4/22
School of Engineering & Applied Science
Penn Glee Club: Still Singing After 151 Years
With its massive popularity among parents and adolescents alike, the Fox Network’s “Glee” certainly has staying power. But, its longevity is no match for the University of Pennsylvania’s Glee Club.
For Three Decades, Computer Science’s Susan Davidson Has Led by Example
PHILADELPHIA — After more than 30 years on the job, Susan Davidson has some perspective on her discipline.
Penn Researchers Use DNA to Make Crystals That Can Switch Configurations
PHILADELPHIA — Beyond serving as the backbone of modern biology, DNA has come to be a molecule of great interest to engineers. That a DNA sequence will naturally bind only with a complementary sequence could make it part of a configurable, and potentially programmable, building material.
University of Pennsylvania Announces 2013 Thouron Award Winners
PHILADELPHIA – Three University of Pennsylvania students and two alumni have received Thouron Awards to pursue graduate studies in the United Kingdom. The recipients are:
Penn Research Shows Mechanism Behind Wear at the Atomic Scale
PHILADELPHIA — Wear is a fact of life. As surfaces rub against one another, they break down and lose their original shape. With less material to start with and functionality that often depends critically on shape and surface structure, wear affects nanoscale objects more strongly than it does their macroscale counterparts.
Penn Research Team Awarded $2.75 Million as Part of New ‘Swarm’ Computing Center
PHILADELPHIA — Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are participating in a massive, interdisciplinary collaboration known as the TerraSwarm Research Center, which will study the potential applications — and risks — of “swarm-based” computing and robotics.
Penn Researchers Show New Level of Control Over Liquid Crystals
PHILADELPHIA — Directed assembly is a growing field of research in nanotechnology in which scientists and engineers aim to manufacture structures on the smallest scales without having to individually manipulate each component. Rather, they set out precisely defined starting conditions and let the physics and chemistry that govern those components do the rest.
Penn Metamaterials Experts Show a Way to Reduce Electrons’ Effective Mass to Nearly Zero
PHILADELPHIA — The field of metamaterials involves augmenting materials with specially designed patterns, enabling those materials to manipulate electromagnetic waves and fields in previously impossible ways.
Penn’s Robert Ghrist Will Teach Calculus Online to Tens of Thousands
PHILADELPHIA — Learning calculus is no easy feat.
Penn’s Steven Fluharty Makes Case for Research Funding in Capitol Hill Briefing
PHILADELPHIA — In the waning days of 2012, two words have dominated the post-election discourse: “fiscal cliff.” The cliff is a combination of impending budgetary measures that will take effect in January if a legislative compromise is not reached.
In the News
Philadelphia Inquirer
Comcast’s Sports Complex plan for South Philly would make our city less livable
In an Op-Ed, Vukan R. Vuchic of the School of Engineering and Applied Science says that Philadelphia should make transit more accessible rather than striving to accommodate more cars.
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Big Think
Can we stop AI hallucinations? And do we even want to?
Chris Callison-Burch of the School of Engineering and Applied Science says that auto-regressive generation can make it difficult for language learning models to perform fact-based or symbolic reasoning.
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CNET
How the solar eclipse will affect solar panels and the grid
Benjamin Lee of the School of Engineering and Applied Science says that the electrical grid will have to figure out how to match supply and demand during brief windows where the energy source goes away.
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The New York Times
Can your personal medical devices be recycled?
A lab at the School of Engineering and Applied Science led the development of a COVID test made from bacterial cellulose, an organic compound.
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CNBC
Students can soon major in AI at this Ivy League university—it’ll prepare them for ‘jobs that don’t yet exist’
The Raj and Neera Singh Program in Artificial Intelligence at Penn will be the first AI undergraduate engineering major at an Ivy League school, led by George Pappas of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
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