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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 […]
MSE PhD Defense: “Integrated Photonics for Intelligent Parameter Retrieval”
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Room 313, Singh Center for Nanotechnology
3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Thesis Committee: Prof. Liang Feng (Chair) Prof. Firooz Aflatouni Prof. Ritesh Agarwal Prof. I-Wei Chen Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/2449152154
CBE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “Gas Encapsulating Microcapsules (GEMs)” (CK Yeh)
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Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology, Room 121
231 S 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Abstract: Microcapsules that can respond under hydrostatic pressure would open a new avenue of application in ultrasound- or impact-induced release of therapeutic agents. While microcapsules that are designed to release cargo under uniaxial compressive loadings have been developed, they are filled with liquid, rendering them insensitive to hydrostatic pressure. To overcome this limitation, bubbles can […]
CBE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “Engineering Multiphasic Processes to Enhance Droplet Microfluidics and Biofuel Conversion” (Owen Land)
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Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology, Room 121
231 S 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Abstract: Multiphasic processes underpin nearly every aspect of modern life; from the food we eat and the clothes we wear to the medicines that sustain us and the energy systems that power our world. This thesis presents three contributions to the advancement of multiphasic processes by developing intelligent control, scalable processing, and reactor design. First, […]
MEAM Seminar: “Taking Advantage of Coherent Vortex Wakes: Formation Flight and High Density Tidal Energy Harvesting”
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Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall
3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wake flows - the fluid mechanical "debris" shed behind an aerodynamic body - are often characterized by unsteady, turbulent, low-momentum fluid. Usually these wakes are to be avoided, but in several situations the wake can exhibit an organized structure consisting of well-defined high energy vortices. Examples of these coherent, or structured, wakes include trailing vortex […]
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/98963621993
Fall 2025 GRASP SFI: Binghao Huang, Columbia University, “Scaling Touch: Flexible Tactile Skin for Dexterous Manipulation”
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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 Tactile and visual perception are crucial for fine-grained human interactions with the environment. Developing similar multimodal sensing capabilities for robots can significantly enhance and expand their manipulation skills. This talk presents a scalable tactile stack that couples flexible, […]
MSE Seminar: “Quantum Technologies with Atom-Light Interaction” Chuanwei Zhang – Washington University in St. Louis
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Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall
3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
From knotted cords to contemporary computers, the revolution in information technologies has been a major driving force of human civilization. Since its emergence in the early 1900s, quantum mechanics has played a foundational role in enabling many transformative technologies—such as lasers and transistors—that are now recognized as hallmarks of the first quantum revolution. Over the […]
FOLDS seminar: Theory and practice of LLM quantization
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Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 306
3317 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98220304722 Modern LLMs process information by repeatedly applying a basic primitive of matrix multiplication. Estimates show that about 60-84% of the energy consumed by LLMs goes into memory load/store operations. How can we reduce this power consumption? Tokens start as about 16-bit integers but get mapped to vectors of floats of length […]
Fall 2025 GRASP on Robotics: Jiatao Gu, University of Pennsylvania, “Towards Robust World Models”
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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 Autonomous agents need a world model that explains observations, predicts what comes next, and chooses actions over long horizons. Think of catching a ball: the robot must infer where it is now and where it will be next—even when it slips out of […]