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Looking to mud to study how particles become sticky
Gif of water moving across a microscope plate, leaving behind several particles

Using a model system of glass particles, researchers from Penn found "solid bridges" formed by smaller-size particles between larger ones. The same bridges were present in suspensions of clay, a common component of natural soils. These structures provided stability, the team found, even when a moving channel of water threatened to wash the particle clumps away. (Video: Jerolmack laboratory)

Looking to mud to study how particles become sticky

A collaboration of geophysicists and fluid mechanics experts led to a fundamental new insight into how tiny ‘bridges’ help particles of all kinds form aggregates.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Engineers collaborate to create electroadhesive grippers
Hand holding a magnifying glass over back of disassembled smartphone

Engineers collaborate to create electroadhesive grippers

A collaborative team has developed a method for electroadhesion—which exploits the same phenomenon as static cling—to manipulate microscale objects.

Penn Today Staff

Penn nanoparticles are less toxic to T cells engineered for cancer immunotherapy
An artist’s illustration of nanoparticles transporting mRNA into a T cell, allowing the latter to express surface receptors that recognize cancer cells.

An artist’s illustration of nanoparticles transporting mRNA into a T cell (blue), allowing the latter to express surface receptors that recognize cancer cells (red). (Image: Ryan Allen, Second Bay Studios)

Penn nanoparticles are less toxic to T cells engineered for cancer immunotherapy

By using messenger RNA across the T cell’s membrane via a nanoparticle instead of a DNA-rewriting virus on extracted T cells, CAR T treatments could have fewer side effects.

Penn Today Staff

‘FACES’ captures, not defines, Black identity on campus
students in the biopond

‘FACES’ captures, not defines, Black identity on campus

Sophomore Hadja Diallo and Senior Christine Olagun-Samuel published the inaugural issue of Faces of Black Penn on behalf of the Black Student League, a new magazine that features the diversity inherent in the Black campus experience.

Kristina García

Kathie Jin races towards the future with Penn Electric Racing
Kathie Jin adjusts her helmet inside a Penn Electric Racing car.

Kathie Jin races towards the future with Penn Electric Racing

As the mechanical co-lead and operations lead for Penn Electric Racing (PER), a Formula SAE Electric Racing team, Engineering junior Kathie Jin leads a group of eighty students to design, build and race electric cars.

Penn Today Staff

Engineers and nurses team up to build inflatable robots
A soft robot mimicking octopus skin, to develop the basis for a new type of soft robot.

Pikul and collaborators at Cornell took inspiration from octopus skin, which changes its texture to mimic rough surfaces, to develop the basis for a new type of soft robot. Pikul and colleagues at Penn are now looking at how such systems could be used to help move patients in healthcare settings. (Image: J. H. Pikul et al. Science 2017)

Engineers and nurses team up to build inflatable robots

Penn Engineering and Penn Nursing’s collaboration in this new area of “soft robotics” is critical for designing machines that can safely interact with people in health care settings.

Penn Today Staff

Evan and the chocolate factory
A dish of bespoke 3D printed chocolates

Evan and the chocolate factory

Engineering student Evan Weinstein fixated on the idea of liberating bespoke chocolates from the confines of both the bar and the mold. Rather than cast a chocolate shape, why not build it? Cocoa Press is his solution. 
Engineers coax white blood cells to crawl upstream
HL-60 cells treated with a Mac-1 blocking antibody migrate upstream on ICAM-1 at a shear rate of 800s-1

HL-60 cells treated with a Mac-1 blocking antibody migrate upstream on ICAM-1 at a shear rate of 800s-1. (Image: Penn Engineering)

Engineers coax white blood cells to crawl upstream

Penn engineers find that by fighting the direction of the blood flow, white blood cells forge a faster route to battle infections.

Penn Today Staff