Revisit some of the stories that highlighted the events, breakthroughs, people, and research across the University this year.
A glance at the University of Pennsylvania reveals a world-renowned teaching and research institution, a vibrant, diverse campus that nurtures a collaborative spirit, a community committed to fostering growth and connection, and a collection of schools and centers committed to solving pressing problems with ingenuity and innovation. The stories featured in Penn Today throughout 2024 also highlight milestones, anniversaries, and Penn’s place in global events. The University has also made significant impacts in arts and culture, and dusts off ancient treasures using state-of-the art technology.
Around the region and world, the Penn community cheered on athletes in the Olympics and in the Penn Relays at Franklin Field, and in the spirit of advancing sporting greatness, a new indoor track center, The Ott Center, opened.
Honoring a life scientist’s lifesaving science Also in April, Carl June accepted the 2024 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his groundbreaking work developing CAR T cell immunotherapy at a Los Angeles ceremony, making him the sixth recipient from Penn.
Carl June, Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine, won the 2024 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
The Wharton School establishes Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative An example of Penn’s commitment to the forefront of emerging technology like artificial intelligence, the Wharton School announced the first business school collaboration with OpenAI. The interdisciplinary endeavor encompasses curricular enhancements, investments to advance new research, collaboration between industry and academia, and open-source resources to help shape the direction of generative AI.
Penn traditions and milestones included Commencement, and Move-In welcomed students back into the fold. In April, a much-anticipated solar eclipse was a time for the Penn community to gather together to experience, but a rare earthquake in the region nearly eclipsed the eclipse coverage. The University marked anniversaries like 25 years of Robert Indiana’s “LOVE” sculpture and Umoja, Penn’s organization for Black student life on campus. In the fall semester, Penn came together for Family Weekend, Climate Week, and flexed its civic muscle for voter turnout on Election Day.
Penn Today reflected on the vibrant arts and culture on campus, highlighting several artistic works as part of the Art Matters series, and featuring faculty, students, and staff.
Picturing artistic pursuits Penn Today photographer Eric Sucar captured students engaged in moments of creativity during fine arts courses throughout the year, from painting and drawing, ceramics and sculpture, to printmaking and animation, photography, and videography.
In the Fabrication Lab, students experimented with three-dimensional art making while developing fundamental techniques used in sculpture.
Two stories took a deep dive into Penn’s past: the 100-year history of one of the world’s largest crystal balls at the Penn Museum’s Asia Galleries (left), and the oldest film in Penn’s University Archives & Records Center, documenting the 1915 Penn-Cornell Thanksgiving Day football game played in front of a packed Franklin Field.
(Images: (left) Eric Sucar; (right) film still from University Archives)
Reporting on the novel research and scientific breakthroughs in numerous schools, Penn Today featured a post-Nobel roundup of mRNA research in the year after Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó received Nobel Prize recognition for mRNA vaccines.
Bioengineers on the brink of breaching blood-brain barrier A team of researchers in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences devised a method to deliver mRNA into the brain using lipid nanoparticles, potentially advancing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and seizures.
Finding a new behavioral adaptation in fruit flies Penn researchers discovered “wing spreading” in Drosophila santomea, research that hints at a rare, novel finding and offers insights into an underrepresented area in sexual reproduction research: female-initiated behaviors.
Biology researchers looked at courtship rituals of a close cousin of the common fruit fly and discovered a novel female adaptation that promotes prolonged courtship in males.
Duncan Watts and CSSLab’s New Media Bias Detector Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor Duncan Watts and colleagues developed the Media Bias Detector, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze news articles, examining factors like tone, partisan lean, and fact selection.
Testing a novel, community-driven response to heat islands in Philadelphia In response to record high global temperatures, researchers from three University of Pennsylvania schools collaborated with a Hunting Park nonprofit to design, build, and test a prototype of a cooling shelter to place at a bus stop.
Researchers from three schools collaborated on a design project aimed at combatting heat islands. The team constructed a cooling shelter prototype and tested it in Philadelphia.
Graduate students left campus in 2024 for global pursuits that included Greenland (left) and Georgia.
(Images: (left) Billy Fleming; (right) Ignacia Leiva)
Penn celebrated the launch of the Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy, which brings together six schools, and two new buildings, Amy Gutmann Hall and the Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology. Amy Gutmann Hall will serve as the new center for data science and artificial intelligence, and the Vagelos Lab is designed for interdisciplinary research and will be run jointly by the School of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
An empty outdoor space is transformed into a social garden A 2023 Project for Progress initiative, the Breathing Room at Sayre High School was unveiled this spring, a collaborative initiative aimed at transforming the space into a vibrant outdoor wellness area for students.
At Sayre High School in West Philadelphia, a collaborative initiative between the Weitzman School of Design, the Graduate School of Education, the Perelman School of Medicine, and Netter Center for Community Partnerships transformed an outdoor space into a vibrant wellness area for students.
Griffin Pitt, right, works with two other student researchers to test the conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and temperature of water below a sand dam in Kenya.
Griffin Pitt’s upbringing made her passionate about water access and pollution, and Penn has given her the opportunity to explore these issues back home in North Carolina and abroad.
Helping robots work together to explore the Moon and Mars
Penn Engineers, NASA, and five other universities tested robotic systems designed to help unmanned explorers cooperate in the dunes of White Sands, New Mexico, paving the way for Moon and Mars exploration.
From framework to actions: Provost John L. Jackson Jr. talks Penn Forward
In a Q&A, Provost John L. Jackson Jr. explains the relationship between the strategic framework In Principle and Practice and Penn Forward—a new University-wide process and action plan that will advance Penn forward for the next decade and beyond.
