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Mechanical Engineering

The Y-Prize: Elevating collaboration and innovation in competition
Valery Yakubovich

Valery Yakubovich, executive director of the Mack Institute. (Image: James Blocker)

The Y-Prize: Elevating collaboration and innovation in competition

Y-Prize is a competition that sees Penn students working together across schools and disciplines, and directly applying what they’ve learned in classes and real life.

Dee Patel

For ‘spirit of innovation,’ three from Penn named National Academy of Inventors Fellows
Penn faculty Vijay Kumar, Katalin Kariko, and Drew Weissman

Vijay Kumar of Penn Engineering and Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman of the Perelman School of Medicine have been named Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors, recognizing their contributions to inventions that have made a meaningful impact on society. (Images: Penn Engineering/Penn Medicine)

For ‘spirit of innovation,’ three from Penn named National Academy of Inventors Fellows

Vijay Kumar of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman of the Perelman School of Medicine were honored with the recognition.

Katherine Unger Baillie , Nathi Magubane , Alex Gardner

Artists and Penn Ph.D.s collabed to explore the intersection of art and engineering. Check out their exhibit

Artists and Penn Ph.D.s collabed to explore the intersection of art and engineering. Check out their exhibit

In the culminating project of Penn’s Robotics Art Residency, three artists hosted at the Pennovation Center developed collaborative exhibits with Ph.D. students at the GRASP Lab of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Weitzman School of Design.

Inspired by the human heart, Penn Engineers design tear-resistant soft material
Glass fibers embedded in stretchy silicone.

Using a 3D printer, Penn Engineering researchers are able to precisely control the alignment of glass fibers embedded within this stretchy silicone. The stripes represent regions with different fiber alignment patterns, and thus different levels of resistance to the tear making its way across the sample. (Image: Penn Engineering Today)

Inspired by the human heart, Penn Engineers design tear-resistant soft material

Engineers have designed a soft material for robotics, medical devices, and wearable technologies that are both tear-resistant and able to resist deformation.

From Penn Engineering Today

Music-making and the flow of aerosols
Person playing a tuba in a dark room with a green laser shedding light on water mist

Members of The Philadelphia Orchestra, including Carol Jantsch, principal tuba player, took part in a study led by Penn scientists Paulo Arratia and Douglas Jerolmack. Their investigation examined the aerosols professional musicians generate as they play. (Image: Courtesy of Paulo Arratia)

Music-making and the flow of aerosols

If simply breathing can spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus to others nearby, what about blowing into a tuba? Researchers from the School of Engineering the School of Arts & Sciences used fluid mechanics to study the movement of aerosols generated by musicians.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Center for Engineering Mechanobiology 2.0: Developing ‘mechanointelligence’
Microscopic view of an individual cell illuminated in bright colors.

The dynamics governing mechanointelligence vary greatly along time- and length-scales, so detailed models of individual cells and their components are necessary to connect the effects of their physical environments to the downstream effects those forces have on biological processes. (Image: Penn Engineering Today)

Center for Engineering Mechanobiology 2.0: Developing ‘mechanointelligence’

The new interdisciplinary Center for Engineering Mechanobiology brings together researchers from the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Perelman School of Medicine together with those from across campus and beyond around the concept of “mechanointelligence.”

Evan Lerner