News Archives

Penn-Led Team Wins WTC Design Competition

PHILADELPHIA - A design by the Daniel Libeskind team, which includes two professors at the University of Pennsylvania, has won the international design competition to rebuild the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Libeskind, a Penn professor of architecture, and Gary Hack, a professor of city planning and the dean of Penn's Graduate School of Fine Arts, are the principal designers for the scheme. Their design was chosen from among an original 435 plans submitted.

Putting Augustan Rome on the map

Lothar Haselberger was often asked, “Are you crazy?” when people learned of his effort to map the known structure of Augustan Rome. “This is Rome,” they said. “With so many [structures], and you want to [map them] in a short period of time.” After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

“Jewish Russians: Upheavals in a Moscow Synagogue”

Based on extensive fieldwork, “Jewish Russians” is an in-depth examination of a single Jewish community in post-Soviet Moscow and the conflicts and struggles—sometimes physically violent ones—over control of its synagogue. Sascha Goluboff, a cultural anthropologist at Washington and Lee University, charts the demise of this elderly Russian Jewish community and the rise of a transnational one consisting of Jews from all regions of the former Soviet empire.

Docs come back to school

Some of the nation’s top physicians will be coming to Penn for a second dose of education. The University has been chosen to serve as a training site for the Clinical Scholars Program of the New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care.

Far from Florida

For many Penn staffers, a change in the weather doesn’t mean a break in routine. Many of you are still hard at work while students are sunning themselves in Ft. Lauderdale. Still, some of you find time for some R&R, even though it may not include hopping on the plane to some exotic locale. Here’s what you told the Current when we asked, Penn students get a Spring Break, do you take time to make one? CAROLANNE SAUNDERS Coordinator, Sociology “No, I don’t. I go straight through until June then straight through September.”

Penn Confidential

The headlines tell you everything you need to know about why Lauren Steinfeld’s (C’89) job as Penn’s first chief privacy officer is so important.

Gelles named School of Social Work dean

School of Social Work Professor Richard J. Gelles, who is known internationally for his work in domestic violence and child welfare, has been named dean of the School. The holder of the Joanne and Raymond Welsh Chair of Child Welfare and Family Violence, Gelles has been serving as interim dean since Fall 2001.

Franklin Medals for two Penn scientists

Two Penn scholars have been named 2003 recipients of the Benjamin Franklin Medal, one of the world’s oldest science and technology awards. Professor of Chemistry Robin M. Hochstrasser and Research Professor of Physics Raymond Davis Jr. are among 10 American scientists being honored by The Franklin Institute for their work in aviation, chemistry, civil engineering, computers and cognitive science, earth sciences, electrical engineering, life sciences and physics.

Eakins horsed around with Penn prof

Illustration by Bo Brown Dear Benny, When I was in the Towne Building recently, I noticed a portrait of Fairman Rogers. Is this the same guy immortalized in the Thomas Eakins painting “The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand”? The dates (and, of course, names and locale) seem plausible.—Art History Geek

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