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    • CBE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “DROPS-ON-STILTS MICROROBOTS FOR TRANSPORT AND DELIVERY OF HYDROPHOBIC CARGO” (Oluwafemi Ligan)

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

    Abstract: Magnetically actuated microrobots composed of dynamic assemblies of iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) offer versatile opportunities for biomedical applications. While such assemblies can reconfigure and perform diverse tasks under applied magnetic fields, the effective transport of hydrophobic cargo remains a significant challenge. To address this limitation, we introduce “drops-on-stilts” microrobots formed by the co-assembly of […]

    ASSET Seminar: “How do LLMs generalize on out-of-distribution tasks? insights from model’s internal representations”

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

    A mystery of large language models (LLMs) is their ability to solve novel tasks, notably through a few demonstrations in the prompt (in-context learning). Such tasks often require the model to generalize far beyond its training distribution, raising the question: how do LLMs achieve this form of out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization? For example, in symbolized language […]

    Fall 2025 GRASP SFI: Deepti Ghadiyaram, Boston University, “Interpreting and Leveraging Generative Representations”

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    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.  ABSTRACT Generating high-quality photo-realistic visual content is a thriving area of research. In this talk, I will focus not on the generation process, but on understanding how rich visual semantic information is represented within generative models. Specifically, I will […]

    CBE Seminar: “Imaging Genetics: Enhancer-mediated Dynamic Gene Control in Space and Time” (Bomyi Lim, University of Pennsylvania)

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

    Abstract: Canonical models suggest that regulatory enhancers function independently of genomic distance, position, and orientation to activate the target gene. Indeed, a wide range of genomic distances and relative enhancer positions exist in endogenous contexts. However, systematic analysis of how specific enhancer-promoter configurations affect transcriptional dynamics has been limited by technical constraints. Here, we employ […]

    MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “The Role of YAP and TAZ in Regulating Load-induced Bone Adaptation and Osteocytes Mechanosensing”

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    Towne 305 220 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Mechanical loading is essential for skeletal growth, maintenance, and repair, yet the mechanisms that regulate bone mechanoadaptation remain incompletely understood. Yes-associated protein (YAP) and transcriptional co-activator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ), downstream of the Hippo pathway, are emerging regulators of bone cell biology, but their in vivo role in skeletal mechanoadaptation has not been fully defined. […]

    MSE Seminar: Designing Biomaterials With Spatially Tunable Properties – Lesley Chow – Lehigh University

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    Wu & Chen Auditorium

    Biological tissues are complex materials where the spatial arrangement of multiple components (i.e., extracellular matrix, cells) is tightly linked to their function. For example, osteochondral tissues contain discrete biochemical and physical gradients across the bone-cartilage interface that are critical for functional load transfer in our articulating joints. Our lab is focused on strategies to fabricate […]

    ESE Fall Seminar – “Physics-Aware, Full-Stack Software to Accelerate Practical Quantum Computing”

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

    Quantum software can be a force multiplier that can significantly shorten the timeline for utility-scale results from quantum hardware. In particular, several key research directions will help realize practical quantum advantage. Physics-aware, cross-layer optimizations will continue to yield important efficiencies to allow applications to make the most of quantum resources. Software-directed noise-aware optimization and error […]

    FOLDS seminar: Propagation-of-Chaos in Shallow Neural Networks beyond Logarithmic Time.

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

    Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98220304722 The analysis of gradient-based learning of Neural Networks remains an outstanding challenge, even for the simplest shallow architectures.  A powerful mathematical framework that has emerged over recent years lifts the optimization in the space of probability measures, and captures important empirical phenomena such as the 'blessing of overparametrization'. However, the resulting learning […]

    CBE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “Mechanical Confinement as a Driver of Aneuploidy in Cancer” (Steven Phan)

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

    Abstract: Cell confinement and mechanical stress are common in solid tumors, but any impact on genetic changes remains unclear. Using chromosome reporters (ChReporters) that reveal heritable losses of chromosomes in live cells, we discover that ChReporter losses are surprisingly equivalent when cells are subjected to either mild confinement (6-10µm) or strong confinement (2µm). Strong confinement […]

    MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Pneumatic Actuation in Soft Robotic System”

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    CTA

    Soft robotic systems, constructed from compliant and adaptive materials, offer advantages such as safe interaction with humans, flexibility in motion, and the ability to conform to unstructured environments. These capabilities make them promising for applications in healthcare, manufacturing, and exploration. A central challenge, however, is the development of actuation strategies that are versatile, efficient, and […]