The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Rob Mauck are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Elisabeth Lemmon. Title: Biologic Delivery to Preserve Joint Health and Promote Tissue Repair Date: May 28, 2024 Time: 10:00 AM Location: JMB Class of ’62 Auditorium Zoom link - https://upenn.zoom.us/j/93923840583?pwd=Tjl5bE1rMEFESlJKRm9ROEYzSU1VZz09 Please email elemmon@vet.upenn.edu for the zoom […]
Low-rank matrix completion is a well-studied problem, for which a rich theory exists, mainly from the optimization and statistical points of view. However, the majority of the theoretical analysis in the literature assumes random observation patterns. On the other hand, the pattern of observed entries depends on the nature of each application, and is usually […]
Silicon's advanced fabrication processes have enabled the miniaturization of complex electronic systems, enhancing performance and efficiency. Recent technological developments have further expanded silicon's utility to integrate photonic systems, merging electronic and photonic technologies on a single chip. This integration has opened new avenues for high-speed communication and computation, attracting significant interest from both research and […]
Contact interactions, including adhesion and friction, are critical to the design of many engineered systems. Currently, most systems rely on materials with static mechanical properties, requiring careful selection of materials to realize effective systems for specialized tasks. However, with advances in smart materials, system design is no longer limited to materials with static properties. There […]
Given the widespread use of deep learning models in safety-critical applications, ensuring that the decisions of such models are robust against adversarial exploitation is of fundamental importance. In this thesis, we discuss recent progress toward designing algorithms that exhibit desirable robustness properties. First, we discuss the problem of adversarial examples in computer vision, for which […]
*This seminar will be held in-person in Levine 307 as well as virtually via Zoom. ABSTRACT To make a future where robots are helpful and commonplace, robots must physically interact with humans and their surroundings. In this talk, I argue that robots should be designed from a materials-centric approach to better facilitate these interactions. If […]
If learning from data is valuable, can learning from big data be very valuable? It has been, so far, in vision and language, for which foundation models can be trained on web-scale data to support a plethora of downstream tasks; not so much in control, for which scalable learning remains elusive. Can information encoded in […]
Cyber-physical systems often include communication networks that ensure data transmission between different components of the system (sensors, actuators, processing units, etc). The presence of such networks renders the whole system vulnerable to malicious attacks consisting, for example, in the injection of arbitrary signals. In this context, the data collected over the communication channel may be […]
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Dani Smith Bassett are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Shubhankar Patankar. Title: Goal-Directed Dynamics of Network Topology Date: June 7, 2024 Time: 11:30 am - 1:30 pm Location: Heilmeier Hall, Room 100 Towne Building Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/95495692170 The public is welcome to attend.
In this talk, I will focus on two challenging imaging systems: snapshot compressive imaging and coherent imaging under speckle noise interference. I will begin by reviewing the core mathematical modeling of the inverse problem corresponding to each system. I will develop a maximum likelihood estimator (MLE)-based optimization for each, employing untrained neural networks (NNs) to […]
You’ve probably seen reports about reproducibility issues and science gone wrong due to lack of rigor. But what does it mean to do rigorous scientific research? If the word conjures up images of stiffness, strictness, and difficulty, the Community for Rigor is here to help! Join us for Rigor in Plain English, a live podcast […]
*This seminar will be held in-person in Levine 307 as well as virtually via Zoom. ABSTRACT In this keynote, I will talk about our latest research on creating photo-realistic AI Avatars. Here, our main goal is to create virtual characters that can are visually indistinguishable from photos and videos of real people. Further, we aim […]
*This seminar will be held in-person in Levine 307 as well as virtually via Zoom. ABSTRACT Understanding the 3D structure of real-world environments is a fundamental challenge in machine perception, critical for applications spanning robotic navigation, content creation, and mixed reality scenarios. In recent years, machine learning has undergone rapid advancements; however, in the 3D […]
Making robots more capable, agile, and efficient requires careful design of the robot’s mechanical body to match task requirements. Passive components allow a robot to perform a task without a dedicated actuator, often improving both power consumption and overall performance. In this thesis, we investigate robotic applications of bistable mechanisms, mechanical structures that exhibit two […]
Legged robots, robotic manipulators, and their combined embodiment as humanoid robots have received considerable attention across both academia and industry. However, with few notable exceptions, state-of-the-art demonstrations are significantly less dynamic than their biological counterparts. A considerable challenge for performing more dynamic tasks for both legged robots and robotics manipulators lies within controlling contact interactions […]
Photoluminescent point defects, or color centers, in wide-bandgap semiconductors are important platforms for quantum information science because they can be operated as solid-state quantum spin-light interfaces. Implementing so-called defect qubits in an expanded variety of materials systems is beneficial for applications, since the host-defect material properties determine operating parameters such as emission wavelength, spin coherence […]
Patient-specific computational modeling and simulation has become a routine part of cardiovascular clinical research. These techniques leverage medical imaging to construct subject-specific models that can be used to study disease processes, design and evaluate medical devices, perform predictive surgery, and aid in clinical decision-making. Modern cardiovascular simulations often require millions of elements and tens of […]
The field of robotic manipulation is attempting to expand from structured warehouse and lab environments to in-the-wild applications in human-centric settings. When deployed in novel settings, a robot may see and need to interact with a new object for the first time. Model-based control approaches rely on a priori dynamics models, an assumption that does […]
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Yale Cohen are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Sereen Assi. Title: Harnessing the Regenerative Characteristics of Meniscus Superficial Zone Cells Date: June 25, 2024 Time: 11:00 AM Location: Berger Auditorium, Skirkanich Hall Zoom option: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/93851147060?pwd=NEh0QmN4Z2sxVkhIb2l0d3c3cWlaZz09 The public is welcome to attend.
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Mike Mitchell are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Rebecca Haley. Title: Lipid Nanoparticles allow Intracellular Protein Delivery for Modulation of Difficult Therapeutic Targets Date: June 26, 2024 Time: 11:30am Location: Levine Hall, Wu & Chen Auditorium Zoom option: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/93908532827, Meeting ID: 939 0853 2827 The […]
Robotic mission planning in uncertain environments remains a formidable challenge due to environmental complexity and sensor noise. This dissertation introduces new methodologies to tackle these issues. We develop a method for Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) planning, extending it to completely unknown environments to enable dynamic understanding and task fulfillment. Large language models (LLMs) are also […]
Ferroelectric properties were initially discovered in perovskite-structured materials over a century ago. However, it was only in the last two decades that these properties were confirmed in fluorite-structured doped HfO2 and wurtzite-structured AlN films, respectively. The ferroelectricity in doped HfO2 or ZrO2 has been attributed to a previously unknown non-centrosymmetric orthorhombic Pca21 phase, while it […]
This seminar will be held in-person in Wu and Chen as well as virtually via Zoom. ABSTRACT Since its inception, Robotics has constantly used technological developments to address new customer needs. These developments have occurred in two areas: mechatronics and software & control. Mechatronic advances made robots stronger, faster, and more accurate. In parallel, software […]
The pressing issues of global warming and the rapid depletion of fossil fuel reserves have prompted both private and governmental organizations to seek clean, renewable energy alternatives. Solar and wind energy have been extensively researched, leading to significantly reduced costs for energy production. However, to address the intermittent nature of these energy sources, reliable methods […]
Data is necessary to improve our understanding of dynamic environments, like the ocean. With limited sensing resources, the challenge lies in identifying and acquiring sensor measurements over large spatial and temporal scales. One solution is to use a team of robots equipped with sensors to collect data. However, robot teams still require methods that effectively […]
Battery technologies are crucial for reducing greenhouse gases by enabling the use of renewable energy and facilitating the transition to electric vehicles, thereby lowering emissions. Lithium metal anodes are ideal for next-generation batteries in automotive applications due to their high energy density. However, issues such as dendrite formation and solid electrolyte interphases (SEI) affect their […]
Sliding touch is one of the key inputs for the perception of materials in our environment. We are interested in the contribution of fingertip friction to the process of tactile exploration and perception. Psychophysical studies address correlations between subjective judgements of perception and measured physical parameters of interactions, in our case of friction on materials […]
