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Natural Sciences

Solar system exploration Q&A with Cullen Blake
a satellite flying above earth with the moon in the distant background

Solar system exploration Q&A with Cullen Blake

Blake, an observational astronomer at Penn who specializes in the search for exoplanets, discusses the busy start of 2019 in the research of solar system exploration.

Erica K. Brockmeier

Electric bond
Presentation ceremony with background image of Kane and Mele

During the gala ceremony held on Nov. 4 at NASA’s Hangar 1 in Mountain View, Calif., Charles Kane and Eugene Mele were presented the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics award by writer and science educator Lucy Hawking (the daughter of Stephen Hawking) and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Electric bond

Behind the discovery of a new class of electronic materials is a 20-year collaboration between two Penn physicists, winners of the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Angelo Fichera

Up, up, and away
BLAST telescope with Mark Devlin and students

As the project manager of the $100 million Simons Observatory project, Devlin (center) is working to keep the numerous and disparate components of the project from falling behind due to pandemic-related shutdowns while recognizing that some delays and disruptions will be inevitable. His advice is to not “sweat the small stuff.” (Pre-pandemic image)

Up, up, and away

Mark Devlin and his team behind BLAST are about to embark on another scientific adventure in Antarctica, this time measuring how stars form in our galaxy.