Ivan Grega @ivan_grega

# on shortification of "learning" There are a lot of videos on YouTube/TikTok etc. that give the appearance of education, but if you look closely they are really just entertainment. This is very convenient for everyone involved : the people watching enjoy thinking they are learning (but actually they are just having fun). The people creating this content also enjoy it because fun has a much larger audience, fame and revenue. But as far as learning goes, this is a trap. This content is an epsilon away from watching the Bachelorette. It's like snacking on those "Garden Veggie Straws", which feel like you're eating healthy vegetables until you look at the ingredients. Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the quickie doesn't do anything, it's just that it is wildly suboptimal if you actually care to learn. I find it helpful to explicitly declare your intent up front as a sharp, binary variable in your mind. If you are consuming content: are you trying to be entertained or are you trying to learn? And if you are creating content: are you trying to entertain or are you trying to teach? You'll go down a different path in each case. Attempts to seek the stuff in between actually clamp to zero. So for those who actually want to learn. Unless you are trying to learn something narrow and specific, close those tabs with quick blog posts. Close those tabs of "Learn XYZ in 10 minutes". Consider the opportunity cost of snacking and seek the meal - the textbooks, docs, papers, manuals, longform. Allocate a 4 hour window. Don't just read, take notes, re-read, re-phrase, process, manipulate, learn. And for those actually trying to educate, please consider writing/recording longform, designed for someone to get "sweaty", especially in today's era of quantity over quality. Give someone a real workout. This is what I aspire to in my own educational work too. My audience will decrease. The ones that remain might not even like it. But at least we'll learn something.

🌟#Postdoc Opportunity We're on the lookout for an Experimental Mechanician. 🚀Be part of exciting projects in X-ray tomography, diffraction tomography & modelling from full field measurements #Postdocjobs #phdpositions Apply: jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/43873/ @Cambridge_Eng @PostdocJobs

Can vibrational ‘fingerprints’ lead to high-throughput characterization of metamaterials? In our work, out in @Nature today, we present a non-contact framework to rapidly characterize microscale metamaterials in the dynamic regime! 🔗: nature.com/articles/s4158… @MITMechE @MIT

Returning home from a great experience sharing our vision for architected materials and making new friends united by science. @wlaforum #WorldLaureatesForum

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Thrilled and honored to receive the 2023 Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching @MITMechE! This honor is shared w/ all colleagues and students who supported these teaching endeavors (K.Kamrin, S.Socrate, @DrRituRaman). Humbled to receive this recognition, makes it all worth it!

Exciting! @ivan_grega & Sara

CAPE @CAPECambridge

3 years ago

We invite you to the CAPE June Event on Tue, 20 June in the West Hub, Lecture Theatre 2, West Cambridge Site, University of Cambridge and on Zoom eng-cam.zoom.us/j/84761376876. Everyone is welome @UniofOxford @cu_e @MagpieGabriel

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Prof. Gil Strang's last lecture is ... Monday! Watch it via live stream: grinfeld.org/strang/

Fun evening at @TEDxMIT - thanks to all who joined! Truly enjoyed showcasing the possibilities that architected materials enable @MITMechE #mechanics #nanomaterials

TEDxMIT @TEDxMIT

3 years ago

Carlos Portela explained the impact of materials of the future through the TEDxMIT talk: “Nano-Architecting the Materials of the Future.”

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👏 @ivan_grega & Sara AlMahri for their outstanding performance in presentation and poster categories, clinching the first places at the Graduate Conference for Division of Mechanics, Materials, and Design @Cambridge_Eng @pembroke1347 Keep shining brightly and inspiring us all!

We've just released the first version of our Deep Learning Tuning Playbook! This is our attempt to distill our process for actually getting good results with deep learning. We emphasize hyperparameter tuning since it has been a large pain point. github.com/google-researc…

And so it begins (again)... 🕸️ @pl219_Cambridge and I kicked off the graph representation learning course @Cambridge_CL for the second year in a row! Exciting to see a full house in the lecture theatre -- so much energy!! 😊

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🤯 Full body tracking now possible using only WiFi signals A deep neural network maps the phase and amplitude of WiFi signals to UV coordinates within 24 human regions The model can estimate the dense pose of multiple subjects by utilizing WiFi signals as the only input 🧵

In the pursuit of demonstrating the generality of the work in a research article, introductions extrapolate to future applications so much that it sounds impractical right away. Do you feel the same?

#SES2022 Prager Medal Plenary Lecture by 𝐃𝐫 𝐕𝐢𝐤𝐫𝐚𝐦 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐡𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞 at 𝟓:𝟑𝟎 𝐏𝐌 (𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞: 𝐈𝐋𝐂𝐁). Toughness of architected solids: Does continuum ideas hold true? Is there anything "meta" in the fracture of elastic discrete solids?

Through thickness crack geometries can't measure the plane strain toughness in architected solids. We showed this in micro-architected lattices, but here the authors @JuliaRGreer prove this at the nanoscale too. Appreciate the innovative sleeved pin joint! sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

It was great to present our research of self-assembly of granular particles (doi.org/10.1002/ntls.2…) and network with other inspiring researchers. Excellent organisation @ESMC2022 @PeterMcHughNUIG, thank you.

European Solid Mechanics Conference 2022 @ESMC2022

4 years ago

Great to see good numbers in one of our last parallel technical sessions at #ESMC2022.

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Presenting my doctoral research @ESMC2022 and taking the opportunity to learn from metamaterial experts in the audience. @Cambridgesolid1

Wonderful week visiting @Cambridgesolid1 , sharing our work and learning about exciting mechanics. Grateful for this opportunity and the hospitality @Angkur13 ! Now en route to Galway ESMC2022 for another week of exciting mechanics and new connections.

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@Angkur13 Thanks Angkur