ENGINEERING A GREEN WORLD UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SPRING 2019 Chris Callison-Burch, associate professor in Computer and Information Science, leads his students in CIS 530, Computational Linguistics, in the Forman Active Learning Classroom. In this course, students approach the problem of how computers can understand and produce natural language text and speech. Students study algorithms like vector space models of semantics and build machine translation models and dialog systems. Callison-Burch’s own work helps computers connect words with their counterparts in other languages, especially when direct translations aren’t obvious. Recently, he’s incorporated images as definition- matching go-betweens, something that can be displayed on the screens on every wall of the classroom. Active Learning Active PENN ENGINEERING n 1 G39256_upe_sp19_v3.indd 1 5/24/19 6:59 AM WWW.SEAS.UPENN.EDU Penn Engineering / Spring 2019 University of Pennsylvania CONTENT School of Engineering and Applied Science 4 20 IT’S A SMALL CAMERA ROLL WORLD Photos of Penn Engineering A conversation with students, faculty and network scientists and Penn campus life. Engineers Danielle Bassett and Duncan Watts. “THERE ARE STRENGTHS AT PENN 22 THAT ALLOW US TO BUILD ASSEMBLING MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND MULTI- 8 ARTIFICIAL LEVERAGING NANOMATERIALS INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERSHIPS CHEMISTRY FOR A team led by Christopher THAT ARE ONLY POSSIBLE A GREEN WORLD Murray and Cherie Kagan is BECAUSE OF PENN’S ECOSYSTEM.” Aleksandra Vojvodic developing a blueprint for the harnesses the power of design and assembly of multi- supercomputing to look functional, adaptive materials. for chemistry solutions to crucial energy and environmental issues. 26 CODING WITH KIDS Undergraduates work with 12 middle schoolers and the Penn Engineering Magazine THE PERFECT Fife-Penn CS Academy to [email protected] 215-898-6564 STORM nurture interest in computer www.seas.upenn.edu Lee Bassett exploits science. Vijay Kumar fundamental research Nemirovsky Family Dean to expand quantum George W. Hain III technologies. Vice Dean, External Affairs Development and Alumni Relations 34 Q&A WITH Joan S. Gocke SUZANNE ROWLAND Director of Communications 16 Editor QUAKERS Penn Engineering Overseer Suzanne Rowland (ChE’83) Olivia J. McMahon ON TRACK Associate Editor Penn Engineering’s scholar- utilizes engineering principles to inspire teams to solve Design athletes are pushing limits Kelsh Wilson Design both on and off the field. problems. Photography Kelsh Wilson Design Felice Macera G39256_upe_sp19_v3.indd 2 4/23/19 5:55 PM FROM THE DEAN VIJAY KUMAR Nemirovsky Family Dean Fridays at PERCH I have been the dean at Penn Engineering for nearly Fitler Moore Professor in Electrical and Systems 4 years. As one can imagine, at first I was continually Engineering, this space has grown into a vibrant, astonished by the range and weight of the responsi- collaborative R&D environment, designed to promote bilities that a dean addresses. I continue to embrace fundamental research and accelerate the lab-to- these challenges and celebrate the tremendous market technology transfer pipeline in robotics, achievements of the School, which occur in no small internet of things and embedded systems tech. part due to the talented teams of students, faculty In the weekly shedding of my jacket and tie for my and staff whose passion, enthusiasm and leadership Superman-to-Clark-Kent metamorphosis, I find joy I count on every day. I travel the world, interacting not only in being just another guy in the lab, but also with our strong communities of alumni and friends. in that I keep in step with what is going on in the I get to see firsthand the impact that our School has School on a fundamental level. I’m not just reading on a global scale. a report or email filtered through the lens of a proud From the moment I arrived on campus 30 years PI, I am able to witness what is really occurring— ago, I’ve had an active research career and have both in success, and yes, failure. mentored hundreds of students. When I became It would be easy to forget that a dean is at their dean, I was determined that my time in the office core an engineer, a teacher, a researcher. Students would include maintaining a strong commitment to who matriculate during the tenure of a single dean these “first loves.” may not even know their research discipline! By So, while I spend almost every hour of every day staying in the trenches, I have found that my time “dean-ing,” I spend Fridays at the Pennovation as dean has not only allowed me to feel personal Center’s third-floor Penn Engineering Research and satisfaction that my research and teaching continue Collaboration Hub, what we lovingly call PERCH. to thrive, but also that I am a more effective leader Under the leadership of Dan Koditschek, Alfred and ambassador for the School. PENN ENGINEERING n 3 G39256_upe_sp19_v3.indd 3 4/18/19 9:11 PM WWW.SEAS.UPENN.EDU It’s a Small World A CONVERSATION WITH DANIELLE BASSETT AND DUNCAN WATTS In July, Duncan Watts will join Penn Engineering as the University’s 23rd Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor. As such, Watts will have primary appointments in the Department of Computer and Information Science in Penn Engineering, as well as in The Wharton School and the Annenberg School of Communications. His research reflects the value of these kinds of interdisciplinary connections; he is one of the progenitors of the field of network science, which studies how unique members of dynamic systems interact to influence the behavior of the whole. Watts sat down with Danielle Bassett, Eduardo D. Glandt Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and in Electrical and Systems Engineering in Penn Engineering. Bassett’s own work on network science draws from the worlds of physics, electrical engineering, applied math and neuroscience, as well as Watts’ theories. The two discussed their intertwining academic networks and how combining basic and applied science contributes to the culture of innovation at Penn. An excerpt of their conversation follows. Danielle Bassett (DB): I came into the field about a DB: As it happens, my first paper was called “Small- decade after you, so I was influenced by your work. world Brain Networks,” and I finally have a paper But even in the mid-2000s, the term “network coming out with Strogatz as a coauthor, so now science” was not used that frequently. What was it you and I are separated only by two steps in the like when you were getting your start? worldwide co-authorship network. Duncan Watts (DW): Network science definitely That notion of “small worldness” was very didn’t exist when I started doing network science. important and has continued to be very important for a really long time. For many physical systems, There were little pockets of other disciplines, like like a crystal structure for example, we can sort of with graph theory in mathematics, and sociology blur our eyes and say that, even though there are and anthropology with social network analysis. lots and lots of atoms, they roughly interact with But there wasn’t any field that thought about the each other in the same way. network as an organizing principle across different areas of applications. But with small-world networks, we’re increasingly realizing there are many systems where that kind That, to me, is what network science is—this idea of assumption is completely false. It requires that that lots of problems of interest across many disci- we understand the underlying architecture of these plines can be viewed through the lens of a network. interactions in order for us to see how the system You have some collection of entities that are will behave. connected to one another, and the structure of that network could have important consequences for the DW: When we first started tackling this problem, behavior of the whole system. we were thinking about a biological question—the synchronization of crickets—from a mathematical That was the idea that Steven Strogatz [Jacob modeling perspective. The realization that I had at Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics the time was exactly what you just said. All of the at Cornell University] and I were working from—this models used this “mean field assumption” where notion that you should be thinking about the structure everything is interacting with the average of of the network to understand the dynamics of the everything else. And that seemed completely false system—in our paper, “Collective Dynamics of Small in the context of crickets sitting in trees chirping World Networks” in 1998. But it wasn’t actually at each other. called network science until several years later. SPRING 2019 n 4 G39256_upe_sp19_v3.indd 4 4/23/19 5:55 PM ARJUN SRINIVAS (M&T’07) DANIELLE BASSETT Eduardo D. Glandt Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor Bioengineering PENN ENGINEERING n 5 G39256_upe_sp19_v3.indd 5 4/18/19 9:11 PM WWW.SEAS.UPENN.EDU DUNCAN WATTS Stevens University Professor Computer and Information Science SPRING 2019 n 6 G39256_upe_sp19_v3.indd 6 4/18/19 9:11 PM So I was mulling over what would be a framework a lot of characterization, but were also building for describing the actual system. And I recalled theory from observations of a real system. It made a conversation I had with my father about a year me wonder whether we’ve digressed by siloing earlier when he casually mentioned that you’re only the disciplines and training students to have a ever six handshakes away from the president of narrow view of what science is. the United States. I hadn’t heard that at the time, but later I learned that this was a topic that had DW: You can go back to the ancients, but a lot of come up over the years in sociology, called the this specialization has really happened in the last small-world problem—also known as six degrees hundred years.