School of Arts & Sciences

Doing Good and Learning Leadership Skills at Penn

When University of Pennsylvania student Amy Phillips learned about the Girl Scouts at Penn program, she immediately joined.Having been a Scout from kindergarten through high school, Phillips was thrilled to be able to continue her involvement at Penn.

Jeanne Leong

Penn Scientists Identify Patterns of RNA Regulation in the Nuclei of Plants

When the human genome was first sequenced, experts predicted they would find about 100,000 genes. The actual number has turned out to be closer to 20,000, just a few thousand more than fruit flies have. The question logically arose: how can a relatively small number of genes lay the blueprint for the complexities of the human body?

Katherine Unger Baillie

Penn and UGA Awarded $23.4 Million Contract for Pathogen Genomics Database

At the turn of the millennium, the cost to sequence a single human genome exceeded $50 million, and the process took a decade to complete. Microbes have genomes, too, and the first reference genome for a malaria parasite was completed in 2002 at a cost of roughly $15 million. But today researchers can sequence a genome in a single afternoon for just a few thousand dollars.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Penn Senior Studies the Past to Understand the Future

By Madeleine Stone   @themadstoneScience fiction is often said to reflect human culture: who we are today and what we dream to be in the future. But those who write on the future also have a hand in shaping it. Indeed, many future thinkers of the past have predicted technologies of the present with uncanny accuracy.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Penn Research Outlines Basic Rules for Construction With a Type of Origami

Origami is capable of turning a simple sheet of paper into a pretty paper crane, but the principles behind the paper-folding art can also be applied to making a microfluidic device for a blood test, or for storing a satellite's solar panel in a rocket’s cargo bay.   

Evan Lerner

Penn Senior Rutendo Chigora Awarded Rhodes Scholarship

Rutendo Chigora, a University of Pennsylvania senior from Harare, Zimbabwe, has been named one of Zimbabwe’s two recipients of a Rhodes Scholarship which will fund two or three years of study at Oxford University in England. At Oxford, Chigora will pursue a master's degree in public policy.

Jacquie Posey



In the News


The Washington Post

Forecast group predicts busiest hurricane season on record with 33 storms

A research team led by Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences is predicting the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season will produce the most named storms on record, fueled by exceptionally warm ocean waters and an expected shift from El Niño to La Niña.

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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.

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SciTechDaily

Satellite images capture extraordinary flooding in the United Arab Emirates

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences explains how three low-pressure systems formed a train of storms that battered the United Arab Emirates.

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Baltimore Banner

Baltimore expands anti-gun-violence strategy into Eastern District

An analysis released by the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the School of Arts & Sciences suggests that a group violence reduction strategy drove a 2022 drop in shootings in Baltimore’s Western District.

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WHYY (Philadelphia)

My Climate Story: Philly students take science from abstract to personal

The “My Climate Story” project at the Environmental Humanities Department helps students and teachers learn about climate change’s impact in everyday backyards, with remarks from Bethany Wiggin. The idea is credited to María Villarreal, a College of Arts and Sciences second-year from Tampico, Mexico.

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