Aravind K. Joshi, Ph.D., the Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science and Director of the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering.
Joshi's election recognizes his four decades of research in cognitive science. His research specialty, natural language processing, draws on computer science and linguistics to study how computers can process text and speech to understand language structure in useful ways.
"Dr. Joshi's election to membership in the [NAE] is well deserved," said Eduardo D. Glandt, Ph.D., dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Joshi is the eighth member of the SEAS faculty to be elected to the NAE. Academy membership honors outstanding contributions to engineering theory and practice and pioneering technology developments.
Penn engineers and collaborators have developed a transparent, micro-engineered device that houses a living, vascularized model of human lung cancer—a “tumor on a chip”—and show that the diabetes drug vildagliptin helps more CAR T cells break through the tumor’s defenses and attack it effectively.
Tumor-on-a-chip offers insight into cancer-fighting cells in immunotherapy
Penn engineers and collaborators have built a living tumor on a chip to expose how cancers block immune attacks, and how one existing drug could make immunotherapy like CAR T more effective against solid tumors.
Professor of city and regional planning Erick Guerra recently published a book exploring the economic and societal impacts of American highways. He explains some of the pitfalls associated with an ever-expansive highway system, arguing that spending more on highways might not be the solution to the country’s transportation issues.
Penn urban planner Erick Guerra’s new book, “Overbuilt,” argues that additional spending on building more highways might not be the solution to the country’s transportation issues. In a Q&A, Guerra shares his insights.
Xin Sun prepares samples collected from the Eastern Tropical North Pacific aboard a research vessel. By adding stable isotope tracers to these vials, Sun and her team can track how different microbial groups convert nitrogen compounds into nitrous oxide, revealing how subtle shifts in oxygen and organic matter change the ocean’s chemistry.
Can tiny ocean organisms offer the key to better climate modeling?
In the shadowy layers of the Pacific, microbes decide how much nitrous oxide—a potent greenhouse gas—rises skyward. New research from Penn’s Xin Sun offers an improved understanding of microbial ecology and geochemistry—key to forecasting global emissions in response to natural and man-made climate change.
Two X-ray plates from Arthur Goodspeed, believed to have created the world’s first X-ray image, were donated by his family to Penn’s University Archives.
Aravind K. Joshi, Ph.D., the Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science and Director of the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering. 
