Millennium Café

No Millennium Café due to Thanksgiving Break.

Technologies such as virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR, AR, and MR) are becoming more ubiquitous and accessible. However, how they can be implemented and utilized in universities and industries is still being explored. The Center for Immersive Experiences will be making available virtual and mixed-reality headsets, 360 cameras, and devices for capturing LIDAR data. So, you can get a hands-on experience with this new immersive frontier.

Speakers: Patrick Dudas & Jessica Menold  |  Center for Immersive Experiences

As Pennsylvania’s land-grant (and sea-, sun-, and space-grant) institution, Penn State has always emphasized the "practical or theoretical aspects" of our work. Now that artificial intelligence (AI) is seemingly everywhere, our university is demonstrating what our historical land-grant status means in the AI space.  Funded by Penn State’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Research via the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, the AI Hub is a forum for promoting these activities and inform multiple audiences.  The hope is that someday the AI Hub will be able to make the same claim as the Millennium Café: That many collaborations have been catalyzed by the Hub due to a diverse audience and the fact that work is presented in a manner allowing many folks to take something away.  (So far, we haven’t figured out how to replicate the good coffee.)

Speaker: David Hunter  |  Penn State AI Hub

In this talk, we will discuss the multiple seed grant initiatives in the Materials Research Institute (MRI), that aim at seeding new and multi-unit collaborations. In particular, the special focus of these opportunities is to expand productive research collaborations across OSVPR, by promoting partnerships across the Institutes. A second focus is to advance Penn State’s strategic goal in stimulating and enhancing international research collaborations by seeding joint research opportunities with international partnering institutions.  Finally, this year’s announcement also includes support for seed projects in Humanitarian Materials.

COVID, climate change, new technologies, systemic inequities. Are policymakers even listening?? Learn about the work of the Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative helping scientists here at Penn State and around the country get their science used by policymakers.  Hear about how we can turn the methods we use in the lab towards fundamental problems of how to improve the policymaking of government officials. Learn about ongoing studies and available resources to make your science more impactful.

Presenter: Max Crowley  |  Human Development, Family Studies & Public Policy

The United States and many other countries have been regulating the emissions of airborne particulates from power plants, vehicles and industry for decades. These policies have yielded drastic improvements in health and well-being through cleaner air. Recent interdisciplinary work at Penn State has highlighted mechanisms through which climate policy can make the air even cleaner.  Well-designed climate policy can improve not only the health of future generations but can also save lives and reduce sickness today.  In some cases, the immediate benefits of cleaner air can dwarf the benefits of climate mitigation. Achieving these benefits requires well designed climate policy that is coordinated over many different jurisdictions and is an active area of interdisciplinary research and engagement.