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What to expect as Penn transitions to a fully in-person fall semester
two people wearing masks walk down penn commons

As Penn looks forward to a fully in-person campus experience for the fall semester, this summer will be a period of transition as faculty, staff, postdocs, and students navigate evolving public health measures while returning to campus in a way that helps keep the community safe.

What to expect as Penn transitions to a fully in-person fall semester

Penn Today looks at guidelines for those on campus this summer, what members of the community can expect as they return to campus, and the role that vaccines have in safely resuming in-person activities.

Erica K. Brockmeier

The pandemic, health inequities, and an ‘opportunity for change’
covid global map

As a global pandemic, COVID-19 spread across the world. But it didn’t hit everyone equally. “Being healthy is essential to human flourishing,” says Jennifer Prah Ruger, who advocates for shared norms in health governance to address global inequalities. (Image: Martin Sanchez, also featured on homepage)

The pandemic, health inequities, and an ‘opportunity for change’

Experts across the University weigh in on which lessons the pandemic drove home and what immediate measures are needed to prevent future loss.
Global Policy Forum focuses on ‘People, Planet, and Prosperity’
A man in a suit and tie and glasses sits in profile in a white chair as he looks at three video screens in front of him: one showing an illustration of a light buld and the words global policy forum, the middle screen showing a man with glasses in front of a book case and the last screen on the right showing another man with glasses, grey hair and a beard

The virtual Global Policy Forum featured leaders and thinkers from across the globe, including co-hosts Paolo Magri (in chair, left), Penn’s Jim McGann (center screen) and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (right screen).

Global Policy Forum focuses on ‘People, Planet, and Prosperity’

Penn’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, headed by Jim McGann, co-hosted the event that shared insights and proposals on the priorities of the G20 ahead of the group’s fall meeting 

Kristen de Groot

Leniqueca Welcome uses photography to explore the human experience
Three dancers doing back bands with one leg raised on a sunlit beach.

“The ways their bodies come together to make a continuous form against the backdrop of the water is simply poetic to me,” says Welcome. (Image: Leniqueca Welcome/OMNIA)

Leniqueca Welcome uses photography to explore the human experience

Welcome, a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology with specialties in urban studies and experimental ethnography, is a member of the Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts (CAMRA).

Blake Cole

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and mass incarceration
Asian prisoner in jumpsuit laying on a cot behind bars.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and mass incarceration

Penn Law student Raymond Magsaysay has an article forthcoming in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law about the absence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the conversation about criminal justice reform.

From Penn Carey Law

A post-pandemic wave of teachers leaving the workforce, and other trends
Teacher wearing face mask standing alone in a school hallway.

A post-pandemic wave of teachers leaving the workforce, and other trends

Penn GSE’s Richard Ingersoll has published a new report looking at who is at work in America’s classrooms, and finds that many trends he has tracked since publishing his first study continue to hold true, and in some ways have deepened.

From Penn GSE

Growing ‘metallic wood’ to new heights
A metallic arch on a surface reflecting a rainbow prism.

This strip of metallic wood, about an inch long and one-third inch wide, is thinner than household aluminum foil but is supporting more than 50 times its own weight without buckling. If the weight was suspended from it, the same strip could support more than six pounds without breaking. (Image: Penn Engineering Today)

Growing ‘metallic wood’ to new heights

“Metallic wood” is full of regularly spaced cell-sized pores that radically decrease its density without sacrificing the material’s strength, which not only gives metallic wood the strength of titanium at a fraction of the weight, but unique optical properties.

Evan Lerner

Giant comet found in outer solar system
an image of the night sky with an object circled and annotated with Bernardinelli-Bernstein (C/2014-UN271)

Giant comet found in outer solar system

The discovery of the comet estimated to 100-200 kilometers across was made by Penn researchers following a comprehensive search of data from the Dark Energy Survey. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is the most distant comet ever discovered and possibly the largest seen in modern times.

Erica K. Brockmeier