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Penn solutions to climate change
Banner that reads climate week at Penn

At a Climate Week event, Penn’s Climate Solutions Showcase, a group of faculty and researchers from the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Weitzman School of Design presented innovative strategies to combat the causes and effects of climate change.

(Image: Felice Macera)

Penn solutions to climate change

As society grapples with the impacts of a worsening climate—from the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events to rising sea levels and deadly heat waves—the need for actionable solutions has never been greater, Penn researchers say.
Toward carbon-negative architecture
A rendering of the carbon-absorbing and storage system

A rendering of the carbon-absorbing and storage system developed by the Penn team and its partners suggests how minimized material use and maximized surface area are expressed in the structure's slabs, columns, and beams.

(Image: Courtesy of Weitzman News)

Toward carbon-negative architecture

A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Weitzman and Penn Engineering are working to develop a new building system that would reduce carbon in all aspects of concrete construction.

From the Weitzman School of Design

The bullet train turns 60
An Amtrak Acela train with the Philadelphia city skyline in the background

An Amtrak Acela passenger train heads south after leaving 30th Street Station.

(Image: AP Photo/David Boe)

The bullet train turns 60

In both Asia and Europe, high-speed rail knits regions, countries, and continents together. What will it take to see more rail infrastructure in the U.S.?

Kristina Linnea García

‘A place of collaborative conversation’
Catherine Seavitt (fourth from left) at a Spring 2024 studio review

Catherine Seavitt (seated, glasses) at a Spring 2024 studio review. “Our department is recognized as a place of collaborative conversation,” says Seavitt, who is also co-executive director of The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism & Ecology.

(Image: Courtesy of Weitzman News)

‘A place of collaborative conversation’

On Sept. 26 and 27, the Weitzman School will host Landscape Futures: Centennial of the Department of Landscape Architecture, a two-day symposium to celebrate the department’s unique ecological foundations, its evolving curriculum, and its ongoing global influence on landscape architectural practice and education.

From the Weitzman School of Design

Two Penn faculty awarded Pew Fellowships
Sculptor Michelle Lopez sitting and talking in front of her sculpture and musician Tyshawn Sorey standing in front of a grafitti on a wall

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage awarded two Penn faculty each a Pew Fellowship in the Arts: artist and sculptor Michelle Lopez (left) in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design; and musician and composer Tyshawn Sorey (right) in the School of Arts & Sciences.

(Images (left) by University of Pennsylvania Communications, and (right) Ogata courtesy of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.)

Two Penn faculty awarded Pew Fellowships

Two Penn faculty -- installation artist and sculptor Michelle Lopez, and composer and musician Tyshawn Sorey -- each have been awarded one of 12 arts fellowships by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage in Philadelphia.

Louisa Shepard

Testing a novel, community-driven response to heat islands in Philadelphia
Hanzhong Luo has his body heat scanned in a cooling shelter prototype.

Dorit Aviv uses an infrared camera to demonstrate the effects of the Tenopy’s radiant cooling panels on Hanzhong Luo.

nocred

Testing a novel, community-driven response to heat islands in Philadelphia

Researchers from three University of Pennsylvania schools collaborated with a Hunting Park nonprofit to design, build, and test a prototype of a cooling shelter to place at a bus stop.
How food moves around cities
Penn students walking through Norris Square Neighborhood Project’s community garden.

(On homepage) Students walk through the Norris Square Neighborhood Project’s community garden.

(Image: Eric Sucar)

How food moves around cities

Domenic Vitiello, an urban and regional planning expert, teaches classes that invite students to locations in and around Philadelphia to better understand how its denizens dine.

5 min. read

A climate expert’s return to Penn
Portrait of Jen Wilcox

Jen Wilcox has returned to the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and to the School of Engineering and Applied Science following three years in at the U.S. Department of Energy, where she served in the Biden Administration as the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

(Image: Courtesy of Jen Wilcox)

A climate expert’s return to Penn

Jen Wilcox, an expert on direct-air capture, is the inaugural faculty appointment in the Kleinman Center and served for three years as principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy in the U.S. Department of Energy. She discusses her time away and her return to Penn.