Building futures through LEGOs
On Feb. 10, approximately 400 middle schoolers from schools in Southeastern Pennsylvania gathered around field models in Houston Hall to watch robots they had built out of LEGOs simulate collecting rain water, helping flowers grow, and putting out fires. The students were participating in the regional FIRST LEGO League (FLL) tournament. FLL, a middle school […]
Self-Reflected: Bringing the Conscious Brain to Life
If you’re lucky enough to wander into the Your Brain exhibit at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, you’re in for a mesmerizing treat — a portrait of the brain, ironically, as it views a work of art. The stunning display, appropriately called Self Reflected, depicts a thin slice of the human brain scaled up by a factor […]
Nicholas Yiu: Voices of Penn Engineering Master’s Alumni
This is the third of our series of articles written by Penn Engineering alums about their experiences at Penn and how it shaped their lives. This article is by Nicholas Yiu, who graduated with a master’s in Nanotechnology in 2016. He is currently working as a process engineer at Heliotrope Technologies, a startup company based […]
Mayur Naik: Building Better Software
In many industries and academic fields, more people are finding it helpful to know some basic programming, but not all of them want to get full degrees in computer science. Meanwhile, as modern software ecosystems grow more and more complex, even those who do spend their undergraduate years studying computer science cannot learn everything. As […]
Penn Engineers Present New ‘Eye-on-a-Chip’
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dan Huh and colleagues presented their research on a new ‘eye-on-a-chip,’ an artificial organ composed of living cells and a blinking, hydrogel eyelid. Researchers could potentially use the eye as a model to study conditions such as dry eye disease, and to […]
Looking for Patterns in the Folded Genome
Jennifer Phillips-Cremins and colleagues recently collaborated on a new technique, published in Nature Methods, of searching for folding patterns in the human genome. A profile of Phillips-Cremins, published in the same journal, explores the path of interests that led her to this type of research.
Vivek Shenoy: Mathematical Models for the Mechanical Body
While they can seem imperfect on the surface, our bodies are in fact finely tuned machines. Joint surfaces glide effortlessly across one another. Tendons and muscles work together to control our movements, letting us run laps, hold conversations, scarf down cheesesteaks and play piano. This complex collection of biological levers, springs and pulleys is enough […]
Sherin Sonia Jacob: Voices of Penn Engineering Master’s Alumni
This is the second of our series of articles, written by Penn Engineering alums in their own words, of their experiences at Penn and how it shaped their lives. Our second article is written by Sherin Sonia Jacob, who graduated with a master’s in Biotechnology in 2011. She is a senior health care and pharmaceutical […]
Living in a Material World
On Feb. 3, hundreds of elementary and middle-school aged students and their families gathered around tables for hands-on demonstrations and workshops with themes ranging from “bouncy balls and borax” to “muggle magic.” The demonstrations were part of the eighth annual Philly Materials Science and Engineering Day, a daylong festival hosted this year by Penn’s Laboratory […]
Dennis Discher Part of Finalist Team in £20 Million UK Cancer Research Challenge
Dennis Discher, Robert D. Bent Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is a member of one of the ten international, multidisciplinary research teams named in the second round of Cancer Research UK’s Grand Challenge. Winning teams will receive up to £20 million, or roughly $28 million, over the course of five years […]