Science & Technology

Penn Mechanical Engineers Win Top Prizes at the Cornell Cup

The senior design classes held in each of the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s six departments are an opportunity for University of Pennsylvania students to put their skills to the test, by picking a real-world problem and developing a new piece of technology to solve it.

Evan Lerner

Penn’s Kang Ko Has a Promising Future in Academic Dentistry

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone Kang Ko never planned to become a typical dentist. Long before he came to the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine to pursue his degree, he fell in love with teaching and research. 

Katherine Unger Baillie

Penn Telescope Minerva-Red Joins Hunt for Earth’s Twin

University of Pennsylvania astronomers are celebrating the dedication of a new planet-hunting telescope known as Minerva-Red. Installed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona, Minerva-Red is part of the Minerva project, an array of low-cost telescopes that are designed to discover planets orbiting stars other than the sun.

Evan Lerner

Penn Researchers Show That Mental ‘Map’ and ‘Compass’ Are Two Separate Systems

If you have a map, you can know where you are without knowing which way you are facing. If you have a compass, you can know which way you're facing without knowing where you are. Animals from ants to mice to humans use both kinds of information to reorient themselves in familiar places, but how they determine this information from environmental cues is not well understood.

Evan Lerner

Penn Researchers Join Two NSF Projects on Medical Cyber-physical Systems

The University of Pennsylvania is participating in two National Science Foundation projects designed to advance cyber­physical systems with medical applications. Cyber­physical systems are built from and depend upon the seamless integration of computation and physical components.

Evan Lerner

Penn Researchers Develop Liquid-crystal-based Compound Lenses That Work Like Insect Eyes

The compound eyes found in insects and some sea creatures are marvels of evolution. There, thousands of lenses work together to provide sophisticated information without the need for a sophisticated brain. Human artifice can only begin to approximate these naturally self-assembled structures, and, even then, they require painstaking manufacturing techniques.

Evan Lerner

Beth Winkelstein Appointed Penn Vice Provost for Education

Beth Winkelstein has been named vice provost for education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a professor of bioengineering and the associate dean for undergraduate education in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Leo Charney

New Dinosaur’s Keen Nose Made it a Formidable Predator, Penn Study Finds

A researcher from the University of Pennsylvania has identified a species of dinosaur closely related to Velociraptor, the group of creatures made infamous by the movie "Jurassic Park.” The newly named species likely possessed a keen sense of smell that would have made it a formidable predator.

Katherine Unger Baillie



In the News


Associated Press

Here’s why experts don’t think cloud seeding played a role in Dubai’s downpour

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that many people blaming cloud seeding for Dubai storms are climate change deniers trying to divert attention from what’s really happening.

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Big Think

Can we stop AI hallucinations? And do we even want to?

Chris Callison-Burch of the School of Engineering and Applied Science says that auto-regressive generation can make it difficult for language learning models to perform fact-based or symbolic reasoning.

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Salon.com

“Record-shattering” heat wave in Antarctica — yep, climate change is the culprit

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that persistent summer weather extremes like heat waves are becoming more common as people continue to warm the planet with carbon pollution.

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CNET

How the solar eclipse will affect solar panels and the grid

Benjamin Lee of the School of Engineering and Applied Science says that the electrical grid will have to figure out how to match supply and demand during brief windows where the energy source goes away.

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Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

Scientists struggle to explain ‘really weird’ spike in world temperatures

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that tendencies to exaggerate climate science in favor of “doomist” narratives helps no one except the fossil fuel industry.

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Vox.com

Spring is here very early. That’s not good

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that plant-flowering, tree-leafing, and egg-hatching are all markers associated with spring that are happening sooner.

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The New York Times

Can your personal medical devices be recycled?

A lab at the School of Engineering and Applied Science led the development of a COVID test made from bacterial cellulose, an organic compound.

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Tampa Bay Times

Could Florida electric bills go up because of a fuel made from manure?

Danny Cullenward of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Weitzman School of Design says that federal and California state subsidies have led to a gold rush of companies trying to get into the business of renewable natural gas around the country.

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WESA Radio (Pittsburgh)

Pa. environmental, religious and other groups criticize Shapiro plan for ignoring climate change

A study by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Weitzman School of Design found that Pennsylvania would benefit overall from joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

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The New York Times

Why don’t we just ban fossil fuels?

Joseph Romm of the School of Arts & Sciences says that stronger action against fossil fuels is essential to save the planet.

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