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Hurricane changed ‘rules of the game’ in monkey society
A group of rhesus macaques sits amidst the bare, leafless trees of their hurricane-impacted habitat.

For more than 17 years, PIK Professor Michael Platt and his collaborators have followed a free-ranging colony of rhesus macaques in the Puerto Rican Island of Cayo Santiago who, in 2017, experienced the devastation of Hurricane Maria. The team showed that the macaques who invested in relationships had higher survival rates, findings that can provide insights into human social behavior and health in the face of environmental change.

(Image: Courtesy of Lauren J. Brent) 

Hurricane changed ‘rules of the game’ in monkey society

PIK Professor Michael Platt and collaborators from the University of Exeter find Hurricane Maria transformed a monkey society by changing the pros and cons of their interpersonal relations.
New dissertation grants expand global research support
A glass globe sitting on a woodend table shows north and south America.

Penn Global has announced the first recipients of the newly established Penn Global Dissertation Grants program, which provides up to $8,000 in funding to nearly a dozen Ph.D. students.

(Image: iStock/artisteer)

New dissertation grants expand global research support

The newly established Penn Global Dissertation Grants program provides as much as $8,000 in funding to each of 11 Ph.D. candidates to enhance global components in their research.

Kristen de Groot

The English major’s cheerleader and champion
Jennifer Egan standing in front of class gesturing with one hand and holding papers in the other

Egan first taught literature at Penn in the spring of 2019, but she restructured the course and wrote new lectures for this year’s class.

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The English major’s cheerleader and champion

Bestselling author Jennifer Egan taught an undergraduate literature course in the spring as an English Department artist in residence in the School of Arts & Sciences. A 1985 Penn graduate, she is a passionate advocate for the English major, the humanities, and a liberal arts education.
Josephine Park on authoring identity
Josephine Park.

Josephine Park, School of Arts & Sciences President’s Distinguished Professor of English.

(Image: Courtesy of OMNIA)

Josephine Park on authoring identity

The School of Arts & Sciences President’s Distinguished Professor of English discusses the way literature has influenced the experience of being Asian American in the United States.

Blake Cole

Penn’s Katz Center: Working to cultivate the next generation of scholars
Galeet Dardashti performing on stage.

Galeet Dardashti performing on stage for the 30th anniversary of Penn’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.

(Image: Lisa J. Godfrey)

Penn’s Katz Center: Working to cultivate the next generation of scholars

For three decades, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies has fostered research on Jewish studies and shares it with the world.

Michele W. Berger

Researchers upend theory about the formation of the Milky Way Galaxy
Visualization of a ‘wrinkly’ halo of stars around the Milky Way.

This image visualizes the Milky Way and its surrounding “halo” of stars. Most stars in the Milky Way lie in the disc (like the Sun, for example), but stars from past collisions end up in the halo, a large “cloud” of stars that extends outwards in all directions. These halo stars have been enhanced in this image, but in reality would be very dim compared to the disc. The halo appears messy and “wrinkly” here, a sign that a merger has occurred relatively recently.

(Image: Halo stars: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, T Donlon et al. 2024; Background Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar)

Researchers upend theory about the formation of the Milky Way Galaxy

New findings by Robyn Sanderson and collaborators suggest galaxy’s last major collision was billions of years later than previously thought.
Fruitful insights on the brain
Photograph of researcher, China Byrns, in front of monitor showing microscopy images of fly brain

China Byrns used high-magnification confocal microscopy to visualize senescent glia (red) in Drosophila brains as part of a multidisciplinary approach to define the origin and effects of senescent cells in brain aging.

(Image: Courtesy of Riya Anand)

Fruitful insights on the brain

Research led by China Byrns of the lab of Nancy M. Bonini in the School of Arts & Sciences have uncovered new details about the role of zombie-like cells in brain aging, using the fruit fly as a model.
Penn alum named 2024 Yenching Scholar
Jing-Jing Piriyalertsak standing outside a building with trees

Chonnipha (Jing Jing) Piriyalertsak, a 2023 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences from Bangkok, has been selected as a 2024 Yenching Scholar.

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Penn alum named 2024 Yenching Scholar

Chonnipha (Jing Jing) Piriyalertsak, a 2023 graduate, has been selected as a 2024 Yenching Scholar, with full funding to pursue an interdisciplinary master’s degree in China studies at the Yenching Academy of Peking University in Beijing.
Measuring readers of romance
two people looking at laptop computers

James English (left) and J.D. Porter have been collaborating on the research project for more than three years. 

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Measuring readers of romance

Researchers at Penn's Price Lab for Digital Humanities conducted a quantitative analysis of the romance genre, studying thousands of avid readers and the hundreds of thousands of books in their collections in Goodreads