School of Arts & Sciences

After the Higgs: Penn Gears Up for New Physics Discoveries at CERN

by Sarah Welsh After a two-year hiatus, the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, is gearing up for its second run. The LHC enabled the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, which gives mass to all particles, but the world’s most complicated scientific apparatus is far from finished

Evan Lerner

Penn Professor Grant Frame Receives $250,000 NEH Grant for Humanities Project

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Grant Frame, University of Pennsylvania associate professor of Near Eastern languages and civilizations, a two-year $250,000 grant for his Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period Project. The award brings to nearly $950,000 the total NEH grants Frame has received for the RINAP Project since 2008.

Jacquie Posey

Consumed by Love of Cooking, Penn Senior Is a Student by Day, Chef at Night

From interning in a kitchen breaking down hundreds of lobsters to hunting truffles in Italy to hosting random four course dinner parties, Amanda Shulman lives to cook. The University of Pennsylvania senior has completed the first level of basic cuisine from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and is as likely to fall asleep reading a cookbook as she is reading a textbook studying for class.

Jacquie Posey

Penn Team Discovers New Liquid Crystal Configurations

Oil-based liquid crystals are ubiquitous; a deep understanding of their properties is behind the displays found in most computer monitors, televisions and smartphones. Water-based liquid crystals are less well understood, though their biocompatibility makes them a potential candidate for a variety of biological and medical applications. 

Evan Lerner

Penn Senior Investigates the State of Airport Security

By Sarah Welsh Ever since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, airport security has been at the forefront of national concern. The United States has since taken numerous measures to tighten security in airports, hoping to prevent similar attacks.

Katherine Unger Baillie

President Gutmann Announces 2015 President’s Engagement Prize Winners at Penn

President Amy Gutmann today announced the selection of five undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania as the inaugural President’s Engagement Prize recipients. Awarded annually to Penn students to design and undertake fully-funded local, national or global engagement projects during the first year after they graduate, the President’s Engagement Prizes underscore the high priority that Penn places on educating students to put their knowledge to work for the betterment of humankind. 

Ron Ozio

New Penn Program Studies the Body’s Cells, One By One

By Sarah Welsh Cancer starts with a single cell going haywire. What is it about that one cell that makes it different from the rest, setting it on a path of destruction? A new program at the University of Pennsylvania may help find an answer to that and many other questions.

Katherine Unger Baillie



In the News


Philadelphia Inquirer

A collector donated 75,000 comic books to Penn Libraries, valued at more than $500,000

Alumnus Gary Prebula and his wife, Dawn, have donated a $500,000 collection of more than 75,000 comic books and graphic novels to Penn Libraries, featuring remarks from Sean Quimly of the Kislak Center and Jean-Christophe Cloutier of the School of Arts & Sciences.

FULL STORY →



Philadelphia Inquirer

He started college in prison. Now, he is Rutgers-Camden’s first Truman scholar

Tej Patel, a third-year in the Wharton School and College of Arts and Sciences from Billeria, Massachusetts, was one of 60 college students nationwide chosen to be a Truman Scholar.

FULL STORY →



KQED Radio (San Francisco)

Violence escalates in Sudan as civil war enters second year

Ali Ali-Dinar of the School of Arts & Sciences discusses the forces driving the civil war in Sudan and how the global community is responding.

FULL STORY →



BBC

From Ancient Egypt to Roman Britain, brewers are reviving beers from the past

Patrick McGovern of the School of Arts & Sciences and Penn Museum oversaw the first hi-tech molecular analysis of residues found in bronze drinking vessels during a 1950s excavation of an ancient Turkish tomb.

FULL STORY →



Christian Science Monitor

A majority of Americans no longer trust the Supreme Court. Can it rebuild?

Matthew Levendusky of the School of Arts & Sciences says that a partisan trust gap has emerged in public perception of the Supreme Court as a conservative institution.

FULL STORY →