Science & Technology

Frederick Ding’s interest in making an impact by improving the lives of others begins with his work on campus assisting fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania.

Liquid crystals are remarkable materials that combine the optical properties of crystalline solids with the flow properties of liquids, characteristics that come together to enable the displays found in most computer monitors, televisions and smartphones.

Gene therapies developed by University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine researchers have worked to correct different forms of blindness.

Sarah Foster, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded a Winston Churchill Scholarship, a merit-based award for American college students who are outstanding in engineering, mathematics and physical and biological sciences.

A multi-disciplinary team from the University of Pennsylvania has published in Nature Methods a first-of-its-kind way to isolate RNA from live cells in their natural tissue microenvironment without damaging nearby cells. This allows the researchers to analyze how cell-to-cell chemical connections influence individual cell function and overall protein production.  

The field of metamaterials has produced structures with unprecedented abilities, including flat lenses, invisibility cloaks and even optical “metatronic” devices that can manipulate light in the way electronic circuitry manipulates the flow of electrons. 

One of the primary social motivations for scientific research is the ability to make better decisions based on the results.

Increasingly, biologists have come to realize that RNA is not merely a transitional state between DNA and proteins but plays a major role in determining whether and how genes are turned into a protein product. Gaining a deeper understanding of RNA regulation can help scientists shed light on diseases that arise when this function goes awry.

Leah Davidson, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, plans to pursue a career in business. But she wants to do so in an environmentally conscientious manner. So when, as a high school senior, she learned of an opportunity to visit one of the most untouched habitats on Earth, she jumped at the chance.

A team of material scientists, chemical engineers and physicists from the University of Pennsylvania has made another advance in their effort to use liquid crystals as a medium for assembling structures.