School of Engineering & Applied Science

The University of Pennsylvania has been named a project site for the Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative, a multiyear, multimillion dollar project that aims to improve the quality of education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Dawn A. Bonnell has been named vice provost for research at the University of Pennsylvania, effective July 1.

Mark G. Allen has been named the inaugural scientific director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology. 

The quintessential piece of origami might be a decorative paper crane, but in the hands of an interdisciplinary University of Pennsylvania research team, it could lead to a drug-delivery device, an emergency shelter, or even a space station.

Cartilage injuries are difficult to repair. Current surgical options generally involve taking a piece from another part of the injured joint and patching over the damaged area, but this approach involves damaging healthy cartilage, and a person’s cartilage may still deteriorate with age.

Rakesh Vohra has been named the University of Pennsylvania’s 15th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, effective Aug. 1. The announcement was made today by Penn President Amy Gutmann and Provost Vincent Price.  

The allure of personalized medicine has made new, more efficient ways of sequencing genes a top research priority. One promising technique involves reading DNA bases using changes in electrical current as they are threaded through a nanoscopic hole.

A team of University of Pennsylvania engineers has used a pattern of nanoantennas to develop a new way of turning infrared light into mechanical action, opening the door to more sensitive infrared cameras and more compact chemical-analysis techniques.

Anyone who has flown in an airplane knows about turbulence, or when the flow of a fluid — in this case, the flow of air over the wings — becomes chaotic and unstable. For more than a century, the field of fluid mechanics has posited that turbulence scales with inertia, and so massive things, like planes, have an easier time causing it.

It was 3 a.m. at an engineering camp in Houston when insight struck Allison Pearce, now a junior at the University of Pennsylvania.