News from

School of Engineering & Applied Science

Visit the School's Site
Reset All Filters
1192 Results
Physics of foam strangely resembles AI training
Six separate piles of foam.

Image: Dowprasook Deenu via Getty Images

Physics of foam strangely resembles AI training

Research by Penn Engineers reveals that as foams flow ceaselessly inside while holding their external shape, and this internal motion resembles the process of deep learning, the method typically used to train modern AI systems.

Ian Scheffler

Awards and accolades for Penn faculty
Ben Franklin statue in front of Penn’s College Hall.

nocred

Awards and accolades for Penn faculty

A roundup of the latest appointments and awards for various faculty members in Penn Engineering, Penn Nursing, and Penn Dental Medicine.

2 min. read

What makes ice slippery?
An icy bench in a city.

Despite the commonality of water and ice, says Penn physicist Robert Carpick, their physical properties are remarkably unique.

(Image: mustafahacalaki via Getty Images)

What makes ice slippery?

With Winter Storm Fern set to bring the Northeast and other parts of the country icy conditions over the weekend, Penn Today asks physicist Robert Carpick about the unique properties of ice, the science of curling, and how close we are to “nonslip” ice.

5 min. read

Penn Engineering’s Chris Callison-Burch on 25 years of AI innovation
Chris Callison-Burch teaching in a classroom.

Image: Courtesy of Penn Engineering

Penn Engineering’s Chris Callison-Burch on 25 years of AI innovation

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.

How interdisciplinary teaching becomes climate action

How interdisciplinary teaching becomes climate action

Penn graduate students are learning that net zero is a systems challenge requiring fluency across disciplines, and why interdisciplinary teaching is climate action—including how it builds the human capital the clean energy transition demands.

From Kleinman Center for Energy Policy

New video dataset to advance AI for health care
Kevin Johnson seated at his desk with a computer and Karen O'Connor, seated at his desk, both testing the new equipment.

Kevin Johnson, left, demonstrating the recording process with Karen O’Connor, right.

(Image: Sylvia Zhang)

New video dataset to advance AI for health care

Penn Engineering’s multimodal medical dataset, Observer, links video, audio, and transcripts to clinical data and electronic health records.

Ian Scheffler

2 min. read

Lifesaving breakthrough in bacterial behavior
Artist's rendering of bacteria moving through a nanofabricated tube.

(Pictured) An artist’s depiction of a single cell moving through the nanofabricated mictostrucures biophysicist Arnold Mathijssen’s team used to study E. coli.

(Image: Courtesy of Ruoshui Liu/Cylos Studio)

Lifesaving breakthrough in bacterial behavior

Bacteria can actively swim upstream, leading to severe infections in places like the urinary tract and respiratory system and contamination of medical devices like catheters. Biophysicist Arnold Mathijssen and colleagues have uncovered how and why this happens, revealing that E. coli actually “thrives under pressure.” Their findings point to new strategies for designing safer, more effective biomedical tools and treatments.

3 min. read

20 breakthroughs of 2025
Masoud Akbarzadeh holding up one of the fabricated materials.

The Polyhedral Structures Laboratory is housed at the Pennovation Center and brings together designers, engineers, and computer scientists to reimagine the built world. Using graphic statics, a method where forces are mapped as lines, they design forms that balance compression and tension. These result in structures that use far fewer materials while remaining strong and efficient.

(Image: Eric Sucar)

20 breakthroughs of 2025

From ancient tombs and tiny robots to personalized gene editing and AI weather models, Penn’s 2025 research portfolio showed how curiosity—paired with collaboration—moves knowledge into impact and stretches across disciplines and continents.
Weighing sustainability of real vs. fake Christmas trees
A person putting ornaments on an artificial Christmas tree.

Image: Dmytro Betsenko via Getty Images

Weighing sustainability of real vs. fake Christmas trees

Engineering professor Lorena Grundy says people looking to make a sustainable decision should consider how many years they would use an artificial tree, how they plan to dispose of a real tree, and how the tree was transported.

2 min. read