Women in Engineering

Monday February 13, 2017 at 12:00 p.m. Dr. Diller, Assistant Professor in the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, will be presenting “Micro-Scale Robots: Magnetic Actuation for Wireless Manipulation”. Speaker: Dr. Diller Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto Day & Time: Monday, February 13th, 2017 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Location: Room TRS2164, 575 Bay Street (Entrance at 55 Dundas Street West) Ryerson University (TRS2164 is on the 8th floor of the building) Organizer: WIE, Measurement/Instrumentation-Robotics, Magnetics, Computer Science Department of Ryerson University Abstract: Micro-scale mobile robots can physically access small spaces in a versatile and non-invasive manner. Such microrobots under 1 mm in size have potential unique applications for object manipulation, local sensing and cargo delivery in healthcare, microfluidics and advanced materials fabrication. These devices are powered and controlled remotely using externally-applied magnetic fields for motion in 2D and 3D. This talk will introduce our experimental work in micro-manipulation using single and teams of these devices. Biography: Dr. Diller is an Assistant Professor in the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, and Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University in 2013. His current work focuses on fabrication and control relating to remote actuation of micro-scale devices using magnetic fields, medical robotics, smart materials, and swimming at small size scales.

Monday January 23, 2017 at 12:00 p.m. Bita Banihashemi, PhD Candidate in Computer Science at York University, will be presenting “Abstraction in Situation Calculus Action Theories”. Speaker: Bita Banihashemi PhD Candidate, Computer Science York University Day & Time: Monday, January 23, 2017 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Location: Room TRS2164, 575 Bay Street (entrance at 55 Dundas Street West), Ryerson University Contact: Maryam Davoudpour Organizer: WIE, Magnetics, Measurement/Instrumentation-Robotics Abstract: We develop a general framework for agent abstraction based on the situation calculus and the ConGolog agent programming language. We assume that we have a high-level specification and a low-level specification of the agent, both represented as basic action theories. A refinement mapping specifies how each high-level action is implemented by a low-level ConGolog program and how each high-level fluent can be translated into a low-level formula. We define a notion of sound abstraction between such action theories in terms of the existence of a suitable bisimulation between their respective models. Sound abstractions have many useful properties that ensure that we can reason about the agent’s actions (e.g., executability, projection, and planning) at the abstract level, and refine and concretely execute them at the low level. We also characterize the notion of complete abstraction where all actions (including exogenous ones) that the high level thinks can happen can in fact occur at the low level. Biography: Bita Banihashemi is currently a PhD candidate in Computer Science at York University. Her research is primarily focused on agent supervision, which is a form of control/customization of an agent’s behavior. Her research interests include Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems, and AI and the Web.