Sacrifice versus suffering: Examining unheard stories of the past
Fourth-year Rafaella Lambrinos traveled to London to study archival records about the Bengal famine of 1943 and British food rationing, gaining greater insight into the study of the past.
Reimagining a shelter as a supportive space for childhood
HAVEN, a winning project of the 2026 President’s Engagement Prize developed by three fourth-year undergraduates, will launch an after-school program for K-5 children at Jane Addams Place, a homeless shelter in North Philadelphia.
A dedicated care team at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine, including experts in dermatology, anesthesia, and radiation oncology, never gave up on a determined baby lamb.
Empowering unhoused patients through comprehensive eye care
Penn fourth-years Eric Lee, Janine Haros, and Justin Wang will use a President’s Engagement Prize to elevate vision health in unhoused individuals across Philadelphia through free eye screenings, tailored care coordination, and interactive patient education.
Margaret Zhu and the Serpent Robotics team have leveraged Penn resources to create a tree-cutting robot, improving safety in a dangerous industry. The President’s Innovation Prize allows Zhu to iterate and pilot the device over the next year.
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.
Boosting Infrastructure Investment for Global Cities
Susan Wachter, co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research (IUR) and William Glasgall, Volcker Alliance Public Finance Adviser and Penn IUR Fellow, will speak with a panel of global public finance experts about how global cities and other subnational governments could adopt attributes of America’s municipal market structure. The conversation will cover how a credit-driven culture may help meet the demands of population growth and climate change. Free and open to the public. Register to attend.
To honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—which was typeset and printed within 12 hours starting on July 4, 1776—the Common Press will host a 12-hour, two-day community typesetting event during which all are invited to hand-set metal type to help create a historically accurate replica. The final product will remain available for printing through September 2026. Part of America 250 at Penn programming, this event is free and open to the public. Register to attend.
Penn’s guiding principles are the University’s enduring values and distinctive strengths: anchored, inventive, interwoven, and engaged. The practices support and strengthen Penn’s core educational mission.
At Penn Today, we focus on some of the ways the University is putting this framework into action. From student, faculty, and staff profiles to research updates and event coverage, Penn Today highlights the latest examples of the University’s principled approach to excellence.
Penn’s community engagement progress at the turn of the century
The third installment in the limited series ‘Chapters of Change’ explores how Penn has led community engagement efforts in public education, economic development, and neighborhood prosperity during a time of widespread change in the nation’s cities.
Students test one way to combat extreme heat in Philadelphia
Third-year students Nafisa Bangura and Angelica Dadda expanded upon a multidisciplinary research endeavor to evaluate a reflective pavement coating as a tool to mitigate extreme heat. Their work may inform policy efforts to improve urban heat resilience.
Quote of the day: Organizational psychologist Adam Grant on rethinking self-doubt and building confidence
Adam Grant of the Wharton School is quoted on rethinking imposter syndrome, saying, “If you doubt yourself, shouldn’t you also doubt your low opinion of yourself?”
The US decoupling from the global gloom has limits
Mohamed El-Erian of the Wharton School writes about the geoeconomic environment and the limits of the U.S. stock market amid mounting risks of a global recession.
