Penn Engineers’ Liquid Crystal Force Fields Enable New Kind of Microrobotics
A new study, published in Nature Communications, shows how simple glass particles can be instructed to follow sophisticated trajectories, which arise from their interactions with a liquid crystalline environment. The study was led by Kathleen Stebe, Richer & Elizabeth Goodwin Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, former Stebe lab member Francesca Serra, […]
Penn Engineering Groups Awarded NSF Grants to Work Toward ‘Quantum Leap’
One group will design robust, integrated quantum memory devices based on defects in diamond, and the other group will develop materials to encode and decode quantum information in single photons. These technologies will be part of the safest and most secure information network ever seen.
Reducing Complexity to Increase Security
In collaboration with Carnegie-Mellon University and Stanford, Penn Engineers Receive $7.5M Office of Naval Research Grant on software complexity reduction.
Automatic Dubbing App Wins PennApps XVIII
Last weekend, more than a thousand student hackers arrived at Penn Engineering for the eighteenth iteration of PennApps, the original student-run collegiate hackathon. Over the course of two days, they were tasked with forming teams and making the best software or hardware applications they could devise, with more than $80,000 in prizes on the line.
New Microscopes Will Allow Researchers to See Small and Think Big
Two high-resolution microscopes will allow researchers to study and test materials at the atomic level with unprecedented precision.
Powering the Future with Giant Clams
In 2014, Shu Yang, of the Materials Science and Engineering, joined School of Arts and Sciences’ biophysicist Alison Sweeney on an unusual quest. Backed by a NSF INSPIRE grant for bold, interdisciplinary research, the duo aimed to unlock the solar-powered secrets of the giant clam. Now, Sweeney and Yang are combining their knowledge of how […]
Dental Plaque is No Match for Catalytic Nanoparticles
Combine a diet high in sugar with poor oral hygiene habits and dental cavities, or caries, will likely result. The sugar triggers the formation of an acidic biofilm, known as plaque, on the teeth, eroding the surface. Early childhood caries is a severe form of tooth decay that affects one in every four children in […]
New GRASP Project Aims to Leverage ‘Embodied Intelligence’ via a Robotic Squirrel
It takes about a year before human infants master their own motor skills well enough to walk. Legged robots don’t have it so easy. Only the most advanced can walk with a smooth, natural gait, and even those can be stymied by a small pile of rubble or sand. A team of researchers, led from […]
Penn and Lehigh Research Team Seeks Alternative Ammonia Production Methods for Sustainable Fertilizers
A Penn Engineering team from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, including John M. Vohs, Carl V. S. Patterson Professor and Chair, Raymond J. Gorte, Russell Pearce and Elizabeth Crimian Heuer Professor, and Aleksandra Vojvodic, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation, is collaborating with Lehigh University’s Steven McIntosh on research that seeks an alternative production […]
Using Statistics to Uncover the Truth About Individual Cells
Researchers at Penn have developed a better method for interpreting data from single-cell RNA sequencing technologies. This research is built on a collaboration between The Wharton School, Mingyao Li at the Perelman School of Medicine, and Arjun Raj’s group at the School of Engineering and Applied Science.