Awards and accolades for Penn faculty and graduate students
A roundup of the latest awards for several faculty members and graduate students at Penn.
2 min. read
Two religious studies graduate students in the School of Arts & Sciences (SAS) have won student paper prizes. Doctoral student Austin McCredie won the Student Essay Prize from the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies-Association Canadienne des Études Patristiques, and Ph.D. graduate Kirby Sokolow won the Religious Studies Graduate Group’s 2026 Israel Goldstein Prize.
Penn Engineering’s Flavia Vitale was awarded a Grainger Foundation Frontiers Grant from the National Academy of Engineering for research into bioelectronics in tissue engineering.
Penn Carey Law’s Jessup International Law Moot Court team was one of 13 schools to compete at the 2026 Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition in Washington, D.C. The team was comprised of Emma Harvison, Trevor Helmy, Stephanie Lee, Charlie Brogdon-Tent, Aiman Shahab, Riona Sheik, Max Mallett, Deepak Gupta, and Sean Kim.
In the Weitzman School of Design, Laurie Olin, practice professor emeritus of landscape architecture, was inducted into the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) Academy of Fellows. Professor of landscape architecture Karen M’Closkey was recognized by CELA with a 2026 Faculty Award for Studio Teaching (Senior).
Penn physicists led by Bo Zhen have created hybrid light-matter particles that interact strongly enough to compute, pointing toward ultrafast, low-energy optical AI hardware.
Penn’s newest supercomputer is transforming research
Penn’s first campus-wide HPC and AI cluster, “Betty,” is expanding access to powerful computing, enabling groundbreaking projects, and fostering new collaborations across disciplines.
A bioengineered bean gum from the lab of Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell is found to reduce the levels of three microbes associated with head and neck squamous cell cancer to almost zero, without affecting the beneficial bacteria normally found in the mouth.
Fighting oral cancer with bioengineered chewing gum
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell shows that antiviral and antibacterial chewing gums reduce the levels of three microbes linked to worse outcomes in oral cancers, paving the way for more effective and affordable therapies.
The performing arts at Penn: Process, practice, and purpose
In the vivid tapestry of performing arts groups at Penn, students prepare for their performances while simultaneously enriching their college experience.
