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Penn Medicine, CHOP team awarded Breakthrough Prize for developing gene therapy for inherited blindness
Jean Bennett and Albert Maguire

Physician-scientists Jean Bennett and Al Maguire (right and left, respectively, pictured in their home), and Katherine High received the 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for their trailblazing work on the first FDA-approved gene therapy for an inherited condition, which dramatically improves sight in people with a form of blindness called Leber congenital amaurosis.

(Image: Peggy Peterson)

Penn Medicine, CHOP team awarded Breakthrough Prize for developing gene therapy for inherited blindness

Jean Bennett, Albert Maguire, and Katherine High have been honored for their trailblazing work on the first FDA-approved gene therapy for an inherited condition.

From Penn Medicine News , Frank Otto

2 min. read

Gravity follows Newton and Einstein’s rules, even at cosmic scales
An artist's depiction of two galaxies, side-by-side, swriling at different velocites.

The cosmic microwave background, the faint afterglow of the Big Bang that fills all of space, passes through massive galaxy clusters whose motion slightly alters the light, allowing scientists to measure how fast the clusters are moving toward one another and test how strongly gravity pulls across the largest distances in the universe.

(Image: Courtesy of Lucy Reading/Simons Foundation)

Gravity follows Newton and Einstein’s rules, even at cosmic scales

By tracking galaxy clusters hundreds of millions of lightyears apart, Penn physicist Patricio Gallardo and collaborators find that the laws of gravity written by Newton and Einstein still hold, leaving little doubt that invisible dark matter exists.

3 min. read

Mapping the expanding cosmos: Dark Energy Survey unveils clearest picture yet
Terrestrial telescope in Chile under a starlit sky.

The Dark Energy Survey used a 570-megapixel camera mounted on the 4-metre Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile to image 5,000 square degrees of southern sky. The survey discovered more than 1,000 supernovae and mapped millions of galaxies to help astronomers better understand the accelerating expansion of our universe.

(Image: Courtesy of Dark Energy Survey Collaborative)

Mapping the expanding cosmos: Dark Energy Survey unveils clearest picture yet

The Dark Energy Survey collaborative, including Penn researchers, recently released an analysis that gives the clearest picture yet of how dark energy is driving the universe’s expansion and how matter—including galaxies and groups of galaxies—has been organized over cosmic time.

3 min. read

One School, many schools of thought
Mark Trodden.

School of Arts & Sciences dean Mark Trodden joins faculty in discussion for Omnia’s latest podcast series.

nocred

One School, many schools of thought

A special edition of the Penn Arts & Sciences “Ampersand” podcast features Dean Mark Trodden in conversation with SAS faculty from different disciplines.

Alex Schein

2 min. read

Hunting for relics of a universe past
a spherical halo created by dark matter.

Image courtesy of ESO/L. Calçada

Hunting for relics of a universe past

In the lab of associate professor of physics and astronomy Robyn Sanderson, Alexandra DiMauro and Mariam Tskitishvili search for hints about dark matter and analyze data that could inform what is known about how stars form.

Laura Dattaro

2 min. read

Penn ATLAS shares 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
Members of the Penn ATLAS team and others in front of the inner detector at the Large Hadron Collider.

Members of the Penn ATLAS team and others in front of the inner detector of ATLAS experiment.

(Image: ©CERN/Maximilien Brice)

Penn ATLAS shares 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

The team, which includes Joseph Kroll, Evelyn Thomson, Elliot Lipeles, Dylan Rankin, and Brig Williams from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, is part of an expansive collaboration studying high-energy collisions from the Large Hadron Collider.

Michele W. Berger

2 min. read

High-definition pictures of the early universe
Part of the installation of a telescope.

(Image courtesy of ACT Collaboration; ESA/Planck)

High-definition pictures of the early universe

Research by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration has led to the clearest and most precise images yet of the universe’s infancy—the cosmic microwave background radiation that was visible only 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

8 min. read