Mapping the Ocean With Marine Robots
M. Ani Hsieh’s robotics lab investigates how to use ocean currents as a natural energy source for marine robots, which would enable widespread exploration.
Guinness Recognizes Piccolissimo as World’s Smallest Self-Powered Flying Robot
Guinness World Records has officially recognized Piccolissimo as the World’s Smallest Self-Powered Flying Robot. Italian for “tiniest,” Piccolissimo is the brain child of Matt Piccoli, a graduate student in professor Mark Yim’s ModLab.
Undergraduate Summer Research Projects Honored at Annual Symposium
Penn Engineering is home to several summer research programs for undergraduates, three of which come together to honor their participants’ accomplishments working under faculty and graduate student advisors and contributing to their research projects. The LittleJohn and Rachleff Scholars programs are open to Penn Engineering students in all departments, while SUNFEST, supported by the National […]
The Snow Graphics in ‘Frozen’ Can Predict the Mechanics of Real Avalanches
When a slab of snow cracks and slides down a slope, the exact size and shape of the resulting avalanche is hard to predict. The sliding slab is denser than the snow underneath it, giving the system a mix of solid and liquid properties. Chenfanfu Jiang, assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Information […]
How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions
Damon Centola, associate professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Penn Engineering, uses formal and computational models of social networks to study collective human dynamics. As the Director of the Network Dynamics Group and a member of the Warren Center for Network & Data Sciences, he uses online experiments to study how changes to […]
Dental Plaque is No Match for Catalytic Nanoparticles
Combine a diet high in sugar with poor oral hygiene habits and dental cavities, or caries, will likely result. The sugar triggers the formation of an acidic biofilm, known as plaque, on the teeth, eroding the surface. Early childhood caries is a severe form of tooth decay that affects one in every four children in […]
New GRASP Project Aims to Leverage ‘Embodied Intelligence’ via a Robotic Squirrel
It takes about a year before human infants master their own motor skills well enough to walk. Legged robots don’t have it so easy. Only the most advanced can walk with a smooth, natural gait, and even those can be stymied by a small pile of rubble or sand. A team of researchers, led from […]
Paris Perdikaris Predicts Complex Outcomes of Physical Systems
Since the days of Isaac Newton, scientists have been monitoring and predicting the movements of falling apples, heavenly bodies, ocean currents and just about anything that can go from point A to point B. These models have grown increasingly complex, but so have the physical phenomena they depict. Now the mechanisms behind cutting-edge technology, in […]
Penn and Lehigh Research Team Seeks Alternative Ammonia Production Methods for Sustainable Fertilizers
A Penn Engineering team from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, including John M. Vohs, Carl V. S. Patterson Professor and Chair, Raymond J. Gorte, Russell Pearce and Elizabeth Crimian Heuer Professor, and Aleksandra Vojvodic, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation, is collaborating with Lehigh University’s Steven McIntosh on research that seeks an alternative production […]
Linh Thi Xuan Phan Builds New Defenses for Cyber-physical Infrastructure
Your self-driving car is being hacked. Linh Thi Xuan Phan says that’s okay. The assistant professor in Penn Engineering’s Computer and Information Science department has been developing new strategies to protect self-driving cars and other systems that exist in both the cyber and physical world from attack by intruders operating online.