MEAM Seminar: "Mechanistic Insights into Crystalline Interfaces via Thermal Fluctuations"
2022-02-01 10:00 - 11:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom – Email MEAM for Link, peterlit@seas.upenn.edu
Interfaces such as grain boundaries are ubiquitous in crystalline materials and have provided a fertile area of research over decades. Their importance stems from the numerous critical phenomena associated with them, such as grain boundary sliding, migration, and interaction with other defects that govern the mechanical properties of materials. Although these crystalline interfaces exhibit small out-of-plane fluctuations, statistical thermodynamics of membranes has been effectively used to extract relevant physical quantities such as the interface free energy, grain boundary stiffness, and interfacial mobility.
In this talk, I will put forward the viewpoint that monitoring thermal fluctuations of crystalline interfaces by way of molecular dynamics can serve as a computational microscope for gaining insights into the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of grain boundaries and present a rich source of future study. In particular, the talk will present how we use thermal fluctuations to estimate the grain boundary stiffness and mobility of grain boundaries by modeling them as Brownian particles.

CIS Seminar: "Trustworthy Machine Learning Systems via PAC Uncertainty Quantification"
2022-02-01 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Machine learning models are increasingly being incorporated into real-world systems, targeting domains such as robotics, healthcare, and software systems. A key challenge is ensuring that such systems are trustworthy. I will describe a novel strategy for composing machine learning models while providing provable correctness guarantees. First, we show how to quantify the uncertainty of any given model in a way that satisfies PAC correctness guarantees. Second, we show how to compose guarantees for individual models to obtain a guarantee for the overall system. Then, I will discuss applications to ensuring safety in reinforcement learning from visual inputs, and to speeding up inference time of deep neural networks. I will conclude with ongoing work on preserving correctness guarantees in the face of distribution shift.

Spring 2022 GRASP SFI: Anthony Bisulco, University of Pennsylvania, “A Tutorial on Neuromorphic Vision for High-Speed Perception”
2022-02-02 15:00 - 16:00 | Levine 307, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
This seminar will be held in person in Levine 307 as well as via Zoom.
Mobile robot systems operate in dynamic environments, such as forests, caves, or roadways, where they must perceive and react to incoming stimuli. Each of these environments presents unique challenges such as perception in low-light conditions, high-speed understanding of objects, and low power requirements. Neuromorphic Vision Systems such as event-based cameras have appealing properties for the above challenges such as high-temporal resolution, low-power footprint, and high-dynamic-range. As opposed to conventional frame-based imagers, event-based cameras output a stream of asynchronous events consisting of spatial illumination changes. This presents an expansive new processing model for event-based computer vision applications. In this talk, I will begin with a tutorial on event-based cameras, review processing techniques for the event-stream, and highlight our recent work on developing high-speed perception action systems for object catching.

CBE Seminar: "From Trash to Treasure: Advancing the Heterogeneous Catalytic Deconstruction and Upcycling of Waste Polyolefins"
2022-02-02 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract
The rapid global consumption of single-use plastics has caused an unsustainable accumulation of plastic waste in landfills and the environment. Unfortunately, current mechanical recycling methods are expensive and produce lower-quality products. New strategies in targeted chemical upcycling of waste plastics offer unique opportunities for selective depolymerization of polyolefins to higher value chemicals under milder conditions than thermal deconstruction or pyrolysis. Inspired by recent developments in the depolymerization of lignin, we turned to the method of hydrogenolysis to break the strong C-C bonds in polyolefins. This talk will cover our efforts in identifying a class of ruthenium-based materials as active and selective heterogeneous catalysts for the depolymerization of polyolefin waste, catalyst support modification strategies to further improve selectivity towards processible liquid alkanes, and new frameworks for the chemical upcycling of waste plastics and complex mixed waste streams to enable a circular carbon economy.

MSE Seminar: "Thermodynamic contributions to glass fragility"
2022-02-03 10:30 - 11:30 | https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752
Liquid fragility characterizes the rate of drop off in viscosity of a glass-forming liquid as its temperature increases above the glass transition. This property is fundamental to glass physics and of critical importance for engineering applications, yet its origin is unclear. Competing theories suggest that vibrational properties may play a role in fragility by contributing entropy to the large excess entropy of the undercooled liquid over the crystal above the glass transition. In this talk, we will demonstrate the use of in situ inelastic neutron scattering to probe the vibrational properties of a series of glasses with varying fragilities. We will demonstrate that event-based neutron scattering allows collection of the phonon density of states in as little as two minutes, enabling capture of vibrational dynamics in the narrow stable window of the undercooled liquid. We will discuss the correlation between excess vibrational entropy in the undercooled liquid and liquid fragility. Finally, we will discuss these new results in the context of a universal understanding of fragility and vibrational contributions to the thermodynamics of the glass transition.

BE Seminar: "From Bench to Pet-Side: Intratumoral Immunotherapy Principles and Practice" (Noor Momin)
2022-02-03 15:30 - 16:30 | 216 Moore Building
Immunotherapies harness the body’s immune system to fight disease. Such therapies can help unleash an immune attack against diseased tissues but can inadvertently instigate an attack on healthy tissues. As a result, many promising immunotherapies face major toxicities, limiting their clinical use. By employing an iterative process that entails measuring, making, and modeling to manipulate immunity, we can develop effective immunotherapies for any ailment – from cancer to cardiovascular disease.
In this seminar, I will describe our effort to develop a novel intratumorally-injected treatment to fight cancer safely and effectively. Cytokines are promising cancer immunotherapies plagued by life-threatening toxicity. Injecting cytokines directly into tumors could provide a method of confining its benefits to the cancerous tissue and away from healthy tissues, but previous attempts to do this have resulted in the cytokines rapidly leaking out of the tumor and ravaging healthy tissues. To this end, we first engineered a strategy to retain cytokines injected in a tumor, thereby safely exerting their anti-tumor activity. Then, we generated a computational framework that outlines the pharmacokinetic underpinnings of an effective tumor localized immunotherapy. Lastly, we commenced a clinical trial in companion (i.e., pet) dogs with naturally-occurring cancer aimed at generating guidelines for the administration of tumor localized cytokines in humans. Together, this work powers safe and effective local immunotherapies for cancer treatment.

CIS Seminar: "Sublinear Algorithms for Massive Datasets"
2022-02-03 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
The influx of massive data systems poses a unique challenge for algorithms research. In this modern era, the classical theory of algorithms is often insufficient, and our goal is to develop the theory of sublinear computation.
This talk will cover various scenarios where the resources used by an algorithm (running time, memory, number of measurements, … etc) should be significantly smaller than the input size. We will spend most of the time on sublinear time algorithms for similarity search in high-dimensional spaces and sublinear space algorithms for the optimal transport problem, where we will present new algorithmic and analytical techniques for tackling these questions. A central theme throughout the talk is the notion of randomized space partitions, and how they lead to algorithms which are simple, have provable guarantees, and are extremely useful.

BE Seminar: “Intratumoral Immunotherapy Principles and Practice” (Noor Momin)
2022-02-03 15:30 - 16:30 | Room 337, Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
This seminar will be held live and broadcast on zoom – check email for zoom link or contact ksas@seas.upenn.edu.
Immunotherapies harness the body’s immune system to fight disease. Such therapies can help unleash an immune attack against diseased tissues but can inadvertently instigate an attack on healthy tissues. As a result, many promising immunotherapies face major toxicities, limiting their clinical use. By employing an iterative process that entails measuring, making, and modeling to manipulate immunity, we can develop effective immunotherapies for any ailment – from cancer to cardiovascular disease.
In this seminar, I will describe our effort to develop a novel intratumorally-injected treatment to fight cancer safely and effectively. Cytokines are promising cancer immunotherapies plagued by life-threatening toxicity. Injecting cytokines directly into tumors could provide a method of confining its benefits to the cancerous tissue and away from healthy tissues, but previous attempts to do this have resulted in the cytokines rapidly leaking out of the tumor and ravaging healthy tissues. To this end, we first engineered a strategy to retain cytokines injected in a tumor, thereby safely exerting their anti-tumor activity. Then, we generated a computational framework that outlines the pharmacokinetic underpinnings of an effective tumor localized immunotherapy. Lastly, we commenced a clinical trial in companion (i.e., pet) dogs with naturally-occurring cancer aimed at generating guidelines for the administration of tumor localized cytokines in humans. Together, this work powers safe and effective local immunotherapies for cancer treatment.

GRASP on Robotics: Stefanos Nikolaidis, University of Southern California, “Towards Robust Human-Robot Interaction: A Quality Diversity Approach”
2022-02-04 10:30 - 11:45 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
The growth of scale and complexity of interactions between humans and robots highlights the need for new computational methods to automatically evaluate novel algorithms and applications. Exploring the diverse scenarios of interaction between humans and robots in simulation can improve understanding of complex human-robot interaction systems and avoid potentially costly failures in real-world settings.
In this talk, I propose formulating the problem of automatic scenario generation in human-robot interaction as a quality diversity problem, where the goal is not to find a single global optimum, but a diverse range of failure scenarios that explore both environments and human actions. I show how standard quality diversity algorithms can discover surprising and unexpected failure cases in the shared autonomy domain. I then discuss the development of a new class of quality diversity algorithms that significantly improve the search of the scenario space and the integration of these algorithms with generative models, which enables the generation of complex and realistic scenarios. Finally, I discuss applications in procedural content generation and human preference learning.

PSOC@Penn Seminar: “Geometric packing problems in kidney development and disease" (Louis Prahl)
2022-02-07 12:00 - 13:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Physical Sciences in Oncology Center PSOC@Penn
Spring 2022 Hybrid-Seminar Series
Towne 225 / Raisler Lounge @ Noon (EST)
For Zoom link , please contact manu@seas.upenn.edu

CIS Seminar: "Learned Query Optimization"
2022-02-08 08:00 - 17:00 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Query optimizers are an important part of modern database management systems, responsible for transforming the user’s declarative query into an executable plan. Because the space of executable plans is so large, traditional query optimizers narrow the search space using complex hand-crafted heuristics, which must be manually tuned on a per-application basis for maximum performance. Both the maintenance of these heuristics and their manual tuning require significant human effort. In this talk, I will present two new approaches to query optimization that employ machine learning to entirely remove — or at least significantly lessen — the need for such heuristics. These learned approaches outperform traditional heuristics with a small amount of training overhead, while also automatically adapting to changes in the user’s workload or even hardware. Finally, this talk will highlight the opportunities for applying similar learning techniques to systems more broadly.

MEAM Seminar: "Uncovering the Rules of Crumpling with a Data-Driven Approach"
2022-02-08 10:00 - 11:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
When a sheet of paper is crumpled, it spontaneously develops a network of creases. Despite the apparent disorder of this process, statistical properties of crumpled sheets exhibit striking reproducibility. Recent experiments have shown that when a sheet is repeatedly crumpled, the total crease length grows logarithmically [1]. This talk will offer insight into this surprising result by developing a correspondence between crumpling and fragmentation processes. We show how crumpling can be viewed as fragmenting the sheet into flat facets that are outlined by the creases, and we use this model to reproduce the characteristic logarithmic scaling of total crease length, thereby supplying a missing physical basis for the observed phenomenon [2].
This study was made possible by large-scale data analysis of crease networks from crumpling experiments. We will describe recent work to use the same data with machine learning methods to probe the physical rules governing crumpling. We will look at how augmenting experimental data with synthetically generated data can improve predictive power and provide physical insight [3,4].
[1] O. Gottesman et al., Commun. Phys. 1, 70 (2018).
[2] J. Andrejevic et al., Nat. Commun. 12, 1470 (2021).
[3] J. Hoffmann et al., Sci. Advances 5, eaau6792 (2019).
[4] J. Andrejevic and C. H. Rycroft, arXiv:2112.13268 (2021).

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Complex systems engineering: designing advanced functions in dynamical and mechanical systems" (Jason Kim)
2022-02-09 10:00 - 12:00 | https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752
The Department of Bioengineering and Dr. Dani Bassett are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Jason Kim.
Date: February 9, 2022
Time: 10:00am
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4299926075?pwd=[REDACTED]

Title: Complex systems engineering: designing advanced functions in dynamical and mechanical systems.

Abstract: From computation in neural networks to allostery in proteins, numerous natural and artificial systems are comprised of many interacting parts that give rise to advanced functions. To study such complex systems, a diverse array of interdisciplinary tools have been developed that relate the interactions and functions of existing systems. However, engineering the interactions to perform designed functions in novel systems remains a significant challenge due to the nonlinearities in the interactions and the vast dimensionality of the design space. Here we develop design principles for complex dynamical and mechanical systems at the lowest level of their microstate interactions. In dynamical neural systems, we use methods from control theory and dynamical systems theory to mathematically map precise patterns of neural connectivity to the control of neural states in biological brains, and to the learning of computations on internal representations in artificial recurrent neural networks. In mechanical systems, we use methods from algebraic geometry and dynamical systems to mathematically map precise patterns of mechanical constraints to design shape changes as a minimal model of protein allostery and cooperativity, and to engineer mechanical metamaterials that possess arbitrarily complex shape changes. These intuitive maps allow us to navigate previously unexplored design spaces in nonlinear and high-dimensional regimes, enabling us to reverse engineer form from function in novel complex systems that have yet to exist.

Women in Data Science (WiDS) Philadelphia @ Penn
2022-02-09 12:00 - 15:00, 2022-02-10 12:00 - 15:00 | PA

Spring 2022 GRASP SFI: Nikos Kolotouros, University of Pennsylvania, “Reconstructing 3D Humans from Images”
2022-02-09 15:00 - 16:00 | Levine 307, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
The past decade we have seen remarkable progress in Computer Vision, mainly fueled by the recent advances in Deep Learning. Unsurprisingly, human perception has been the center of attention. We now have access to systems that can work remarkably well for traditional 2D tasks like segmentation or pose estimation. However, scaling this to 3D remains particularly challenging because of the inherent ambiguities and the scarcity of annotations.
In this talk I will focus on 3 important problems in reconstructing 3D bodies from images and how my research attempts to solve them. First, I will talk about the limited availability of annotated data and I will propose a method for addressing it. Next, I will present my work on modeling the ambiguities in 3D human reconstruction and demonstrate its usefulness for solving a variety of downstream tasks. Last, I will move beyond single-person 3D pose estimation and show how we can scale our methods to work on scenes with multiple humans.

CBE Seminar: “Investigating Biomedical Challenges Through State-of-the-Art DNA-based Technology”
2022-02-09 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract
DNA can serve purposes beyond conveying hereditary information – its highly specific Watson-Crick base pairing can also be used to direct the assembly of cells, nanoparticles, and proteins. Recently developed in the Sohn lab [1], high-throughput DNA-directed patterning takes advantage of the versatile and iterative aspects of photolithography to define clearly regions on an aldehyde-functionalized slide to which amine-terminated 20 nucleotide oligonucleotides are conjugated. By tagging antibodies, liposomes, or cells with the complementary oligonucleotide, I can create patterns with high spatial resolution. In this talk, I will demonstrate the versatility of high-throughput DNA-directed patterning through disparate applications, including the immobilization of antibodies [2], the validation of a liposome model of SARS-CoV-2 [3], and an in vitro model of the tumor microenvironment. The advantages afforded by this technique enable me to validate ACE2-binding and antibody neutralization of different variant model liposomes and to study interactions of the multiple types of cells found in the bone marrow. By controlling the organization of cells with single-cell resolution and the ability to configure heterogeneous cellular environments, DNA-directed patterning presents opportunities in the study of high complexity biomedical challenges.

CIS Seminar: "Learning with Feedback from Strategic Stakeholders: Algorithms and Systems"
2022-02-09 15:30 - 16:30 | Room 307, Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Machine learning has made great strides in the recent past, achieving super-human performance in tasks requiring learning from data. However, intelligent algorithms should go beyond simply learning; they should be able to make decisions to collect data in unknown environments and work towards a desired outcome. Quite often, we need to rely on feedback from stakeholders for this data, who themselves have vested interest in the decisions taken by such algorithms. In this talk, I will argue that effective learning and decision-making in such problems requires that we combine ideas from economics with machine learning.

I will present some of our recent work on learning with feedback from strategic stakeholders in fair division and in auctions. We will strive to design algorithms that are efficient (finds optimal outcomes), fair (treats all stakeholders fairly), and strategy-proof (cannot be manipulated by selfish stakeholders) when agent preferences and environment characteristics are unknown. On the theoretical side, I will discuss algorithms, asymptotic upper bounds on the three criteria, and complementary hardness results. On the applied side, I will discuss Cilantro, a Kubernetes-based system for resource allocation in clusters while obtaining feedback from a job’s performance. We implement our methods on Cilantro and show that they are able to quickly learn efficient resource allocations while being empirically fair and strategy-proof.

CIS Seminar:"Improving the Privacy, Scalability, and Ecological Impact of Blockchains"
2022-02-10 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Blockchains are an exciting area of research that touches on many areas of Computer Science and beyond. This technology has the potential to enable a fast, cheap, and private financial system based on distributed consensus and cryptography, instead of trusted parties. Despite this potential, the reality still shows severe limitations of blockchains: (i) transactions can cost hundreds of dollar and take minutes to confirm, (ii) some blockchains offer little privacy, and (iii) proof-of-work consensus consumes too much energy. In this talk, I will discuss powerful techniques that follow a prover paradigm and can mitigate these limitations. The first technique, called Bulletproofs, is a general-purpose zero-knowledge proof system that is specifically designed to enable confidential blockchain transactions. Bulletproofs requires minimal trust assumptions and gives the shortest zero-knowledge proofs without trusted setup. The system is widely deployed and powers tens of thousands of private blockchain transactions per day. The second technique, called inner pairing products, is a way to aggregate many zero knowledge proofs into a single short proof. This can significantly reduce on-chain data, leading to a significant increase in transactions per second that the chain can process. The third technique is a new concept called a verifiable delay function (VDF) that is vital for permission-less and eco-friendly consensus. VDFs are already deployed in Filecoin and Chia, and are planned for Ethereum 2.0, the upcoming upgrade to Ethereum.

ODEI Spotlight: Women+ in STEM at Penn Research Symposium
2022-02-11 10:00 - 18:00 | PA
Women+ in Chemistry is excited to announce the Women+ in STEM at Penn Research Symposium, which will be held on the International Day of Women in Science, on February 11th 2022 from 10:00AM-6:00PM. This event is co-sponsored by Penn Graduate Women in Science (PGWISE), Graduate Student Engineering Government (GSEG) and Penn INSPIRE. While the symposium will feature research from members of the community who identify as gender minorities, the whole event is open to anyone at Penn.

This symposium will highlight the amazing science being performed by gender minorities at Penn. If interested in attending, please fill out this Google form.

If you have questions or concerns, please email us at upennwomeninchemistry@gmail.com.

GRASP on Robotics: Ankur Mehta, University of California, Los Angeles, “Towards $1 Robots”
2022-02-11 10:30 - 11:45 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Robots are pretty great — they can make some hard tasks easy, some dangerous tasks safe, or some unthinkable tasks possible. And they’re just plain fun to boot. But how many robots have you interacted with recently? And where do you think that puts you compared to the rest of the world’s people?
In contrast to computation, automating physical interactions continues to be limited in scope and breadth. I’d like to change that. But in particular, I’d like to do so in a way that’s accessible to everyone, everywhere. In our lab, we work to lower barriers to robotics design, creation, and operation through material and mechanism design, computational tools, and mathematical analysis. We hope that with our efforts, everyone will be soon able to enjoy the benefits of robotics to work, to learn, and to play.

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "T Cell Recruiting Bispecific Autoantibodies for Personalized Cancer Treatment" (Fabiana Zappala)
2022-02-11 14:00 - 16:00 | Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology, 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Andrew Tsourkas are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Fabiana Zappala.

Title: “T Cell Recruiting Bispecific Autoantibodies for Personalized Cancer Treatment”
Date: Friday February 11, 2022
Time: 2:00 PM
Location: Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology
Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/95334318432?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom password: [REDACTED]

The public is welcome to attend.

PSOC@Penn Seminar: “Dynamics of early stages of cell adhesion on fluid substrates” (Oleg Mikhajlov)
2022-02-14 12:00 - 13:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States

MEAM Seminar: "The Unsteady Aerodynamics of Wind Power Generation"
2022-02-15 10:00 - 11:30 | Zoom – Email MEAM for Link, peterlit@seas.upenn.edu
Wind energy plays a crucial role in clean energy generation. Currently, horizontal axis wind turbines dominate the wind energy sector. Nevertheless, vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) have some advantages over traditional horizontal axis wind turbines. However, their performance is difficult to predict and they are prone to failure over time. This is because the axis of rotation of a VAWT is perpendicular to the wind direction, which causes the individual blades to experience rapidly fluctuating airflows, even when the wind direction is constant. These fluctuations can lead to unsteady flow phenomena that are not well understood. In this talk, I will present new insights into the aerodynamics of VAWTs by elucidating the unsteady airflow over an individual turbine blade. I will discuss a flow phenomenon known as dynamic stall and its impact on VAWT performance. Because wind turbines are too large to study in a laboratory, most experimental wind turbine research is conducted on scaled-down models, but this typically changes the physics involved. The research I will present was conducted in a pressurized wind tunnel which allows for physically accurate downscaling of large-scale flows. The insights from this research can be used to design VAWTs with better durability and performance.

ESE Spring Colloquium - "Autonomous Microsystems Based on Heterogeneously Integrated CMOS for Biological Big Data"
2022-02-15 11:00 - 12:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Minimally invasive and chronic physiological monitoring can provide an effective means of disease prevention and early detection while the cumulative big data can unveil hidden patterns in our physiology. Yet, current physiological monitoring tools are often bulky, invasive, and expensive, limiting their sensitivity and applicability. In this talk, I will discuss autonomous microsystems based on heterogeneously integrated CMOS, a platform on which ideal physiological sensors and actuators can be built.
A micro-scale optoelectronically transduced electrode (MOTE), an exemplary microsystem I have designed and built for tetherless neural recording, is powered and communicates optically through a vertically integrated AlGaAs micro-scale light emitting diode (µLED), eliminating the needs for a battery or a RF coil; the MOTE is smaller than a human hair (~60 µm × 30 µm × 330 µm) and weighs about one 1 µg (cf. a grain of sand is about 670 µg). I will review the unique challenges and considerations in developing such heterogeneous systems in terms of device fabrication, circuit design, integration, and handling/manipulation.
While the MOTE is designed for neural recording, its design methodologies can also be used to monitor other physiological parameters such as temperature, pH, glucose-level, etc. I will introduce future autonomous microsystems with expanded modalities and how to interface them with existing wearables. As such microsystems become more accessible, the resulting biological big data will help enable personalized healthcare and produce a physiological ‘digital twin’ (like the architectural digital twins of select cities) that can add a new dimension to epidemiological and aging studies.

Joseph Bordogna Forum: "Engineering for Everyone: Centering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion"
2022-02-15 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Please join us for this distinguished lecture given by Dr. Gilda Barabino, President of Olin College of Engineering.
“Engineering for Everyone: Centering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”
At its core, engineering involves creative problem solving. Diverse groups of problem solvers are more likely to outperform homogeneous groups and derive the best solution. Yet, ensuring diverse groups in engineering is compromised by the persistent underrepresentation of members of racially minoritized groups and women, and the lack of equitable and inclusive environments to ensure their success. Centering diversity, equity, and inclusion in the context of engineering for everyone has the capacity to effect meaningful change within our institutions and across higher education. This presentation will challenge assumptions, provide frameworks, apply inclusion lessons, and offer strategies for the future.
This event will be held in a hybrid format in the Wu and Chen Auditorium in Levine Hall (3330 Walnut Street).
Dr. Barabino’s talk was recorded and is available for viewing here.

Dr. Gilda A. Barabino is President of Olin College of Engineering and Professor of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering. She previously served as Daniel and Frances Berg Professor and Dean at The City College of New York’s (CCNY) Grove School of Engineering. Prior to joining CCNY, she was Associate Chair for Graduate Studies and Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory. At Georgia Tech she also served as the inaugural Vice Provost for Academic Diversity. She is a noted investigator in the areas of sickle cell disease, cellular and tissue engineering, and the role of race/ethnicity and gender in science and engineering. Her many honors include an honorary degree from Xavier University of Louisiana and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. Dr. Barabino is president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest interdisciplinary scientific society. She is a Fellow of AAAS, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the Biomedical Engineering Society. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She chairs the National Academies Committee on Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine and serves on numerous committees of the National Academies including the Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine and the Health and Medicine Division Committee. She is also a member of the congressionally mandated Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering. Dr. Barabino consults nationally and internationally on STEM education and research; diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education; policy; faculty development; and workforce development. She received her B.S. degree in Chemistry from Xavier University of Louisiana and her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Rice University.

CIS Seminar: "Foundations of Cryptographic Proof Systems"
2022-02-15 15:30 - 16:30 | Room 307, Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
One of computer science’s greatest insights has been in understanding the power and versatility of *proofs*, which were revolutionized in the 1980s to utilize *interaction* as well as other resources such as randomization and computational hardness. Today, they form the backbone of both theoretical and practical cryptography and are simultaneously the source of deep connections to areas such as complexity theory, game theory, and quantum computation.
In this talk, I will introduce general-purpose tools, techniques, and abstractions for two key aspects of cryptographic proof systems that have been poorly understood for decades:
1) Can we remove interaction from interactive proofs? Already in the 1980s, Fiat and Shamir proposed a heuristic *but unproven* methodology for removing interaction from interactive proofs, which is now ubiquitous and essential for practical applications. However, it remained open for over 30 years to prove the security of this transformation in essentially any setting of interest.
My work on the Fiat-Shamir transform has led to resolutions to many long-standing open problems, including (i) building non-interactive zero knowledge proof systems based on lattice cryptography, (ii) establishing the existence of highly efficient and succinct non-interactive proof systems, and (iii) demonstrating that foundational protocols from the 80s fail to compose in parallel.
2) Are classical interactive protocols secure against quantum computers? At its heart, the problem of analyzing and ruling out quantum attacks on cryptographic protocols is the issue of “rewinding.” The inability to rewind a quantum attack stems from the no-cloning theorem, a fundamental property of quantum information. As a result, very few classical protocols were known to be secure against quantum attacks.
In a recent work, I showed how to overcome these difficulties and settle many foundational questions on post-quantum cryptographic proof systems. Our main technique is showing how to efficiently extract certain pieces of (classical) information from a quantum attacker without disturbing its internal state.

CEMB Future Leaders: Richard Vincent
2022-02-16 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.
Register HERE for access to the Zoom link and visit the CEMB website for more information.

Spring 2022 GRASP SFI: Johannes Betz, University of Pennsylvania, “Autonomous Handling at the Limits – Winning the Indy Autonomous Challenge”
2022-02-16 15:00 - 16:00 | Levine 512
*This will be a HYBRID Event with in-person attendance in Levine 512 and Virtual attendance via Zoom
The rising popularity of self-driving cars has led to the creation of an additional research and development branch in the recent years: Autonomous racing. Researchers are developing algorithms and hardware for high performance race vehicles which aim to operate autonomously on the edge of the vehicles limits: High speeds, high accelerations, high computation power, low reaction time, adversarial environments. In addition, with an increasing number of competitions in the field of autonomous racing, researchers have the platforms to test their high performance algorithms. This talk will give an overview of the current efforts in the field, the main research outcomes and the open challenges we can solve with the help of autonomous Racing. Especially we will focus on the Indy Autonomous Challenge and the the software setup of the TUM Autonomous Motorsports Team – the winning team of the Indy Autonomous Challenge. A detailed look into the software will show how each software module is connected and how we can achieve high speed autonomous driving on the racetrack.

CBE Seminar: “BEYOND SURFACE” Facilitates Electrocatalytic Reactions of Renewable Carbons
2022-02-16 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract
There has been growing interest to drive chemical reactions via the direct use of renewable electricity to address sustainability challenges. The success of the approach rests on the use of the right materials to efficiently catalyze electrochemical reactions. Thus, there have been intense efforts to engineer catalyst materials whose surface contains the desired active sites. Despite the success, there is still much room for improvement in the field of electrocatalysis. However, it is not because of our limited advances in the synthesis of materials and their use as catalysts. It is because of how we typically view catalytic reactions at the solid-liquid interface that often lacks consideration of the liquid phase (e.g., solvent molecules, double-layer ions). The “BEYOND SURFACE” approach that not only recognizes the presence and role of liquid phase components, but alters their characteristics to facilitate chemical reactions will bring the necessary advances to progress beyond the performance levels achieved to date. In this talk, two examples of the “BEYOND SURFACE” approach are presented for electrocatalytic reactions of renewable carbons, CO2 and biomass.
The first example concerns the discovery of a unique interfacial configuration on the surface of colloidal nanoparticles, that is the Nanoparticle/Ordered-Ligand Interlayer (NOLI). Its operation as a catalytic pocket for CO2 reduction by the synergistic act of the nanoparticle surface and surface ligands hovering above suggests a new route to promote reactions by tuning the electric double layer using materials. The other example presents the need for a better understanding of solvent molecule behavior at electrochemically active interfaces. During electrooxidation of biomass-derived polyols, it is shown that the interaction between the Pt surface and surrounding water eventually leads to its surface oxidation limiting catalytic activity at fixed potential conditions. Thus, a unique method so-called electrochemical potential cycling is devised that continuously cycles between oxidative and reductive potentials exploiting the short-lived high activity state of Pt nanoparticles otherwise difficult to maintain under typical conditions. These studies highlight the complexity of electrochemical interfaces and the potential of thinking beyond the surface for electrocatalytic reactions.
