Evan Lerner

If you have a map, you can know where you are without knowing which way you are facing. If you have a compass, you can know which way you're facing without knowing where you are. Animals from ants to mice to humans use both kinds of information to reorient themselves in familiar places, but how they determine this information from environmental cues is not well understood.

The University of Pennsylvania is participating in two National Science Foundation projects designed to advance cyber­physical systems with medical applications. Cyber­physical systems are built from and depend upon the seamless integration of computation and physical components.

The compound eyes found in insects and some sea creatures are marvels of evolution. There, thousands of lenses work together to provide sophisticated information without the need for a sophisticated brain. Human artifice can only begin to approximate these naturally self-assembled structures, and, even then, they require painstaking manufacturing techniques.

The compound eyes found in insects and some sea creatures are marvels of evolution. There, thousands of lenses work together to provide sophisticated information without the need for a sophisticated brain. New research from Penn engineers and physicists shows how liquid crystals can be employed to create compound lenses similar to those found in nature.

At the forefront of a field known as “neurocriminology,” Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania has long studied the interplay between biology and environment when it comes to antisocial and criminal behavior.

At the forefront of a field known as “neurocriminology,” Adrian Raine, a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with appointments in the School of Arts & Sciences and the

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone        Decorating the outside of cells like tiny antenna, a diverse community of sugar molecules acts like a telecommunications system, sending and receiving information, recognizing and responding to foreign molecules and neighboring cells.

Technological limitations have made studying friction on the atomic scale difficult, but researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Merced, have now made advances in that quest on two fronts.

Dorothy Cheney, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and Abraham Nitzan, a chemist who will join Penn’s faculty in July, have been elected members of the National Academy of Scie

Every year, Penn produces a large volume of new research, but it also produces a high number of researchers. The process of becoming a scientist is more than just learning formulas and memorizing equations; it involves experiencing life in the lab and the drive for new knowledge.