Rajeev Alur and Randall Kamien of the University of Pennsylvania have been awarded five-year, $500,000 grants from the Simons Foundation, as part of its 2013 class of Simons Investigators.

The University of Pennsylvania has been named a project site for the Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative, a multiyear, multimillion dollar project that aims to improve the quality of education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Several studies have shown that how much parents say to their children when they are very young is a good predictor of children’s vocabulary at the point when they begin school.

Finding better painkillers is a high priority for doctors, researchers, and patients. While opioids, such as morphine, are very effective, they come with unwanted side effects and can be addictive and dangerous.

Mark G. Allen has combined insights from the worlds of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry, and materials science to become a pioneer in the field of micro-electromechanical systems, as well as the technology involved in building them.

Dawn A. Bonnell has been named vice provost for research at the University of Pennsylvania, effective July 1.

Mark G. Allen has been named the inaugural scientific director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology. 

Opioids, such as morphine, are still the most effective class of painkillers, but they come with unwanted side effects and can also be addictive and deadly at high doses.

Cartilage injuries have ended many athletes’ careers—including that of former two-sport star Bo Jackson—and the general wear-and-tear of the joint-cushioning tissue is something that almost everyone will endure as they age.

Cartilage injuries are difficult to repair. Current surgical options generally involve taking a piece from another part of the injured joint and patching over the damaged area, but this approach involves damaging healthy cartilage, and a person’s cartilage may still deteriorate with age.