School of Engineering & Applied Science

A person standing up adjusting a headset over a person sitting in a soundproof room. Barely visible in front of the sitting person is a computer screen and keyboard. A fire alarm sits above a window behind both people.

Singing, speech production, and the brain

This summer, rising second-years Audrey Keener and Nicholas Eiffert worked in the lab of Penn linguist Jianjing Kuang studying vowel articulation in song, running an in-person experiment and built a corpus of classical recordings by famous singers.

Michele W. Berger ・

Wharton graduate Saif Khawaja

A fish harvest that’s more sustainable—and tastier, too

December graduate Saif Khawaja’s President’s Sustainability Prize is helping him build Shinkei Systems, a company that has developed a robotics-based system for minimizing waste in the fishing industry.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・

An illustration of an old television with a person in sunglasses on it. On top sits a laptop computer with an arm reaching out past the screen, holding a rolled up newspaper. Another newspaper lays flat on top of the screen.

TV news top driver of political echo chambers in U.S.

Duncan Watts and colleagues found that 17% of Americans consume television news from partisan left- or right-leaning sources compared to just 4% online. For TV news viewers, this audience segregation tends to last month over month.

Michele W. Berger ・

Scientists Erynn Johnson and Aja Carter use a 3D printer to make shell shapes

Mentorship strategies to boost diversity in paleontology

Drawing on research as well as their experiences as women of color in paleontology, Aja Carter and Erynn Johnson, who earned doctoral degrees from Penn, coauthored a paper offering advice for making the field more inclusive.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・

kevin johnson at biology pond

PIK Professor Kevin Johnson: Informatics evangelist

The Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with appointments in Penn Engineering and the Perelman School of Medicine on forging his own path in the fields of health care and computer science.

From Penn Engineering Today ・

microscopic image of an immune cell labeled purple against a gray background

Deconstructing the mechanics of bone marrow disease

A new understanding of how mechanical features of bone marrow affect resident immune cells in a fibrotic cancer points to future therapeutic strategies for cancers and fibrotic diseases.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・



In the News


Scientific American

Grumpy voters want better stories. Not statistics

In a Q&A, PIK Professor Duncan Watts says that U.S. voters ignored Democratic policy in favor of Republican storytelling.

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Interesting Engineering

Superhuman vision lets robots see through walls, smoke with new LiDAR-like eyes

Mingmin Zhao of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and colleagues are using radio signals to allow robots to “see” beyond traditional sensor limits.

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Technical.ly Philly

A sneak peek inside Penn Engineering’s new $137.5M mass timber building

Amy Gutmann Hall aims to be Philadelphia’s next big hub for AI and innovation while setting a new standard for architectural sustainability.

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6ABC.com

New building at University of Pennsylvania aims to become hub for AI research

Amy Gutmann Hall, set to open in early 2025, is dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence and data science. 

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Philadelphia Business Journal

First look: Inside Penn’s new Amy Gutmann Hall, the region's largest mass timber building

Amy Gutmann Hall will be a catalyst for groundbreaking artificial intelligence research and collaboration across disciplines, with remarks from Dean Vijay Kumar of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

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