For your winter break reading pleasure: Our favorite stories from 2023
The staff at Penn Today share a list of features that we think warrant a second (or a third or a fourth) glance. Enjoy!
Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó after earning a Nobel Prize in October. We covered a Penn Medicine celebration for the duo in our story titled “A booster for all of us.”
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A nearly 300-year-old University, the institution’s commitment to teaching, education, and research endures, and Penn Today has remained dedicated to telling those stories. In fact, our writers, photographers, videographers, web designers, and editors worked together—sometimes into the wee hours—to publish more than 1,200 original, timely, and significant stories in 2023.
Around this time every year, we put together a list of our favorite articles. No easy feat, we also list some honorable mentions. We hope that you enjoy a second (or a third or a fourth) read on the features below, which showcase a glimpse into the people and programs that make Penn the extraordinary institution it is.
We told the story of how and why researchers, including Shravan Pradeep of Penn Engineering, are conducting experiments to understand the flow and grip properties of the Major League Baseball’s “magic mud.”
Artist-in-residence and visiting scholar Rebecca Kamen blended AI and art to produce animated illustrations representing how a dyslexic brain interprets information.
Law professor Tess Wilkinson-Ryan’s book “Fool Proof: How Fear of Playing the Sucker Shapes Ourselves and the Social Order―and What We Can Do About It” explores the psychology of fools, dupes, cons, and morality.
Penn Today joined famed landscape architect Laurie Olin and his art of sketching class at The Woodlands cemetery in the spring.
An oil painting by 19th-century French artist Gustave Courbet that was found in the School of Dental Medicine’s storage was on view at the Arthur Ross Gallery.
Despite hopeful signs that this demographic is returning to work, certain female-dominated sectors, like the care economy, still haven’t recovered, signaling there’s more to learn about COVID-19’s full effect.
2023 Franklin Medal winner Engheta is one of the world’s biggest names in wave physics. The Penn Engineering professor is renowned for his unique approach to science, combining technical brilliance, creativity, and care.
Penn Integrates Knowledge University professor Desmond Upton Patton discussed his research in social media and violence, finding an interdisciplinary career in social work, communication, data science, and psychiatry, and why his open-mindedness never stops.
Students in a course taught by Peter Decherney produced virtual reality films on Penn Museum conservators, curators, and archivists. Here, we photograph as students review footage taken at a warehouse where monumental Egyptian artifacts are being conserved.
Undergraduate and graduate students spent two months on San Cristóbal Island this summer, doing research on antibacterial resistance, vectors of disease, climate change adaptation, and the impact of climate change on mental health.
College Houses model lifelong learning and provide a home away from home. Three house directors discussed their distinctive roles. (Another favorite People and Places at Penn was published in April and featured makerspaces on campus.)
Over the summer we profiled Nader Engheta, who is known as the founder of optical nanocircuits, a field that integrates nanoelectronics and nanophotonics. His work has opened many new frontiers, such as nanoscale optical computation and scattering control for cloaking and transparency.
The Annenberg School for Communication and School of Nursing continued their efforts to train as many people as possible on administering the lifesaving overdose reversal medication.
New hires like Marcia Chatelain and Vaughn Booker in Africana Studies and William Sturkey in the History Department are bolstering Penn’s position as one of the best places for the field of African American history.
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.
