Launched by 2025 President’s Sustainability Prize recipient Piotr Lazarek, Nirby uses autonomous drones and satellite data to help farmers reduce their fertilizer use—which reduces farms’ carbon footprints and increases profits.
In February 2025, Alicia Meyer showed students in Elly Truitt’s Technology & Society course a rare 19th-century book of hours woven from silk on a Jacquard loom, an Egyptian clay tablet from 400 BCE, an astronomical rotula used to predict the movement of heavenly bodies, posters from Central America made on sugarcane paper, and more.
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Who, What, Why: Alicia Meyer on the wonders of the Kislak Center
As curator of research services, Meyer wants students from every discipline to visit the Kislak Center and to find new insights from old materials.
Understanding GLP-1 signaling: A path to better therapies
A collaborative study led by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Penn’s School of Nursing and Perelman School of Medicine found that a novel GLP-1 drug shows promise for reducing nausea and vomiting while maintaining blood sugar.
The annual Energy Week Poster Session is a good way to learn about the energy-related research of Penn students and postdocs.
(Image: Bill Cohen)
Energy Week to explore solutions for transition to clean energy
Penn’s sixth Energy Week, taking place Feb. 23-27, features events that highlight cross-disciplinary research at Penn and bring in leading industry experts.
Students visited Alna Farms and posed for a picture in front of a borehole drilling machine.
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Solar solutions for farmers in The Gambia
For students in Engineers Without Borders at Penn, collaborating with Gambian farmers to design an irrigation system is a way to both address food insecurity in the smallest country in mainland Africa and apply their knowledge from the classroom in the real world.
In honor of Valentine's Day, and as a way of fostering community in her Shakespeare in Love course, Becky Friedman took her students to the University Club for lunch one class period. They talked about the movie "Shakespeare in Love," as part of a broader conversation on how Shakespeare's works are adapted.
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Studying Shakespeare through the lens of love
In Becky Friedman’s English course Shakespeare in Love, undergraduate students analyze language, genre, and adaptation in the Bard’s plays through the lens of love.
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.
New model could help police departments reduce excessive force incidents
Criminology professor Greg Ridgeway has developed a model that estimates an officer’s likelihood of using a higher level of force than peers in similar situations—an improvement on existing early-intervention systems that don’t account for differences in time and location.
Students in Andi Johnson’s course Health in Philly: Past and Present visited the nonprofit organization Bebashi in December to present their findings from interviews with staff.
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Health in Philly, past and present
This fall, in Andi Johnson’s course Health in Philly: Past and Present, students worked closely with leadership of the health-focused nonprofit Bebashi to identify ways they could better support staff, while visiting other local health organizations to learn more about how they address issues facing city residents.
Fourth-year Stefan Hatch is researching one of Philadelphia’s most pressing challenges: housing insecurity. The double major combines urban studies and psychology to explore solutions.
