Millennium Café

Penn State’s Applied Biological and Biosecurity Research Laboratory (ABRL) protects global health through a strong network of international partners.  Together we perform critical research, assess risks, investigate threats, inform policy and work to build global capabilities for mitigating the threat of human and veterinary infectious disease emergence.  Leveraging state-of-the-art interdisciplinary strategies, ABRL has ongoing programmatic engagements focusing on One Health security around the globe to create sustainable impacts.  We involve regional country ministries and stakeholders as well as US government agencies, global foundations and philanthropic organizations. In the end, our mission is simple: improve global health and biosecurity.  I will provide an overview of ABRL’s Vision, current global engagements and how faculty may engage with and contribute to ABRL’s global engagements.

Kay M. van der Horst | Applied Biological Research Laboratory

Medical radar is an emerging area of research and development, spurred by rapid advances in electromagnetic modeling, simulation, component development, and signal and image processing algorithms. In this talk, we review various important considerations in the design and development of medical radar systems for diagnostic applications. 

Elemental sulfur, an essential intermediate in the sulfur cycle, is both ubiquitous in the environment and an enigmatic material with dozens of allotropic forms.  Despite its prevalence, S(0) is challenging to characterize. In this talk, I will discuss our use of low frequency Raman spectroscopy in detecting and analyzing sulfur in our environmental and lab-synthesized samples.

Chrissie Nims | Cosmidis Lab

A picture is worth a thousand words.  The question is, which thousand words?  This talk will present computational methods developed in my group that enable the translation of raw image pixels to objects, relations, events, decisions, and new knowledge. Based upon these methods we have created highly accurate machine learning systems for segmentation, classification and synthesis of biological and medical images.​

Sharon Huang | Information Sciences and Technology | Huck Institutes

Particulate matter adversely affects millions of people across the globe and is becoming an increasing global health and environmental concern. This talk will highlight our work to analyze what it is that we breathe and its impact, using microscopy for visualization. Characterization of such aerosolized carbon forms lies at the intersection of multiple analytical techniques which come together to tell the story of this unwanted yet impactful material.

From eyeglass lenses to the optics in your cell phone camera, an ongoing challenge is to eliminate reflection from plastic optics that most of us use on a daily basis. This talk will highlight the development of a graded-index fluoropolymer antireflection coating that combines extraordinary durability with extreme performance, making common plastics such as plexiglass virtually disappear.