Penn Engineering Events

MSE Seminar: "Metals and Alloys: A Critical Weapon in the Fight against Climate Change"
2021-10-07 12:15 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Auditorium, LRSM Building, 3231 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Today in the U.S., we deal with the severe, wide ranging effects of climate change from the West to East Coast in the form of heat waves, drought, wildfires, and flooding. To end these disasters, we need to drastically change the way we produce and use energy. For example, in 2020, over 72 % of the energy consumed in the U.S. came from burning natural gases (31.5 %), coal (9.21 %) and petroleum (32.2 %), [1] which are all major contributors to U.S. carbon pollution. Experts agree that we need to move away from fossil fuels and embrace renewable energy technologies. At present, some of our most sophisticated renewable energy efforts involve the transition from coal and gasoline to Li-ion battery and hydrogen energy technologies. A fundamental problem with these solutions is the extremely low volumetric energy density of Li-ion batteries (blue marker in Fig. 1) and hydrogen fuel (red marker in Fig. 1) compared to coal and gasoline (grey markers in Fig. 1). [2] In addition, Li-ion battery technology suffers from several drawbacks, which Dr. Detsi will discuss in this talk, alongside with the efforts of his group to mitigate these issues, including the highly inefficient roll-to-roll battery manufacturing process and the poor cycle life of Li-ion batteries caused by a gradual degradation of electrode materials during (dis)charging. [3-5] Similarly, the use of hydrogen as a fuel is hampered by the low scalability of sustainable hydrogen production methods, the high costs and safety issues associated with hydrogen storage, and the lack of hydrogen infrastructures nationwide. Thus, hydrogen and metal-ion (such as Li-, Na-, K-, and Mg-ion) battery technologies are obviously not suitable for grid scale and heavy-duty energy applications.
An alternative approach involves reversibly storing renewable energy in Earth-abundant metals (such as Al, Mg, and Fe) or metalloids (B, Si). These materials exhibit much higher volumetric energy densities than coal and gasoline, as shown by the green markers in Fig. 1. [2] Typically, Fig. 1 reveals us that, for a given fixed volume fuel, burning Fe metal as a fuel will release twice as much energy as burning coal or gasoline; and burning Al metal will release three times as much energy as burning coal or gasoline.[2] By activating these metals through nanostructuring, these materials can release energy through reaction with oxygen (i.e. dry metal fuel oxidation) or water (i.e. wet metal fuel oxidation). In this talk, Dr. Detsi will discuss how we activate reactive metals like Al, Mg, and Zn using dealloying, and use these metals to release energy in the form of heat and chemical bonds (hydrogen) through hydrolysis (i.e. wet metal fuel oxidation).[6-8] After energy is extracted through oxidation, the solid reaction products in the form of metal (hydr)oxides can then be converted back into pure metals through reduction using sustainable energy resources such as hydropower, solar power and wind power to enable a sustainable metal fuel economy.[2] In this talk, he will also discuss the effort in his group to convert Al (hydr)oxide into metallic Al.[9]

CBE Seminar: "Electrolytes for High Energy Li-ion and Li Metal Batteries"
2021-10-06 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract
Electrolytes are critical enabling components for Li-ion batteries to safely operate within a wide temperature range, under extreme fast charging, and under intense abuse conditions without sacrificing energy density and cycle life. Current electrolytes cannot satisfy these requirements. We developed advanced all-fluorinated electrolytes, water-in-sale (WIS) electrolytes and solid-state electrolytes aiming to simultaneously enhance cell energy density and safety. Guided by the electrolyte design principle for high-capacity electrodes with large volume changes, we developed serval organic liquid electrolytes suitable for micro-sized Si and Li metal anodes and NMC cathodes. We also reduced the salt concentration of water-in-salt electrolytes from 21m to 4.5m, and extended the electrochemical stability window from 3.0V of WIS to 3.4V. These improved electrolytes enable LiMn2O4/Li4Ti5O12 pouch cells with an areal capacity of 2.5 mAh/cm2 and a P/N capacity ratio of 1.14 to achieve a long cycle life of 500. For solid state electrolyte Li metal batteries, we suppressed the Li dendrite growth and reduced the interface resistance by constructing a lithionphobic-lithiophoilic interlayer between solid electrolyte and Li metal anodes. The critical role of solid electrolyte interphase in accommodating electrode volume changes was also investigated.

PICS Student Seminar: "Keshav Patil and Yansong Gao"
2021-10-06 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom – email kathom@seas.upenn.edu
Yansong Gao Title: “A Free-Energy Principle for Representation Learning”
Keshav Patil Title: “Altered protein dynamics delineates the oncogenic potential of various kinase mutations”
On Wednesday, October 6 at 12:00, PICS will host a virtual student seminar featuring Yansong Gao, a 4th year PhD in the Chaudhari group; and Keshav Patil, 4th year PhD in the Radhakrishnan group. At this seminar each student will present for 30 minutes and then take questions.

ESE Fall Colloquium Seminar - "Toward Practical Quantum Advantage: Many-body Physics in the NISQ Era"
2021-10-06 11:30 - 12:30 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Quantum processors of today are already capable of surpassing classical supercomputers on certain specialized tasks [1]. A current milestone for the quantum information science community is the fulfilment of quantum computational advantage on a practical problem of interest. The beginning of this talk will outline our technical progress on realizing various high-fidelity quantum gates on Google’s Sycamore processor, such as iSWAP and CPHASE. We then focus on two experiments studying many-body phenomena that have previously proven elusive on all quantum computing or simulation platforms: discrete time-crystals (DTC) and quantum scrambling.
In the DTC work, we implement Floquet dynamics on a 1D chain of 20 superconducting qubits [2]. Engineered disorders in the two-qubit couplings allow many-body localization (MBL) to occur despite strong external drive, thereby stabilizing a non-equilibrium phase of matter [3]. We carefully validate the phase structure of the DTC by probing the average response of all eigenstates belonging to the Floquet unitary. Using a suitable choice of order parameter, we further identify the location of the MBL-ergodicity crossover via experimentally observed finite-size effects. These results open a direct path to studying quantum phase transitions and critical phenomena on NISQ quantum processors. In the quantum scrambling work [4], we deploy a full 2D grid of 53 qubits and implement quantum circuits with tunable complexity. By measuring the quantum fluctuation of out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), we resolve the two key requisites of quantum scrambling: operator spreading and operator entanglement. Results from the most complex quantum circuits require ~100 hours to simulate on a CPU core via best-known classical algorithms, indicating the potential for achieving practical quantum advantage in the near term.
[1] Google AI Quantum and Collaborators, Nature 574, 505 (2019).
[2] X. Mi, M. Ippoliti, K. Kechedzhi, V. Khemani, P. Roushan et al., arXiv:2107.13571 (2021).
[3] M. Ippoliti, K. Kechedzhi, R. Moessner, S. Shivaji, V. Khemani, PRX Quantum (In press).
[4] X. Mi, P. Roushan, C. Quintana, K. Kechedzhi, V. Smelyanskiy, Y. Chen et al., arXiv:2101.08870 (2021).

MEAM PhD Thesis Defense: "Analytical Homogenization Estimates for the Effective Properties and Field Statistics of Viscoplastic Composites and Particle Suspensions"
2021-10-05 13:00 - 14:00 | Zoom – Email MEAM for Link, peterlit@seas.upenn.edu
Heterogeneous materials are commonly found in nature (e.g. soil, rock, blood) and engineering applications (e.g. paints, lubricants, sintered materials). Understanding the microstructure-properties relations is crucial to predicting how these materials fail and behave during processing.
In this thesis, we develop semi-analytical homogenization estimates for the macroscopic properties and field statistics of viscoplastic composites. A generalization of classical homogenization estimates for anisotropic linear two-phase composites is proposed. The generalized estimates are consistent with known bounds for the effective properties and satisfy certain duality properties relating the primal and dual formulations of the homogenization problem. Particularly for composites with large phase contrast, the new estimates are expected to have improved predictive capabilities as they can capture — at least qualitatively — the onset of clustering of the inclusion phase at non-dilute volume fractions. The new estimates also have important implications for the phase averages of the stress and strain-rate fields as well as the field fluctuations. In addition, for the special case of monodisperse suspensions of rigid spheres in a Newtonian fluid, the new estimates for the shear viscosity are validated against experimental results.
The generalized estimates are then used to estimate the effective behavior of nonlinear viscoplastic composites. To that end, we employ the variational linear comparison methods, which make use of optimally chosen linear comparison composite media, allowing the direct conversion of estimates for linear composites into corresponding estimates for nonlinear composites. For suspensions of rigid spheres in a Herschel-Bulkley fluid, the estimates for the effective yield and flow stress are validated against experimental results. Second-order linear comparison homogenization estimates for nonlinear viscoplastic composites with infinite phase contrast are generated and the dependence of the effective behavior on the macroscopic loading conditions is investigated. Special attention is devoted to the method’s ability to capture the highly localized anisotropic deformation patterns that emerge in composites with a finite yield stress. Under pure shear loading conditions the dependence of the effective yield stress is found to be non-analytic for dilute inclusion volume fractions which is shown to be connected to the emergence of shear bands.

MEAM Seminar: "Electrets, Magnetics and Deformation in Soft Materials"
2021-10-05 10:00 - 11:30 | Zoom – Email MEAM for Link, peterlit@seas.upenn.edu
Soft robotics, energy harvesting, large-deformation sensing and actuation, are just some of the applications that can be enabled by soft dielectrics that demonstrate substantive electromechanical coupling. Imagine now also a material that will produce electricity and deform substantively via a contactless, wireless magnetic signal. Unfortunately, truly soft, naturally occurring piezoelectric or magnetoelectric materials essentially do not exist. In this presentation, I will illustrate how mechanics and the concept of electrets i.e. materials with immobile embedded charges and dipoles, may be used for the design of soft piezoelectric, magnetoelectric, and electrocaloric materials. I will also briefly discuss the ramifications our results to explain biophysical phenomena such as the infrared vision of snakes or the ability of some animals to detect magnetic fields.

PSOC@Penn: "Microtubule Deacetylation Enables in vivo Collective Cell Migration by Tuning Cell Stiffness in Relation to Substrate Stiffness" (Abdul N. Malmi-Kakkada)
2021-10-04 12:00 - 13:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Room: Towne 225/Raisler Lounge
For zoom link, contact manu@seas.upenn.edu.

MEAM PhD Thesis Defense: "Dynamic Behavior of Periodic Media and Elastic Metamaterials"
2021-10-04 10:00 - 11:00 | Zoom – Email MEAM for Link, peterlit@seas.upenn.edu
Periodic media and resonant, acoustic/elastic metamaterials possess extraordinary frequency band gaps where no waves may propagate. In this dissertation, we leverage numerical simulations to gain insight into practical ways to effectively measure and characterize the behavior of these materials from experimental observables and also explore physical mechanisms to optimize their performance, particularly in the context of resonant metamaterials. With respect to the former, the finite nature of experiments prevents the usage of Bloch’s theorem and unit cell analysis. To circumvent this, an FFT procedure combined with an exponential fitting method are used to extract the real and imaginary part of dispersion relations from real-time simulation data. Difficulties such as sample length and frequency domain resolution, associated with this type of analysis, are examined parametrically using synthetic data from numerical simulations. In addition to this study, an additively manufactured, resonant metamaterial made of a soft PDMS rubber is analyzed using both experimental data and finite element models. By isolating several physical features of the material, a new mechanism for band gap formation is discovered where band gaps associated with different vibrational modes are combined to produce an ultrabroad band gap through the use of a compliant frame.

ODEI Spotlight: Penn Pride Palooza 2021
2021-10-03 13:00 - 16:00 | LGBT Center – 3907 Spruce Street, 3907 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, United States
Kick-off LGBTQ+ History Month and warm-up for National Coming Out Day with a bang! Come to our festival featuring queer dance lessons (no experience needed), progressive pride flags galore, and of course yummy food (gluten-free and vegan options available; more TBA. All are welcome.

ODEI Spotlight: Career Services Q&A zoom session for International Students
2021-10-01 13:00 - 14:00
Are you an international student at Penn with questions about your resume, cover letters, interviewing, LinkedIn, using Handshake, finding opportunities, career fairs, virtual interviews, networking, negotiations, or other job search topics? Join this informal zoom session where Jillian Cener, Associate Director of Penn Career Services, will answer your questions and have a discussion with the group. Many of you probably have some of the same questions, so we can go over resources together.
Please RSVP to attend.

Fall 2021 GRASP Seminar: Rahul Mangharam, University of Pennsylvania, “What can we learn from Autonomous Racing?”
2021-10-01 10:30 - 11:45 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
*This will be a HYBRID Event with in-person attendance in Wu & Chen Auditorium and Virtual attendance via Zoom here.
Balancing performance and safety are crucial to deploying autonomous vehicles in multi-agent environments. In particular, autonomous racing is a domain that penalizes safe but conservative policies, highlighting the need for robust, adaptive strategies. Current approaches either make simplifying assumptions about other agents or lack robust mechanisms for online adaptation. In this talk, we will explore research themes on perception, planning and control at the limits of performance. We explore (1) How to build the most efficient autonomous racecar with Multi-domain optimization across vehicle design, planning and control; (2) How to generate the most competitive agents who dynamically balance safety and assertiveness by using distributionally robust online adaptation; (3) How to stress test the overtaking logic and path planning algorithms in interactive adversarial agents; (4) How to combine previous system designs to auto-complete new designs with new requirements, and (5) Understand the value of Cooperation in Multi-Agent Games. We realize all our research in the https://f1tenth.org autonomous racecar platform that is 10th the size, but 10x the fun! The main takeaway from this talk is how you can get involved in very exciting research on safe autonomous systems. This is a team presentation by Rahul Mangharam, Johannes Betz and Billy Zheng.

MEAM PhD Thesis Defense: "A Differential Homogenization Framework for Precipitation-Strengthened Metals"
2021-09-30 14:00 - 15:00 | Zoom – Email MEAM for Link, peterlit@seas.upenn.edu
Composite materials, such as metal- and polymer-matrix composites, exhibit both elastic and dissipative effects when subjected to macroscopic loadings. Even when the phases of the composite are characterized by a simple Maxwell rheology, the complex viscoelastic interactions between the phases give rise to emergent behavior at the macroscopic scale. Incorporating these “long-memory” effects in the context of analytical homogenization is the subject of this thesis.
In particular, I will present a novel differential homogenization framework for particulate composites comprised of elasto-viscoplastic strain-hardening phases that incorporates first and second-moment information about the local hardening fields and improves upon existing formulations which only consider the corresponding first moments. The present framework is motivated by precipitation-strengthened alloys, which constitute a commercially important class of whose mechanical properties can be altered by introducing stiff precipitates into the bulk (matrix) through heat-treatment.
First, we’ll consider the simple case of linear viscoelasticity and show that by using differential equations instead of difference equations, the new formulation is more robust than earlier approaches and recovers exact results for certain classes of composites.
Next, we provide estimates for creeping single crystals with elastic particles and find that the long-memory effect manifests as a transient creep-rate which is strongly dependent on the elasticity of the phases as well as the morphology of the particles. We also find that the timescales associated with macroscopic creep are strongly dependent on crystal symmetry as well as the loading configuration.
Lastly, we examine the effect of microstructure on the effective behavior of precipitation-strengthened crystals. It is found that overall, stiff precipitates induce larger levels of slip-activity and work-hardening, relative to a corresponding homogeneous crystal. For FCC crystals, the precipitate stiffness plays a significant role in modulating the overall anisotropy, while for HCP crystals the overall anisotropy is mostly affected by the viscous and hardening anisotropies. Moreover, it is found that incorporating the second-moments of the local hardening fields is important for generating accurate predictions, particularly at large deformations.

ODEI Spotlight: Promoting LGBTQ+ Inclusivity
2021-09-30 12:00 - 13:30
Are you looking for a way to expand your understanding of what it means to be a member of LGBTQ+ communities? Do you feel uneducated in conversations surrounding LGBTQ+ language and preferred terms? Join us for this interactive session which provides participants with an overview of LGBTQ+ history, terms, and current issues. It is a chance to expand your understanding of what it means to be a member of LGBTQ+ communities and gain tangible tips on how you can check implicit biases and effectively engage with and support those who identify within the queer community. Lunch will be provided (gluten-free and vegan options available). Registration required.

CBE Seminar: "Shake It Off: Dynamics of Bacterial Adhesions at Interfaces"
2021-09-29 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract
Control over adhesion of bacteria on solid and liquid interfaces underlies a spectrum of practical applications, ranging from preventing the formation of destructive biofilms on medical devices and on resource pipelines to removing pollutants from water. Because microscale bacteria are similar in size to colloidal particles, bacterial adhesion has long been studied using models for colloidal deposition. Many bacteria, however, are active and can move, swim, tumble, and rotate near interfaces. This activity, not captured in models for deposition of passive colloids, must affect how bacteria deposit onto surfaces. Here, I will describe work exploring effects of motility on adhesion to solid substrates and to liquid-liquid interfaces. On solid surfaces, we relate near-surface mobility and adhesion to surface properties using imaging; engineer bacteria to identify surface adhesions that control transient mobility; and apply insights from these studies to design responsive polymer brush surfaces that detach adherent bacteria. On liquid-liquid interfaces, we test the applicability of thermodynamic pictures for adhesion of non-motile bacteria on oil droplets; identify how bacterial swimming alters this adhesion; and show that motile adhered bacteria can drive droplet rotation.

MEAM Seminar: "Kirigami: Programming Cutting and Folding from Microscale to Meter Scale"
2021-09-28 10:00 - 11:30 | Zoom – Email MEAM for Link, peterlit@seas.upenn.edu
Programmable shape-shifting materials can take different physical forms to achieve multifunctionality in a dynamic and controllable manner. By introducing holes and cuts in 2D sheets, we demonstrate dramatic color and shape change and super-conformability via collapsing or expanding of the hole arrays in the micro- and macroscales. When choosing the cuts and geometry correctly, we show folding into the third dimension, known as kirigami. By programming the geometry of cuts and folding angles, we explore their potential applications in water harvesting, super-stretchable and shape conformable medical devices.

PICS Colloquium: "How reproducible is your research?"
2021-09-24 14:00 - 15:00 | Zoom – email kathom@seas.upenn.edu
Abstract: Each year vast international resources are wasted on irreproducible research. The scientific community has been slow to adopt standard software engineering practices, despite the increases in high-dimensional data, complexities of workflows, and computational environments. Here we show how scientific software applications can be created in a reproducible manner when simple design goals for reproducibility are met. We describe the implementation of a test server framework and 40 scientific benchmarks, covering numerous applications in Rosetta bio-macromolecular modeling. High performance computing cluster integration allows these benchmarks to run continuously and automatically. Detailed protocol captures are useful for developers and users of Rosetta and other macromolecular modeling tools. The framework and design concepts presented here are valuable for developers and users of any type of scientific software and for the scientific community to create reproducible methods. Specific examples highlight the utility of this framework, and the comprehensive documentation illustrates the ease of adding new tests in a matter of hours.

Penn Electric Racing and the Future of EV Engineering
2021-09-24 14:00 - 15:00 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Penn Electric Racing is Penn’s award winning Formula SAE electric racing team. Every year, we design and manufacture an electric racecar and compete against schools from across the country. This experience gives our students invaluable skills, allowing us to jumpstart careers in the EV industry. In this event, we will discuss the role of EV’s in the climate crisis and how Penn Electric Racing uniquely prepares our students to contribute to this industry.

Sustainability and the Building Environment: Building Materials and Cooling Strategies that Combat a Warming Planet
2021-09-24 12:00 - 13:00 | https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752
Air conditioning today accounts for nearly 20% of the total electricity used in buildings around the world and over 10% of the total primary energy use in the US. Already a major contributor to climate change, cooling energy demand is predicted to significantly increase over the next decades with urbanization, population growth and global warming. Heat stress is a major environmental justice concern, dis-proportionally impacting disadvantaged communities. We must find sustainable and equitable cooling alternatives to replace current building practices which only exacerbate the environmental crisis.
The webinar will include an overview of research by Penn faculty members on alternative low-energy cooling strategies and innovative building materials inspired by nature. This will be followed by case-studies of built projects presented by industry leaders in the field.

Fall 2021 GRASP Seminar: GRASP Research Overview – Day 2
2021-09-24 10:30 - 11:45 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
GRASP Lab faculty confirmed presentations (where appropriate their presenters)…
Dr. Ani Hsieh – Welcome & Introduction
Dr. Michelle Johnson (presented by Frances Sowande)
Dr. Dan Koditschek (presented by Wei-Hsi Chen)
Dr. George Pappas (presented by Yiannis Kantaros)
Dr. Rahul Mangharam
Dr. Nikolai Matni
Dr. Robert Stuart-Smith
Dr. Cynthia Sung
Dr. James Pikul

CBE Graduate Student Symposium (GSS)
2021-09-24 08:00 - 18:00 | Singh Center for Nanotechnology, 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States

ODEI Spotlight: GIC Open House, Welcome and Introduction to Native and Indigenous Community
2021-09-23 18:00 - 20:00
Welcome and Introduction to Native and Indigenous Community
Date: Thursday, September 23, 2021
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. EST
Location: Greenfield Intercultural Center, 3708 Chestnut Street

BE Seminar: "Material Design for Lymph Node Drug Delivery and Immunomodulation" (Susan Thomas)
2021-09-23 13:30 - 16:30 | Moore 216, 200 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
This event will be held live and broadcast on zoom – link coming soon.
Lymph nodes mediate the co-mingling of cells of the adaptive system to coordinate adaptive immune response. Drug delivery principles and technologies our group has developed to leverage the potential of lymph nodes as immunotherapeutic drug targets to augment anti-cancer therapeutic effects will be described.

MSE David P. Pope Distinguished Lecture: "Skin-Inspired Organic Electronics"
2021-09-23 12:30 - 13:30
Skin is the body’s largest organ, and is responsible for the transduction of a vast amount of information. This conformable, stretchable, self-healable and biodegradable material simultaneously collects signals from external stimuli that translate into information such as pressure, pain, and temperature. The development of electronic materials, inspired by the complexity of this organ is a tremendous, unrealized materials challenge. However, the advent of organic-based electronic materials may offer a potential solution to this longstanding problem. Over the past decade, we have developed materials design concepts to add skin-like functions to organic electronic materials without compromising their electronic properties. These new materials and new devices enabled arrange of new applications in medical devices, robotics and wearable electronics. In this talk, Dr. Bao will discuss basic material design concepts for realizing stretchable, self-healable and biodegradable conductive or semiconductive materials. She will show our methods for scalable fabrication of stretchable electronic circuit blocks. Finally, she will show a few examples of applications we are pursuing uniquely enabled by skin-like organic electronics when interfacing with biological systems, such as low-voltage electrical stimulation, high-resolution large area electrophysiology, “morphing electronics” that grows with biological system and genetically targeted chemical assembly – GTCA.

Global Discovery Series: Climate Change and Cities
2021-09-23 12:00 - 13:00 | https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752
Professor Michael Weisberg, Director of Post-Graduate Programs at the Perry World House, and Perry World House Visiting Fellow and Penn Alumna Lolita Jackson talk about the impacts of climate change at the municipal level. While vastly different in scale, New York City and the Galápagos Town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno (population 8000), the towns in which they have worked for many years, face similar threats: sea level rise, increased flooding from storms, and population growth. They also face the challenge of having their needs prioritized in the national and international arena. Join us for a lively conversation about climate change and these two cities.
This event is sponsored by Penn Alumni and Penn Engineering.

CBE Seminar: “Engineering the Crystallization of Water Using Molecular and Biomolecular Agents”
2021-09-22 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract
The crystallization of water affects various processes, both globally and in our daily lives. Ice crystals cause freezing and death when they grow in the extracellular fluids of organisms living in sub-freezing conditions. Similarly, the formation of gas hydrates in flowlines transporting gas/oil causing safety and economic risks, and the release of methane from gas hydrates to the atmosphere contributing to global warming. Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) are evolution’s answer to the problem of freezing in organisms, and some synthetic inhibitors of gas hydrates are currently in use. However, the mechanisms by which these natural and synthetic inhibitors work remain largely unclear.
My lab is using a unique combination of cold-stages (millikelvin resolution), fluorescence microscopy and microfluidics to study the effects of molecular agents on the crystallization of water. In my talk, I will describe how AFPs: a) bind to ice and inhibit its growth, b) synergistically enhance their activity, and c) accelerate and inhibit ice growth. I will then present our work with a synthetic dye molecule that assembles in solution and forms supramolecular assemblies that inhibit both ice and clathrate hydrates.

Plastic Waste: Global Challenges and Opportunities
2021-09-21 15:00 - 16:00 | https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752
This event will be a panel discussion on polymer waste as a global societal challenge; recent efforts on polymer upcycling will be discussed.

VIPER Lightning Talks: Addressing Energy Challenges Through Undergraduate Research
2021-09-21 12:30 - 13:30 | https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752
The Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research (VIPER) is a dual-degree undergraduate program at the University of Pennsylvania that prepares students to be the next generation of energy leaders. Join us to learn more about the work they are doing to address energy and sustainability challenges through their undergraduate research.
Graduates of the program gain an interdisciplinary perspective as they earn both a Bachelor of Arts from the School of Arts and Sciences as well as a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the School of Engineering and Applied Science. VIPER students also participate in a dedicated on-ramp into research and conduct fully-funded, cutting-edge research experiences with renowned Penn faculty throughout their time in college. If you are interested in learning more about the program, visit http://viper.upenn.edu. VIPER accepts transfer applications from first-year Penn students.

MEAM Seminar: "Active Colloids in Nematics for Micro-robotics and Reconfigurable Systems"
2021-09-21 10:00 - 11:30 | Zoom – Email MEAM for Link, peterlit@seas.upenn.edu
Active colloids in nematic liquid crystals are exciting vehicles for materials manipulation. Colloid shape, surface chemistry and dynamic displacement can be designed to introduce defects whose non-linear dynamics generate new modalities of motion and interaction. These effects rely on energy conversion mechanisms, in which active colloids with tailored surface functionalization and shape seed defects and distortions in the nematic liquid crystal domain. Once the colloid moves, e.g., under the action of an external field, these defects undergo complex, non-linear rearrangements with implications for colloid motion. Interactions emerge that differ strikingly in range and form from their static counterparts. I describe our current state of understanding of these systems, their application and our vision for future work in the domain. These interactions provide a rich toolkit for hybrid top-down, bottom-up assembly schemes in which microrobots based on active nematic colloids exploit these far-from-equilibrium topological structures as tools for micro-robotic tasks including building and reconfiguring structures.

CBE Joint Seminar: "Harnessing Biochemistry and Engineering to Visualize Metabolism"
2021-09-20 16:00 - 17:00 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
ABSTRACT
Oncogenic transformation has been shown to have a dramatic impact on the metabolic state of the cell. Recent reports have demonstrated that specific alterations in oncogenes and signaling pathways results in increases in pathway flux as well as diversion of substrates. Moreover, there is an argument that changes in metabolism can directly affect cell fate and thus promote oncogenesis. Interrogation of these pathways in relevant systems has been hindered though by lack of technologies capable of monitoring metabolism. Hyperpolarized magnetic resonance addresses a fundamental limitation of MRI for interrogating metabolic substrates, sensitivity. Using this approach, endogenous metabolic substrates can be converted into imaging probes to follow metabolic reactions in living systems. Utilizing this imaging as well as a wide range of biochemical tools and engineering approaches, one can develop strategies to mechanistically interrogate metabolic flux. This talk will focus on the combination of such approaches, demonstrating the synergy of new probes and platforms, to reveal metabolic mechanisms as well as their translation to humans.

PSOC@Penn Seminar: "Harnessing Biochemistry and Engineering to Visualize Metabolism" (Kayvan R. Keshari)
2021-09-20 16:00 - 17:00 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Oncogenic transformation has been shown to have a dramatic impact on the metabolic state of the cell. Recent reports have demonstrated that specific alterations in oncogenes and signaling pathways results in increases in pathway flux as well as diversion of substrates. Moreover, there is an argument that changes in metabolism can directly affect cell fate and thus promote oncogenesis. Interrogation of these pathways in relevant systems has been hindered though by lack of technologies capable of monitoring metabolism. Hyperpolarized magnetic resonance addresses a fundamental limitation of MRI for interrogating metabolic substrates, sensitivity. Using this approach, endogenous metabolic substrates can be converted into imaging probes to follow metabolic reactions in living systems. Utilizing this imaging as well as a wide range of biochemical tools and engineering approaches, one can develop strategies to mechanistically interrogate metabolic flux. This talk will focus on the combination of such approaches, demonstrating the synergy of new probes and platforms, to reveal metabolic mechanisms as well as their translation to humans.
