A seminar from Middle Eastern medievalist Paul Cobb gets students talking and thinking about the ‘disorienting’ storytelling in ‘One Thousand and One Nights.’
At Penn’s Graduate School for Education, doctoral student Estefanie Aguilar Padilla’s work with associate professor Rachel Baker reveals why students walk away—and how colleges can help them stay.
A typesetting workshop at Penn’s Common Press invited participants to reinterpret lines from the Declaration of Independence as part of the Typography of Independence project and Penn’s America 250 programming.
Raindrop-formed ‘sandballs’ that erode hillsides tenfold
Penn geophysicists and colleagues have uncovered Earth-sculpting processes that result from the formation of snowball-like aggregates they call ‘sandballs.‘ Their findings provide fundamental insights into erosion and will broaden scientific understandings of landscape change, soil loss, and agriculture.
Pink noise reduces REM sleep and may harm sleep quality
Penn Medicine researchers find that earplugs work better in protecting sleep from traffic noise, challenging the widespread use of ambient sound machines and apps marketed as sleep aids.
Penn named top producer of 2025-26 Fulbright students
With 19 students and alumni offered an award, the flagship international education exchange program again recognized Penn as a top producing institution of Fulbright students.
Penn biologists and collaborators show that collective intelligence doesn’t emerge by rewarding the most accurate individuals but by rewarding those who improve the group’s prediction as a whole.
The Penn community is invited to engage with faculty experts, students, and staff in an interactive, participatory reading of the U.S. Constitution, followed by a guided conversation about how its interpretation has evolved over time. Refreshments and take-home pocket editions of the Constitution will be provided. Register to attend.
Part of the Penn Science Café series, participants in this session will learn more about the science behind sweaters—and knitting in general. Randall Kamien, Vicki and William Abrams Professor in the Natural Sciences, will discuss how this deceptively complex, centuries-old practice is shaped by geometry and the mechanical properties and behavior of materials. Free and open to the Penn community. Register to attend.
Randall Kamien of the School of Arts & Sciences and long-time collaborator Geneviève Dion, a professor of design at Drexel University, are investigating the mechanics of knitting, an area of research that represents a significant shift in understanding and using fabrics.
Penn’s guiding principles are the University’s enduring values and distinctive strengths: anchored, inventive, interwoven, and engaged. The practices support and strengthen Penn’s core educational mission.
At Penn Today, we focus on some of the ways the University is putting this framework into action. From student, faculty, and staff profiles to research updates and event coverage, Penn Today highlights the latest examples of the University’s principled approach to excellence.
Penn Forward’s Access, Affordability, and Value co-chairs on creating opportunity
As co-chairs of Penn Forward’s Access, Affordability, and Value working group, Sara Bachman, dean of the School of Social Policy & Practice, and Patrick Harker, a professor and dean emeritus of the Wharton School, discuss breaking down barriers and opening pathways.
A conversation with Penn Forward’s Global Opportunity and New Markets co-chairs
In a Q&A with Ezekiel Emanuel and Megan Ryerson, co-chairs of the Global Opportunity and New Markets working group for Penn Forward, the duo discuss the charge of their group, where they are in the process, and leaning into global engagement.
Through Penn First Plus, students unlock potential and purpose
Providing first-generation and limited-income students with a comprehensive array of support, Penn First Plus equips undergraduates for success during and after their time at Penn.
The eighth annual Penn Local Business Exchange brought together entrepreneurs, city officials, and University buyers to swap insights and build relationships.
AI agents could change your life—if they don’t ruin it first
Speaking about AI, Chris Callison-Burch of the School of Engineering and Applied Science says, “The fact that you can interact with your computer in this totally new way and the fact that you can build anything, almost anything that you can imagine—it’s incredible.”
Lung cancer hijacks the brain to trick the immune system
Penn Medicine researchers have discovered that lung cancer tumors in mice can use nerve endings to communicate way beyond their close vicinity and send signals to the brain through a complex neuroimmune circuit.
