Alejandro Ribeiro: Expanding Applications of Network Science
The real power behind a network, says Alejandro Ribeiro, isn’t its component parts. It’s the myriad ways they connect with one another. The social bonds we share with others. The flow of information that makes the internet possible. Even the tiny electrical impulses that appear between neurons in the brain, letting us think, feel, taste, […]
Kathleen Stebe Wins 2018 Langmuir Lectureship Award
Kathleen Stebe, Penn Engineering’s Deputy Dean for Research and Richer & Elizabeth Goodwin Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has won the 2018 Langmuir Lectureship Award.
ModLab’s ‘SMORES’ Modify Their Environment to Get the Job Done
Given the exact parameters of the task at hand, a robot can assemble a car door or pack a box faster and more efficiently than any human, but such purpose-built machines aren’t good for much else. With that in mind, the history of robotics research is marked by devising ways of giving machines more and […]
Penn Engineers Update a User-friendly Device for Point-of-Care Diagnostics
In 2016, Penn Engineers published a paper introducing a hand-held device for detecting Zika virus. Using a Thermos, a microfluidics chip and a smartphone, the “smart-connected cup” can screen saliva, urine, or blood samples for signature genetic material of the Zika virus. The device streamlines and condenses processes that health providers usually carry out in […]
At TED, Professor Aaswath Raman Talks About the Cold of Space as a Renewable Resource
Aaswath Raman, one of the newest members of the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, is using his background in optics and materials science to take an ancient idea and apply it to a pressing, modern-day problem: cooling. He spoke at this year’s TED conference in Vancouver, explaining how harnessing “radiative cooling” could be the […]
Machine Learning Researchers Try to Improve Working Conditions for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Workers
In the late 1700s, a Hungarian inventor built what appeared to be a chess-playing automaton, cloaked in Ottoman robes and a turban. The machine, known as the Mechanical Turk, impressed crowds and challenged opponents across Europe and the Americas. Eventually it was revealed that the Turk was not automated at all. Rather, a skilled chess […]
Paving the Way for Safer, Smaller Batteries and Fuel Cells
Research led by Karen I. Winey, TowerBrook Foundation Faculty Fellow, professor and Chair in Materials Science and Engineering, and Edward B. Trigg, then a doctoral student in her lab, introduces a new and versatile kind of solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) that has twice the proton conductivity of the current state-of-the-art material.
Science and Politics: A Q&A with Molly Sheehan
Molly Sheehan, postdoctoral researcher in Bioengineering, sat down with Penn Today to discuss her path towards becoming a scientist, what led her to run for office, and the changes she hopes to be able to make.
An Innovative Approach to Better Energy Storage
Led by Shu Yang, Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, a Penn/Drexel research team has engineered a way to manipulate nanomaterials to stand up vertically on a scale that has potential for industrial applications.
GRASP’s Research Experience for Teachers Featured in NSF Video Showcase
Penn Engineering’s GRASP lab is committed to sharing its expertise in cutting-edge robotics with the wider world. In 2015, it received a National Science Foundation grant to conduct a Research Experience for Teachers program, in which Philadelphia middle school teachers spend a summer in the lab, learning aspects of robotics that they can then impart […]