News Archives

Penn’s Amy Gutmann and Kathleen Hall Jamieson Named to Commission on Humanities and Social Sciences

PHILADELPHIA -– University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communications and director of Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, have been named to a new national commission to bolster teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences.

Penn Transit celebrates new home with open house

With Penn in the midst of the nationwide RecycleMania competition, the University community can find a model campus reuse-and-recycle project right here in West Philadelphia.

Biba Wine Bar

Staff Q&A with Jeffrey Cooper

Penn ranks near or at the top of a lot of important lists: the City of Philadelphia’s largest private employer. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s second-largest employer. One of the nation’s largest recipients of federal research funding. That’s part of the reason why local, state and federal affairs are important to Penn—and part of the reason the University is important to lawmakers, community leaders and elected officials.

Join Computer Science Experts and Penn Students to Watch the Final Match of “The Jeopardy! IBM Challenge”

WHAT: The Jeopardy! IBM challenge pits the long-running game show’s two most successful contestants against an IBM computer named Watson, as a demonstration of its ability to understand and respond to natural language questions.  Figuring out the contextual cues and ambiguity found in normal human speech, especially the tricky wordplay found in Jeopardy! clues, is a major challenge for computers.  Advancements in that field have major implications for science, business and personal computing.

Penn Researcher Receives $2 million From NIH to Test Macular Degeneration Drug

John Lambris, PhD, the Dr. Ralph and Sallie Weaver Professor of Research Medicine in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, has been awarded a $2 million grant from the National Eye Institute to test a new class of drugs called complement inhibitors in a primate model of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

First International Collaboration on the Genetics of Alzheimer's Disease Is Launched

The launch of the International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project (IGAP) – a collaboration formed to discover and map the genes that contribute to Alzheimer’s disease – was announced Feb. 1 by a multi-national group of researchers. The collaborative effort, spanning universities from both Europe and the United States, will combine the knowledge, staff and resources of four consortia that conduct research on Alzheimer’s disease genetics.The four groups are:

Penn Social Policy & Practice and Law Faculty to Present Domestic Violence Research to Legislators

PHILADELPHIA — Susan B. Sorenson of the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania will present research about gun policy and domestic violence to state legislators in the “Pennsylvania State Briefing: Domestic Violence,” sponsored by Women in Government on Feb.  15, from noon to 2 p.m. at the Pennsylvania Capitol Building in Harrisburg. The event will be hosted by Sen. Christine M. Tartaglione and representatives Chelsea Wagner,  Kate Harper, Lynda Schlegel-Culver, Margo Davidson and Rosemary Brown.

Penn Study Shows Hospital Nurses Dissatisfied With Health Benefits

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found that nearly 41 per cent of nurses working in American hospitals and health-care settings were dissatisfied with their health-care benefits.  The figure is more than double that of nurses working in other settings and indicates broad-based disincentives for attracting nurses to work at the bedside.  Nurses, totaling nearly 3 million nationally, comprise the largest segment of the health-care workforce.

Fels Institute of Government Study Shows Positive Effect of Philadelphia Neighborhood Reinvestment

PHILADELPHIA – A report from the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania details the ways reclamation and redevelopment of vacant property have improved residents’ quality of life in eastern North Philadelphia.  The report, “Neighborhood Stabilization and Safety in East North Philadelphia,” highlights how comprehensive strategic investment by local community developers and public agencies correlates with improvements in safety, rising incomes and an attraction of new working households.