EVENT DETAILS
Thursday / CS/ME Seminar
February 6th / 3:00 PM
Hybrid / Ford ITW
Speaker
Amira Abdel-Rahman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Talk Title
Inverse Design of Material-Robot Systems
Abstract
"In human history, no innovation has progressed as rapidly as digital technologies. Yet, it wasn't until the 2000s that we began to feel this impact on the physical world. With the rise of the Internet of Things, our built environment is becoming smarter, more dynamic, and more complex. Each year, the line between physical and digital blurs further. However, examining the history of computer-aided design (CAD), engineering (CAE), and manufacturing (CAM) tools reveals few radical advancements since the invention of "Sketchpad" in 1963--the first interactive CAD system. We urgently need these radical advances to faithfully model and respond to our complex environment, and to enable us to imagine and design a new world where the physical and digital are indistinguishable.
To achieve that, we need novel physical and digital tools that can handle complexity and grow reliability. Just as digitizing analog signals revolutionized and scaled communication and computing, applying discretization and error correction principles to the physical world unlocks the ability of the precise placement of functional materials with embedded electrical and mechanical properties. These "Digital Material" structures introduce digital programmability to the physical realm, mirroring the transformative impact seen in digital technologies.
In my talk, I will introduce fully declarative and inverse workflows to design and build scalable Digital Material systems. Using these workflows the user can model and design systems that span scales (micro, meso, macro) and disciplines (electrical, mechanical, aerospace, architectural engineering) without being an expert in all -- or any -- of these fields.
Using principles of discretization, distributed computing, hierarchy, and error correction; the introduced workflows use domain knowledge as priors and universal design representations across all stages--simulation, optimization, fabrication, and control. These tools have been used to design a plethora of static and dynamic structures, ranging from bridges and shelters to aerospace structures, robots, and electronics."
Biography
Amira Abdel-Rahman is a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Bits and Atoms, where she develops inverse design workflows, empowered by physics-informed AI, to advance the design and fabrication of large-scale material-robot systems. She earned her Master in Design Studies (MDes) in Technology from Harvard Graduate School of Design and her Bachelor's degree from the American University in Cairo. Her professional experiences include NVIDIA as part of the Simulation Technology Team, and Autodesk as part of the Generative Design Group, where she contributed to cutting-edge research at the intersection of computational design, AI, and simulation technologies.
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Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/99856023678?pwd=IWSX91NYBlQ6VEwRtnVMr5FlDY5nxl.1
Panopto: https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=bd8a3dec-e2d0-4ae8-b5c4-b27401679ad9
TIME Thursday February 6, 2025 at 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
LOCATION ITW, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center map it
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CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)