A roundup of the latest appointments and awards for various faculty members in the Graduate School of Education, the School of Arts & Sciences, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Two faculty members from Penn‘s School of Arts & Sciences received recognition. In December, Nancy Bonini, Florence R.C. Murray Professor of Biology, received the seventh annual Sean M. Healey International Prize for Innovation in ALS. Bonini and a colleague discovered that repeat expansions in a gene called ataxin-2 can cause ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. In January, Anna Papafragou, a professor in the Department of Linguistics and associate director of research for MindCORE, was among six who were named a 2026 Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society.
Materials in the Annenberg School for Communication Library Archives include thousands of TV scripts, the first issue of TV Guide, and interviews about the early days of HBO—which help to chronicle TV’s 100-year story.
Centering joy in AI development and implementation
PIK Professor Desmond Upton Patton—of Annenberg and SP2—and collaborators introduce a joy-informed framework designed to initiate conversations among engineers, designers, and researchers.
Winter Storm Fern brought icy and snowy conditions to the Northeast and other parts of the country over the weekend. Penn Today asks physicist Robert Carpick about the unique properties of ice, the science of curling, and how close we are to ‘nonslip’ ice.
Organizations like Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships foster collaborations between Penn and public schools in the West Philadelphia community.
Penn receives national distinction for community engagement
The recognition by the American Council on Education and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching acknowledges Penn’s long-standing commitment to community-engaged scholarship and partnerships in West Philadelphia and beyond.
