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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241112T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241112T120000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20240821T142017Z
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SUMMARY:ESE Fall Seminar - "Color center photonics in silicon carbide: scalable fabrication\, cryogenic experiments\, and quantum simulation on NISQ testbeds"
DESCRIPTION:Color center systems are among the leading platforms in the development of quantum communication and quantum sensing hardware due to their desirable spin\, optical\, and spin-photon properties. Among them\, the near infrared emitters in silicon carbide\, such as the nitrogen-vacancy center in 4H-SiC\, provide fiber-friendly operation in an industrially mature substrate\, ideal for scalable deployment of quantum networking hardware. By exploring the triangular geometry in quantum-grade SiC\, we develop the first wafer-scale fabrication process for color center photonics based on ion beam etching at an angle\, realizing a broad range of devices for guiding and resonating light. \nDue to their near-identical emission\, color centers enable unprecedented studies of multi-emitter-cavity physics\, or the Tavis-Cummings (TC) model\, with applications in quantum light generation and quantum memories. Here\, a lossy resonator interacts with multiple quantum emitters in resonant and off-resonant systems. Modeling of TC systems in an open quantum setting is limited to small dimensions on classical computing resources. We explore how quantum computers can help bridge this knowledge gap and propose algorithms for quantum mapping\, analog and digital simulation of the TC model on superconducting and trapped ion DOE testbeds.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/ese-fall-seminar-title-tbd-19/
LOCATION:Raisler Lounge (Room 225)\, Towne Building\, 220 South 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ORGANIZER;CN="Electrical and Systems Engineering":MAILTO:eseevents@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241112T101500
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241112T111500
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20240930T155918Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240930T155918Z
UID:10008111-1731406500-1731410100@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:Tedori-Callinan Distinguished Lecture: "Novel Passive and Active Approaches to Fluid Friction Reduction using Polymers & Plastrons"
DESCRIPTION:When a superhydrophobic (SH) textured surface is immersed in water it traps a thin shiny layer of air within the texture that is known as a plastron. Contact line pinning stabilizes this Cassie-Baxter state and the patches of air trapped in the texture can act as shear-free regions that locally lower the frictional dissipation. Recent developments of scalable manufacturing methods for producing robust SH surfaces open new possibilities for using these textures in drag reduction applications. We use a newly-developed bespoke Taylor-Couette (TC) apparatus to compare and contrast frictional drag reduction by dilute polymer solutions and superhydrophobic (SH) surfaces in turbulent flows for Reynolds numbers over a wide range (10\,000 < Re < 100\,000). By applying SH coatings to the inner rotating cylinder\, we can evaluate the drag reducing performance and robustness of different textures and calculate the effective slip length in turbulent flow using a suitably augmented Prandtl-von Kármán (PvK) analysis. We also investigate how these plastrons can be partially stabilized against turbulent pressure fluctuations using active heating as well as chemical methods to locally regenerate vapor. Additionally\, we can use our apparatus to revisit an alternative drag-reducing strategy using dilute solutions of various high molecular weight polymers. We show that natural polysaccharides derived from plant mucilage can be an inexpensive and effective alternative to costly synthetic polymers\, whilst still approaching the same maximum drag reduction (MDR) asymptote. Finally\, we explore combinations of these two complementary drag reduction methods – one arising from wall slip and the other due to changes in turbulence dynamics in the bulk flow – and find that the two effects are not always additive; interestingly\, the effectiveness of polymer drag reduction can actually be reduced in the presence of a SH coating on the wall.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/tedori-callinan-distinguished-lecture-novel-passive-and-active-approaches-to-fluid-friction-reduction-using-polymers-plastrons/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Distinguished Lecture
ORGANIZER;CN="Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics":MAILTO:meam@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241111T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241111T140000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241030T200432Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241030T200432Z
UID:10008158-1731330000-1731333600@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: "Coupling Hard and Soft Interfaces to Realize Actuators and Energy Sources that Bring Robots Towards Animal Mobility"
DESCRIPTION:Mobile robots have shown significant advancements in agility\, intelligence\, and efficiency over the past few decades. However\, their endurance and overall performance remain limited by the onboard power supplies. Current power sources typically restrict mobile robots to areas close to the electrical grid and necessitate heavier batteries for extended range. Energy refueling could be significantly challenging in remote and inaccessible regions\, and traditional energy harvesting methods have also proven inadequate for sustaining continuous operations. \nTo address this challenge\, we propose a bio-inspired approach: enabling robots to “digest” energy-dense metals for power generation\, analogous to how animals process food for energy. This concept builds upon aluminum-air batteries\, which operate as miniature chemical plants converting aluminum into electricity. We selected this technology for three key advantages: (1) exceptional energy density for improved endurance compared to conventional lithium batteries; (2) simple anode replacement for rapid refueling without charging stations; and (3) readily available fuel sources from everyday aluminum materials\, from beverage cans to construction waste. \nThis thesis investigates how aluminum-air batteries can benefit the robotics community through four interconnected studies. First\, we quantify the energy gap between mobile robots and their biological counterparts through comparative analysis of energy and power density\, establishing benchmarks for future battery technologies to achieve biological equivalence. Second\, we demonstrate the development of a highly stretchable metal-air battery using sliding electrodes\, achieving up to 10-fold improvements in areal capacity and power compared to existing stretchable designs\, which could extend the endurance and unleash the potential of various soft robots and wearable technologies. Third\, we implement customized metal-air batteries on an Arduino-based robot platform\, demonstrating continuous operation through metal oxidation using various aluminum and zinc sources while addressing challenges such as byproduct accumulation\, hydrogen production\, and water consumption. Finally\, we showcase a feasible approach to develop a soft crawler based on this metallivore concept\, capable of simultaneous metal digestion and continuous locomotion. By developing this aluminum-air battery-based energy solution\, we demonstrate a path toward extending robots’ operational range and endurance beyond current limitations\, thereby expanding their potential in remote and complex environments.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/meam-ph-d-thesis-defense-coupling-hard-and-soft-interfaces-to-realize-actuators-and-energy-sources-that-bring-robots-towards-animal-mobility/
LOCATION:Raisler Lounge (Room 225)\, Towne Building\, 220 South 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Doctoral,Dissertation or Thesis Defense
ORGANIZER;CN="Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics":MAILTO:meam@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241111T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241111T133000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241024T203439Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241024T203439Z
UID:10008147-1731328200-1731331800@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:Center for Soft and Living Matter Seminar: "Medium-range Order and Local Structure Fluctuations in Metallic Glass"
DESCRIPTION:Amorphous materials have no long-range order\, but there are ordered structures at short-range (2-5 Å)\, medium-range (5-20 Å)\, and even longer-length scales. While regular and semiregular polyhedra are often identified as short-range order in amorphous materials\, the nature of the medium-range order has remained elusive. Because of the disorder\, the dynamics also become far more complicated.  For example\, the vibrational spectrum of glasses shows an excess density of states. This is known as the Boson Peak and has been found to be a ubiquitous feature of amorphous materials. In this talk\, I will present recent studies of metallic glass using neutron and synchrotron X-ray scattering. The development of medium-range order in driving liquid-to-liquid phase transitions will be highlighted. For the dynamics\, the momentum dependence of the inelastic scattering intensity reveals spatial correlation at different time scales. The role of local structure fluctuations will be discussed.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/center-for-soft-and-living-matter-seminar-medium-range-order-and-local-structure-fluctuations-in-metallic-glass/
LOCATION:DRL 2N3
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ORGANIZER;CN="Center for Soft and Living Mtter":MAILTO:bzall@upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241111T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241111T120000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241029T124653Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241029T124653Z
UID:10008155-1731322800-1731326400@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: "Exploring Multimodal Sensing Across the Stack for Robot Manipulation"
DESCRIPTION:Despite substantial progress in robotics\, achieving human-like manipulation remains a significant challenge. Existing robotic systems typically leverage human-inspired sensory modalities: vision\, touch\, and proprioception. However\, these modalities are historically studied and integrated in isolation\, leading to limited performance in complex real-world tasks that require sensing across multiple modalities for robust generalization. As a result\, robots have struggled to transition from structured lab environments to effective real-world applications. \nThis persistent challenge highlights two critical limitations: the narrow focus on only human-inspired senses and the isolated integration of vision\, touch\, and proprioception fail to provide robots with the necessary adaptability for the real world. In contrast to traditional approaches focused on each of these three modalities\, complementary modalities and tightly integrated multimodal systems are underexplored. With the unprecedented availability of diverse off-the-shelf sensors\, powerful on-board computation to process rich data streams\, advances in data-driven control and perception frameworks\, and a new spotlight on robotic system integration\, we now face a unique opportunity to construct new multimodal sensing paradigms. \nThis thesis explores three complementary aspects of multimodality selection and integration across sensor design\, perception\, and RL control. First\, we address the challenge of integrating an additional modality without compromising existing functionality – a sensing mechanism design problem that often forces trade-offs between different sensing modes. We leverage a selectively transmissive membrane to enable proximity depth sensing that seamlessly augments the visuotactile modality. Next\, we exploit the complementary nature of our sensor’s dual modalities for sensor fusion. We demonstrate how carefully combining proximity and tactile modalities can enhance perception\, enabling more robust and informative contact patch detection. Finally\, we bridge the reality gap in robot policy learning\, where sim-to-real transfer is particularly challenging due to the complex physics of contact-rich manipulation. By developing a sim-to-real tactile skin model\, we achieve zero-shot transfer of tactile data during the in-hand translation task\, allowing us to evaluate the impact of combining tactile feedback with proprioception in this dexterous control task.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/meam-ph-d-thesis-defense-exploring-multimodal-sensing-across-the-stack-for-robot-manipulation/
LOCATION:Raisler Lounge (Room 225)\, Towne Building\, 220 South 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Doctoral,Dissertation or Thesis Defense
ORGANIZER;CN="Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics":MAILTO:meam@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241108T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241108T114500
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241007T144449Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241007T144449Z
UID:10008123-1731061800-1731066300@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:Fall 2024 GRASP on Robotics: Nicholas Roy\, Massachusetts Institute of Technology\, "Hierarchy\, Abstractions and Geometry"
DESCRIPTION:This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom. \nABSTRACT\nIn the last few years\, the ability for robots to understand and operate in the world around them has advanced considerably. Examples include the growing number of self-driving car systems\, the considerable work in robot mapping\, and the growing interest in home and service robots. However\, one limitation is that robots most often reason and plan using very geometric models of the world\, such as point features\, dense occupancy grids and action cost maps. To be able to plan and reason over long length and timescales\, as well as planning more complex missions\, robots need to be able to reason simultaneously about the abstract representations needed to support task planning\, as well as the detailed geometry for reliable motion. I will talk about recent work in joint reasoning about semantic representations and physical representations and what these joint representations mean for planning and decision making.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/fall-2024-grasp-on-robotics-nicholas-roy-massachusetts-institute-of-technology-hierarchy-abstractions-and-geometry/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="General Robotics%2C Automation%2C Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab":MAILTO:grasplab@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241107T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241107T163000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241017T201128Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241017T201128Z
UID:10008139-1730993400-1730997000@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:CIS Seminar: "Cedar: A language for expressing fast\, safe\, and fine-grained authorization policies"
DESCRIPTION:Cedar is a new open-source authorization policy language\, used to express fine-grained permissions on behalf of applications. Rather than embed authorization logic in their application code\, developers can write that logic as Cedar policies and delegate access requests to Cedar’s evaluation engine. Cedar is designed to be ergonomic\, fast\, safe\, and analyzable. Cedar’s simple and intuitive syntax supports common authorization use-cases\, naturally leveraging concepts from role-based\, attribute-based\, and relation-based access control models. Cedar’s policy structure ensures that access requests can be authorized quickly. Cedar’s schema-based policy validator leverages optional typing to help policy writers avoid mistakes\, but not get in their way. Cedar’s design has been finely balanced to allow for a sound and complete logical encoding to a decidable first-order theory\, which enables precise automated policy analysis\, e.g.\, to ensure that when refactoring a set of policies\, the authorized permissions do not change. \nCedar is built using a high-assurance process called verification-guided development. Its authorization engine and validator are formally modeled in the Lean proof-enabled programming language. Cedar’s core development team proves safety and security properties about those models in Lean\, and runs millions of automated differential tests to check that the implementations of the Cedar authorization engine and validator\, written in Rust\, agree with the Lean models. \nCedar is used by AWS’s Amazon Verified Permissions and AWS Verified Access services\, and in third-party applications and services. Cedar’s code\, proofs\, and tests are open-source at https://github.com/cedar-policy. There are many interesting problems still to address\, especially in the areas of provable\, end-to-end security enforcement; automated specification and test generation; and formal reasoning about how policies can evolve.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/cis-seminar-cedar-a-language-for-expressing-fast-safe-and-fine-grained-authorization-policies/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
ORGANIZER;CN="Computer and Information Science":MAILTO:cherylh@cis.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241107T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241107T120000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20240821T141635Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240821T141635Z
UID:10008066-1730977200-1730980800@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:ESE Fall Seminar - "The Circuit Frontier: Innovating and Expanding ASIC Solutions for Enhanced Biosensing and Seamless Wireless Communication"
DESCRIPTION:The BU Wireless Integrated Systems and Extreme Circuits (WISE-Circuits) group blends integrated circuits with energy-constrained applications to pioneer breakthroughs in information theory\, bioengineering\, and communications. Our research focuses on the development of Cyber-Secure Biological Systems\, leveraging living sensors constructed from engineered biological entities seamlessly integrated with solid-state circuits. This unique synergy harnesses the advantages of biology while incorporating the reliability and communication infrastructure of electronics\, offering a unique solution to societal challenges in healthcare and environmental monitoring. \nAdditionally\, our research extends to the realm of all-in-one data decoders\, where we employ novel cross-layer techniques spanning algorithms to low-power integrated circuits. This innovative decoding approach facilitates ultra-low-energy wireless communications\, a critical requirement for the success of these systems and numerous other applications. In this seminar\, I will delve into the intricacies of our interdisciplinary approach and the longer-term vision of the WISE-Circuits research\, spotlighting the potential of energy-efficient integrated circuits in the domains of biosensing and wireless communications. These collaborative research projects involve MIT BE/MechE\, BU ECE/BME\, and MIT RLE-Northeastern University.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/ese-fall-seminar-title-tbd-18/
LOCATION:Raisler Lounge (Room 225)\, Towne Building\, 220 South 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ORGANIZER;CN="Electrical and Systems Engineering":MAILTO:eseevents@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241107T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241107T120000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241027T154047Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241027T154047Z
UID:10008150-1730975400-1730980800@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:David P. Pope Distinguished Lecture: "Supersonic Collisions of Microparticles on Metal: In-Situ Studies at the Nanosecond and Micrometer Scales" 
DESCRIPTION:There are many situations in which small particles impact metals at high speeds\, even above the speed of sound. Sometimes these are unintentional (as for foreign object damage or micrometeorite strikes)\, and sometimes they occur by design (as for surface treatment processes like abrasive spray\, peening\, or spray coatings). The fundamental physics behind supersonic impacts\, however\, remain mysterious; the impacts are extremely fast and involve microscopic particles\, so that they are challenging to resolve. This talk will review a new line of research aimed at understanding the unit process of particle impacts at velocities into the supersonic range—we study individual ~5-50 µm particles and record their approach and impact with a substrate using an all-optical single-particle test method with nanosecond time resolution. For hard particles\, this method leads to quantitative measures of plasticity at extreme rates (>107 s -1). In this range\, conventional plasticity gives way to ballistic dislocation motion\, with counterintuitive “anti-thermal” behavior in which hotter metals are stronger. For metallic particles\, our approach quantitatively reveals the changes in plasticity that occur as particles approach the threshold velocity for bonding\, as well as other deleterious transitions such as impact-induced melting and erosion.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/david-p-pope-distinguished-lecture-supersonic-collisions-of-microparticles-on-metal-in-situ-studies-at-the-nanosecond-and-micrometer-scales/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="Materials Science and Engineering":MAILTO:johnruss@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T163000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241014T174445Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241014T174445Z
UID:10008135-1730907000-1730910600@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:CBE Seminar: "AI-Guided Closed-Loop Discovery of Photostable Light-Harvesting Molecules" (Charles Schroeder\, UIUC)
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: \nAI–guided closed-loop experimentation has recently emerged as a promising method to optimize functional properties in materials discovery. However\, achieving the full potential of this approach in the chemical sciences requires new methods to efficiently access large chemical spaces. In this talk\, I will discuss a closed-loop approach combining automated synthesis\, materials characterization\, and AI-guided prediction methods to identify organic light-harvesting molecules with optimized photostability. A Bayesian optimization framework is used to efficiently guide the search through a large molecular space using key physicochemical descriptors while maintaining a customizable tradeoff between exploitative and explorative sampling. Candidate molecules suggested by the AI framework are prepared via automated synthesis using a modular\, “Lego-like” molecular building block approach based on Suzuki cross-coupling\, followed by characterization of photophysical properties. Our results show that high-energy regions of the triplet state manifold are key to controlling molecular photostability in solution across a diverse chemical library of light-harvesting donor-bridge-acceptor oligomers. Remarkably\,this insight emerged after automated synthesis and experimental characterization of only ~1.5% of the total chemical space of 2\,200oligomers. In the second part of the talk\, I will discuss emerging directions including the extension of this framework to the design and development of function-encoded molecular building blocks to enhance photostability and the discovery of new organic electrochromic materials. Overall\, this work shows that interfacing physics-based modeling with closed-loop discovery campaigns – unimpeded by synthesis bottlenecks – can rapidly illuminate fundamental chemical insights and guide rational pursuit of frontier molecular
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/cbe-seminar-ai-guided-closed-loop-discovery-of-photostable-light-harvesting-molecules-charles-schroeder-uiuc/
LOCATION:Wu & Chen Auditorium
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering":MAILTO:cbemail@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T160000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241031T154250Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241031T154250Z
UID:10008159-1730905200-1730908800@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:Fall 2024 GRASP SFI: Jason Ma\, University of Pennsylvania\, "Environment Curriculum Generation via Large Language Models"
DESCRIPTION:This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom. \nABSTRACT\nRecent work has demonstrated that a promising strategy for teaching robots a wide range of complex skills is by training them on a curriculum of progressively more challenging environments. However\, developing an effective curriculum of environment distributions currently requires significant expertise\, which must be repeated for every new domain. Our key insight is that environments are often naturally represented as code. Thus\, we probe whether effective environment curriculum design can be achieved and automated via code generation by large language models (LLM). In this paper\, we introduce Eurekaverse\, an unsupervised environment design algorithm that uses LLMs to sample progressively more challenging\, diverse\, and learnable environments for skill training. We validate Eurekaverse’s effectiveness in the domain of quadrupedal parkour learning\, in which a quadruped robot must traverse through a variety of obstacle courses. The automatic curriculum designed by Eurekaverse enables gradual learning of complex parkour skills in simulation and can successfully transfer to the real-world\, outperforming manual training courses designed by humans.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/fall-2024-grasp-sfi-jason-ma/
LOCATION:Levine 307\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
ORGANIZER;CN="General Robotics%2C Automation%2C Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab":MAILTO:grasplab@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T150000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241022T122539Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241022T122539Z
UID:10008142-1730898000-1730905200@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:CBE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Scaling Mineral Carbonation and Critical Mineral Recovery in Mining Waste: Process Engineering\, Techno-Economics\, and Public Policy" (Katherine Vaz Gomes)
DESCRIPTION:Abstract:\nThe growing need to secure critical minerals for clean energy technologies\, alongside the urgency to mitigate climate change\, presents a unique opportunity to combine mineral recovery with carbon sequestration. This dissertation explores the potential of mine tailings as a dual-purpose feedstock\, enabling both the extraction of critical minerals and the storage of CO₂ through mineral carbonation. Mine tailings\, typically an industrial byproduct\, offer a promising source of magnesium and calcium\, which can react with CO₂ to form stable carbonate minerals\, providing a means of permanent carbon storage while recovering valuable resources. \nThis research focuses on optimizing CO₂ mineralization in four types of legacy tailings: platinum group element tailings\, basalt tailings\, and two sources of asbestos waste. Tailings were characterized to evaluate their mineralogical composition and their potential for mineral recovery and carbonation. The study involved a series of thermal and chemical extraction experiments aimed at maximizing the release of magnesium and other critical minerals while improving carbonation efficiency. The results show varying extraction efficiencies across different tailings\, with asbestos tailings achieving the highest magnesium recovery (80%). Performance differences among tailings are discussed in relation to their mineralogical structure\, reactive surface area\, and porosity. \nA techno-economic analysis (TEA) was conducted to evaluate the costs and benefits of integrating critical mineral recovery with CO₂ sequestration in industrial settings. The analysis revealed that while mineral carbonation offers a viable method for reducing CO₂ emissions\, its economic feasibility depends heavily on feedstock characteristics\, processing conditions\, and market demand for the recovered minerals. Key cost factors include reagent consumption\, energy requirements\, and the specifications of equipment needed to manage corrosive materials and high-pressure environments. \nThe policy implications of these findings are also examined\, particularly in the context of the U.S. Superfund law (CERCLA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)\, which regulate industrial waste management and provide incentives for CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Policy recommendations center on updating regulatory frameworks to encourage the use of legacy waste streams for both critical mineral recovery and carbon sequestration\, potentially advancing global energy transition and climate mitigation goals. \nThis dissertation concludes by highlighting the importance of cross-sector collaboration in promoting the advancement of carbon mineralization technologies. Future research should prioritize scaling up integrated processes\, improving material handling\, and addressing both environmental and economic challenges. By utilizing mine tailings for critical mineral recovery and carbon storage\, this work contributes to the broader effort to build sustainable\, circular economies that address both resource security and climate change.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/cbe-doctoral-dissertation-defense-scaling-mineral-carbonation-and-critical-mineral-recovery-in-mining-waste-process-engineering-techno-economics-and-public-policy-katherine-vaz-gomes/
LOCATION:Room 35\, Singh Center for Nanotechnology\, 3205 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Doctoral,Student,Dissertation or Thesis Defense
ORGANIZER;CN="Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering":MAILTO:cbemail@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T131500
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20240709T174124Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240709T174124Z
UID:10008013-1730894400-1730898900@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:ASSET Seminar: "What’s In my Network? On Learned Proximals and Testing for Explanations"
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: \nModern machine learning methods are revolutionizing what we can do with data\, from tiktok video recommendations to biomarkers discovery in cancer research. Yet\, the complexity of these deep models makes it harder to understand what functions these data-dependent models are computing\, and which features they detect regarding as important for a given task. In this talk\, I will review two approaches for turning general deep learning models more interpretable\, both in an unsupervised setting in the context of imaging inverse problems—through learned proximal networks—as well as in supervised classification problems for computer vision—by testing for the semantic importance of concepts via betting. \nZoom Link (if unable to attend in-person): https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96232340757
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/asset-seminar-jeremias-sulam-johns-hopkins-university/
LOCATION:Raisler Lounge (Room 225)\, Towne Building\, 220 South 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241105T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241105T130000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241029T132133Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241029T132133Z
UID:10008157-1730808000-1730811600@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:ESE PhD Seminar - "Prehistory of Continual Learning and All Else That We Forget"
DESCRIPTION:I would probably “forget” what I will say in the abstract\, and you would\, too. Translation: deep neural networks can “forget”\, meaning they might perform poorly on previously learned tasks when learning a new task. A major goal of the subject now known as deep continual learning is to address this issue. In order to alleviate forgetting\, the subject seems to forget that it has a prehistory (1960 – 1980). In this talk\, we will recollect a few historical pieces and compare them with their modern counterparts. If time allows\, I shouldn’t forget and should be excited to share my recent work on continual learning with you.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/ese-phd-seminar-prehistory-of-continual-learning-and-all-else-that-we-forget/
LOCATION:Raisler Lounge (Room 225)\, Towne Building\, 220 South 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar,Colloquium,Doctoral
ORGANIZER;CN="Electrical and Systems Engineering":MAILTO:eseevents@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241105T101500
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241105T111500
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241028T145759Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241028T145759Z
UID:10008154-1730801700-1730805300@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:MEAM Seminar: "Multifunctional Architected Structures"
DESCRIPTION:Funicular structural forms maximize the structural performance and minimize the use of materials by carrying the applied loads in the form of pure tensile/compressive axial forces. The internal structure of a bone is a classic example where material follows the principal stress directions and forms a delicate latticework of tiny\, interlaced trabeculae crossing each other. This lecture introduces polyhedral graphic statics as an alternative method to design such load paths for architecture\, structural engineering\, and material science. This method is based on the reciprocal diagrams proposed by Maxwell and Rankine in 1864\, and this lecture will show recent advances in the use and development of this method and its application for the design of multi-functional structural geometry on micro and macro scales. This presentation will especially show how to (i) minimize mass in large-scale structures and thus contribute to the reduction of embodied energy\, (ii) design systems for disassembly\, (iii) develop future manufacturing methods by combining polyhedral geometry with origami\, and (iv) design concrete 3d printed structures with maximized mass to absorb carbon.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/multifunctional-architechted-structures/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics":MAILTO:meam@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241104T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241104T160000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241007T183136Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241007T183136Z
UID:10008125-1730728800-1730736000@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Spectral CT thermometry for real-time\, non-invasive temperature monitoring of thermal ablation" (Leening Liu)
DESCRIPTION:The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Peter Noel are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Leening Liu.\n\n\nTitle: Spectral CT thermometry for real-time\, non-invasive temperature monitoring of thermal ablation\n\nDate: November 4\, 2024\nTime: 2:00 PM\nLocation:  Reunion Auditorium\, John Morgan Building\n\nZoom info:\nTopic: Leening Liu’s Dissertation Defense\nTime: November 4\, 2024 2:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) \nJoin Zoom Meeting\nhttps://upenn.zoom.us/j/9712621454?omn=99923084242.\nThe public is welcome to attend.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/be-doctoral-dissertation-defense-spectral-ct-thermometry-for-real-time-non-invasive-temperature-monitoring-of-thermal-ablation-leening-liu/
LOCATION:JMB Reunion Auditorium\, 3620 Hamilton Walk\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Doctoral,Graduate,Student,Dissertation or Thesis Defense
ORGANIZER;CN="Bioengineering":MAILTO:be@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241104T101500
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241104T111500
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241023T154238Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241023T154238Z
UID:10008144-1730715300-1730718900@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:MEAM Seminar: "Digital Twin Development using Physics-Informed Neural Operators"
DESCRIPTION:Digital twins are virtual models of physical systems that allow for more computationally cost-effective evaluation and optimization. Building digital twins often involves machine learning techniques that integrate data with underlying physical laws. In this seminar\, I’ll explore two such techniques: Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) and operator learning. First\, I’ll discuss the formulation of PINNs and how they can be utilized for solving forward and inverse problems. I’ll particularly highlight an application of PINNs for solving non-trivial parameter inference problems in viscoelastic fluids. Next\, I’ll introduce operator learning which aim to learn mappings between function spaces. I’ll explore effective architecture choices for building powerful operator learning methods and present some applications and advantages of operator learning in solving partial differential equations.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/meam-seminar-digital-twin-development-using-physics-informed-neural-operators/
LOCATION:Towne 307\, 220 S. 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar,Doctoral
ORGANIZER;CN="Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics":MAILTO:meam@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241101T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241101T114500
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20240909T153102Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240909T153102Z
UID:10008091-1730457000-1730461500@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:Fall 2024 GRASP on Robotics: Tess Smidt\, Massachusetts Institute of Technology\, "Recent applications of Euclidean neural networks to understand and design atomistic systems"
DESCRIPTION:This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom. \nABSTRACT\nAtomic systems (molecules\, crystals\, proteins\, etc.) are naturally represented by a set of coordinates in 3D space labeled by atom type. This poses a challenge for machine learning due to the sensitivity of coordinates to 3D rotations\, translations\, and inversions (the symmetries of 3D Euclidean space). Euclidean symmetry-equivariant Neural Networks (E(3)NNs) are specifically designed to address this issue. They faithfully capture the symmetries of physical systems\, handle 3D geometry\, and operate on the scalar\, vector\, and tensor fields that characterize these systems. \nE(3)NNs have demonstrated state-of-the-art performance on diverse atomistic benchmarks\, such as small molecule properties\, protein-ligand binding\, and force prediction for heterogeneous catalysis. These networks combine neural network operations with insights from group representation theory. Their success stems from a rigorous foundation\, making them more robust\, data-efficient\, and capable of generalization compared to invariant or non-equivariant neural networks. \nIn this talk\, I will provide an overview of recent applications of E(3)NNs in understanding and designing materials. I will also discuss the expansion of these methods’ applicability to new domains and data modalities. Finally\, I will explore open questions regarding the expressivity\, data-efficiency\, and trainability of methods that leverage invariance and equivariance.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/fall-2024-grasp-on-robotics-tess-smidt-massachusetts-institute-of-technology-recent-applications-of-euclidean-neural-networks-to-understand-and-design-atomistic-systems/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="General Robotics%2C Automation%2C Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab":MAILTO:grasplab@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241031T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241031T120000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241027T153136Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241027T153136Z
UID:10008149-1730370600-1730376000@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:MSE Seminar: "Quantum Materials: A View from the Lattice"
DESCRIPTION:Connecting theoretical models for exotic quantum states to real materials is a key goal in quantum materials science.  The structure of the crystalline lattice plays a foundational role in this pursuit in the subfield of quantum material synthesis.  We here revisit this long-standing perspective in the context low dimensional emergent electronic phases of matter\, including the realization of model two-dimensional topological and correlated electronic phenomena.  Along the way\, we discuss how to define a quantum material\, and how this definition has evolved in recent years. Finally\, we comment on the perspective for realizing further two-dimensional model systems in complex material structures and connections to new paradigms for programmable quantum matter. \n 
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/mse-seminar-quantum-materials-a-view-from-the-lattice/
LOCATION:Wu & Chen Auditorium
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="Materials Science and Engineering":MAILTO:johnruss@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241030T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241030T160000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241024T162108Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241024T162108Z
UID:10008146-1730300400-1730304000@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:Fall 2024 GRASP SFI: Jonathan Michaux\, University of Michigan\, “Spheres Are All You Need: Risk-Aware Trajectory Planning in Radiance Fields”
DESCRIPTION:This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom. \nABSTRACT\nSafe and efficient motion planning is crucial for robots operating in dynamic and unstructured environments. To accomplish this\, one must address key challenges. First\, robots must understand the scene geometry to prevent collisions that could harm humans or damage any nearby objects. Second\, motion plans must be generated in real-time to ensure that the robot can adapt to sudden changes in its environment. This talk presents a novel approach to trajectory optimization that leverages reachability analysis and 3D Gaussian Splatting for real-time planning in radiance fields. This talk first describes a novel spherical representation that overapproximates a robot’s parameterized reachable set. Next\, a method is derived that rigorously upper-bounds the probability of collision between the robot’s reachable set and a normalized Gaussian Splatting model. Finally\, this probability bound is formulated as a chance constraint in a nonlinear optimization problem. This approach\, which generates probabilistically-safe behaviors in real-time\, is demonstrated in simulation and on a real-world serial robot manipulator.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/fall-2024-grasp-sfi-jonathan-michaux/
LOCATION:Levine 307\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="General Robotics%2C Automation%2C Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab":MAILTO:grasplab@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241030T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241030T131500
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20240709T174026Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240709T174026Z
UID:10008012-1730289600-1730294100@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:ASSET Seminar: "Advancing Diffusion Models for Text Generation"
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: \nTransformer-based language models have undoubtedly become the dominant and favorite architecture for language generation of our time. However\, although they provide impressive text quality\, they tend to be hard to control. In the domain of image synthesis\, on the other hand\, Denoising Diffusion Models (DDM) are the dominant approach\, shining with unprecedented quality and control. The application of DDMs to discrete domains like language remains a challenging open problem. This talk addresses this challenge head-on. First\, we introduce Latent Diffusion for Language Generation that enables DDMs for text generation in the latent space of text auto-encoders\, enabling the generation of fluent text through latent diffusion. Further\, we utilize diffusion models to generate semantic proposals that guide autoregressive text decoders. The latter approach combines the fluency of autoregression with the plug-and-play control of diffusion. Through these works\, we demonstrate how diffusion models can be adapted to language\, opening new avenues for flexible and controllable language generation systems. \nZoom Link (if unable to attend in-person): https://upenn.zoom.us/j/93913926936
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/asset-seminar-kilian-weinberger-cornell-university/
LOCATION:Raisler Lounge (Room 225)\, Towne Building\, 220 South 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241029T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241029T163000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241023T154904Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241023T154904Z
UID:10008145-1730215800-1730219400@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:CIS Seminar: "Scaling Machine-Checkable Systems Verification in Coq"
DESCRIPTION:System software like operating systems and hypervisors forms the critical backbone of our computing infrastructure. However\, due to their size and complexity\, these systems often contain vulnerabilities that can compromise security. Formal verification offers a solution by mathematically proving software correctness\, but its adoption is hindered by the substantial effort required to create these proofs.\n\nIn this talk\, I will introduce Spoq\, a highly automated verification framework designed to dramatically reduce the proof effort in verifying system software. Spoq leverages LLVM to automatically translate C code—including full C semantics like macros\, inline assembly\, and compiler directives—into Coq\, a proof assistant for formal verification. This automation eliminates the need for manual modification of source code prior to verification. Spoq leverages a layering proof strategy and introduces novel Coq tactics and transformation rules to automatically generate layer specifications and refinement proofs to simplify verification of concurrent system software. Spoq also supports easy integration of manually written layer specifications and refinement proofs. We applied Spoq to verify a multiprocessor KVM hypervisor implementation. Verification using Spoq required 70% less proof effort than the manually written specifications and proofs to verify an older implementation. Furthermore\, the proofs using Spoq hold for the unmodified implementation that is directly compiled and executed.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/cis-seminar-scaling-machine-checkable-systems-verification-in-coq/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
ORGANIZER;CN="Computer and Information Science":MAILTO:cherylh@cis.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241029T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241029T120000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20240821T142755Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240821T142755Z
UID:10008069-1730199600-1730203200@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:ESE Fall Seminar - "Power Electronics is Cool. Trends and Opportunities for the Coming Decades"
DESCRIPTION:For the past two decades\, power management and delivery has been a bottleneck\, limiting the size and performance of a range of applications from performance computing to mobile phones and wearables. In the coming decades\, power electronics will become the ‘glue’ of the modern energy system network. With electronics embedded deeply into this network\, well beyond the ‘grid edge\,’ there will be new opportunities for control\, management\, diagnostics\, and system integration.  This talk will motivate the need for 2+ decades of power electronic research to solve key application challenges\, circuit and passive component limitations. There is a need to explore architectures well beyond conventional ‘buck’ and ‘boost’ converters; more specifically\, topologies that leverage next-generation higher-energy-density passives including capacitors and piezoelectric resonators. We will discuss past efforts that have broken previous barriers in performance and size as well as future trends and opportunities to continue breaking these barriers.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/ese-fall-seminar-title-tbd-21/
LOCATION:Raisler Lounge (Room 225)\, Towne Building\, 220 South 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ORGANIZER;CN="Electrical and Systems Engineering":MAILTO:eseevents@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241029T101500
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241029T111500
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241007T181131Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241007T181131Z
UID:10008124-1730196900-1730200500@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:MEAM Seminar: "Engineering Innovation in Maternal and Fetal Health: The Biomechanics of High-Risk Pregnancies"
DESCRIPTION:The reproductive soft tissues that support the fetus undergo some of the most dramatic and unique growth and remodeling events in the human body. The uterus and fetal membrane must grow and stretch during pregnancy to accommodate the fetus. Simultaneously\, the cervix must remodel and be a mechanical barrier to keep the fetus within the uterus. All three tissues must withstand mechanical forces to protect\, support\, and maintain an optimal growth environment for the developing baby. Then\, in a reversal of roles\, ideally nearing term\, the uterus begins to contract and the cervix deforms to allow for a safe delivery. The magnitude of biomechanical stress and stretch of these soft tissues supporting the fetus is thought to control physiologic processes that regulate tissue growth\, remodeling\, contractility\, and rupture\, and it is generally hypothesized that these mechanical signals are clinical cues for normal labor and preterm birth\, a major long-lasting public health problem with heavy emotional and financial consequences. In this talk I will reveal what we know about the soft tissue mechanics of pregnancy. I will present computational models of pregnancy based on ultrasonic anatomical measurements and cervical stiffness measurements from a novel aspirator clinical tool. I will examine the mechanical environment of pregnancy by comparing biomechanical models of patients clinically considered at low- and high-risk of preterm birth. The high-risk cohort is a subset of patients who participated in the TOPS clinical trial at Columbia University Irving Medical Center\, an NIH-funded clinical trial to examine the efficacy of the pessary in reducing preterm birth in singleton pregnancies. Through this experimental and modeling effort I aim to hypothesize which factor or combination of factors may be responsible for clinically-observed mechanical dysfunction in pregnancy.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/meam-seminar-engineering-innovation-in-maternal-and-fetal-health-the-biomechanics-of-high-risk-pregnancies/
LOCATION:Wu & Chen Auditorium
CATEGORIES:Seminar,Colloquium
ORGANIZER;CN="Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics":MAILTO:meam@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241025T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241025T150000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241021T140143Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241021T140143Z
UID:10008141-1729864800-1729868400@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:PICS Colloquium with Daniel Tartakovsky: Information Theory of Multiscale Simulations
DESCRIPTION:We present an information-theoretic approach for integration of multi-resolution data into multiscale simulations.  Fine-scale information can comprise observational data and/or simulation results related to both system states and system parameters. It is aggregated into its coarse-scale representation by setting a probabilistic equivalence between the two scales\, with parameters that are determined via minimization of observables error and mutual information across scales. The same quantities facilitate the use of coarse-scale data to constrain compatible fine-scale distributions. In the second part of this talk\, we leverage the information-geometric properties of the statistical manifold to reduce predictive uncertainty via data assimilation. Specifically\, we exploit the information-geometric structures induced by two discrepancy metrics\, the Kullback-Leibler divergence and the Wasserstein distance\, which explicitly yield natural gradient descent. The use of a deep neural network as a surrogate model for MD enables automatic differentiation\, further accelerating optimization. The manifold’s geometry is quantified without sampling\, yielding an accurate approximation of the gradient descent direction. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that accounting for the manifold’s geometry significantly reduces the computational cost of data assimilation by both facilitating the calculation of gradients and reducing the number of required iterations.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/pics-colloquium-with-daniel-tartakovsky-information-theory-of-multiscale-simulations/
LOCATION:PICS Conference Room 534 – A Wing \, 5th Floor\, 3401 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
ORGANIZER;CN="Penn Institute for Computational Science (PICS)":MAILTO:dkparks@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241025T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241025T114500
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241011T191325Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241011T191325Z
UID:10008133-1729852200-1729856700@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:Fall 2024 GRASP on Robotics: Ruslan Salakhutdinov\, Carnegie Mellon University\, "Multimodal AI Agents"
DESCRIPTION:This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom. \nABSTRACT\nIn recent years\, the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) with advanced general capabilities has paved the way towards building language-guided agents that can perform complex\, multi-step tasks on behalf of users\, much like human assistants. Building agents that can perceive\, plan\, and act autonomously has long been a central goal of artificial intelligence research. In this talk I will introduce Multimodal AI agents capable of planning\, reasoning\, and executing actions on the web\, that can not only comprehend textual information but also effectively navigate and interact with visual settings I will next present an inference-time search algorithm for agents to explicitly perform exploration and multi-step planning in interactive web environments. Our approach is a form of best-first tree search that operates within the actual environment space\, and is complementary with most existing state-of-the-art agents. Finally\, I will introduce VisualWebArena\, a novel framework for evaluating multimodal autonomous language agents\, and offer insights towards building stronger autonomous agents for both digital and physical environments.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/fall-2024-grasp-on-robotics-ruslan-salakhutdinov-carnegie-mellon-university-multimodal-ai-agents/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="General Robotics%2C Automation%2C Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab":MAILTO:grasplab@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241024T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241024T163000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241014T144539Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241014T144539Z
UID:10008134-1729783800-1729787400@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:CIS Grace Hopper Distinguished Lecture: "OLMo: Accelerating the Science of Language Modeling"
DESCRIPTION:Language models (LMs) have become ubiquitous in both AI research and commercial product offerings. As their commercial importance has surged\, the most powerful models have become closed off\, gated behind proprietary interfaces\, with important details of their training data\, architectures\, and development undisclosed. Given the significance of these details in scientifically studying these models\, including their biases and potential risks\, I argue that it is essential for the research community to have access to powerful\, truly open LMs.  In this talk\, I present our OLMo project aimed at building strong language models and making them fully accessible to researchers along with open-source code for data\, training\, and inference. I describe our efforts in building language modeling from scratch\, expanding their scope to make them applicable and useful for real-world applications\, and investigating a new generation of LMs that address fundamental challenges inherent in current models.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/cis-grace-hopper-distinguished-lecture-olmo-accelerating-the-science-of-language-modeling/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
ORGANIZER;CN="Computer and Information Science":MAILTO:cherylh@cis.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241024T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241024T130000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20241017T134335Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241017T134335Z
UID:10008138-1729771200-1729774800@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:ESE PhD Seminar: "Learning Local Control Barrier Functions for Safety-Critical Hybrid Systems"
DESCRIPTION:Safety-critical control is one of the fundamental problems in autonomous systems. A special class of autonomous systems is the class of hybrid dynamical systems\, which involves both continuous dynamic flow and discrete dynamical mode jumps for state evolution. I will introduce how to synthesize safe controllers for hybrid dynamical systems based on local control barrier functions (CBFs)\, and such a framework enjoys flexibility\, non-conservativeness\, and computational advantage compared with existing safety-critical methods. Then\, I will show how to learn local CBFs for hybrid systems through self-supervision techniques. Finally\, I will briefly share some ideas on learning safe and adaptive controllers in multi-agents systems.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/ese-phd-seminar-learning-local-control-barrier-functions-for-safety-critical-hybrid-systems/
LOCATION:Raisler Lounge (Room 225)\, Towne Building\, 220 South 33rd Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar,Colloquium
ORGANIZER;CN="Electrical and Systems Engineering":MAILTO:eseevents@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241024T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241024T120000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20240917T183106Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240917T183106Z
UID:10008100-1729765800-1729771200@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:MSE Seminar: "Kagome Metals and Their Unusual Electronic Properties"
DESCRIPTION:In this talk\, I will discuss new inroads in the study of electronic order within classes of metals built from kagome lattices or networks of corner sharing triangles.  The electronic band structures of these compounds are known to host a series of features such as Dirac crossings\, saddle points\, and flat bands at select carrier fillings.  Tuning the electron filing about these features has the potential to stabilize a variety of exotic electronic states such as orbital magnetism\, bond density wave order\, and unconventional superconductivity; however experimental realization of these states has been a historical challenge.  Recently\, a number of new compounds built from kagome lattices with band fillings near each of these features have been discovered\, and I will provide an overview of progress in studying their anomalous properties.  Particular focus will be given to electronic instabilities realized in kagome metals with their Fermi levels close to the saddle points in their band structures.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/mse-seminar-kagome-metals-and-their-unusual-electronic-properties/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="Materials Science and Engineering":MAILTO:johnruss@seas.upenn.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241023T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241023T163000
DTSTAMP:20260403T143743
CREATED:20240816T203114Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240816T203114Z
UID:10008054-1729697400-1729701000@seasevents.nmsdev7.com
SUMMARY:CBE Seminar: "Backbone Modifications in Peptide Natural Products" (James Link\, Princeton University)
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: \nThe posttranslational modifications (PTMs) in RiPPs (ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides) dictate their 3D structure and their bioactivity. An underlying structural feature of many RiPPs is macrocyclization\, installed by a growing number of different enzymatic strategies. Another common class of PTM in RiPPs is backbone modification\, such as the formation of thiazol(in)es and oxazol(in)es. Our group has recently been interested in aspartimidylation\, a backbone modification occurring at Asp residues that installs a metastable succinimide moiety into several different RiPPs. This talk will focus on recent work on the O-methyltransferase enzymes that install aspartimide in lasso peptides\, graspetides\, and a new class of peptides\, the imiditides. The surprising stability of these aspartimide moieties will also be discussed within a kinetic framework. Finally\, the talk will discuss potential chemical and biological ramifications of the aspartimide moiety in RiPPs.
URL:https://seasevents.nmsdev7.com/event/cbe-seminar-backbone-modifications-in-peptide-natural-products-james-link-princeton-university/
LOCATION:Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101)\, Levine Hall\, 3330 Walnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Seminar
ORGANIZER;CN="Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering":MAILTO:cbemail@seas.upenn.edu
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