School of Engineering & Applied Science

The University of Pennsylvania is participating in two National Science Foundation projects designed to advance cyber­physical systems with medical applications. Cyber­physical systems are built from and depend upon the seamless integration of computation and physical components.

Beth Winkelstein has been named vice provost for education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a professor of bioengineering and the associate dean for undergraduate education in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Technological limitations have made studying friction on the atomic scale difficult, but researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Merced, have now made advances in that quest on two fronts.

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone        (This is the fifth and last in a series of features introducing the inaugural Penn President’s Engagement Prize winners.)  

By Madeleine Stone @themadstone        (This is the second in a series of features introducing the inaugural Penn President’s Engagement Prize winners.)  

WHO:            Randall Kamien                       Shu Yang                      XingTing Gong                      Daniel Sussman

Why do some people learn a new skill right away, while others only gradually improve? Whatever else may be different about their lives, something must be happening in their brains that captures this variation.

Where water and oil meet, a two-dimensional world exists. This interface presents a potentially useful set of properties for chemists and engineers, but getting anything more complex than a soap molecule to stay there and behave predictably remains a challenge.   

 By Madeleine Stone  @themadstoneNone of us would be alive if sperm cells didn’t know how to swim, or if the cilia in our lungs couldn’t prevent fluid buildup. But we know very little about the dynamics of so-called “living fluids,” those containing cells, microorganisms or other biological structures.

President Amy Gutmann today announced the selection of five undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania as the inaugural President’s Engagement Prize recipients. Awarded annually to Penn students to design and undertake fully-funded local, national or global engagement projects during the first year after they graduate, the President’s Engagement Prizes underscore the high priority that Penn places on educating students to put their knowledge to work for the betterment of humankind.