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Thesis Committee: Prof. Liang Feng (Chair) Prof. Firooz Aflatouni Prof. Ritesh Agarwal Prof. I-Wei Chen Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/2449152154
35 events found.
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3 events,
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Abstract: Microcapsules that can respond under hydrostatic pressure would open a new avenue of application in ultrasound- or impact-induced release of therapeutic agents. While microcapsules that are designed to release cargo under uniaxial compressive loadings have been developed, they are filled with liquid, rendering them insensitive to hydrostatic pressure. To overcome this limitation, bubbles can […]
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Abstract: Multiphasic processes underpin nearly every aspect of modern life; from the food we eat and the clothes we wear to the medicines that sustain us and the energy systems that power our world. This thesis presents three contributions to the advancement of multiphasic processes by developing intelligent control, scalable processing, and reactor design. First, […]
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Wake flows - the fluid mechanical "debris" shed behind an aerodynamic body - are often characterized by unsteady, turbulent, low-momentum fluid. Usually these wakes are to be avoided, but in several situations the wake can exhibit an organized structure consisting of well-defined high energy vortices. Examples of these coherent, or structured, wakes include trailing vortex […]
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This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Tactile and visual perception are crucial for fine-grained human interactions with the environment. Developing similar multimodal sensing capabilities for robots can significantly enhance and expand their manipulation skills. This talk presents a scalable tactile stack that couples flexible, […]
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From knotted cords to contemporary computers, the revolution in information technologies has been a major driving force of human civilization. Since its emergence in the early 1900s, quantum mechanics has played a foundational role in enabling many transformative technologies—such as lasers and transistors—that are now recognized as hallmarks of the first quantum revolution. Over the […]
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Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98220304722 Modern LLMs process information by repeatedly applying a basic primitive of matrix multiplication. Estimates show that about 60-84% of the energy consumed by LLMs goes into memory load/store operations. How can we reduce this power consumption? Tokens start as about 16-bit integers but get mapped to vectors of floats of length […]
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This event will be in-person ONLY in Wu and Chen Auditorium. ABSTRACT Autonomous agents need a world model that explains observations, predicts what comes next, and chooses actions over long horizons. Think of catching a ball: the robot must infer where it is now and where it will be next—even when it slips out of […]
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Surface electrochemical actuators (SEAs) harness ion-induced surface stress changes to produce large bending deformations at the microscale. They have previously been applied in microrobot locomotion and microbattery validation, demonstrating their versatility as low-voltage microscopic actuators. Here, we extend their functionality by showing that ultra-thin platinum membranes (10 nm thick, 10–100 µm wide), fabricated via low-temperature […]
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Understanding the physical processes modulating the transport of scalars, such as heat, over very rough surfaces is essential for understanding the thermal environment of cities, how wind and solar farms modify heat and water exchanges between the atmosphere and Earth surface, and parameterizing surface physics in coarser Earth systems models. This talk examines this problem […]
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There has been considerable interest in the colloidal self-assembly of photonic crystals with a diamond structure, owing to their exceptional optical properties, such as a wide photonic bandgap and relative insensitivity to disorder. These materials are valuable for applications in optical circuits, low-threshold lasers, sensors, and solar cells. Given the three-dimensional nature of photonic crystals, […]
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Abstract: Liquid–liquid phase separation is a fundamental thermodynamic process that governs structure and function in biological systems, chemical separations, and multiphase materials. Within this broad field, computational studies play a critical role in advancing understanding of this phenomenon by enabling investigation of phase behavior across multiple length scales. In this thesis, liquid–liquid phase separation is […]
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Abstract TBD Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/92346171614
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This presenter is one of the winners of the 2025 GRASP vote for internal PhD or postdoc SFI Speakers! This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT The automatic discovery of structures in data (analysis) and generation of data (synthesis) are two core problems in machine […]
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Abstract: Beyond lithium-ion batteries, like sodium and potassium, are more abundant in the Earth’s crust and alleviate geopolitical concerns surrounding the materials inside of lithium-based batteries. However, both sodium and potassium batteries display unique interfacial chemistry that develops during electrochemical cycling in conventional electrolytes, preventing performances that are on par with current lithium systems. In […]
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The inaugural Penn AI Symposium is a landmark event that gathers leading thinkers who will share their explorations at the frontiers of artificial intelligence. The symposium is hosted by Penn AI, a University-wide initiative driving responsible AI innovation at Penn. The launch of Penn AI and the upcoming symposium signal a new chapter in Penn's commitment […]
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Now in its sixth year, Climate Week at Penn offers opportunities for every member of the Penn community to learn about and act on the climate crisis. The theme for 2025 is “Hot Spots,” be they literal (wildfires and extreme heat) or figurative (political, cultural, interpersonal, or scholarly hot topics). The Climate Week core organizing […]
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Artificial intelligence systems powered by deep neural networks have achieved remarkable success across a broad range of applications. However, perturbations such as natural image corruptions or crafted malicious queries, can cause significant performance degradation. This poses severe risks in safety-critical applications, such as autonomous driving and clinical decision-making. A key vulnerability of machine learning models […]
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The displacement of one fluid by another in a porous medium gives rise to a rich variety of hydrodynamic instabilities. Beyond their scientific value as fascinating models of pattern formation, unstable porous-media flows are essential to understanding many natural and man-made processes, including water infiltration in the vadose zone, carbon dioxide injection and storage in […]
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Datacenters are the pillars of a digital economy and modern-day global IT services. The building blocks for today's datacenters are cost-effective volume servers that find their roots in the basic hardware and OS organization of the desktops of 90s with a fundamental mismatch with workloads and services. Meanwhile, there are several technological trends (e.g., slowdown […]
4 events,
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Abstract TBD Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/97546234895
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This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence has achieved remarkable advances in linguistic intelligence, enabling machines to process and generate language proficiently. Yet to truly assist people in everyday life, machines must also develop spatial physical intelligence—the ability to perceive, interpret, and act […]
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Abstract: Advancements in electrochemical separation have paved the way for innovative approaches to address critical challenges in water treatment and resource recovery. In this seminar, I will introduce the Electrochemical Ion Pumping (EIP) platform, a transformative new approach to electrochemical separation that addresses the inherent limitations of conventional capacitive deionization and electrosorption. EIP leverages circuit-switching-induced […]
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Organisms have derived specific sets of traits in response to common selection pressures that serve as guideposts for optimal biological designs. A prime example is the evolution of toughened structures in disparate lineages within plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates 1-4. Extremely tough structures can function much like armor, battering rams, or reinforcements that enhance the ability […]
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Uncertainty propagation and mitigation is at the core of all robotic and control systems. The standard approach so far has followed the spirit of controlling a system “with uncertainties,” as opposed to the direct control “of uncertainties.” Borrowing ideas from the classical Optimal Mass Transport (OMT) and Schrödinger Bridge problems, distributional control has recently emerged […]
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Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98220304722 We revisit the fundamental problem of learning with distribution shift, where a learner is given labeled samples from training distribution D, unlabeled samples from test distribution D′ and is asked to output a classifier with low test error. The standard approach in this setting is to prove a generalization bound in terms of […]
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This event will be in-person ONLY in Wu and Chen Auditorium. ABSTRACT Advances in audiovisual rendering have led to the commercialization of virtual reality (VR); however, haptic technology has not kept up with these advances. While a variety of robotic systems aim to address this gap by simulating the sensation of touch, many hardware limitations […]
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Abstract: The precise regulation of gene expression depends on coordinated enhancer-promoter (E-P) interactions, yet the principles governing how enhancer configuration influences transcription remain unclear. Classical models describe enhancers as modular and independent of orientation or relative positioning, but accumulating evidence suggests these assumptions may not hold true. To investigate this problem, systematic manipulations of enhancer […]
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Polymers are essential to a wide range of technologies, yet designing them with targeted structural and functional properties remains a grand challenge. A major opportunity lies in applying machine learning to help navigate the vast combinatorial design space—spanning sequence, composition, architecture, morphology, processing, and more—to discover new formulations or replace existing ones with more sustainable […]
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Materials Science and Engineering Undergraduate Open House Are you a first-year Student? Undecided about your major? Curious about MSE? Join us for food and fun and explore how MSE can transform your future! • Who Should Attend: All first-year undergrad engineering students, regardless of major • What: Eat good food and meet MSE faculty, staff, […]
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Friction and wear of moving components across various industries result in reliability issues, enormous energy losses, and environmental problems. These problems originate from the complex interactions between micro- and nanoscale asperities at the contacting surfaces. Such tribological challenges can be addressed via surface engineering, inspired by biological species that control friction very efficiently, combined with […]
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Does media fragmentation contribute to democratic erosion? If so, how, and what steps are required to address potential impacts? Join the Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy as we explore this topic both through the lens of empirical research - as represented by Professors Duncan Watts, Sandra González-Bailón, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen along with […]
Free
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The Penn Engineering community is invited to join our inaugural AI Industry Days on Wednesday, October 22 and Thursday, October 23. Continuing Industry Days’ tradition of providing avenues for students to learn, connect, and explore career opportunities in niche areas of engineering and technology, this series offers both in-person and virtual programming. A variety […]
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The rapid integration of AI into educational settings presents opportunities and challenges—this talk will discuss findings from three large-scale field studies investigating the impact of AI on student learning. First, we found that unfettered access to ChatGPT negatively impacted short-term student learning outcomes. Second, to understand longer-term effects, we examined learning in chess academies. Contrary […]
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Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have created much excitement in the past years and attract spotlight attention. This talk will provide an overview of the reasons for this development highlighting the historic development as well as the specific material properties that make perovskites so attractive for the research community. The current challenges are exemplified using a […]
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This speaker will present virtually. This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT The last several years have witnessed tremendous progress in the capabilities of AI systems, driven largely by foundation models that scale expressive architectures with diverse data sources. While the impact of this technology […]
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The era of global digitalization and the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence-driven data applications have set their sights on terabits per second (Tbps) communication links. The limitations of the rapidly advancing 5G network in meeting this demand, attributed to challenges such as bandwidth scarcity, have spurred the exploration of innovative technologies for the envisioned 6G […]
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This winter the Americans will see a price hike in their electricity bill – not because of any issues related to energy generation but rather because of the rapidly increasing energy demand by the Data Centers. Energy efficiency is becoming critical not only to maintain the incessant advanced march of computing, but also to ensure […]
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Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98220304722 I will argue that properties of natural data are what predominantly make deep networks so effective. To that end, I will show that deep networks work well because of a characteristic structure in the space of learnable tasks. The input correlation matrix for typical tasks has a “sloppy” eigenspectrum where eigenvalues decay […]
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The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. David Cormode are pleased to announce the Doctoral Dissertation Defense of Katherine Mossburg. Title: "Developing Silver Sulfide-Based Nanoparticles for Imaging and Treatment of Breast Cancer" Location: Alison Pouch (chair), Andrew Maidment, David Issadore Date: Friday, October 24, 2025 Time: 10:00 AM Location: Raisler Lounge, Towne […]
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This event will be in-person ONLY in Wu and Chen Auditorium. ABSTRACT Vision Language Models (VLMs) are extremely successful, but their performance degrades when asked questions involving spatial relations and 3D world knowledge. Inspired by Cognitive Science, we develop 3D VLMs which are 3D-aware and 3D-explicit to help us to diagnose their failure nodes. We […]
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To meet net-zero carbon emissions targets by mid-century, up to a ~30-fold increase in wind power capacity is required. Acceleration to this rate requires urgent improvements to efficiency and reliability of installed wind farms, as well as cost reductions for future offshore farms. To expand energy production, wind turbines are rapidly increasing in size, wind […]
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One grand challenge for materials and structures design is to satisfy multiple conflicting requirements. For example, energy infrastructure, especially those in remote and extreme environments such as offshore wind turbines and nuclear reactors, requires components to operate effectively over long time periods and avoid catastrophic failures. Structural materials in aviation must be lightweight but high […]
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We seek the ability to take a few images of a scene of interest, and turn it into an immersive visual experience, where one can explore it from different viewpoints, in effect visualizing a 3D representation of an object, scene or photograph, and providing numerous applications in augmented reality, e-commerce and 3D photography. This problem, […]
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The two most popular vehicles for communicating uncertainty in the estimates of an unknown quantity are confidence sets and conformal sets. The set produced and its corresponding probability guarantee (conditional on the feature vector) depend upon assumptions the analyst has made about the underlying data generating process. For example, are the residuals independent and normally […]
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This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom. ABSTRACT Most tasks people wish robots could do (fetching objects across rooms, assisting in the kitchen, tidying) require mobile manipulation, the integration of navigation and manipulation. While robots have made remarkable progress in each skill independently, bringing them together […]
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Abstract: Biomolecular condensates are membraneless compartments inside living cells that play critical roles in health and disease. Over the past two decades, a wide body of work has established that these compartments form through phase separation of molecules such as proteins and RNA. This discovery has sparked significant interest in uncovering the molecular factors that […]
5 events,
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After an introduction to quantum computing, we discuss the currently practiced framework of "hybrid" computing, which is a method of accelerating traditional High Performance Compute (HPC) with Quantum Processing Units. I will talk about some of the ways in which Dell's research office has implemented this idea and the value it can bring to modern […]
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The next generation of intelligent and autonomous systems requires not only novel devices but also new silicon architectures and design workflows that transcend conventional approaches to deliver real-time learning, perception, and decision-making under severe power and resource constraints. In this talk, I will outline a cross-layer methodology for architecting silicon for embodied AI, from workload […]
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Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/98220304722 Weak-to-Strong Generalization (Burns et al., 2023) is the phenomenon whereby a strong student, say GPT-4, learns a task from a weak teacher, say GPT-2, and ends up significantly outperforming the teacher. We show that this phenomenon does not require a strong and complex learner like GPT-4, nor pre-training. We consider students and […]
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This event will be in-person ONLY in Wu and Chen Auditorium. ABSTRACT Prevailing models in robotics reason about the world either as images (end-to-end learning approaches) or as a collection of rigid objects (classical approaches), but neither have proven to be suitable abstractions for manipulating cloth, ropes, piles of objects, plants, and natural terrain. My […]
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