Millennium Café

The layer by layer processing of AM has opened the door to novel designs and development of new materials that can help meet future engineering challenges.  The Center for Innovative Materials Processing through Direct Digital Deposition (CIMP-3D) is a multidisciplinary, intercollegiate research lab dedicated to cutting-edge additive manufacturing technologies (AM) and houses advanced equipment to support AM research of metal, polymer, and ceramic materials.  This presentation will provide an overview of CIMP-3D’s facilities and capabilities, its operational structure and collaboration opportunities, and will present on a selection of work performed in the past.

Jay Keist  CIMP-3D

Fungal-based materials, also known as fungal biomaterials or mycelium materials have been identified by many national initiatives and research programs as an area of high growth potential. Manufacturing of fungal biomaterials has the potential to revolutionize traditional manufacturing in the United States. Here, I will discuss how fungal evolutionary diversity impacts the properties and behavior of resulting materials spanning from food to biomedical scaffolds.

Josephine Wee Food Science

Shape memory polymers have many potential applications which includes biomedical devices, smart textiles, and soft robotics.  These polymers store elastic energy by freezing stretched polymer chains in an extended state, which is analogous to a spring.  I will discuss how the work that can be done by these systems is a combination of elastically stored energy (i.e., a spring) and energy stored through a phase change (i.e., transitioning between crystalline and amorphous solid states) while highlighting opportunities for new interdisciplinary applications.

The Penn State Plant Institute serves to develop and support a wide diversity of students, staff and faculty involved in many different areas related to plant science and applications. As the new director, I am leading the development of a new vision for the Institute, this will be an opportunity to hear updates, gather input from the community, and learn about some activities planned for this year.  We are specifically looking to increase interdisciplinary interactions across campus and so this talk is for anyone that might be looking to learn how there expertise can fit within the institute.

Mark Guiltinan  |  Plant Science

We will engage researchers from different disciplines to consider the ethical, social, legal, and cultural implications of innovative biomedical research for patients, people, animals, and populations. Panel experts and audience participants will specifically discuss the opportunities and challenges of governing neuroscientific advances and novel neurotechnologies. 

Neuroscience has reached a pivotal point in its study of the human brain, including the creation of novel neurotechnologies with unique capabilities for both understanding the brain's intricate functions and manipulating neural activity with high precision. While both neuroscience and neurotechnology are critical to improving societal and individual well-being, both can also be applied in a variety of domains such as law, context of legal systems, employment, and entertainment, impacting our daily lives and society in unprecedented ways: some positive and some negative.  This poses unique ethical, social, and legal questions, including: 
How can we best regulate development and use? 
What can be learned from other technologies regarding how best to govern emerging technologies?  
Is new regulation needed to address neurotechnologies? 

Panelist:
Jennifer Wagner  |  Law, Policy, and Engineering 
Laura Cabrera      |  Engineering Science & Mechanics / Rock Ethics Institute
Michele Mekel      |  Bioethics, law, and Medical Humanities

Moderator:  Laura Weyrich  |   Anthropology and Bioethics
 

Global problems that have the potential to be existential are of such complexity that no one field, agency, country, or foundation can solve them.  Systems solutions to those problems by definition require an unprecedented degree of interdisciplinary collaboration to solve problems not solvable within single disciplines.  By banding together internationally, universities may be the best social structure in society that would overall be capable of rising to the challenge of finding systems solutions to global problems, and by a decentralized organization be potentially immune to less-than-beneficent influences.  Participating in those solutions is a moral responsibility of Universities, a useful focus for the future of Universities, and motivates future funding for their role in addressing global problems and making the world a better place.  I propose that Penn State faculty and community play a key role in interdisciplinary approaches to solving global problems and that we outline current and potential activities that will enable such activity. We can be purposeful in developing a culture that maximizes our interdisciplinary effectiveness.

Keith Cheng |  College of Medicine