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Exhibition as conversation
Exterior view of “(Ex)Urban Futures of the Recent Past” artwork.

Exterior view of “(Ex)Urban Futures of the Recent Past” at Galleria Thomas Schultz in Berlin.

(Image: Courtesy of Weitzman News)

Exhibition as conversation

For three faculty members in the Department of Fine Arts, curating exhibitions offers the opportunity to explore relationships between works of art, art and politics, history, and the environment.

From the Weitzman School of Design

2 min. read

Decoding ancient immunity networks
Hand holding a blood vial that reads "complement (C3 + C4)"

A collaborative team from the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Perelman School of Medicine have unraveled the mathematics of a 500-million-year-old protein network that acts like the body’s bouncer, “deciding” which foreign materials get degraded by immune cells and which are allowed entry.

(Image / iStock Md Saiful Islam Khan)

Decoding ancient immunity networks

A collaborative team from Penn Medicine and Penn Engineering have  unraveled the mathematics of a 500-million-year-old protein network that “decides” which foreign materials are friend or foe.

Nathi Magubane , Ian Scheffler , Holly Wojcik , Matt Toal

5 min. read

Weitzman team selected for Special Recognition in the Los Angeles Small Lots, Big Impacts Design Competition

Weitzman team selected for Special Recognition in the Los Angeles Small Lots, Big Impacts Design Competition

FORMA (led by associate professor of practice Daniel Markiewicz and Miroslava Brooks) and Studio Zimm (led by Weitzman alum Michael Zimmerman) teamed up to design a project for the Los Angeles Small Lots, Big Impacts design competition, and received Special Recognition for their work on both sites within the Gentle Density category.

‘Elusive Cures: Why Neuroscience Hasn’t Solved Brain Disorders—and How We Can Change That’
Cover of Elusive Cures book next to headshot of Nicole Rust.

Tackling brain conditions, says psychology professor Nicole Rust, requires thinking about the brain not as a domino chain but as a complex dynamical system with feedback loops.

nocred

‘Elusive Cures: Why Neuroscience Hasn’t Solved Brain Disorders—and How We Can Change That’

The first book from psychology professor Nicole Rust of the School of Arts & Sciences dives into why research on conditions like Alzheimer’s and depression hasn’t translated more effectively into better treatments.

5 min. read

New chair of Orthopaedics starts a new chapter in a lifetime of service
Benjamin Potter holding a piece of prosthetic hardware.

Benjamin “Kyle” Potter demonstrates how the OPRA implant (Integrum LLC), which is FDA-approved for osseointegration following transfemoral amputation, fits into the AXOR II failsafe device, directly linking a patient's residual bone to an external prosthesis.

(Image: Courtesy of Penn Medicine News)

New chair of Orthopaedics starts a new chapter in a lifetime of service

Following a distinguished military career, Benjamin ‘Kyle’ Potter is bringing his battle-tested expertise to Penn.

From Penn Medicine News

2 min. read

What can ants and naked-mole rats teach about societal roles?
Leafcutter ants moving around a bright green leaf.

In eusocial superorganisms like leafcutter ant colonies, labor is divvied up according to body shape and size, but PIK Professor Shelley Berger and her team discovered that molecular signals can override that blueprint. Their findings reveal how simple neuropeptides can reprogram ant behavior, reshuffling roles in nature’s most disciplined workforce.

(Image: Courtesy of Tierney Scarpa)

What can ants and naked-mole rats teach about societal roles?

PIK Professor Shelley Berger and colleagues explored the genetic basis of labor distribution in communal-dwelling species and discovered that pathways dating back hundreds of millions of years are conserved across animal kingdoms. Their findings offer fundamental insights into complex social behaviors.

5 min. read

What is an NPU? A Penn expert explains
A computer chip being placed by a rubber-gloved hand.

Image: Narumon Bowonkitwanchai via Getty Images

What is an NPU? A Penn expert explains

Benjamin C. Lee, a professor of electrical and systems engineering, explains what a neural processing unit (NPU) is and why it matters in the age of artificial intelligence.

5 min. read

How cable news has diverged from broadcast news
Person sitting on couch watching news.

Image: simonkr via Getty Images

How cable news has diverged from broadcast news

A team of researchers from the Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Pennsylvania find that cable news has increasingly diverged from broadcast news in the topics covered and language used.

3 min. read

Penn Nursing’s Jane Muir wins national research award

Penn Nursing’s Jane Muir wins national research award

Muir, an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Health at Penn Nursing and emergency medicine at Penn Medicine, and a senior fellow in the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research and in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, has won the 2025 Nurse Researcher Award from the Emergency Nurses Association. The award honors individuals who have significantly contributed to the field of emergency nursing through research, dissemination of findings, and/or utilization of research to improve patient outcomes.