Science & Technology

PHILADELPHIA — Six professors from the University of Pennsylvania, representing four schools, have been elected members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), one of the nation's highest honors in biomedicine.

It’s almost as far away from Philadelphia urban life as one can imagine. Or, to be precise, it’s a 14-hour plane ride followed by a 16-hour bus ride capped by a 40-minute ride in a truck away from the University of Pennsylvania campus.

PHILADELPHIA — Making uniform coatings is a common engineering challenge, and, when working at the nanoscale, even the tiniest cracks or defects can be a big problem. New research from University of Pennsylvania engineers has shown a new way of avoiding such cracks when depositing thin films of nanoparticles.  

PHILADELPHIA — The colors of a butterfly’s wings are unusually bright and beautiful and are the result of an unusual trait; the way they reflect light is fundamentally different from how color works most of the time.

This weekend, Penn hosted the first Ivy Plus Symposium and workshops for diverse scholars, a national conference designed to encourage exceptional undergraduate students to pursue advanced training in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields. 

PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine has been added to the list of United Way charities to which individuals in the Philadelphia area may donate as part of a workplace campaign.

PHILADELPHIA — Whether human or baboon, it helps to have friends. For both species, studies have shown that robust social networks lead to better health and longer lives.

PHILADELPHIA — We couldn’t live without our immune systems, always tuned to detect and eradicate invading pathogens and particles. But sometimes the immune response goes overboard, triggering autoimmune diseases like lupus, asthma or inflammatory bowel disease.

PHILADELPHIA — A collaboration between researchers at Columbia University and Marija Drndić of the University of Pennsylvania has been awarded a three-year, $1.5 million grant for a project aimed at reducing the cost of genome sequencing.

PHILADELPHIA — It’s not every day that a new academic discipline is born. But that’s exactly what happened in 2010, when the Project on Bioethics, Sexuality and Gender Identity — or “Queer Bioethics,” for short — came to life at the University of Pennsylvania.