School of Arts & Sciences

One of the defining features of cells is their membranes. Each cell’s repository of DNA and protein-making machinery must be kept stable and secure from invaders and toxins. Scientists have attempted to replicate these properties, but, despite decades of research, even the most basic membrane structures, known as vesicles, still face many problems when made in the lab.

This is the first in a series of articles about families living in the University of Pennsylvania’s College House system.  

President Amy Gutmann today announced the launch of the Penn Center for Innovation, a new initiative that will provide the infrastructure, leadership and resources needed to transfer promising Penn inventions, know-how and related assets into the marketplace for the public good.   

When the winners of the 2013 Peabody Awards for excellence in broadcasting were announced late last month, Nancy Novack, a University of Pennsylvania alum and a lecturer of fine arts in the School of Design, had cause to celebrate. A film series she edited, the PBS TV documentary “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates Jr.” won a Peabody.

It’s smooth sailing ahead for one student-run club at the University of Pennsylvania.

University of Pennsylvania student Courtney Bliler, a rising junior from Horseheads, N.Y., is among 10 students from universities across the United States selected to receive 2014 Cultural Vistas Fellowships to intern abroad in Asia, Europe and South America this summer.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Ruth Schwartz Cowan has been elected to the American Philosophical Society. She is professor emerita in the Department of History and Sociology of Science.

Stimulation of a certain population of neurons within the brain can alter the learning process, according to a team of neuroscientists and neurosurgeons at the University of Pennsylvania. A report in the Journal of Neuroscience describes for the first time that human learning can be modified by stimulation of dopamine-containing neurons in a deep brain structure known as the substantia nigra.

The body’s innate immune system is a first line of defense, intent on sensing invading pathogens and wiping them out before they can cause harm. It should not be surprising then that bacteria have evolved many ways to specifically evade and overcome this sentry system in order to spread infection.

The Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania has awarded its inaugural 2014-15 Sobti Family Fellowship to senior Vignesh Selvakumaran.