Events
Past Event
CANCELLED- TAM Seminar Series Presents: Benedetto Marelli
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
11:00 AM
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A230, Technological Institute
Details
Dr. Benedetto Marelli
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Presentation Title: Growing structural proteins into advanced materials for food security.
Abstract: Applications of robotics and sensing technologies, big data analysis and biotechnology in farming, plant and food science are highly sought to guarantee global food security while mitigating the environmental impact of agriculture. In this scenario, the potential benefit of applying materials science principles to enhance food security remains underexplored when compared to material- based research efforts in biomedicine, energy and optoelectronics. In this seminar, we highlight recent development in the nanomanufacturing of structural proteins to engineer a new generation of advanced materials that can be interfaced with food and plants. We will present newly developed techniques to direct the assembly of structural proteins into nanostructured materials that can serve as: edible coatings to prolong the shelf-life of perishable food, microenvironments to boost seed germination in saline soil and injectors to deliver payloads in plant vasculature. These examples will provide an opportunity to discuss how the establishment of a successful interface between biomaterials and plants tissues requires the development of a basic scientific knowledge on: mechanics of disorder to order transitions in proteinaceous materials during condensation phenomena, fluid mechanics and transport phenomena in plants vasculature, and swelling of porous materials exposed to plant fluids.
Biography
Benedetto Marelli is the Paul M. Cook Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a B.Eng. and a M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2005 and 2008 and a PhD in Materials Science from McGill University in 2012. After a Postdoc in the Silklab at Tufts University, Benedetto joined the MIT Faculty in November 2015. At MIT, the Marelli research group works in the area of structural biopolymers and nanomanufacturing. By using biofabrication strategies that integrate bottom-up and top-down techniques, the research efforts are focused on the design of materials that act at the biotic/abiotic interface with applications in precision agriculture and food security. Benedetto has recently received several awards, including PECASE, NSF CAREER, ONR Young Investigator Award and ONR Director of Research Early Career Award.
Time
Tuesday, March 10, 2020 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
A230, Technological Institute Map
Contact
Calendar
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
ME Alumni Seminar Series- Apostolos Karafillis
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)
2:00 PM
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1.350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center
Details
On the Design and Manufacture of Structures for Flightworthy Gas Turbines
by Apostolos Karafillis
Chief Consulting Engineer
Structures and Additive Design
GE Aerospace
Abstract
The design and manufacture of gas turbine components presents unique technical challenges that highlight the relevance and importance of the disciplines of mechanical and aerospace engineering. In this presentation, we will focus on describing the fundamental technical requirements for parts of flightworthy gas turbines and will then share examples of designs and innovations to meet these requirements. The talk will include the description of typical loading conditions and operating environments, and the description of how these requirements guide the selection of design features, materials, and manufacturing methods. We will discuss three specific examples: The selection of features and architecture of a bearing housing, the design of a turbine frame with a mix of metallic and composite materials, and the development of methods for characterizing the performance of components manufactured with non-traditional methods. Through these examples, it will be shown that successful hardware design requires the combination of robust design methods, rigorous implementation of the principles of mechanics of materials, and the development of design and manufacturing innovation.
Time
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Location
1.350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center Map
Contact
Calendar
McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)
Russ Tedrake, MIT and Toyota Research Institute, "Dexterous Manipulation with Diffusion Policies"
Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)
11:30 AM
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M416, Technological Institute
Details
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.
Time
Friday, May 3, 2024 at 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Location
M416, Technological Institute Map
Contact
Calendar
Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)