In recent years polymer chemists have made tremendous strides in the synthesis of biocompatible, tough, self-healing hydrogels. However, there are not many comprehensive mechanical models that capture the observed time dependent mechanical behavior of these gels (especially fracture) to the underlying, rate dependent bond breaking and reformation processes. In this talk I will summarize some […]
For those that may not be able to attend the talk please sue this zoom link:
https://upenn.zoom.us/j/92928358554?pwd=MWdDU0lJRmE3U0hDWUdmU284UmNGZz09
Meeting ID: 929 2835 8554
Passcode: 488035
ABSTRACT: The introduction of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) creates unprecedented opportunities for achieving full autonomy. However, learning-based methods in building autonomous systems can be extremely brittle in practice and are not designed to be verifiable. In this talk, I will present several of our recent efforts that combine ML with formal methods […]
I lead an Energy Materials and Devices research group at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a major mission to address the CO2 challenge. Our current research interests include (1) ultrahigh-temperature synthesis of new materials and their use in advanced energy devices, (2) beyond Li-ion batteries for transportation and the grid, and (3) wood […]
This is a hybrid seminar which will be held in Glandt Forum (Singh Center) and via Zoom (link coming soon). Precision Engineering for Cancer Immunotherapy Cancer immunotherapy is now considered the fourth pillar of cancer therapy, joining the ranks of surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. However, only a small subset of cancer patients responds to cancer […]
Overview: Come network with Zoox employees as we discuss Zoox’s mission, the challenges we’re encountering in the industry, and the internship opportunities available in 2023. About us: Zoox is developing the first ground-up, fully autonomous vehicle fleet and the supporting ecosystem required to bring this technology to market. Sitting at the intersection of robotics, machine […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT In this talk, I will introduce the development of a high-resolution robotic tactile sensor GelSight, and how it can help robots understand and interact with the physical world. GelSight is a vision-based tactile sensor that measures the […]
Many interesting problems in nonlinear mechanics, from classical to more recent, pertain to applications with high initial symmetry: from the buckling of thin walled structures to the morphing in architected materials – the list is long! A common feature of these problems, in addition to their importance for engineering applications, is their great theoretical interest […]
Fall 2022 Hybrid-Seminar Series Mondays 1.00-2.00 pm (EST) Towne 225 / Raisler Lounge For Zoom link, please contact <manu@seas.upenn.edu
Ten years into the revival of deep networks and artificial intelligence, we propose a theoretical framework that sheds light on understanding deep networks within a bigger picture of intelligence in general. We introduce two fundamental principles, Parsimony and Self-consistency, that address two fundamental questions regarding Intelligence: what to learn and how to learn, respectively. We […]
Flows of particulate materials are ubiquitous in nature and industry. Predictions of flow rates and mixing times rely on an understanding of the rheological properties of the materials, which can differ considerably from that associated with a single-phase fluid. This presentation highlights some unique features of granular materials and inertial suspensions and includes recent experimental […]
Electronic and photonic microsystems realized in the form of integrated circuits (IC) has been revolutionizing numerous fields that traditionally exploit bulky implementations. The advantages stemming from device miniaturization have opened up wide and growing opportunities to design for unprecedented functionality and enhanced performance. Leveraging novel CMOS and silicon photonic IC designs, this thesis presents four […]
ABSTRACT: Machine learning algorithms are increasingly used in conjunction with optimization to guide decision making. A key challenge is aligning the machine learning loss with the decision-making loss. Existing solutions have limited flexibility and/or scale poorly to large datasets. We propose a principled decision-aware learning algorithm that uses a Taylor expansion of the optimal decision […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Touch is a crucial sensor modality in both humans and robots. Recent advances in tactile sensing hardware have resulted -- for the first time -- in the availability of mass-produced, high-resolution, inexpensive, and reliable tactile sensors. In this […]
Halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been the focus of much research in recent years due to their extremely high photoconversion efficiencies and their ability to be synthesized by solution processing. These materials crystallize in the perovskite, AMX3 crystal structure where A is a monovalent cation (e.g. methyl ammonium, MA, formamidinium, FA, and/or Cs), M is the […]
This talk will begin by discussing phase transitions in high-dimensional statistical inference problems. Some effort will be made to distinguish between problems with random structure (e.g., random codes and sparse PCA) and problems with deterministic structure (e.g., highly symmetric codes such as Reed-Muller codes). For problems with deterministic structure, we will observe that symmetry can […]
Over the past decades we have seen robots move from constrained and heavily designed industrial environments out into the world. Along with this shift there is a need for smaller, safer, and less expensive robots which can complete tasks autonomously in teams, sometimes covering large areas. Multi-robot teams can expand the capabilities of a single […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT In nature, groups of thousands of individuals cooperate to create complex structure purely through local interactions — from cells that form complex organisms, to social insects like termites and ants that build nests and self-assemble bridges, to the […]
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Rahim Rizi are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Hooman Hamedani. Title: Multibreath Hyperpolarized Gas Imaging of Lung Ventilation and Gas Exchange in Humans for Diagnosis and Treatment Response Monitoring Date: November 11th, 2022 Time: 1:00 PM-3:00 PM Location: Donner - Grice Auditorium, 2 Dulles […]
Integrating machine learning and control systems has achieved remarkable success in controlling complex dynamical systems such as autonomous vehicles. However, the resulting controlled system often has a neural network (NN) in the loop which represents the system dynamics, control policy, or perception. The nonlinearity and large scale of NNs make it challenging to provide formal […]
Lubricants with low viscosity have the potential to improve fuel efficiency in engines due to friction reduction. However, a reduction in viscosity increases the likelihood of wear. Zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP), the most widely used antiwear additive in engine oils, has been extensively studied over the last few decades. ZDDP forms surface-bound tribofilms at sliding contacts […]
During embryonic development, groups of cells reorganize into functional tissues with complex form and structure. Tissue reorganization can be rapid and dramatic, often occurring through striking embryo-scale flows that are mediated by the coordinated actions of hundreds or thousands of cells. In Drosophila, cell rearrangements in the embryonic epithelium rapidly narrow and elongate the tissue, […]
Effective theories play a fundamental role in how we reason about the world. Although real physical processes are very complicated, useful models abstract away the irrelevant degrees of freedom to give parsimonious representations. In contrast, overly complex models can be difficult to evaluate, suffer from numerical instabilities, and may overfit data. They also obscure useful […]
The intersection of dynamical systems and networks are used to model a huge variety of phenomena such as the spread of disease, multi-agent systems, opinions in social networks, and more. Many properties of these network phenomena can be understood by examining the eigenvalue spectrum of a matrix representation of the underlying graph. Using this intuition, […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Raisler Lounge (Towne 225) and virtual attendance via Zoom. This talk will NOT be recorded, please make sure to arrive on time. ABSTRACT In this talk, I will first show that physics of human-like body in action already provide certain information structure which can set the natural […]
ABSTRACT: Balancing performance and safety are crucial to deploying autonomous vehicles in multi-agent environments. In particular, autonomous racing is a domain that penalizes safe but conservative policies, highlighting the need for robust, adaptive strategies. Current approaches either make simplifying assumptions about other agents or lack robust mechanisms for online adaptation. In this talk we will […]
Microstructurally and compositionally complex alloys (MCCA) such as Nickel-Aluminum-Bronze (NAB) are important to Navy and maritime applications due to their high strength, toughness, and fatigue resistance, as well as excellent corrosion resistance. NAB’s are widely used in many naval applications including ship propellers, underwater fasteners, pumps, and valves. Traditional sand cast NAB alloys tend to […]
In this talk, I will discuss my group’s work on fabricating micro- and nanosensing platforms for health monitoring. My group has developed novel electronic sensing modalities and has demonstrated their use for both in vitro with human clinical samples and in vivo in animals. In the first part of my talk, I will discuss sensor […]
High-level synthesis has accelerated the adoption of autotuners to explore design spaces. Design-space size increases exponentially in the number of design parameters, and synthesizing a single configuration for a device-scale application easily consumes hours, so existing autotuners are frequently demonstrated with small kernels and few configurations to render the problem tractable. This dissertation shows that […]
Signal Temporal Logic (STL) is a common way to express a broad range of real-time constraints that can be imposed on control systems. Spatial robustness of STL specifications, quantifying permissible spatial perturbations, has been widely studied in the literature. However, despite the importance of various time-critical systems, temporal robustness of STL has not yet been […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT The ability for robots, be it a single robot, multiple robots or a robot swarm, to adapt to the humans with which they are teamed requires algorithms that allow robots to detect human performance in real time. The multi-dimensional […]
Epidemiological spreading processes constitute the core of a large number of disparate networks. In some, faster spread is desirable, in others containing the spread is critically important. We focus on understanding the spatio-temporal spread of epidemics over contact networks with the goal of facilitating or containing the spread as the case may be. In this […]
LARGE-SCALE MICROFLUIDIC MANUFACTURING OF GRANULAR HYDROGELS AND MULTIPLE EMULSIONS Abstract: Droplet microfluidics have made tremendous progress in the last two decades in the generation of micrometer- and nanometer-scale materials. One of the major developments lies in the incorporation of multiple microfluidic devices onto single chips enabling emulsion generation at clinical and industrial-relevant scale. However, most […]
Fall 2022 Hybrid-Seminar Series Mondays 1.00-2.00 pm (EST) Towne 225 / Raisler Lounge For Zoom link, please contact <manu@seas.upenn.edu
Fall 2022 Hybrid-Seminar Series Mondays 1.00-2.00 pm (EST) Towne 225 / Raisler Lounge For Zoom link, please contact <manu@seas.upenn.edu
Sustainable transportation and aviation are critical to address climate change and renewable energy powered battery electric vehicles represent a promising path towards this goal. I will discuss the performance metrics needed of batteries for electric land and air vehicles, and assess the energy-efficiency of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft compared to ground vehicles. […]
Our current data ecosystem leaves individuals, groups, and society vulnerable to a wide range of harms, ranging from privacy violations to subversion of autonomy to discrimination to erosion of trust in institutions. In this talk, I'll discuss the Data Co-ops Project, a multi-institution, multi-disciplinary effort I co-lead with Kobbi Nissim. The Project seeks to organize our understanding of […]
ABSTRACT: Neurosymbolic learning is an emerging paradigm which, at its core, combines the otherwise complementary worlds of classical algorithms and deep learning; in doing so, it ushers in more accurate, interpretable, and domain-aware solutions for today’s most complex machine learning challenges. I will begin by reviewing the various fundamentals, such as algorithmic supervision, symbolic reasoning, […]
Advancements in semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) “chip” technology over the past 60+ years have enabled exponential growth in chip functionality with exponential reduction in cost per transistor, resulting in the proliferation of information and communication devices and systems, with revolutionary impact on society; today cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence are driving the digital […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT The human fascination to mimic ultra-efficient living beings like insects and birds has led to the rise of small autonomous robots. Smaller robots are safer, more agile and are task-distributable as swarms. One might wonder, why do we […]
Pathological calcification is a wide-spread phenomenon in the human body, in which calcium minerals form in soft tissues and are found in both healthy and diseased tissues. One example are microcalcifications (MCs), which are primarily biological apatite and occur in cancerous and benign breast pathologies. MCs are key mammographic indicators, however, little is known about […]
*This is a HYBRID Event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Domains such as high-mix manufacturing, domestic robotics, space exploration, etc., are key areas of interest for robotics. Yet, the difficulty of anticipating the role of robots in these domains is a crucial hurdle for the adoption of robots. […]
This is a hybrid seminar: Check email for the zoom link and passcode. "Cellular and Acellular Strategies for Heart and Lung Repair" Therapeutic tissue regeneration using stem cells has been hampered by the controversial identity of resident stem cells, low cell retention/engraftment, tumorigenecity and immunogenicity issues. Taking a bioengineering/biomaterials approach, this lecture will introduce the uses of drug delivery and biomaterials […]
This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Mobile robots now deliver vast amounts of sensor data from large unstructured environments. In attempting to process and interpret this data there are many unique challenges in bridging the gap between prerecorded data sets and the […]
This seminar will be held in person (LRSM 112C) and virtually (https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98620440148).
A non-local (gradient) plasticity model for porous metals that accounts for deformation-induced anisotropy is presented. The model is based on the work of Ponte Castañeda and co-workers on porous materials containing randomly distributed ellipsoidal voids. It takes into account the evolution of porosity and the evolution/development of anisotropy due to changes in the shape and […]
