The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Drs. Osbert Bastani and James Gee are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Michael Yao. Title: Distributionally Robust Machine Intelligence Advisors: Osbert Bastani, PhD and James Gee, PhD Date & Time: Friday, September 5th at 11am Location: Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 414 (3317 Chestnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19104) RSVP […]
What’s the best way to avoid paper retractions and irreproducible results? Conduct rigorous research. Join us for a public talk with Ivan Oransky, Co-Founder of Retraction Watch, Anita Anita Bandrowski, founder of The Research Resource Identification Initiative (RRID), and Jason Williams, Assisant Director of the DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, on doing science […]
Please join us on Tuesday, September 9 for an overview of research being done in the MEAM Department, hosted by MEAM Department Chair, Dr. Kevin Turner. This is an excellent opportunity for current graduate students to learn about the breadth of work being done in MEAM. The following faculty will be presenting (not in order […]
We present a unified perspective on test-time thinking as a lens for improving generative AI agents through finer-grained reward modeling, data-centric reasoning, and robust alignment. Beginning with GenARM, we introduce an inductive bias for denser, token-level reward modeling that guides generation during decoding, enabling token-level alignment without retraining. While GenARM targets reward design, ThinkLite-VL focuses on the data […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Humanoids represent the most versatile robotic platform, capable of walking, manipulating, and collaborating with people in human-centered environments. Yet, despite recent advances, building humanoids that can operate reliably in the real world remains a fundamental challenge. Progress has […]
Abstract: Vesicles are membrane-bound compartments that play a central role in biology. Despite recent progress, the dynamics of single- and multi-component lipid vesicles are not fully understood, particularly far from equilibrium where complex nonspherical shapes undergo large deformations in flow. In this talk, I will present recent work from our group on the non-equilibrium dynamics […]
In a supervised learning setting, a model fitting algorithm is unstable if small perturbations to the input (the training data) can often lead to large perturbations in the output (say, predictions returned by the fitted model). Algorithmic stability is a desirable property with many important implications such as generalization and robustness, but testing the stability […]
Ferroelectric materials have emerged as promising candidates for next-generation non-volatile memory technologies due to their intrinsic remnant polarization and fast switching dynamics. Among them, aluminum scandium nitride (AlScN) stands out for its CMOS compatibility, low growth temperature, exceptional thermal stability and high remnant polarization compared to conventional perovskite and hafnia-based ferroelectrics. In this dissertation, I […]
AI-enabled systems have become ubiquitous and integral to safety-critical domains, e.g., autonomous vehicles and aerial robotics. Despite promising empirical results, decision-making processes for critical systems incorporating AI components require careful consideration, as failures may have catastrophic consequences. One key challenge is that various uncertainties will inevitably arise from system limitations, black-box models, or environmental factors, […]
Tunable and energy-efficient filters are key components in modern wireless communication, where RF front-end systems must operate across multiple frequency bands while minimizing power consumption. This thesis focuses on the design and fabrication of miniature, narrowband, tunable bandpass and bandstop filters based on magnetostatic waves (MSW) in yttrium iron garnet (YIG) waveguides. A zero-static-power magnetic […]
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Chamith Rajapakse are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Brian-Tinh D. Vu. Title: "Rapid, High-resolution, and Signal-efficient Methods for the Clinical Translation of Bone Magnetic Resonance Imaging" Date: Wednesday, September 17th Time: 10:00 AM Location: BRB 1412 Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/99746435550?pwd=PSZPcdjQznAxQK4TRsyydCi0IQE52L.1 The public is welcome to […]
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Flavia Vitale are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Georgios Mentzelopoulos. Title: From thoughts to actions: cracking the neural code across scales and modalities Advisor: Dr. Flavia Vitale Date: Monday, September 15th Time: 12:30 PM- 2:30 PM Location: 225 Towne Building The […]