And the winners are… First, a great big Thank You to all 259 faculty, staff and students who filled out our survey as of press time, readers and non-readers alike. Your feedback will help us serve you better. But that’s not the real reason you filled out the survey, is it? So without further ado, here are the lucky prize winners:
Dinner at the White Dog Café and Black Cat gift certificate: Barbara Brooks, staff assistant, Genetics
Tickets to Penn Presents’ “Foley” at the Annnenberg Center: Rochelle Hambeau, administrative assistant, Business and Public Policy
$20 gift certificate from Eastern Mountain Sports: Gates Rhodes, director, Penn Video Network, ISC Networking and Telecommunications
Fragrance and cosmetics gift basket from Parfumerie Douglas: Tonia Sharlach, researcher, Babylonian Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum
“Worlds Intertwined” gift collection from the University of Pennsylvania Museum: Katie Pyott, general manager, Penn Student Agencies
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream: Nik Sizgorich, School of Medicine
Congratulations to all, and enjoy your prizes!
From Annenberg to Annenberg: Our Annenberg School for Communication is not the only one getting a new head. Deputy Dean and Sol Wirth Professor of Communication Larry Gross will head to Los Angeles to become Director of the School of Communication at the other Annenberg School for Communication, at the University of Southern California, effective July 1. Gross is one of the many people who can share credit for raising the prestige and profile of Penn’s Annenberg School, and he will be missed by his colleagues as well as your Buzz correspondent, who had the pleasure of working with him on University benefits policies. Good luck in LA, Larry, and we hope you get time off to work on a good tan.
The fashionable Ivy: If you thought our students were run-of-the-mill when it comes to fashion sense, think again. The May 1 issue of Women’s Wear Daily devoted the bulk of its pages to a survey of “America’s Most Fashionable Colleges.” Dear old Penn came in at No. 4 in the fashion-industry bible’s top ten schools, behind New York University (natch), Howard and Southern Methodist. “When it comes to the ultimate collegiate look, nobody preps it up better than students at the University of Pennsylvania,” reporter Nandini D’Souza wrote in her assessment. The story also noted Penn’s old-school ties to the fashion industry embodied in alums like Trustee Leonard Lauder (W’54) and the strong design ethos in the Graduate School of Fine Arts, where cutting-edge people like architect Daniel Libeskind teach. In case you’re curious, one other Ivy—Yale—made it into the top ten, at No. 9, and Cornell—the only Ivy with a fashion department—received honorable mention.
The Polyhedral Structures Laboratory is housed at the Pennovation Center and brings together designers, engineers, and computer scientists to reimagine the built world. Using graphic statics, a method where forces are mapped as lines, they design forms that balance compression and tension. These result in structures that use far fewer materials while remaining strong and efficient.
From ancient tombs and tiny robots to personalized gene editing and AI weather models, Penn’s 2025 research portfolio showed how curiosity—paired with collaboration—moves knowledge into impact and stretches across disciplines and continents.
Centering joy in AI development and implementation
PIK Professor Desmond Upton Patton—of Annenberg and SP2—and collaborators introduce a joy-informed framework designed to initiate conversations among engineers, designers, and researchers.
Reflecting on Jane Austen, 250 years after her birth
English professors Michael Gamer and Barri Joyce Gold have been teaching courses specifically dedicated to Jane Austen for years. They spoke with Penn Today about their approach to teaching her novels, how they challenge common readings and myths, and what makes Austen’s work so enduring—and adaptable to the screen—more than two centuries later.
Electronic medical records help save lives of HIV patients
Wharton’s Leandro “Leo” Pongeluppe and colleagues found that HIV clinics in Malawi that switched from paper to electronic medical records saw an estimated 28% reduction in deaths in five years.
Dinner at the White Dog Café and Black Cat gift certificate: Barbara Brooks, staff assistant, Genetics
