News from

Natural Sciences

Reset All Filters
153 Results
When the Schuylkill swallowed the city
Two people looking at the flooded highway overpass in Philadelphia after flooding from Hurricane Ida.

Image: Jessica Kourkounis / Stringer via Getty Images

When the Schuylkill swallowed the city

New Penn research shows that Hurricane Ida wasn’t a once-in-a-century anomaly but a preview of how climate change, urbanization, and aging infrastructure are rewriting flood risk.

5 min. read

The science of winemaking
Students listen to explanation at winery.

Students listened to an information session in a vineyard at Cobos winery prior to a sit-down tasting.

(Image: Kelly Williamson)

The science of winemaking

The Biochemical Engineering of Wine course provides a real-world application of engineering principles, teaching students about the science behind the processes involved with making wine.

3 min. read

Making ‘light’ work of computing  
Futuristic digital intelligent chip data processing technology

Image: Chayanan via Getty Images

Making ‘light’ work of computing  

Penn physicists led by Bo Zhen have created hybrid light-matter particles that interact strongly enough to compute, pointing toward ultrafast, low-energy optical AI hardware.

2 min. read

What happens when an iceberg melts?
An iceberg in Iceland.

Research from Hugo Ulloa, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth & Environmental Science, and Daisuke Noto of Hokkaido University, models how icebergs melt and move in their environments.

(Image: Gabi Musat / 500px via Getty Images)

What happens when an iceberg melts?

With ice balls, lasers, and cameras, School of Arts & Sciences’ Hugo Ulloa recreated a melting iceberg in his lab. This project revealed that icebergs don’t sit passively on the water’s surface but actually release dense, cold water and jet across the surface, churning and mixing everything in their paths.

From Omnia

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

Caitlyn Chen’s path to becoming a physician-scientist
Caitlyn Chen.

nocred

Caitlyn Chen’s path to becoming a physician-scientist

The fourth-year in the College of Arts & Sciences, who will pursue medical school after graduation, spent her time at Penn applying deep knowledge of the natural sciences to research more affordable microsensors for medical devices.

3 min. reada

Shujie Yang harnesses sound to build the next generation of microrobotic medicine
Shujie Yang

Shujie Yang is at the frontier of single-cell acoustic manipulation, an emerging field that blends physics, mechanobiology, and medicine.

(Image: Courtesy of Penn Engineering)

Shujie Yang harnesses sound to build the next generation of microrobotic medicine

Yang’s lab at Penn Engineering uses precisely-controlled ultrasound waves to develop microscale tools that can manipulate cells, viruses, and soft materials without physical contact.

Melissa Pappas

2 min. read

Building better delivery vehicles for medicine
A machine in Michael Mitchell’s lab.

Image: Courtesy of Penn Engineering

Building better delivery vehicles for medicine

Penn researchers in the Mitchell Lab are modifying lipid nanoparticles, the delivery vehicles for mRNA therapies, to make them more potent, precise, and better tolerated.

Ian Scheffler

2 min. read

Topology helps build more robust photonic networks
(From left) Xilin Feng, Liang Feng, and Tianwei Wu in an engineering lab.

(From left) Xilin Feng, Liang Feng, and Tianwei Wu developed a microring array that allows multiple beams of light to travel simultaneously, protected by topology.

(Image: Sylvia Zhang)

Topology helps build more robust photonic networks

Researchers at Penn Engineering draw insights from topology to help drive promising, light-based technological advances in computing and communications.

Ian Scheffler

2 min. read