonator material with applications in radio frequency filtering. AlN’s low piezoelectric coefficients, however, limit its application, especially when large electromechanical coupling is required such as wide bandwidth acoustic filters and energy harvesters. In 2009 it was discovered that alloying AlN with Scandium (Sc) increases its d33 piezoelectric coefficient by over 500% and maintains compatibility with post-CMOS integration when deposited below 400∘{1}*C. As process parameters and Sc levels are modified to enhance performance, this also impacts the built-in stress in the film. Undesired stress can degrade device performance in thin films and cause undesired deformations in released MEMS structures. Undesired phases and anomalously oriented grains (AOGs) reduce piezoelectric coefficients, film orientation, and modify stress. AOGs also render etching of device structures problematic as the AOG regions etch at a much lower rate. AlScN theoretical material models do not capture these and other fabrication related effects and often fail to accurately predict the electromechanical properties of AlScN thin films.
This presentation will discuss the origins of stress and anomalous grain formation in AlScN physical vapor deposition processes, establish methods to control the stress, and inhibit anomalous grain growth over a range of scandium alloying levels to yield high quality AlScN films with large piezoelectric coefficients. The physical mechanism behind stress gradients in AlScN thin films and methods mitigate stress gradients to reduce out-of-plane deformations in released MEMS structures will also be discussed. I demonstrate a technique where the total process gas flow is varied during the deposition to compensate for the native through-thickness stress gradient in sputtered AlScN thin films. Finally, I will provide methods to extract the AlScN stiffness, piezoelectric, and permittivity tenors from MEMS structures carefully designed to isolate various electromechanical parameters. A suite of device structures capable of measuring the key electromechanical properties of AlScN materials as a function of Sc alloying are demonstrated. Extraction of electromechanical properties is performed by matching solutions using COMSOL Multiphysics Finite Element Solver with the measurements obtained from the suite of device structures. This presentation provides physical vapor deposition parameters to deposit low stress, stress gradient free, and AOG free AlScN films, fabrication processes to develop AlScN devices, as well as electromechanical material models with complete material parameters to predict device performance. These are crucial innovations enabling the realization of devices in Al1−xScxN thin films.
{1}*M. Akiyama, T. Kamohara, K. Kano, A. Teshigahara, Y. Takeuchi, and N. Kawahara. (2009). Enhancement of piezoelectric response in scandium aluminum nitride alloy thin films prepared by dual reactive cosputtering. Advanced Materials, 21(5), 593-596.

MSE David P. Pope Distinguished Lecture: "Intelligentsia of Nano-Architected Hierarchical Materials"
2023-05-11 11:30 - 12:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Creation of reconfigurable and multi-functional materials can be achieved by incorporating architecture into material design. In our research, we design and fabricate three-dimensional (3D) nano-architected materials that can exhibit superior and often tunable thermal, photonic, electrochemical, biochemical, and mechanical properties at extremely low mass densities (lighter than aerogels), which renders them useful and enabling in technological applications. Dominant properties of such meta-materials are driven by their multi-scale nature: from characteristic material microstructure (atoms) to individual constituents (nanometers) to structural components (microns) to overall architectures (millimeters and above).
The focus of this talk is on additive manufacturing via vat polymerization and function-containing chemical synthesis to create 3D nano- and micro-architected metals, ceramics, multifunctional metal oxides (nano-photonics, photocatalytic, piezoelectric, etc.), and metal-containing polymer complexes, etc., as well as demonstrate their potential in some real-use biomedical, protective, and sensing applications. I will describe how the choice of architecture, material, and external stimulus can elicit stimulus- responsive, reconfigurable, and multifunctional response.

Penn Engineering Commencement 2023: Doctoral Ceremony
2023-05-11 15:30 - 16:30 | Irvine Auditorium, 3401 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Celebrate Penn Engineering’s 2023 Doctoral Graduates. Additional information is available on the Penn Engineering Commencement website.
