Spring 2023 GRASP on Robotics: Vivienne Sze, MIT, "Efficient Computing for Autonomy and Navigation"
2023-04-21 10:30 - 11:45 (America/New_York) | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. This week’s presenter will be virtual.

ABSTRACT
A broad range of next-generation applications will be enabled by low-energy autonomous vehicles including insect-size flapping wing robots that can help with search and rescue, chip-size satellites that can explore nearby stars, and blimps that can stay in the air for years to provide communication services in remote locations. Autonomy capabilities for these vehicles will be unlocked by building their computers from the ground up, and by co-designing the algorithms and hardware for autonomy and navigation. In this talk, I will present various methods, algorithms, and computing hardware that deliver significant improvements in energy consumption and processing speed for tasks such as visual-inertial navigation, depth estimation, motion planning, mutual-information-based exploration, and deep neural networks for robot perception. We will also discuss the importance of efficient computing to reduce carbon emissions for sustainable large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles.
Much of the work presented in this talk was developed in the Low-Energy Autonomy and Navigation (LEAN) interdisciplinary group at MIT (http://lean.mit.edu), which is co-directed by Vivienne Sze and Sertac Karaman.

PSOC Seminar: "Leveraging dynamic biomaterials platforms to elucidate mechanisms of mechanical memory in disease and aging" (Christopher Madl, Penn)
2023-04-24 13:00 - 14:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Spring 2023 Hybrid-Seminar Series
Mondays 1.00-2.00 pm (EST)
Towne 225 / Raisler Lounge
“For Zoom link, please contact <manu@seas.upenn.edu>”

MEAM Seminar: “Laboratory Investigations of Wind Turbine Wakes at Field Reynolds Numbers”
2023-04-25 10:00 - 11:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Wind turbines and wind farms present unique challenges—fluid mechanically—as they combine extremely high Reynolds numbers with additional time scales imposed by the rotation, and three-dimensional effects. This implies that resolved numerical solutions are too computationally expensive and investigations in conventional wind tunnels are impossible due to the flow speeds and rotational rates needed in order to satisfy the dynamic similarity requirements. At Princeton, we achieve the conditions a large wind turbine experiences, experimentally, by compressing the air around a model-scale turbine up to 238 bar. This yields conditions similar to those experienced by a field-sized turbine using a model that is only 20 cm in diameter. High pressure enables tests at high Reynolds numbers but at low velocities, which implies that realistic non-dimensional frequencies can be tested even with such a small model. This unique feature is used both to study rotating wind turbines and their wakes, as well as the unsteady aerodynamics that are involved in these machines.

2023 Franklin Medal Symposium Honoring Nader Engheta: "Sculpting Waves with Complex Structures" (Villanova Livestream)
2023-04-26 09:00 - 13:00 | PA
*This is an event hosted by Villanova University. To gain access to the livestream, you must register to attend.*
Featuring presentations by a select group of world-class experts, this symposium celebrates the groundbreaking contributions of Dr. Nader Engheta in complex electromagnetic structures, plasmonics, optical nanocircuitry, and wave-based computing. The speakers discuss the current and future trends in the physics of light/matter interaction and present the latest innovations in electromagnetic and optical materials which promise to have broad applications in ultrafast computing, communication technologies, and high-resolution imaging.
Learn more about this event (agenda, speakers, etc.).
Register with Villanova University to access the livestream.

ASSET Seminar: AI and Medicine: One Possible Future for Augmented Care, Kevin B Johnson (University of Pennsylvania)
2023-04-26 12:00 - 13:30 | Levine 307, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract:
Scientific discoveries, fueled by data collected during the course of care, are promising to radically change how we think about health, disease, prevention and treatment. However, the very systems that are responsible for this tsunami of data are crippling many aspects of the care delivery system. In particular, the burden of documentation, the challenges of information retrieval, and the regulatory pressure on the healthcare system are responsible for burnout and even attrition among healthcare professionals. This talk will briefly summarize the history of the present-day EHR, describe some recent and promising advances using AI, and propose some approaches to re-engineering our system of digitally-enhanced care to augment the cognitive capabilities of today’s healthcare providers.

CBE Seminar Series: "Multiscale Bioinspired Material Intelligence" (Markus J. Buehler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
2023-04-26 15:30 - 16:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Abstract:
Digital biomaterials are designed through an integrated approach of large-scale computational modeling, material informatics, and artificial intelligence/machine learning to optimize and leverage novel smart material manufacturing for advanced mechanical properties. Through the use of nanotechnology and additive manufacturing, and bio-inspired methods, we can now mimic and improve upon natural processes by which materials evolve, are manufactured, and how they meet changing functional needs. In this talk we show how we use mechanics to fabricate innovative materials from the molecular scale upwards, with built-in bio-inspired intelligence and novel properties, while sourced from sustainable resources, and breaking the barrier between living and non-living systems. Applied specifically to protein materials, this integrated materiomic approach is revolutionizing the way we design and use materials, and has the potential to impact many industries, as we harness data-driven modeling and manufacturing across domains and applications. The talk will cover several case studies covering distinct scales, from spider webs and silk, to collagen, to biomineralized materials, as well as applications to food and agriculture, and focuses on mechanistic insights using scaling laws and size effect studies.
Bio:
Markus J. Buehler is the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT (an Institute-wide Endowed Chair), a member of the Center for Materials Science and Engineering, and the Center for Computational Science and Engineering at the Schwarzman College of Computing. He holds academic appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering. In his research, Professor Buehler pursues new modeling, design and manufacturing approaches for advanced biomaterials that offer greater resilience and a wide range of controllable properties from the nano- to the macroscale. His interests include a variety of functional material properties including mechanical, optical and biological, linking chemical features, hierarchical and multiscale structures, to performance in the context of physiological, pathological and other extreme conditions. His methods include molecular and multiscale modeling, design, as well as experimental synthesis and characterization. His particular interest lies in the mechanics of complex hierarchical materials with features across scales (e.g. nanotubes, graphene and natural biomaterial nanostructures including protein materials such as intermediate filaments and hair, collagen, silk and elastin, and other structural biomaterials). An expert in computational materials science and AI, he has pioneered the field of materiomics, and demonstrated broad impacts in the study of mechanical properties of complex materials, including predictive materials design and manufacturing. Between 2013-2020, Buehler served as Department Head of MIT’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. He has held numerous other leadership roles at professional organizations, including a term as President of the Society of Engineering Science (SES).

Abstraction in Language and Systems: A Symposium in Honor of Barbara Liskov
2023-04-27 09:30 - 12:30 | Berger Auditorium (Room 13), Skirkanich Hall, 210 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
ABSTRACTION IN LANGUAGES AND SYSTEMS

Laureate symposium honoring Barbara Liskov, recipient of the 2023 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science

Featuring:
Barbara Liskov, Ph.D., Laureate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lorenzo Alvisi, Ph.D.
Cornell University
Maurice Herlihy, Ph.D.
Brown University
Andrew Myers, Ph.D.
Cornell University

Location:
University of Pennsylvania
Berger Auditorium
Skirkanich Hall
210 S 33rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
www.upenn.edu

LEARN MORE

Contact: Prof. Mitch Marcus, University of Pennsylvania

Sponsored by:
The Franklin Institute and the University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science and School of Engineering and Applied Science

ASSET Seminar: Neurosymbolic Programming for Science, Swarat Chaudhuri (University of Texas at Austin)
2023-05-03 12:00 - 13:30 | Levine 307, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT:
Neurosymbolic programming (NSP) is an emerging area of computing that bridges the fields of deep learning and program synthesis. Like in classical machine learning, the goal here is to learn functions from data. However, these functions are represented as programs that use neural network modules as well as symbolic primitives and are induced using a mix of symbolic search and gradient-based optimization.
In this talk, I will give an elementary introduction to NSP and show how methods in this area have natural applications in accelerating scientific discovery. Specifically, using applications in behavioral neuroscience, I will show that NSP offers natural ways of incorporating prior knowledge into data-driven scientific discovery and interpreting discovered knowledge. I will conclude with a discussion of some of the open technical challenges in NSP in general and NSP-for-science in particular.

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Next-generation Analyses of T Cell Receptor Repertoires" (Michael Malone)
2023-05-04 10:00 - 12:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Jenny Jiang are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Michael Malone.

Title: Next-generation Analyses of T Cell Receptor Repertoires
Date: May 4, 2023
Time: 10am – 12pm
Location: Raisler Lounge, 225 Towne Building

The public is welcome to attend.

Zoom info:

Join Zoom Meeting https://upenn.zoom.us/j/91374286405?pwd=[REDACTED] Meeting ID: 913 7428 6405 Passcode: [REDACTED] One tap mobile +16465588656,,91374286405# US (New York) +13017158592,,91374286405# US (Washington DC) Dial by your location +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) Meeting ID: 913 7428 6405 Find your local number: https://upenn.zoom.us/u/ad5ezT97KB

BE Seminar: "Bioengineered Platforms for Mechanistic Understandings and Therapeutic Interventions" (Shyni Varghese, Duke University)
2023-05-04 15:30 - 16:30 | Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology, 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
This talk will be held in person in Glandt Forum; snacks will be served.
Regenerative medicine is an interdisciplinary field that has significant promise for treating compromised tissues and organs. In our laboratory, we use a number of tools including biomaterials, organoids, quantitative modeling, and animal models to gain new fundamental understandings and identify therapeutic targets. In this talk, I will show several examples from our lab illustrating the use of such platforms to address key problems in tissue repair with aging and disease progression. First, I will discuss our efforts in creating synthetic analogs of the extracellular matrix to direct stem cell commitment in vitro and in vivo with a focus on bone tissue repair and employing such platforms to understand molecular mechanisms underlying bone homeostasis and identifying new therapeutic targets (Shih et al., PNAS 111: 990, 2014; 114: 5419 2017; Kang H et al., Biomacromolecules 16: 1050, 2015; Shih et al., Sci. Adv. 5: eaax1387, 2019). Next, I will discuss how these understandings can be leveraged to develop therapeutic interventions to promote tissue repair and mitigate pain (Zeng et al., Adv. Mater. 32, 2020). Finally, I will end the talk by discussing our ongoing efforts in studying the effect of aging on neuroinflammation.

[VIRTUAL] Spring 2023 Robotics MSE Capstone Presentation
2023-05-04 16:00 - 16:30 | https://upenn.zoom.us/j/96715197752
This is a virtual event via Zoom.
Zachary Block, Amar Mohanty, Keyan Zhai
Advised by Dr. Mark Yim
“Automated At-Home Fall Assessment for the Elderly Using Computer Vision”

Spring 2023 Robotics MSE Thesis Presentations
2023-05-05 12:30 - 16:00 | Towne 337
This is a hybrid event that will take place in Towne 337 and via Zoom.

12:30pm – Welcome Remarks
Dr. Ani Hsieh – ROBO Program Chair
12:35pm – Haoran Tang
Advised by: Dr. Pratik Chaudhari
“Navigating the Task Manifold”
1:05pm – Ankit Prabhu
Advised by: Dr. Vijay Kumar
“Robots in Timberland: Towards Fine-Grained Semantic Mapping by UAVs in Forests for Diameter Estimation”
1:35pm – Xiatao Sun
Advised by: Dr. Vijay Kumar
“Imitation Learning for Autonomous Quadrotor Flight“
2:05pm – Bo Wu
Advised by: Dr. Kostas Daniilidis
“The Role of Mapping in Modern Robot Navigation Tasks”
2:35pm – Maya Guru
Advised by: Rahul Mangharam
“Ethics and Liability Considerations of Autonomous Vehicle Driving Policies”

3:05pm – Jinxu Zhang
Advised by: Jianbo Shi
“Detection and Curation of Generated Images from Diffusion Model”
3:35pm – Kaihan Zhu (CIS)
Advised by: Jianbo Shi
“Experiment on Super Resolution Through UNet and Diffusion Transformer”

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Resident Macrophages in Tendon Growth and Development" (Catherine Bautista)
2023-05-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Class of 62 Auditorium, John Morgan Building, 3620 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA, 19104
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Nathaniel Dyment are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Catherine Bautista.

Title: Resident Macrophages in Tendon Growth and Development
Date: May 8, 2023
Time: 10:00am
Location: JMB Class of ’62 Auditorium

Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/94981950758?pwd=[REDACTED]

The public is welcome to attend.

2023 Heilmeier Award Lecture: Dr. Dani S. Bassett
2023-05-08 13:00 - 14:00 | Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology, 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
“On Being Curious”
What is curiosity? Is it an emotion? A behavior? A cognitive process? Curiosity seems to be an abstract concept — like love, perhaps, or justice — far from the realm of those bits of nature that science can possibly address. However, contrary to intuition, leading theories of curiosity from history, philosophy, and psychology are surprisingly amenable to formalization in an emerging branch of mathematics known as network science. Such a formalization allows theories of curiosity to be explicitly tested and validated in linguistic and behavioral data. In understanding the foundational processes of curiosity, we can turn to pressing societal questions that can only be addressed through interdisciplinary work that foregrounds a critical consciousness. How can we practice, mentor, and teach curiosity? In what ways might we value and support diverse curiosities? What is an ethical curiosity?

ESE PhD Thesis Defense: "Event-based Perception for Ground Vehicle Control"
2023-05-10 09:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Autonomous vehicles rely on environmental perception to inform the system on how to act. Vision sensors, such as conventional cameras, have been at the forefront of the perception of most mobile platforms. However, conventional cameras have limitations such as high data rates, low dynamic range, and high latency. Dynamic vision sensors, such as event cameras, address and overcome those shortcomings by recording changes in the logarithm of light intensity at pixel level asynchronously and independently. With the benefits of high dynamic range, low power consumption, low latency, and high temporal resolution, event cameras excel as vision sensors for autonomous ground vehicle applications. This dissertation highlights the use of event cameras to inform control decisions for autonomous ground vehicles. Additionally, it introduces a new 1/10th scale autonomous testing platform, Ryder.

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Engineering stem cells and organoids on a chip for the study of human health and disease" (Sunghee Estelle Park)
2023-05-10 13:00 - 15:00 | Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Dan Huh are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Sunghee Estelle Park.
Title: Engineering stem cells and organoids on a chip for the study of human health and disease
Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Time: 1:00 pm
Location: Towne 225 Raisler Lounge
The public is welcome to attend.

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: "Aluminum Scandium Nitride (AlScN) Films for Microelectromechanical Systems"
2023-05-10 15:00 - 16:00 | Towne 307, 220 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Advancements in wireless and sensor technology have resulted in increasing demand for piezoelectric MEMS devices in wireless handsets and base stations, automobile technology, health monitoring sensors, and environmental sensors. Due to its high-quality factor (Q), Young’s modulus, sound velocity, and low mechanical and dielectric losses, AlN is an advantageous resonator material with applications in radio frequency filtering. AlN’s low piezoelectric coefficients, however, limit its application, especially when large electromechanical coupling is required such as wide bandwidth acoustic filters and energy harvesters. In 2009 it was discovered that alloying AlN with Scandium (Sc) increases its d33 piezoelectric coefficient by over 500% and maintains compatibility with post-CMOS integration when deposited below 400∘{1}*C. As process parameters and Sc levels are modified to enhance performance, this also impacts the built-in stress in the film. Undesired stress can degrade device performance in thin films and cause undesired deformations in released MEMS structures. Undesired phases and anomalously oriented grains (AOGs) reduce piezoelectric coefficients, film orientation, and modify stress. AOGs also render etching of device structures problematic as the AOG regions etch at a much lower rate. AlScN theoretical material models do not capture these and other fabrication related effects and often fail to accurately predict the electromechanical properties of AlScN thin films.
This presentation will discuss the origins of stress and anomalous grain formation in AlScN physical vapor deposition processes, establish methods to control the stress, and inhibit anomalous grain growth over a range of scandium alloying levels to yield high quality AlScN films with large piezoelectric coefficients. The physical mechanism behind stress gradients in AlScN thin films and methods mitigate stress gradients to reduce out-of-plane deformations in released MEMS structures will also be discussed. I demonstrate a technique where the total process gas flow is varied during the deposition to compensate for the native through-thickness stress gradient in sputtered AlScN thin films. Finally, I will provide methods to extract the AlScN stiffness, piezoelectric, and permittivity tenors from MEMS structures carefully designed to isolate various electromechanical parameters. A suite of device structures capable of measuring the key electromechanical properties of AlScN materials as a function of Sc alloying are demonstrated. Extraction of electromechanical properties is performed by matching solutions using COMSOL Multiphysics Finite Element Solver with the measurements obtained from the suite of device structures. This presentation provides physical vapor deposition parameters to deposit low stress, stress gradient free, and AOG free AlScN films, fabrication processes to develop AlScN devices, as well as electromechanical material models with complete material parameters to predict device performance. These are crucial innovations enabling the realization of devices in Al1−xScxN thin films.
{1}*M. Akiyama, T. Kamohara, K. Kano, A. Teshigahara, Y. Takeuchi, and N. Kawahara. (2009). Enhancement of piezoelectric response in scandium aluminum nitride alloy thin films prepared by dual reactive cosputtering. Advanced Materials, 21(5), 593-596.

MSE David P. Pope Distinguished Lecture: "Intelligentsia of Nano-Architected Hierarchical Materials"
2023-05-11 11:30 - 12:30 | Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Creation of reconfigurable and multi-functional materials can be achieved by incorporating architecture into material design. In our research, we design and fabricate three-dimensional (3D) nano-architected materials that can exhibit superior and often tunable thermal, photonic, electrochemical, biochemical, and mechanical properties at extremely low mass densities (lighter than aerogels), which renders them useful and enabling in technological applications. Dominant properties of such meta-materials are driven by their multi-scale nature: from characteristic material microstructure (atoms) to individual constituents (nanometers) to structural components (microns) to overall architectures (millimeters and above).
The focus of this talk is on additive manufacturing via vat polymerization and function-containing chemical synthesis to create 3D nano- and micro-architected metals, ceramics, multifunctional metal oxides (nano-photonics, photocatalytic, piezoelectric, etc.), and metal-containing polymer complexes, etc., as well as demonstrate their potential in some real-use biomedical, protective, and sensing applications. I will describe how the choice of architecture, material, and external stimulus can elicit stimulus- responsive, reconfigurable, and multifunctional response.

Penn Engineering Commencement 2023: Doctoral Ceremony
2023-05-11 15:30 - 16:30 | Irvine Auditorium, 3401 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Celebrate Penn Engineering’s 2023 Doctoral Graduates. Additional information is available on the Penn Engineering Commencement website.

ESE PhD Thesis Defense: "Control and Optimization over Large-Scale Networks"
2023-05-12 10:00 | Room 452 C, 3401 Walnut, 3401 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
The future of the Internet of Things (IoT) envisions very large networks of spatially distributed devices cooperating to solve common tasks in both industrial and urban environments. That vision fundamentally relies on the use of wireless communication across such networks to enable flexibility, mobility, and dynamic configurations. To help realize that vision, we discuss three related challenges in this dissertation. First, we present a constrained reinforcement learning framework for the joint design of control and communication policies in wireless control systems. As the scale of deployment of spatially distributed control systems grows, however, the performance of learned policies deteriorate. In the second part of this talk we then investigate the design of scalable and transferable resource allocation policies to govern communication in wireless control systems. We conclude the talk by generalizing that approach to large-scale distributed optimization problems and show that one can learn distributed optimization algorithms that match or exceed the performance of hand-crafted ones.

Penn Engineering Commencement 2023: Master's Ceremony
2023-05-12 14:00 - 16:30 | Palestra, 223 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Celebrate the Penn Engineering 2023 Master’s Graduates. Additional information is available on the Penn Engineering Commencement website.

Penn Engineering Portrait Celebration in Honor of Ms. Cora Ingrum and Ms. Donna Hampton
2023-05-13 09:30 - 10:15 | Heilmeier Hall (Room 100), Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Dean Vijay Kumar invites members of the Penn Engineering community to attend the unveiling of commissioned portraits of:
Ms. Cora Ingrum
by Patricia Watwood
and
Ms. Donna Hampton
by Ashon Crawley
There will be a breakfast reception to follow.

Penn Engineering Commencement 2023: Undergraduate Ceremony
2023-05-13 14:00 - 16:00 | Palestra, 223 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Celebrate the Penn Engineering Undergraduate Class of 2023. Additional information is available on the Penn Engineering Commencement website.

Penn Engineering 2023 Commencement Open House
2023-05-15 12:00 - 14:00 | PA
Immediately following the University Ceremony, Penn Engineering will host an Open House for the School’s returning graduates and their families throughout the first floors of the main Engineering complex.
Included are photo booth opportunities, a t-shirt giveaway (including a live t-shirt press!), and light refreshments. Department offices will also be open as a location for graduates and their loved ones to connect one last time with staff and faculty. Please join us!
More information, including a map of departmental locations, is available here.

Physics PhD Thesis Defense: "Characterization of Solid State Defect Systems For Quantum Computing, Communication, and Sensing"
2023-05-16 10:00 | Towne 319, 220 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, 19104, United States
Solid state defects have emerged as a leading candidate for platforms in quantum computing, communication, and sensing. The electronic spins localized around these defects have many advantages such as room temperature coherence, spin dependent optical transitions which enable visible-wavelength initialization and readout, and resonant frequencies compatible with widely available off-the-shelf microwave hardware. Furthermore, the nuclear spins coupled to these electronic spins provide additional quantum registers which can be used as long-lived memories, ancilla qubits to enhance sensing and communication schemes based on the electronic spin, or for general purpose computation. However, unlike systems which are all identical, such as trapped atoms, or systems which are man-made, such as superconducting circuits, the formation and structure of defects, as well as their coupled nuclear spins, is stochastic and difficult to model using textit{ab initio} methods. This thesis focuses on methods to efficiently and precisely characterize the properties of these systems. After presenting sufficient background for a general scientific audience, a method is outlined for robustly and efficiently quantifying the optical properties of defect-based emitters, even if the emitters are heterogeneous. We show how this method can be used to study treatment effects in novel systems, such as hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN), where a new class of defect-based emitters has been identified but proven difficult to characterize – largely due to the widely varying optical properties of emitters which are believed to arise from the same defect. We then describe the infrastructure developed within the laboratory to generate, run, and simulate the results of experiments such as those used in the remainder of the thesis. This is followed by an explanation of some of the state of the art techniques used to identify, control, and map the nuclear spins coupled to an electronic spin within a defect system. We then show how these techniques can be expanded to precisely measure the Hamiltonian parameters of a single nuclear spin – which opens the door to a new era where individual nuclear spins can be used to measure their environment and reveal information about the local molecular and crystal structure. Finally, this thesis concludes with a brief discussion of the ongoing work and future directions inspired by the ideas and work presented in this thesis.

MEAM Seminar: "Addressing Sensitivity-Induced Challenges in Modeling Rigid-Body Systems with Frictional Impacts"
2023-05-23 10:00 - 11:30 | Room 337, Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Imperfect but useful physical models play a crucial role in planning and controlling robot locomotion and manipulation. However, as the field shifts toward complex real-world applications, model accuracy requirements are increasing while calibration data is becoming scarcer. Consequently, model inaccuracy or the sim2real gap often hinders the development of performant robotics algorithms. Frictional contact, the physical process driving these robotic tasks, exacerbates this issue. The motion of robots touching their surroundings is highly sensitive to initial conditions and material properties. Thus, even slight errors in state estimation and parameter identification can lead to significant prediction discrepancies. These challenges are amplified by the use of coarse rigid-body models, rather than high-fidelity solid mechanics, due to the faster-than-real-time computational requirements of robotics.
In this talk, we present two advancements towards accurate modeling of robotics undergoing contact. In the former, we discover how this sensitivity leads to poor training-time optimization landscapes and test-time generalization in common robotics modeling methods. Our method, ContactNets, circumvents both of these issues respectively with a novel statistics- and mechanics-inspired loss and implicit learning representations. ContactNets is capable of identifying geometric and frictional properties of an object rolling, pivoting, and sliding against its environment from just a handful of motion-captured trajectories. In the latter, we attribute sensitivity to the rapid ordering or sequencing of impact forces in nearly-simultaneous collisions—such as heel and toe strikes during a foot step. As existing rigid-body models lack the fidelity and accuracy to predict this ordering, we develop a set-valued rigid-body model which captures the set of all impact orderings as a continuous-time differential inclusion. We rigorously prove key theoretical properties of this model, including existence of solutions.

BE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: "Design, Modeling and Optimization of a Tape Spring Steerable Needle" (Omar Abdoun)
2023-05-26 11:30 - 13:30 | Towne 337
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Mark Yim are pleased to announce the doctoral dissertation defense of Omar Abdoun.

Title: DESIGN, MODELING, AND OPTIMIZATION OF A TAPE SPRING STEERABLE NEEDLE

Date: 5/26
Time: 11:30am
Location: 337 Towne Building

Zoom is also an option. The Link Is below:

Omar Abdoun is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Omar Abdoun’s Thesis Defense
Time: May 26, 2023 11:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://pennmedicine.zoom.us/j/93855309212

Meeting ID: 938 5530 9212

MEAM Seminar: "Progress on Templates for Spined and Tailed Legged Robots"
2023-05-30 10:00 - 11:30 | Room 337, Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
By mirroring the success of biological systems, legged robots have the potential to be successful in almost every terrestrial environment. While legged machines have made significant advancements in the past 20 years, there still exists a considerable gap between what they can achieve and the abilities of animals. In this talk I’ll discuss some of my recent work on exploring how internal degrees of freedom – spines and tails – can help to create more agile robots. First I’ll discuss my recent results showing how an internal degree of freedom can enable gravity to energize a simple hopping robot using a novel stepping strategy. I’ll present my formal analysis of the system which explains how the strategy controls the distribution of energy in an intuitive manner and present simulation and hardware results showing our robot hopping at speeds of up to 8.85 leg lengths per second. Next I’ll present some new work where I show how a coupled oscillator model, traditionally used for studying vibrations, can explain the role of a spine in trotting and bounding.

ESE PhD Thesis Defense: "Compute-In-Memory on Emerging Memory Technology: From Device to Algorithm"
2023-05-30 14:00 - 16:00 | Room 313, Singh Center for Nanotechnology, 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Current computing systems are mainly constructed on the von Neumann architecture, where data needs to be transferred to a processing unit from memory components. The latency associated with accessing data from the memory units is a key performance bottleneck for a range of data-intensive applications in the convergence of big data and AI. Several solutions have been proposed to mitigate and overcome this bottleneck, with a prominent one being placing memory and logic units in close physical proximity. While significant progress has been made along those lines at both technology and architecture levels, a transformative approach would be to implement arithmetic kernels precisely where the data are stored using memory devices. This is known as compute-in-memory (CIM).
In this dissertation, I will begin by presenting the most recent advancements in the CMOS-compatible ferroelectric memory technologies on aluminum nitride platform. Second, I will present a reconfigurable CIM system on field-programmable ferroelectric diodes in a transistor-free architecture, allowing for multiple essential data operations. Last, I will discuss the conceptualization and demonstration of a programmable parallel search architecture – analog content-addressable memory (ACAM) on complementary Si-CMOS ferroelectric field-effect-transistor memory. The deployment and acceleration of deep neural network and kernel regression on ACAM will also be presented.

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: "Transport Modeling and Design of Electrode Architectures for High Energy Density Batteries"
2023-05-31 09:00 - 10:00 | Room 337, Towne Building, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
With the ever-increasing production of portable electronics, internet of things devices, electric vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other autonomous robotic systems comes an increasing demand for reliable, long-lasting, portable power sources. Portable electronic systems are often limited by the energy density of the batteries that power them, and these batteries typically take up a large fraction of the overall device weight and volume. Higher energy density batteries are needed to effectively power current and future devices.
One strategy for increasing energy density is to increase the volume fraction of active materials in the battery by increasing the thickness and decreasing the porosity of the electrodes. However, existing electrode architectures cannot simultaneously enable thick, high-density electrodes because electrolyte pathways are necessary for ion transport. Creating high solid volume fraction electrodes requires new electrode architectures which enable ion transport even when electrolyte volume is limited.
To achieve high energy, most battery research focuses on making packaged batteries as small or as light as possible, irrespective of the systems that such batteries will power. In biology, multifunctional interconnected subsystems work together to create a more efficient full system. Incorporating multifunctionality into energy storage for robotics will lead to similar improvements in system-level efficiency.
This work demonstrates multiple approaches toward electrode architecture design for high energy density batteries. First, we demonstrate how continuous electrode architectures enabled by the electrodeposition of lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) can overcome electrolyte transport limitations via fast solid-state diffusion. These electrodeposited LCO cathodes create a large opportunity space for improved energy density by enabling thick, high solid volume fraction electrodes. We also present a novel catholyte architecture with the ability to store and extract energy from dissolved oxygen in silicone oil emulsions. This electrolyte is a promising candidate for multifunctional power systems and presents new design opportunities for flow batteries by removing the need for the challenging gas-liquid-solid interfaces and semi-open boundaries in conventional oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) cathodes.
