Computer Science and Engineering
Progressive Automated Formal Verification of Hardware and Software Systems
Tuesday, March 31, 2020;
10:00am
Via Zoom
Speaker: YATIN MANERKAR from Princeton University
ABSTRACT
Modern computing systems are increasing in complexity, making it challenging to ensure their correctness. Automated formal verification can provide strong correctness guarantees based on mathematical proofs but presents a number of challenges. The models used in such verification may be far removed from real implementations, and they may have trouble scaling to the size of real-world systems. In addition, their correctness guarantees may not cover all possible programs. In this talk, I will discuss how my PhD research has addressed each of these challenges for the verification of Memory Consistency Model (MCM) properties in parallel systems. MCMs specify the ordering and visibility rules for memory operations in parallel programs, so MCM verification is critical to parallel system correctness. My MCM verification work spans the hardware/software stack, and the tools I have developed are designed to be employed at different points in the design timeline. Together, they provide "Progressive Automated Formal Verification", or automated formal verification throughout the system design process. My MCM work has discovered bugs in a "proven-correct" compiler mapping for C/C++11 atomics, the draft RISC-V ISA's memory model, a commercial compiler, a lazy coherence protocol, and an open-source processor. I will conclude with my plans for future work, which include developing new methodologies and tools for the principled design and verification of emerging heterogeneous parallel hardware, applying progressive verification to distributed and cyber-physical systems, and automating the generation of formal hardware specifications.
BIOGRAPHY
Yatin Manerkar is a final-year PhD candidate in the Princeton Computer Science Department, advised by Prof. Margaret Martonosi. He holds a BASc in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. He also worked full-time at Qualcomm Research for one year. Yatin's research develops automated formal methodologies and tools for the design and verification of computing systems. His work has been recognized with two best paper nominations, and three of his papers have been honored for their high potential impact as either Top Picks or Honorable Mentions in IEEE Micro's annual "Top Picks" issue. Yatin is a recipient of the Wallace Memorial Fellowship, one of Princeton's highest graduate honors awarded to approximately 25 PhD students annually for a senior year of their doctoral studies. He also received the 2019 Award for Excellence from Princeton's School of Engineering and Applied Science.
https://psu.zoom.us/j/837238333
Hosted by: Jack Sampson, Computer Science and Engineering
(jms1257@psu.edu)
Redesigning Storage Systems for Modern Storage Hardware
Thursday, April 2, 2020;
10:00am
Via Zoom
Speaker: ABUTALIB AGHAYEV from Carnegie Mellon
ABSTRACT
The interface with which we access storage devices---the "block" interface---was first introduced with hard disk drives three decades ago. Since then, it has been the dominant standard for persistent storage devices. Almost all storage software, such as file systems and databases, that manage raw storage devices are built using this interface.
The block interface has served us well until recently, but it is quickly approaching the end of its useful life. With recent technological changes in the manufacturing of hard disk drives and solid-state drives, preserving the same block interface comes at the expense of lost performance, increased device cost, and limited device lifetime. In this talk, I will describe technological changes leading to these problems, demonstrate the overhead of keeping the block interface on modern hardware, and show how these problems can be avoided using a newly proposed "zone" interface.
BIOGRAPHY
Abutalib Aghayev is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by George Amvrosiadis and Greg Ganger. He has a broad research interests in computer systems, including storage and file systems, distributed systems, and operating systems. He is the recipient of Hima and Jive Fellowship and a Best Paper award at USENIX FAST conference.
https://psu.zoom.us/j/192822398
Hosted by: Timothy Zhu, Computer Science and Engineering
(timothyz@cse.psu.edu)
Chemical Engineering
CANCELLED Sharon Walker
Tuesday, April 7, 2020;
10:50 - 11:50 am
350 Health & Human Development
Speaker: CANCELLED Sharon Walker from Drexel University
TBD
Hosted by: Lisa Haines, Chemical Engineering
(luv1@psu.edu)
Mechanistic Insights into Small Molecule Activation over Gold Catalysts
Thursday, April 9, 2020;
11:00 am
Via Zoom: https://www.che.psu.edu/department/seminars.aspx
Speaker: Bert Chandler from Trinity University
Mechanistic Insights into Small Molecule Activation over Gold Catalysts
https://www.che.psu.edu/department/seminars.aspx
Hosted by: Dana Hosko, Chemical Engineering
(dlh55@psu.edu)
Engineering Science and Mechanics
From source-to-sensor: adventures in maritime remote sensing
Wednesday, April 8, 2020;
3:35 PM - 4:25 PM
ZOOM
Speaker: Jonathan S. Pitt from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Abstract:
Bio:
Hosted by: Lisa Spicer, Engineering Science and Mechanics
(lms8@psu.edu)
Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
Simulation in Support of Scheduling and Industry 4.0
Tuesday, April 7, 2020;
4:50 PM - 5:50 PM
102 Leonhard Building
Speaker: David T. Sturrock from Simio LLC
Years ago, you would use simulation only for largest projects –- use it once to help evaluate system design, then put it back on the shelf waiting for another big-budget project. Recent advances in rapid modeling, flexibility, and functionality provide many new opportunities to better design and operate your system in the world of the Digital Twins and Industry 4.0. In this lecture, you will learn how to optimize your system design, plan the most effective intermediate term strategy, then use that same tool in combination with your existing data to generate highly productive short-term schedules. You will find out how virtual factory models provided by the latest simulation tools are a key component of the Smart Factories and Digital Twins of the future.
310 Leonhard Building
Hosted by: James Wyland, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
(jtw108@psu.edu)
Operations Research in the Tiered Healthcare Delivery System for China
Thursday, April 9, 2020;
4:50 PM - 5:50 PM
https://psu.zoom.us/j/713925747
Speaker: Nan Kong from Purdue University
With the China’s healthcare reform, a tiered healthcare delivery system has been promoted that coordinates primary health care and hospital care. Patients can be treated at the primary or community health center level by general practitioners for common and minor illness and be referred to hospitals for more complex and severe disorders. To fundamental alleviate the challenge on workload imbalance in the tiered system and effectively deepen the reform, we have systematically applied operations research principles and techniques to study several systems and operational problems. In this talk, I will present a few of these studies. I will also share my thoughts on how to initiate and realize reverse innovation with our existing success in studying the Chinese problems.
https://psu.zoom.us/j/713925747
Hosted by: James Wyland, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
(jtw108@psu.edu)
Biomedical Engineering
Combinatorial Nano-Biomaterials with Intelligent Polymer Automation
Thursday, April 16, 2020;
12:05 pm - 1:20 pm
001 Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Building
Speaker: Dr. Adam Gormley from Rutgers University
Synthetic polymers have played a key role in medicine and drug delivery for the last 50 years. Their ability to be uniquely tailored for very specific drug delivery or formulation needs makes them highly powerful tools. Here, we talk about how these material parameters can be tuned with incredible precision to achieve highly diverse characteristics. Polymers can either be conjugated directly to drugs for in vivo targeted delivery to tumors, or self-assembled into stimuli-responsive capsules. Recent advances in oxygen-tolerant polymer chemistry have also enabled a new and exciting ability to make polymer libraries using laboratory automation. Coupling this polymer automation with machine learning now allows us to sort through a very large range of characteristics to identify highly valuable compositions. In effect, we believe that this unique tool may significantly enable the emerging field of polymer informatics, particularly for biomedical applications.
122 CBEB
Hosted by: Stacy Smith, Biomedical Engineering
(sls60@psu.edu)
Engineering Science and Mechanics
Transdisciplinary Global Environmental Science in the Anthropocene
Monday, April 13, 2020;
4:00 - 5:30
114 EES Building
Speaker: Paul Shrivastava from Penn State University
Abstract
We are living in the Anthropocene, an era distinguished by major disturbances of natural earth system cycles (Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus) by human social and economic activities. In this talk I will explore the grand research challenges of the Anthropocene for global environmental sciences. I describe global sustainable development as one solution. To implement global sustainability we need integration of natural sciences with social sciences, the humanities, arts and law. We will examine how stakeholder engaged transdisciplinary research can help solve global sustainability problems, and some institutional barriers to this type of research at academic institutions.
Bio
Paul Shrivastava is Chief Sustainability Officer at The Pennsylvania State University, Director of the Sustainability Institute, and Professor of Management. He is a member of the Club of Rome. Previously, he was the Executive Director of Future Earth, where he established the secretariat for global environmental change programs. He served as David O'Brien Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at Concordia University, Montreal. He Chairs Arts and Sustainable Enterprise at ICN Business School, Nancy, France, and is an advisor to the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan. He has published 17 books and over 100 articles in refereed scholarly journals.
Refreshments: 4:00 - 4:30 p.m.
Hosted by: M Lakhtakia, Engineering Science and Mechanics
(mlakhtakia@gmail.com)
Designing and Probing Photovoltaic Materials
Wednesday, April 15, 2020;
3:35 PM - 4:25 PM
ZOOM
Speaker: Jason Baxter from Drexel University
Abstract: Photovoltaics have the potential to convert sunlight into electricity at very large scales and at low cost. However, many constraints on materials and interfaces must be simultaneously satisfied to achieve high efficiency. For example, light absorption by photovoltaic absorber materials generates electron-hole pairs that must be separated and collected before they recombine. For many materials, recombination lifetimes are on the order of picoseconds to nanoseconds. This talk will highlight our group’s use of ultrafast spectroscopy to provide a link between processing, structure, and device performance that can help direct the design of more efficient solar cells. Specifically, we have combined time resolved terahertz spectroscopy and transient absorption spectroscopy with modeling of the semiconductor transport equations to extract carrier lifetimes and mobilities and to determine dominant recombination mechanisms. I will discuss our application of this method to understand: (1) the dependence of dynamics on composition and surface treatments in Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (CZTSSe) thin films and single crystals; (2) long and similar radiative lifetimes in organic and inorganic lead halide perovskites; and (3) the role of ligand chemistry in interfacial charge transfer and long range charge transport in PbSe nanocrystal films and binary nanocrystal superlattices.
Bio: Jason Baxter is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Drexel University, where he began in 2007. His research group focuses on solar energy conversion, including materials chemistry and processing of thin films and nanostructures, fabrication and characterization of photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical cells, and ultrafast photophysics of solar energy materials. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and Drexel’s College of Engineering Outstanding Teacher Award. He received his BS at University of Delaware and PhD at University of California Santa Barbara, both in chemical engineering, and was a postdoctoral fellow in physical chemistry at Yale University.
Hosted by: Lisa Spicer, Engineering Science and Mechanics
(lms8@psu.edu)
Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
“Downstream” Effects of Technological Innovation for Sports and Society
Thursday, April 16, 2020;
4:50 PM - 5:50 PM
https://psu.zoom.us/j/713925747
Speaker: Steve Ross from Penn State
Sports increasingly relies on technological advancements to enhance competitiveness and increase commercial opportunities. I view engineering scholarship as “upstream” contributions to knowledge, that combine with contributions further “downstream” from ethics, business, sociology, history, kinesiology, and other fields to inform public policy and law. The talk will provide an overview of important issues concerning privacy, monetization of data, enhanced protocols to protect health and safety, ways to understand analytics, and other issues that affect law and policy.
https://psu.zoom.us/j/713925747
Hosted by: Jim Wyland on behalf of Dr. Ling Rothrock, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
(jtw108@psu.edu)
Chemical Engineering
CANCELLED Identifying the kinetic relevance of active sites for upgrading of renewable oxygenates in complex environments
Tuesday, April 21, 2020;
10:50 - 11:50 am
350 Health & Human Development
Speaker: Steven P Crossley from University of Oklahoma
seminar has been cancelled. Identifying the kinetic relevance of active sites for upgrading of renewable oxygenates in complex environments
Hosted by: Lisa Haines, Chemical Engineering
(luv1@psu.edu)
Engineering Science and Mechanics
PhotoImmunoNanoTherapy (PINT): A New Therapy for Cancer Through Enhanced STEM Cell Differentiation Based on Infra-Red Photon Therapy with Inorganic Nanoparticles
Wednesday, April 22, 2020;
15:35 - 16:25
114 EES Building
Speaker: James H. Adair from Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Penn State University
Abstract:
New therapies based upon nanoscale platforms are transforming the treatment of human cancer. Nanoparticles with encapsulated novel chemotherapeutics and novel therapies are being developed that are changing the 60 year old treatment paradigm for cancer knocking down all rapidly dividing cells with deleterious side effects for the patient will be challenged The focus is on the the encapsulation and delivery of a novel therapy in animal models based on the encapsulation and targeted delivery of the near infra-red fluorophore indocyanine green (ICG) within the novel 10 to 20 nm diameter calcium phosphosilicate nanoparticles (CPSNPs).
Bio:
James H. Adair is a Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, Bioengineering and Pharmacology at The Pennsylvania State University. His research and teaching interests include biological-nanoscale composite particulates for nanomedical applications, colloid and interfacial chemistry, material chemistry, nanoparticle characterization, and ceramic and metal particulate processing.
Dr. Adair received his A.A. degree in Chemistry from Palm Beach Junior College (1972), and B.S. in Chemistry (1975) and M.S. (1979) and Ph.D. (1981) in Materials Science and Engineering, all from the University of Florida. From 1981-1982, he was a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Western Australia in the Department of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition and the Royal Perth Hospital where he studied the biophysical chemistry origin of pathological biomineralization including human kidney stone disease. Dr. Adair was a Principal Research Scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute from 1982-1986. He joined Penn State as a Research Associate at the Materials Research Lab from 1986-1990. Adair was a faculty member from 1990 to 1997 at the University of Florida. He has been at Penn State as a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering since 1998. In 2012, he received courtesy faculty appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Pharmacology. He co-founded Keystone Nano, Inc. in 2005 and serves as chief science officer. Dr. Adair is the author or co-author of over 260 publications, over 20 patents with numerous other foreign patents, many technical reports to sponsoring agencies, and several copyrights on computer software. He has been chair or co-chair of many symposia related to materials chemistry and colloid and powder processing science at American Ceramic Society and American Chemical Society at national and international meetings. He is also the co-editor of twelve books including the Handbook of Characterization Techniques for the Solid-Solution Interface.
Dr. Adair is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and the World Academy of Ceramics, and holds membership in the American Chemical Society and the New York Academy of Sciences. He was elected as an Academician in the Science Division of the World Academy of Ceramics in 2005. He is past Chair of the Basic Science Division of the American Ceramic Society and has served in various capacities in the American Ceramic Society at both the local and national level. He was named one of the International Men of Achievement in 1996. Dr. Adair has also received recognition for his inventions by Battelle Memorial Institute, Cabot Corporation, the University of Florida, and The Pennsylvania State University. He has received several awards for innovations in teaching and research while on the faculty at the University of Florida and at Penn State and is the originator of the Materials Chemistry course developed and taught originally at the University of Florida and now Penn State to engineering freshmen. He received one of six Faculty Scholar Medals awarded at Penn State in 2017, his for Entrepreneurship. In 2018, he was named the Inventor of the Year by Penn State University.
Hosted by: Lisa Spicer, Engineering Science and Mechanics
(lms8@psu.edu/814-867-1569)
