Millennium Café

The PPG Elevator Pitch Competition is evolving given the nature of today's social distancing restrictions. One's ability to quickly and efficiently communicate a concept in a virtual environment has recently become important. We believe that this is a skill that must be learned and practiced. To facilitate the process, we will be holding a virtual elevator pitch competition on the morning of Tuesday, June 2nd. You will "pitch" the importance of your research before judges from industry. There will be 2 virtual training sessions the week of May 11th, and the competition is open to current graduate students only. The top 5 winners will receive $750/$500/$250/2 consolation gift cards of $50 respectively.  If this is of interest, join the Millennium Café this week to hear about the competition and you can also look for details on the MRI home page. Generous support for this program is provided by The PPG Foundation.

Jean Paul Allain | Nuclear Engineering

Patterns in nature driven by far-from-equilibrium processes can result in self-organized structures that can dictate function and behavior. This talk will give a brief summary of our group’s passion for self-organized patterns and our ability to synthesize them on any class of material. A wide variety of complex materials from porous refractory alloys that are self-healing to natural biopolymers for tissue engineering applications will be highlighted as I cover some general aspects of nanopatterning, irradiation synthesis, and their potential applications. In-situ surface characterization and computational tools that enable nanopatterning design will also be briefly presented.

Ibrahim Moustafa | Hafenstein Lab

Understanding the structural basis of viruses is a key to learn how they work & how to eliminate them. This is true for Covid-19 as well as other viruses. In this talk, I will show how we apply a structural approach integrated with computational methods to identify compounds that could potentially develop into antiviral therapeutics. The virus example used in the presented study is Coxsackivirus B3 (CVB3), an enterovirus and a leading cause of viral myocarditis in humans.

Andrew Zydney + Wendy Oakes | Center of Excellence in Industrial Biotechnology (CoEIB)

The CoEIB leverages interdisciplinary expertise across Penn State to serve as a focal point in the area of industrial biotechnology. Join us to learn how to add your expertise to help this center realize its GIANT potential. 

Join us for the first live musical performance @ the Zoom Cafe! Cole Hons, Huck Institutes’ Director of Communications & Marketing, will open and close the Café with uplifting songs of community resilience, understanding, and cooperation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted the rhythms of much that we know and do. We are dealing with unprecedented times and a new reality which includes the onslaught of information about what is happening locally, nationally and around the world; the dynamics of working from home; potential and real financial pressures; and family and friend dynamics. This talk is about how we cope and help others cope to stay mentally aware and hopefully healthy in these trying times.