Each day, in every School at Penn, from labs to libraries, field sites to clinics, researchers are making strides to cure diseases, improve lives, and better understand our world.
Research at Penn: By the Numbers
Promise
Longer, Healthier Lives
1,407 clinical trials (FY24)
>67,000 patients in clinical trials (FY24)
42 FDA approvals (through 2024)
(From Penn Medicine)
Progress
Creative Solutions
125 patents issued (FY24)
354 invention disclosures (FY24)
12 PCI-supported spinouts and Penn affiliated startups (FY24)
(From PCI)
Purpose
Stronger, Safer Communities
619 commercialization agreements (FY24)
$2.8B total annual output within the Commonwealth (FY24)
$47M in Pennsylvania state tax revenue (FY24)
(From PCI and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research)
Passion
Curiosity-Driven Pursuits
9 MacArthur Award faculty recipients
2 Nobel Prize faculty recipients
>150,000 undergraduate research hours
(From Institutional Research & Analysis and the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships)
Penn biophysicist Arnold Mathijssen uncovers how and why E. coli manage to swim upstream causing infections in challenging places such as the urinary tract, respiratory system, and catheters, pointing to new strategies for designing safer, more effective biomedical tools and treatments.
Future mRNA vaccines may prevent food and seasonal allergies
Early research from Penn Medicine finds a new mRNA vaccine stops allergens from causing immune reactions and life-threatening inflammation, with promise for future treatment for a variety of seasonal and food allergies.
Electronic medical records help save lives of HIV patients
Management and socioeconomic development expert Leandro ‘Leo’ Pongeluppe and colleagues found that switching from paper to electronic medical records at HIV clinics in Malawi led to an estimated 28% reduction in deaths after five years, with the greatest impact on children.
Sniffing out cancer: Trained dogs can detect hemangiosarcoma by scent
Penn Vet’s Cynthia M. Otto and Clara Wilson and colleagues show that trained dogs can identify the odor of hemangiosarcoma, a devastating canine cancer, offering the hope of a better screening tool and more effective treatments.
J. Nicholas Betley has led collaborative research seeking the neural basis of long-term sustained pain and finds that a critical hub in the brainstem holds a mechanism for stopping pain signals from reaching the rest of the brain. Their findings could help clinicians better understand chronic pain and lead to new, more efficacious treatments.
Kiran Musunuru develops gene-based therapies to improve the health of patients with heart disease and correct genetic changes in people affected by ultra-rare conditions.
Shreya Parchure: Leveraging AI to help stroke survivors recover speech abilities
Doctoral student Shreya Parchure and her team evaluated the usefulness of an AI tool for personalizing speech therapy for patients with post-stroke aphasia.
Turning peels into pavers: How Penn designers turn food scraps into biodegradable building materials
The Weitzman School’s Laia Mogas-Soldevila and Yasaman Amirzehni transform unavoidable food waste—like fruit peels and eggshells, which account for 14.8% of post-consumer restaurant food waste—into durable, biodegradable building materials in collaboration with Penn Dining.
The world’s smallest programmable, autonomous robots
Engineers at Penn Engineering have created robots barely visible to the naked eye that operate without tethers, magnetic fields or joystick-like controls.
A new study by Penn GSE’s Richard Ingersoll evaluates a team-based model of organizing teaching staff in elementary and secondary schools that integrates teams of teaching staff in contrast to this traditional one-teacher, one-classroom approach.
Novel plant-based approach to a better, cheaper GLP-1 delivery system
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell investigates the use of a lettuce-based, plant-encapsulated delivery platform as a new oral delivery of two GLP-1 drugs previously approved by the FDA in injectable form.
Penn Engineering faculty Chris Callison-Burch, a leading researcher in the artificial intelligence field, reflects on decades of technological innovations that have informed the present and future of AI.
Truth Mjumbe: Using AI to preserve memory and dignity
Professional counseling student at Penn GSE Truth Mjumbe built Recall Aid, an AI-powered memory-support platform inspired by his own experience with epilepsy, his grandfather’s dementia, and his father’s work preserving civil rights histories.
Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital and New Bolton Center’s Infection Prevention and Biosecurity Programs are focusing on infection prevention, control measures, and biosecurity strategies to protect the animals, people, and communities served by its hospitals and facilities.
Preventing falls in older adults with mild cognitive impairment
A team led by researchers in the School of Nursing has developed a multicomponent intervention that uses passive monitoring and behavioral support to help reduce falls in at-risk older adults.
A new study in Sciences Advances, co-authored by Penn Carey Law’s Michael Morse, introduces the concept of vote revelation, or the potential for a vote on an anonymous ballot to be linked to the voter’s name in the public voter file.
Antonia Villarruel and Kathleen Hall Jamieson: Recommendations for economic prosperity and national security
Dean Antonia M. Villarruel of Penn Nursing and Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center are on the Vision for American Science and Technology task force that devised the policy recommendations.
How plants ‘hedge their bets’ for better reproductive outcomes
Penn biologists reveal how plants respond to seasonal flowering cues while protecting the stem cells at their growing tip, enabling continuous reproduction in changing environments.
Raindrop-formed ‘sandballs’ that erode hillsides tenfold
Penn geophysicists and colleagues have uncovered Earth-sculpting processes that result from the formation of snowball-like aggregates they call ‘sandballs.‘ Their findings provide fundamental insights into erosion and will broaden scientific understandings of landscape change, soil loss, and agriculture.
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.
Helheim Glacier: New information on sea-level rise
For nearly a decade, Leigh Stearns and collaborators aimed a laser scanner system at Greenland’s Helheim Glacier. Their long-running survey reveals that Helheim’s massive calving events don’t behave the way scientists once thought, reframing how ice loss contributes to sea-level rise.
Exploring Black America: A historian’s unique path of inquiry
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marcia Chatelain, a Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies, takes a unique approach to history, from the impact of fast food to the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement.
Ani Liu: Motherhood, microplastics, and her multimedia works on display
Weitzman professor of fine arts Ani Liu explores the physiological and emotional transformations in motherhood through her multimedia artworks while teaching students how to conduct fine arts research.
Building on his working helping psychology professor Sara Jaffee evaluate PHLHousing+, Philadelphia’s monthly cash assistance pilot program, fourth-year Stefan Hatch has focused on housing instability in two senior research projects for his majors, urban studies and psychology.
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Research at Penn: In print
Research at Penn is also a print publication highlighting notable research from across the University. Featuring original and repurposed stories from Penn Today, Research at Penn is brought to you twice a year by the Office of University Communications and available as a PDF (Spring 2026 and Fall 2025).
