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Events

• Apr

  18

  TAM Seminar- Laura De Lorenzis

  McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)

  11:00 AM A230, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILS

  Automated discovery of material models

  The talk overviews the recent research on automated discovery of material models carried out by the group of the speaker and collaborators. Overall, this research proposes a shift in paradigm, moving away from the classical calibration of the unknown parameters in an a priori chosen material model, towards the new task of model discovery, i.e. simultaneous selection of the most appropriate model and calibration of its unknown parameters.

  The new approach, inspired by advances on automated discovery of governing equations for non-linear dynamical systems, deploys sparse regression from a potentially extremely large library of material models to automatically select the few terms that lead to the best approximation of the experimental data. These data can be available in the form of stressstrain pairs or as full-field displacement, and force data obtained from mechanical testing with digital image correlation. Sparse regression delivers a parsimonious, i.e. simple and interpretable, deterministic model; through the appropriate design of the model library, the discovered model can be guaranteed to satisfy a priori the desired physics constraints. As an alternative to sparse regression, Bayesian learning with sparsity-promoting priors can deliver a few candidate models with quantified uncertainty, as proposed in. Another possible choice is to replace the model library with a neural network, thus trading interpretability against a larger approximation space. The latest advances include deploying formal grammars to generate the language of hyperelastic materials [6], i.e. a very large library of hyperelastic models fulfilling predefined requirements, and the first steps towards experimental validation,, also leveraging X-ray tomography with digital volume correlation and in-situ testing.

  LAURA DE LORENZIS received her Engineering degree and her PhD from the University of her hometown Lecce, in southern Italy, where she first stayed as Assistant and later as Associate Professor of Solid and structural mechanics. In 2013 she moved to the TU Braunschweig, Germany, as Professor and Director of the Institute of Applied Mechanics. There she was founding member and Chair (2017-2020) of the Center for Mechanics, Uncertainty and Simulation in Engineering. Since 2020 she is Professor of Computational Mechanics at ETH Zürich. She was visiting scholar in several renowned institutions, including Chalmers University of Technology, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (as Fulbright Fellow), the Leibniz University of Hannover (as Alexander von Humboldt Fellow), the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Cape Town. She is the recipient of several prizes, including the RILEM L’Hermite Medal 2011, the AIMETA Junior Prize 2011, the IIFC Young Investigator Award 2012, two best paper awards and two student teaching prizes at the TU Braunschweig. In 2011 she was awarded a European Research Council Starting Researcher Grant. In 2022 she was elected Solid Mechanics Fellow of the European Mechanics Society (EUROMECH) "in recognition of her outstanding and influential contributions to computational solid mechanics including in particular phase-field approaches to fracture and fatigue, variational collocation methods, and data-driven mechanics". She authored or co-authored more than 140 papers on international journals, delivered over 15 plenary lectures at international conferences and is editorial board member or associate editor of over 15 international journals. Since 2023 she is Editor of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering.

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  TIME Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

  LOCATION A230, Technological Institute    map it

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  CONTACT Jeremy Wells    jeremywells@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)

• May

  2

  Thought Leader Dialogue: AI and the Future of Work

  Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design (HCI+D)

  4:00 PM

  EVENT DETAILSmore info

  

  With the explosion of AI platforms, what is the future of work? Will we need “humans in the loop”? Although these platforms are still in the early stages, implications are broadly significant. In this dialogue, we bring together researchers with distinct perspectives to discuss approaches for designing a desirable future of work for everyone. Tackling questions related to ethics, governance, and competition, this dialog will highlight the role of thoughtful design in achieving the vision of a desirable future of work for everyone.

  Register Now

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  TIME Thursday, May 2, 2024 at 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM

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  CONTACT Madison Deyo    Madison.Deyo@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design (HCI+D)

• May

  3

  Russ Tedrake, MIT and Toyota Research Institute, "Dexterous Manipulation with Diffusion Policies"

  Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)

  11:30 AM M416, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILSmore info

  

  Speaker: Russ Tedrake, Toyota Professor of EECS, Aero/Astro, ME at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and VP of Research at Toyota Research Institute

  Title: Dexterous Manipulation with Diffusion Policies

  Date and Time: Friday, May 3 at 11:30 AM CT

  Location: Tech ESAM M416 and Zoom

  Zoom Link: https://tinyurl.com/CRBSeminar

  • NU-authenticated attendees will be automatically admitted. Others, please email amy.nedoss@northwestern.edu to be admitted from the waiting room.

  Abstract:

  At the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we've been working on behavior cloning for dexterous manipulation. Building on the Diffusion Policy framework that we've recently developed in collaboration with Shuran Song, we now have a very solid pipeline for taking ~50-100 bimanual haptic teleop demonstrations and turning that into a surprisingly effective visuomotor (+tactile) policy. Because there is no explicit state representation required, these skills work equally well manipulating deformable, liquid, or other difficult to model tasks as they do for more traditional rigid-object manipulation. We're actively scaling this up into the multi-task setting and now see a plausible path towards "Large Behavior Models". This behavior cloning pipeline is working incredibly well, and must be understood deeply in the broader context of output-feedback control. Time permitting, I'll also tell you a bit about some new results in optimization-based planning and control, and where they might fit in the age of foundation models.

  Bio:

  Russ Tedrake is the Toyota Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Aero/Astro, and he is a member of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). He is also the Vice President of Robotics Research at Toyota Research Institute (TRI). He received a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1999, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2004. Dr. Tedrake is the Director of the MIT CSAIL Center for Robotics and was the leader of MIT’s entry in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the MIT Jerome Saltzer Award for undergraduate teaching, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in Mathematics, the 2012 Ruth and Joel Spira Teaching Award, and was named a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellow. His research has been recognized with numerous conference best paper awards, including ICRA, Robotics: Science and Systems, Humanoids, Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, as well as the inaugural best paper award from the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Whole-Body Control.

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  TIME Friday, May 3, 2024 at 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

  LOCATION M416, Technological Institute    map it

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  CONTACT Amy Nedoss    amy.nedoss@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)

• May

  8

  Extending Care: A Conversation about Conservation and Futurity

  Block Museum of Art

  6:00 PM Block Museum of Art, Mary and Leigh

  EVENT DETAILSmore info

  The Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts is a collaboration between the Art Institute of Chicago and materials science-related departments at Northwestern University to pursue objects-based and objects-inspired scientific research. Materials research benefits ongoing work in conservation, archaeology, art history, and curatorial scholarship.

  Learn how the Center uses materials research to care for art objects in sustainable, innovative ways with Maria Kokkori, Senior Scientist in the Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts. She will be in conversation with Corey Byrnes, Northwestern Associate Professor of Chinese Culture and co-founder/co-director of the Environmental Humanities Workshop in Kaplan Humanities Center.

  This event is presented by the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science in conjunction with exhibition Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology.

  Register Now

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  TIME Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

  LOCATION Block Museum of Art, Mary and Leigh    map it

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  CONTACT Block Museum of Art    block-museum@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Block Museum of Art

• Jun

  10

  Northwestern Engineering PhD Hooding and Master's Degree Recognition Ceremony

  McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

  9:00 AM Welsh-Ryan Arena

  EVENT DETAILSmore info

  McCormick School of Engineering PhD Hooding and Master’s Degree Recognition Ceremony

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  TIME Monday, June 10, 2024 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

  LOCATION Welsh-Ryan Arena   

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  CONTACT Amy Pokrass    amy.pokrass@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

• Jun

  10

  Northwestern Engineering Undergraduate Convocation

  McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

  2:00 PM Welsh-Ryan Arena

  EVENT DETAILSmore info

  McCormick School of Engineering Undergraduate Convocation

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  TIME Monday, June 10, 2024 at 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

  LOCATION Welsh-Ryan Arena   

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  CONTACT Amy Pokrass    amy.pokrass@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

• Aug

  14

  Undergraduate Quantum Summer School

  McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

  All Day Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center

  EVENT DETAILSmore info

  Innovation in Quantum Pedagogy, Application, and its Relation to Culture (IQ-PARC), funded by the Department of Defense — National Defense Education Program, is extending an invitation to underrepresented students nationwide (including military-connected students) to participate in a summer school focused on quantum technologies, to be held at Northwestern University. Join us for presentations by faculty and industry partners introducing quantum technologies, cutting-edge research areas, and related job opportunities particularly in the areas of national security.

  This effort aims to foster an inclusive environment that encourages participation from all corners of the academic community. Successful applicants will receive up to $1,000 USD to cover travel and lodging expenses in Evanston, IL.

  Priority application deadline: May 15, 2024.

  Decisions will be sent by June 15, 2024.

  Register Now

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  TIME Wednesday, August 14, 2024

  LOCATION Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center    map it

  ADD TO CALENDAR

  CONTACT Dongyang Li    lidongyang@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

• Aug

  15

  Undergraduate Quantum Summer School

  McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

  All Day Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center

  EVENT DETAILSmore info

  Innovation in Quantum Pedagogy, Application, and its Relation to Culture (IQ-PARC), funded by the Department of Defense — National Defense Education Program, is extending an invitation to underrepresented students nationwide (including military-connected students) to participate in a summer school focused on quantum technologies, to be held at Northwestern University. Join us for presentations by faculty and industry partners introducing quantum technologies, cutting-edge research areas, and related job opportunities particularly in the areas of national security.

  This effort aims to foster an inclusive environment that encourages participation from all corners of the academic community. Successful applicants will receive up to $1,000 USD to cover travel and lodging expenses in Evanston, IL.

  Priority application deadline: May 15, 2024.

  Decisions will be sent by June 15, 2024.

  Register Now

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  TIME Thursday, August 15, 2024

  LOCATION Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center    map it

  ADD TO CALENDAR

  CONTACT Dongyang Li    lidongyang@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science