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Inspiring people, place, and purpose
penn president amy gutmann

Inspiring people, place, and purpose

Penn President Amy Gutmann’s record tenure of nearly 18 years is the University’s most transformative.

Penn Today Staff

A chance to imagine memorials of tomorrow
rocky steps in philadelphia

A chance to imagine memorials of tomorrow

A history course taught by Jared Farmer looks at Philadelphia’s monuments past and present, and lets students envision what future memorials may be.

Kristen de Groot

The ‘music’ of one poet’s words, translated
Huda Fakhreddine holding the poetry book outside

(Homepage image) As a scholar, Fakhreddine works hard to retain as much of a poem as possible when it moves from Arabic to another language. “It’s a challenge that all translation involves. We talk about what’s lost and what’s gained,” she says. “It’s all exaggerated here with these short musical pieces. Their meaning is ground in their sound.”

The ‘music’ of one poet’s words, translated

With help from her daughter, scholar Huda Fakhreddine published an English version of 30 poems for children written by her father in Arabic, paying tribute to their endearing and enduring subject matter and to the musicality and richness of their sound.

Michele W. Berger

After the shutdown, what comes next for the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery?
philadelphia refinery

Flames and smoke emerge from the Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refining Complex in Philadelphia, Friday, June 21, 2019. (Image: Matt Rourke/AP Images)

After the shutdown, what comes next for the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery?

Creating a greener, more equitable future at the site means understanding its complex history, its long-running public health impacts, and working in partnership with communities.

Erica K. Brockmeier

From the archives, a class on different communities of Jews in China
students looking at manuscripts in a penn libraries course

Homepage image: Students brought their own expertise to the experience of working with the archival materials, including translation of Chinese characters written on the back of photographs. Working together (center) were College freshmen (from left) Louis Dong, Nancy (Ziqi) An, and Alice (Yucheng) Feng.

From the archives, a class on different communities of Jews in China

Kathryn Hellerstein created an opportunity for her first-year seminar students to study archival material from a collection donated to the Penn Libraries by her mentor, Israeli scholar Irene Eber.
Refining data into knowledge, turning knowledge into action
paris perdikaris graphic

Homepage image: No one type of medical imaging can capture every relevant piece of information about a patient at once. Digital twins, or multiscale, physics-based simulations of biological systems, would allow clinicians to accurately infer more vital statistics from fewer data points.

Refining data into knowledge, turning knowledge into action

Penn Engineering researchers are using data science to answer fundamental questions that challenge the globe—from genetics to materials design.

From Penn Engineering Today

From foundational discoveries to profound impact
weissman and kariko in the lab Today, Weissman and colleagues are working to develop a pan-coronavirus vaccine capable of protecting the population against SARS, MERS, SARS-CoV-2, and more. At BioNTech, Karikó is overseeing parallel but distinct research on a range of diseases in which patients receive mRNA encoding therapeutic proteins. (Image: Peggy Peterson)

From foundational discoveries to profound impact

How decades of mRNA research at Penn made powerful new COVID-19 vaccines possible—and opened a new vista for future discoveries.

Ashley Rabinovitch

On the Galápagos, an underwater exploration of marine life
sea lion with divers

Homepage image: The diving project is part of a larger initiative called Projecto Laboratorio para Apreciar la Vida y el Ambiente or Project LAVA, which also includes research about the effect humans are having on sea lions in the Galápagos.

On the Galápagos, an underwater exploration of marine life

In collaboration with a local dive instructor and the students he trained, researchers from Penn and Villanova are learning how human presence affects life on the seafloor around these islands.

Michele W. Berger