News from

Graduate Students

Reset All Filters
444 Results
Kelly Jordan-Sciutto on advancing graduate education through Penn Forward
Kelly Jordan-Sciutto smiling at fellow panelists.

Kelly Jordan-Sciutto, vice provost for graduate education and chair of the Penn Forward working group for Graduate and Professional Training. 

nocred

Kelly Jordan-Sciutto on advancing graduate education through Penn Forward

Kelly Jordan-Sciutto, vice provost for graduate education and chair of the Penn Forward Graduate and Professional Training working group, says, ‘I don’t want students to walk uphill both ways in the snow just because I had to.’
How a coral stiffens its skeleton on demand
Chenhao Hu holds up a 3D-printed model of a sclerite.

Penn Engineering doctoral student Chenhao Hu holding a 3D-printed model of a sclerite, the tiny mineral particles that make up the coral’s skeleton and whose unique shape allows the organism to tune its own stiffness.

(Image: Bella Ciervo)

How a coral stiffens its skeleton on demand

Researchers at Penn Engineering have discovered how a coral’s skeleton compacts itself to ward off danger, a novel discovery of “granular jamming” in a living organism.

Ian Scheffler

2 min. read

A Lauder Institute intercultural venture in Oman and the UAE
Lauder Institute students looking at a scale model of a city.

Lauder Institute students observing at a scale model of a city during the Dubai leg of their international trip.

(Image: Mili Lozada-Cerna)

A Lauder Institute intercultural venture in Oman and the UAE

Graduate students in the Lauder Intercultural Ventures program traveled from Oman to Dubai to learn about urban growth, trade, tourism, and development in areas entrenched in cultural history and with deep religious roots.

2 min. read

Ph.D. researcher Yefan Zhi wins the Hangai Prize

Ph.D. researcher Yefan Zhi wins the Hangai Prize

Yefan Zhi, a third-year Ph.D. student in architecture at the Weitzman School and a member of the Polyhedral Structures Laboratory has won the Hangai Prize at the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures Annual Symposium 2025 for co-authoring the paper “Surface-Toolpath Twins of Shell Components in 3D Concrete Printing for Optimized Buildability and Surface Quality”.

Truth Mjumbe launches AI-powered tool to preserve memory and dignity
Truth Mjumbe.

Truth Mjumbe is a graduate student in Professional Counseling at Penn’s Graduate School of Education.

(Image: Courtesy of Penn GSE)

Truth Mjumbe launches AI-powered tool to preserve memory and dignity

Professional counseling student at Penn GSE Truth Mjumbe built Recall Aid, an AI-powered memory-support platform inspired by his own experience with epilepsy, his grandfather’s dementia, and his father’s work preserving civil rights histories.

Kat Stein

2 min. read

A built-in ‘off switch’ to stop persistent pain

Collaborative research on the neural basis of chronic pain led by neuroscientist J. Nicholas Betley finds that a critical hub in the brainstem, has a built-in “off switch” to stop persistent pain signals from reaching the rest of the brain. Their findings could help clinicians better understand chronic pain. (Pictured) Flurorescence imaging reveals hunger neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus labeled in maroon with nuclei shown in blue.

(Image: J. Nicholas Betley)

A built-in ‘off switch’ to stop persistent pain

J. Nicholas Betley has led collaborative research seeking the neural basis of long-term sustained pain and finds that a critical hub in the brainstem holds a mechanism for stopping pain signals from reaching the rest of the brain. Their findings could help clinicians better understand chronic pain and lead to new, more efficacious treatments.

4 min. read

Women’s labor and political agency in Delhi
Four women street vendors sell shoes and footwear on a Delhi street.

Four women street vendors sell shoes and footwear on a Delhi street.

(Image: Kannagi Khanna)

Women’s labor and political agency in Delhi

Rashi Sabherwal, a doctoral student in political science, explores how women engage politically in society in informal roles through her research in India.

2 min. read