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    • CBE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “Understanding and Modulating Interactions between Polymers and Nanoparticles for Effective Catalyst Design in Polymer Upcycling” (Anirban Majumder)

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    Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Abstract: Despite recent advances in catalytic conversion of plastic waste into high-value chemicals, the interactions between the polymers and catalysts, which are highly porous nanomaterials, are not well understood. Fundamental understanding of these interactions and the ability to modulate them would allow us to design effective catalysts for polymer upcycling reactions. To study the interactions […]

    MEAM Seminar: “Learning Memory and Material Dependent Constitutive Laws”

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    Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    The theory of homogenization provides a systematic approach to the derivation of macroscale constitutive laws, obviating the need to repeatedly resolve complex microstructure. However, the unit cell problem which defines the constitutive model is typically not amenable to analytical solution. It is therefore of interest to learn constitutive models from data generated by the unit […]

    ASSET Seminar: “Alignment and Control with Representation Engineering”

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    Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 414 3333 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, United States

    Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are vulnerable to adversarial attacks, which bypass common safeguards put in place to prevent these models from generating harmful output. Notably, these attacks can be transferrable to other models---even proprietary ones—potentially compromising a wide range of AI systems with a single exploit. This surprising fragility underscores a critical weakness in […]

    Spring 2025 GRASP SFI: Lillian Ratliff, University of Washington, “Fragile Foundations? Building Robustness into Reasoning with Algorithmic Agents”

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    Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom. ABSTRACT As AI-enabled systems become integral to critical domains, their robustness is increasingly tested by dynamic environments, continual learning, and inferential uncertainty. Whether an AI proxy informs high-stakes medical decisions or an embodied agent relies on a foundation […]

    CBE Seminar: “Value-added Transformations in Electrocatalysis and Graduate Education” (Maureen Tang, Drexel University)

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    Wu & Chen Auditorium

    Abstract: Electrifying the chemical industry has been much touted as a path to a low-carbon future, but nearly all pathways of interest are electrochemical reductions. If we want water-to-hydrogen, CO2-to-chemicals, or nitrogen-to-ammonia, from where will we get the electrons? Water-to-oxygen is thermodynamically expensive, kinetically slow, and generates a zero-value product. This talk will discuss two […]

    MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Macroscopic Ensemble Methods for Multi Robot Task Assignment in Dynamic Environments”

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    Levine 307 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    With finite resources to complete tasks like monitoring, coverage, and search, the challenge lies in identifying and performing tasks that can change both in frequency and location. One potential solution is teams of robots equipped with the necessary capabilities to complete the desired tasks. However, robot teams require methods that effectively assign robots to tasks, […]

    MSE/MEAM Seminar: “Converting Scientific Discovery and Disruptive Ideas Into Impactful Energy Technologies with ARPA-E” Laurent Pilon: ARPA-E

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    Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    This talk presents the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and how stakeholders at the University of Pennsylvania can engage in a dialog with the funding agency. ARPA-E advances high-risk high-impact transformational technologies to generate, store, and use energy. As part of the US Department of Energy, ARPA-E’s mission is to enhance the economic and energy […]

    IDEAS/STAT Optimization Seminar: “Gradient Equilibrium in Online Learning”

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    Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 414 3333 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, United States

    We present a new perspective on online learning that we refer to as gradient equilibrium: a sequence of iterates achieves gradient equilibrium if the average of gradients of losses along the sequence converges to zero. In general, this condition is not implied by, nor implies, sublinear regret. It turns out that gradient equilibrium is achievable […]

    Spring 2025 GRASP on Robotics: Lingjie Liu, University of Pennsylvania, “Towards Next-Gen 3D Reconstruction and Generation: From Visual Fidelity to Multimodal and Physical Understanding”

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    Wu and Chen Auditorium (Room 101), Levine Hall 3330 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom. This seminar will NOT be recorded. ABSTRACT Recent years have witnessed remarkable progress in 3D reconstruction and generation. However, most existing methods primarily focus on modeling geometry and appearance. I believe the next generation of 3D reconstruction […]

    CBE Doctoral Dissertation Defense: “Context-Dependent Protein Surface Hydrophilicity” (Lilia F. Escobedo)

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    Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology, Room 121 231 S 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Abstract: Proteins perform many important biological functions while also avoiding fouling in an aqueous and crowded cellular environment. Their surfaces have evolved to be both chemically heterogeneous (containing nonpolar, polar, and charged groups) as well as hydrophilic. While nonpolar groups are known to induce hydrophobicity, surface heterogeneity has been found to enhance hydrophilicity and the […]

    Penn Engineering Entrepreneurship (EENT): Generative AI Panel

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    Amy Gutmann Hall, Auditorium 3333 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    A panel hosted by Penn Engineering Entrepreneurship (EENT) highlighting the importance of AI for the next generation of leaders and showcasing how Penn has been, and will continue to be, at the forefront of this evolving field. Panelists include: Elizabeth (Liz) Golden CEO & Co-Founder @ Wavelet Medical Mel Tang Founding Operating Partner & CFO of Matter […]

    PICS Colloquium: Multiscale simulations of soft matter: from block copolymers to biomolecular condensates

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    PICS Conference Room 534 - A Wing , 5th Floor 3401 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Polymers are ubiquitous in both synthetic and biological materials and underlie technologies as diverse as surfactants, adhesives, proteins and DNA. One of the defining features of all polymeric materials is that they are characterized by a wide range of length scales, often involving phenomena that span nanometers to microns. This hierarchy of length scales presents […]