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Penn Engineering’s Chris Callison-Burch on 25 years of AI innovation
Chris Callison-Burch teaching in a classroom.

Image: Courtesy of Penn Engineering

Penn Engineering’s Chris Callison-Burch on 25 years of AI innovation

Penn Engineering faculty Chris Callison-Burch, a leading researcher in the artificial intelligence field, reflects on decades of technological innovations that have informed the present and future of AI.

How interdisciplinary teaching becomes climate action

How interdisciplinary teaching becomes climate action

Penn graduate students are learning that net zero is a systems challenge requiring fluency across disciplines, and why interdisciplinary teaching is climate action—including how it builds the human capital the clean energy transition demands.

From Kleinman Center for Energy Policy

2 min. read

New video dataset to advance AI for health care
Kevin Johnson seated at his desk with a computer and Karen O'Connor, seated at his desk, both testing the new equipment.

Kevin Johnson, left, demonstrating the recording process with Karen O’Connor, right.

(Image: Sylvia Zhang)

New video dataset to advance AI for health care

Penn Engineering’s multimodal medical dataset, Observer, links video, audio, and transcripts to clinical data and electronic health records.

Ian Scheffler

2 min. read

Lifesaving breakthrough in bacterial behavior
Artist's rendering of bacteria moving through a nanofabricated tube.

(Pictured) An artist’s depiction of a single cell moving through the nanofabricated mictostrucures biophysicist Arnold Mathijssen’s team used to study E. coli.

(Image: Courtesy of Ruoshui Liu/Cylos Studio)

Lifesaving breakthrough in bacterial behavior

Bacteria can actively swim upstream, leading to severe infections in places like the urinary tract and respiratory system and contamination of medical devices like catheters. Biophysicist Arnold Mathijssen and colleagues have uncovered how and why this happens, revealing that E. coli actually “thrives under pressure.” Their findings point to new strategies for designing safer, more effective biomedical tools and treatments.

3 min. read

Awards and accolades for Penn faculty
College Hall seen through the archway of Fischer Fine Arts.

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Awards and accolades for Penn faculty

A roundup of appointments and awards for various members of Penn’s faculty across several schools.

2 min. read

20 breakthroughs of 2025
Masoud Akbarzadeh holding up one of the fabricated materials.

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.

(Image: Eric Sucar)

20 breakthroughs of 2025

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.

5 min. read

Weighing sustainability of real vs. fake Christmas trees
A person putting ornaments on an artificial Christmas tree.

Image: Dmytro Betsenko via Getty Images

Weighing sustainability of real vs. fake Christmas trees

Engineering professor Lorena Grundy says people looking to make a sustainable decision should consider how many years they would use an artificial tree, how they plan to dispose of a real tree, and how the tree was transported.

2 min. read

The world’s smallest programmable, autonomous robots
A microscopic robot on a U.S. penny for scale.

A microrobot on a U.S. penny for scale.

(Image: Michael Simari, University of Michigan)

The world’s smallest programmable, autonomous robots

Engineers at Penn Engineering have created robots barely visible to the naked eye that operate without tethers, magnetic fields or joystick-like controls.

Ian Scheffler

2 min. read

Penn Engineering launches new master’s in energy and sustainability

Penn Engineering launches new master’s in energy and sustainability

In December, Penn Engineering launched Master of Science in Engineering in Energy and Sustainability, a new graduate program designed to prepare engineers to lead the transition toward a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable energy future.

Startup recognized for milestones in cancer care
Marco Ruella in the Ruella Lab, collaborating with two lab technicians. Ruella is wearing a white lab coat and holding up a chemical sample. Two of his colleagues are observing the sample.

Marco Ruella, associate professor of medicine at PSOM and hematologist-oncologist at Penn Medicine, collaborates with his colleagues in the Ruella Lab.

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Startup recognized for milestones in cancer care

During the Penn Center for Innovation’s 10th annual Celebration of Innovation, viTToria Biotherapeutics was presented with the Startup of the Year Award for its remarkable progress in the development of promising treatment of T-cell lymphoma.

4 min. read