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20 breakthroughs of 2025
Masoud Akbarzadeh holding up one of the fabricated materials.

The Polyhedral Structures Laboratory is housed at the Pennovation Center and brings together designers, engineers, and computer scientists to reimagine the built world. Using graphic statics, a method where forces are mapped as lines, they design forms that balance compression and tension. These result in structures that use far fewer materials while remaining strong and efficient.

(Image: Eric Sucar)

20 breakthroughs of 2025

From ancient tombs and tiny robots to personalized gene editing and AI weather models, Penn’s 2025 research portfolio showed how curiosity—paired with collaboration—moves knowledge into impact and stretches across disciplines and continents.

5 min. read

Mapping the links between brain development and mental health
Sheet of a child’s brain scans.

A collaborative team led by Theodore D. Satterthwaite, Golia Shafiei, and Michael P. Milham has developed a large-scale, open data resource for mapping brain development and its associations with mental health.

(Image: fmajor via Getty Images)

Mapping the links between brain development and mental health

A new large-scale, open data resource from the Perelman School of Medicine and collaborators helps researchers link brain development with mental health disorders.

3 min. read

$27.2M national effort launches to unify Alzheimer’s research data

$27.2M national effort launches to unify Alzheimer’s research data

Yong Chen, Leonard Davis Institute senior fellow and professor of biostatistics, epidemiology, and informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine, has been selected by the National Institute on Aging initiative to establish a collaborative network and data ecosystem to accelerate discovery and improve prevention, detection, and treatment strategies for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

Eva Dyer is listening to the brain’s code with a little help from AI
Eva Dyer

Eva Dyer is the Rachleff Associate Professor in Bioengineering and in computer and information science at the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

(Image: Courtesy of Penn Engineering)

Eva Dyer is listening to the brain’s code with a little help from AI

Penn professor Eva Dyer merges her background in music and audio engineering with artificial intelligence to help uncover brain signals and explore how the brain processes information.

Melissa Pappas

2 min. read

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

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