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MSE Faculty Candidate Seminar: “Atom-Scale Engineering using 2D Materials”

ESE Seminar: “Physics-Driven Sensing and Processing: From Computational Periscopy to Particle Beam Microscopy”
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Room 337, Towne Building
220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
In many areas of science and engineering, novel signal acquisition methods allow unprecedented access to physical measurements. From digital cameras to microscopes and nano-scale biosensors, the data generated are shaped by both the underlying physics of the phenomena and characteristics of the acquisition device. Meanwhile, in many practical scenarios, the useful signals are remarkably weak, […]

CIS Seminar: “Cataloging the Visible Universe through Bayesian Inference at Petascale”
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Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall
3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Abstract: A key task in astronomy is to locate astronomical objects in images and to characterize them according to physical parameters such as brightness, color, and morphology. This task, known as cataloging, is challenging for several reasons: many astronomical objects are much dimmer than the sky background, labeled data is generally unavailable, overlapping astronomical objects […]

CIS Seminar: “Towards Generalization and Efficiency in Reinforcement Learning”
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Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall
3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Abstract: In classic supervised machine learning, a learning agent behaves as a passive observer: it receives examples from some external environment which it has no control over and then makes predictions. Reinforcement Learning (RL), on the other hand, is fundamentally interactive : an autonomous agent must learn how to behave in an unknown and possibly […]

PRiML Seminar: “Optimizing probability distributions for learning: sampling meets optimization”
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Room 401B, 3401 Walnut
3401 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Optimization and sampling are both of central importance in large-scale machine learning problems, but they are typically viewed as very different problems. This talk presents recent results that exploit the interplay between them. Viewing Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithms as performing an optimization over the space of probability distributions, we demonstrate analogs of Nesterov's acceleration approach in the sampling domain, […]

MEAM Seminar: “Interfacial Soft Matter”
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Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall
3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Surface tension plays a critical role in a wide range of biological, environmental, technological and geophysical settings. In this talk, I will present three different problems dealing with interfacial soft matter that find motivation in markedly diverse areas. First, I will discuss the evaporation kinetics and flow dynamics of non-spherical sessile drops undergoing phase change. […]

ESE Seminar: “New Designer Materials: Sculpting Electromagnetic Fields on the Atomic Scale”
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Room 337, Towne Building
220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
New optical nanomaterials hold the potential for breakthroughs in a wide range of areas from ultrafast optoelectronics such as modulators, light sources and hyperspectral detectors, to efficient upconversion for energy applications, bio-sensing and quantum information science. An exciting opportunity to realize such new nanomaterials lies in controlling the local electromagnetic environment on the atomic- and […]

CIS Seminar: “Perceiving Humans in the 3D World”
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Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall
3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Since the dawn of civilization, we have functioned in a social environment where we spend our days interacting with other humans. As we approach a society where intelligent systems and humans coexist, these systems must also interpret and interact with humans that reside in the 3D world. While computer vision systems today work well for […]

CBE Seminar: “Mechanisms of Cellulose Activation and Implications for Bioenergy”
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Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall
3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

ESE Seminar: “Towards Socially-Aware Autonomy for Mobility-Efficient Smart Cities”
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Room 337, Towne Building
220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
As cities grow everywhere, and urban roadways become overburdened, efficient strategies are required for improving mobility. With the prevalence of smart sensing and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as smartphones and smart intersections, the physical infrastructures of our cities are being connected to the cyber world. As a result, cities are becoming smart. Moreover, […]

ODI Seminar: Christopher Hart, Former NTSB Chairman, on the Future of Autonomous Vehicles
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Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building
220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Join the Office of Diversity and Inclusion for an afternoon with Christopher Hart, who will discuss the state and future of autonomous vehicles. The talk will be followed by a reception.

CIS Seminar: ” Rethinking the hardware-software contract: Enabling practical and general cross-layer optimizations”
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Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall
3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Layered abstractions in the computing stack are critical to building complex systems, but the existing *interfaces* between layers restrict what can be done at each level. Enhancing cross-layer interfaces--specifically, the hardware-software interface--is crucial towards addressing two important and hard-to-solve challenges in computer systems today: First, significant effort and expertise are required to write high-performance code […]
