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Undergraduates help songbird research project take flight
Three brown-headed cowbirds sit together in Penn's Smart Aviary

Through the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring program, undergraduates Julia Youngman and Eric Tao studied the mating songs of brown-headed cowbirds like those above in Penn’s “smart” aviary.

Undergraduates help songbird research project take flight

Through the PURM internship program, Julia Youngman and Eric Tao had the opportunity to work in neuroethologist Marc Schmidt’s lab studying the neural basis of courtship behaviors in songbirds.

Marilyn Perkins

The right to human empathy in an automated state

The right to human empathy in an automated state

Cary Coglianese of the Law School argued that people deserve to be listened to by real humans when faced with life-altering decisions, even amid the rise of automation in government agencies. “The public’s need for empathy, though, does not mean that government should avoid automation,” he wrote. “If planned well, the transition to an automated state could, surprisingly, make interacting with government more humane, not less.”

Amani Carter develops a new study on unmasking coded bias
Partially obscured head of Blind Justice statue against a backdrop of algorithmic code.

Amani Carter develops a new study on unmasking coded bias

The Class of 2022 law student works to identify biases and ‘stereotype threat’ in AI and help provide context for the conversation around mitigating those biases.

From Penn Carey Law

From ‘Indiana Jones’ to medieval robots
Professor Elly Truitt standing on Penn's campus

In her work and her teaching, historian of science Elly Truitt challenges assumptions. “The people who lived in the Middle Ages were definitely no less intelligent than we are, and they didn’t think they were living in the middle of anything,” she says. 

From ‘Indiana Jones’ to medieval robots

Historian of science Elly Truitt’s multidisciplinary investigations of the Middle Ages challenge assumptions about the period as a dark time in innovation and prompt a rethink of notions of ‘modern’ science.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Who should stop unethical A.I.?

Who should stop unethical A.I.?

Michael Kearns of the School of Engineering and Applied Science spoke about ethics and artificial intelligence, saying that regulatory agencies “are playing a serious game of catch-up. They don’t understand the technologies that they’re regulating anymore, or its uses, and they have no means of auditing it.”

Artificial intelligence and COVID-19: Can the machines save us?

Artificial intelligence and COVID-19: Can the machines save us?

Jason Moore of the Perelman School of Medicine spoke about how AI and machine learning are aiding the fight against COVID-19, but also warned, “If you’re only studying primarily Caucasian populations and want to apply that nationally, that may not work as well on a more diverse population. AI algorithms themselves can be biased and can pick and inflate biases in the data. Those are the things I worry about,” he said.

Localizing epilepsy ‘hotspots’
Scan of a brain

Localizing epilepsy ‘hotspots’

Student interns worked this summer with the Davis Lab in the Penn Epilepsy Center to research improvements to epilepsy diagnosis using the tools of machine learning and network analysis.