2018
Individualized Care Will Become the Standard for Depression Patients
In a new paper for the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, researchers Robert DeRubeis, Samuel H. Preston Term Professor in the Social Sciences, and Zachary Cohen of Psychology, address precision medicine, also known as customized-care, in the context of treatment for depression.
Michael Jones-Correa Named President’s Distinguished Professor
Michael Jones-Correa has been named the President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Jones-Correa joined Penn in 2016 from Cornell University, where he was Robert J. Katz Chair of the Department of Government. As a political scientist studying Latino politics and immigration to the United States, his research is focused on the political integration of new immigrant communities and their relations with the U.S.-born.
Restoring Vacant Lots Reduces Gun Violence and Crime
In cities across the U.S., about 15 percent of land is considered vacant or abandoned. These areas can foster criminal activity, and urban residents, especially those in low-income neighborhoods, often view vacant land as a threat to their health and safety.
The Master of Applied Positive Psychology Program Receives the “Friend of the ROCK” Award
The Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program is the recipient of the “Friend of the ROCK” award in recognition of the service learning projects students in the program have done with The ROCK Center for Youth Development, a nonprofit that serves teens in Michigan.
New Open-access Data Resource Aims to Bolster Collaboration in Global Infectious Disease Research
Population-based epidemiological studies provide new opportunities for innovation and collaboration among researchers addressing pressing global-health concerns. As with the vast quantities of information emerging in other fields, from economic modeling to weather surveillance to genomic medicine, the technical challenges of sharing and mining gigantic datasets can hamper such efforts.
Astronomers Reveal Secrets of Most Distant Supernova Ever Detected
An international team of astronomers, including Penn's Masao Sako, an associate professor of physics and astronomy, has confirmed the discovery of the most distant supernova ever detected, a huge cosmic explosion that took place 10.5 billion years ago when the universe was only a quarter of its current age.
5 Science-Based Tips for Building Love That Lasts
A new book, “Happy Together: Using the Science of Positive Psychology to Build Love That Lasts,” from husband-and-wife duo James Pawelski of the School of Arts and Sciences and Suzann Pileggi Pawelski, who earned her bachelor’s and master’s from Penn, offers science- and philosophy-backed tips to build a thriving romance.
Penn Language Center Awarded NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant
The Penn Language Center (PLC) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant entitled “Digital Humanities from an Indigenous Perspective,” which will be administered by EPIC (Educational Partnerships with Indigenous Communities). The grant will study how Native American tribes are using digital technology to revitalize their language and culture. The partnership will include four Native American partners and four major archives.
Chemists Develop Motion Capture-like Technology for Tracking Protein Shape
In many modern animated movies, the trick to achieving realistic movements for individual characters and objects lies in motion-capture technology. This process often involves someone wearing a tracking suit covered in small, colored balls while a camera captures the position of those colored balls, which is then used to represent how the person is moving.
Better Knowledge of Evolution Leads to Greater Acceptance of the Concept
Prevailing theories about evolution state that belief in the concept is tied only to a person’s politics, religion, or both. But according to new research published in BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biology, whether Americans accept or reject the subject also depends on how well they understand it.
Emily Steiner Receives the CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching
Emily Steiner, Professor of English, has been awarded the Committee for Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) Award for Excellence in Teaching. CARA became a standing committee of the Medieval Academy in 1969. It assists institutions and individual medievalists in meeting the challenges that face medieval studies in the classroom, the library, and other institutional settings locally and nationally.
Researchers Prove That Precisely Timed Brain Stimulation Improves Memory
Precisely timed electrical stimulation to the left side of the brain can reliably and significantly enhance learning and memory performance by as much as 15 percent, according to a team led by Michael Kahana, professor of psychology. It is the first time such a connection has been made and is a major advance toward the goal of Restoring Active Memory, a U.S.
Anna Weesner Wins Virgil Thomson Award in Vocal Music
Anna Weesner, Dr. Robert Weiss Professor of Music, has won the 2018 Virgil Thomson Award in Vocal Music. The award, endowed by the Virgil Thomson Foundation and administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, recognizes an American composer of vocal works. Candidates were nominated by the Academy’s members, and the winner was chosen by a special jury comprised of composers William Bolcom, Robert Beaser, John Harbison, and Tania León.
Warren Breckman Named Sheldon and Lucy Hackney Professor of History
Warren Breckman has been named Sheldon and Lucy Hackney Professor of History. Breckman is a leading intellectual and cultural historian of modern Europe. He is the author of three books, Karl Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory: Dethroning the Self, European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents, and Adventures of the Symbolic: Postmarxism and Radical Democracy.
Improvements in Mortality Rates Are Slowed by Rise in Obesity
With countless medical advances and efforts to curb smoking, one might expect that life expectancy in the United States would improve. Yet according to recent studies, there’s been a reduction in the rate of improvement in American mortality during the past three decades. According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a rise in obesity is to blame.
Team Uncovers the Physiology Behind the Hour-Long Mating Call of Midshipman Fish
Midshipman fish can generate a mating call that emits continuously from their bodies for a full hour. Biologists have puzzled over how this was possible, as the call requires the fish to contract and relax muscles around their swim bladder very quickly—360,000 times in an hour, to be precise—seemingly too fast for the necessary pumping of calcium ions required for muscle contraction. A new study led by Penn researchers provides an explanation for this display of physiological fortitude.
Physicist to Shed Light on an Emerging Field in Physics
Bo Zhen, an assistant professor of physics, has been awarded a Young Investigator Grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Zhen will receive $450,000 for a three-year period to investigate non-Hermitian topological photonics.
Experimentation Creates Unique English Course
During a lifetime of teaching, English professor Charles Bernstein has created and tested various writing “experiments” that now number 95 on a list used by professors and writers worldwide.Bernstein used many of those writing exercises in his English 111 “Experimental Writing” course last semester. The students published their work in an online book, Paper Excuse, in December.
Political Scientist Rudra Sil Reconsiders Russia
Rudra Sil, the director of the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business, does research in the fields of comparative and international politics with a special interest in Russian and post-communist studies, Russian foreign policy, and United States-Russia relations.
2017
Anne Norton Named Stacey and Henry Jackson President’s Distinguished Professor
Anne Norton, Professor and Department Chair of Political Science, has been named the inaugural Stacey and Henry Jackson President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science. A scholar of political theory, Norton is the author of seven books, including On the Muslim Question and 95 Theses on Politics, Culture and Method. She is Co-Founding Editor of the journal Theory and Event and on the executive board of the journal Political Theory.
Dagmawi Woubshet Is Ahuja Family Presidential Associate Professor
Dagmawi Woubshet has joined Penn as the inaugural Ahuja Family Presidential Associate Professor of English. A scholar of African American literature and visual culture, Woubshet comes to Penn from Cornell University, where he received Cornell’s highest honor for undergraduate mentoring and teaching, the Paul Award for Excellence, in 2012, as well as being named one of “The 10 Best Professors at Cornell” in 2013 by Business Insider.
Dark Energy Survey Offers New View of Dark Matter Halos
Dark matter, a mysterious form of matter that makes up about 80 percent of the mass of the universe, has evaded detection for decades. Although it doesn’t interact with light, scientists believe it’s there because of its influence on galaxies and galaxy clusters.
New Method of Stabilizing Peptides Opens the Door to Better Therapeutic and Imaging Techniques
For many people with advanced Type 2 diabetes, taking insulin is a regular part of their routine, helping them control their blood sugar by signaling the metabolism of glucose. But recently, researchers have been investigating GLP-1, a peptide that gets activated when people eat, triggering insulin through a more natural pathway.
Peter Decherney Receives Penn Alumni Faculty Award of Merit
Peter Decherney, a professor of English and cinema studies in Penn Arts and Sciences, has received the 2017 Penn Alumni Faculty Award of Merit. This award recognizes a faculty member who has made outstanding contributions to alumni education and engagement by sharing his or her unique scholarship.
Seeing Isn’t Believing: Biologists Show How to Shut Off Hunger ‘Alarm System’
With a new study, researchers have explained the biological mechanism behind hunger-driven highs and lows. While the mere sight or smell of food can temporarily turn off neurons responsible for the drive to eat, they showed that the neurons only stay off if the brain receives a signal from the stomach that calories have been ingested.
Physicists Shed Light on How Wetness Affects a Phenomenon in Foams
Whether drinking beer, eating ice cream, or washing the dishes, it’s fair to say that many people come across foam on a day-to-day basis. It’s in everything from detergents to beverages to cosmetics. Outside of everyday life, it has applications in areas such as firefighting, isolating toxic materials and distributing chemicals. But there’s still a lot to be learned about this ubiquitous material.
Center for Ancient Studies Holds Lunchtime Seminar on the Appropriation of Antiquity
As part of their 2017–2018 Lunchtime Seminar Series, the Center for Ancient Studies (CAS) presented “The Usage of Antiquity in Modern Times: The Manipulation of the Past,” a lecture by Joseph Farrell, M. Mark and Esther K. Watkins Professor in the Humanities. The talk, held in November, focused on the alt-right’s appropriation of the values of Greek and Roman antiquity—a controversial representation that has been met with shock and anger.
Peter Struck Awarded the Society for Classical Studies' Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit
Peter Struck, Professor and Chair of the Department of Classical Studies, has been awarded, for a second time, the Society for Classical Studies' Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit.
Mitchell and Margo Blutt Endow Professorships at Three Penn Schools
Mitchell J. Blutt, C’78, M’82, WG’87, and Margo Krody Blutt have made a gift of $4.5 million, including matching funds, to endow three Presidential Professorships across the University of Pennsylvania. The Mitchell J. Blutt and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Professorships will be held by faculty members in the School of Arts and Sciences, the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, and the Wharton School.
New Interdisciplinary Center to Promote the Study of Human Intelligence and Behavior
A new center at Penn Arts and Sciences has been established to unite researchers, programs, and initiatives involving human intelligence and behavior across the University. Known as MindCORE (Center for Outreach, Research, and Education), the center will promote multidisciplinary research aimed at fundamental questions of human cognition, intelligence, and behavior.
Researchers Establish Universal Signature Fundamental to How Glassy Materials Fail
Dropping a smartphone on its glass screen, which is made of atoms jammed together with no discernible order, could result in it shattering. Unlike metals and other crystalline material, glass and many other disordered solids cannot be deformed significantly before failing and, because of their lack of crystalline order, it is difficult to predict which atoms would change during failure.
Penn Junior Jack Stack Is Pursuing His Paleontological Dream
Some paleontologists travel far and wide to seek new fossils — to the desert Southwest of the United States, remote regions of China or the farthest tip of Argentina. University of Pennslyvania student Jack Stack, on the other hand, made his first paleontological discoveries much closer to home.At home, in fact.
Michael Kahana and Team Analyze the Formation of Memories
A team of neuroscientists has constructed the first whole-brain map of electrical connectivity in the brain based on data from nearly 300 neurosurgical patients with electrodes implanted directly on the brain. The researchers found that low-frequency rhythms of brain activity, when brain waves move up and down slowly, primarily drive communication between the frontal, temporal and medial temporal lobes, key brain regions that engage during memory processing.
Daniel José Mindiola Among Penn Professors Elected to the 2017 Class of AAAS Fellows
Daniel José Mindiola has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon members of AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific society, by their peers.Mindiola is among 396 members awarded the honor this year because of scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.
Two College Seniors Named Rhodes Scholars
Two University of Pennsylvania seniors have been awarded Rhodes Scholarships for graduate study at the University of Oxford. Christopher D’Urso, of Colts Neck, N.J., has been awarded an American Rhodes and Adnan Zikri Jaafar, of Malaysia, has been awarded a Malaysian Rhodes.
Peter Holquist Named Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History
Peter Holquist, Associate Professor of History, has been appointed Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History. Holquist is a leading scholar of Russian and European History. He served as founder and editor of the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History from 1999 to 2010, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Modern History.
A Russian Revolution in Opera, Created by a Penn Composer
Rasputin, an opera composed by Jay Reise, was performed in Moscow last weekend, part of a celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.The production also marked the opera’s 10th anniversary in repertory at Moscow’s Helikon Opera Company, directed by Dmitry Bertman. The performances, November 11 and 12, were in the new Stravinsky Hall and conducted by Alexander Briger, founder and chief conductor of the Australian World Orchestra.
Apply for the 2018 Grad Ben Talks
Grad Ben Talks returns for a second year after a successful inaugural event in 2017!Who is eligible to enter?Currently enrolled students in any of Penn Arts and Sciences’ graduate groups or professional master’s programs.What is it?
For Penn Undergrads, New Digital-Humanities Minor Offers Unique Perspectives on Conventional Ideas
Whitney Trettien has a unique perspective on books. The work of this assistant professor of English sits at the intersection of digital humanities and Renaissance literature.
Michael Leja Named James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art
Michael Leja, Professor of History of Art, has been named James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art. Leja is the author of two highly acclaimed books, Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s and Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp, which won the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize.
Saint-Amour Named Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities
Paul Saint-Amour, Professor of English, has been appointed Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities. A leading scholar of Victorian and modernist literature, Saint-Amour has been a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Center for the Humanities at Cornell, and the National Humanities Center.
Goulian Named Charles and William L. Day Distinguished Professor in the Natural Sciences
Mark Goulian, Professor of Biology and Physics and Astronomy, has been appointed Charles and William L. Day Distinguished Professor in the Natural Sciences. Goulian is a highly influential scholar of microbiology. His research, which focuses primarily on Escherichia coli (E. coli), explores the fundamental mechanisms of signal transduction and gene expression in bacteria.
What Can Twitter Reveal About People With ADHD? Penn Researchers Provide Answers
What can Twitter reveal about people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD? Quite a bit about what life is like for someone with the condition, according to findings published by Sharath Chandra Guntuku and Lyle Ungar in the Journal of Attention Disorders. Twitter data might also provide clues to help facilitate more effective treatments.
Biologists Show How Chromosomes ‘Cheat’ for the Chance to Get Into an Egg
Each of your cells contains two copies of 23 chromosomes, one inherited from your father and one from your mother. Theoretically, when you create a gamete — a sperm or an egg — each copy has a 50-50 shot at being passed on. But the reality isn’t so clearcut.
Writer-in-Residence is a National Book Award Finalist
Since January, Carmen Maria Machado has been a writer-in-residence at Penn. Her first book, “Her Body and Other Parties,” is a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. The short story collection is a literary sensation and winner of a lengthening list of prizes. The book is appearing on various “Best of 2017” lists, including just-announced Publisher’s Weekly.
Researchers Working to Mimic Giant Clams to Enhance the Production of Biofuel
Alison Sweeney has been studying giant clams since she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. These large mollusks, which anchor themselves to coral reefs in the tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans, can grow to up to three-feet long and weigh hundreds of pounds.
Restoring Active Memory Project Adds Task and Patient Data to Publicly Available Human Brain Dataset
The Restoring Active Memory project run by the University of Pennsylvania has just released human intracranial brain recording and stimulation data for 102 new patients and a new spatial-navigation task developed by researchers at Columbia University. The total RAM dataset now includes such recordings from 251 patients and more than 1,100 experimental sessions, making it the largest publicly available dataset of its kind.
Researchers Demonstrate How to Control Liquid Crystal Patterns
When Lisa Tran set out to investigate patterns in liquid crystals, she didn’t know what to expect. When she first looked through the microscope, she saw dancing iridescent spheres with fingerprint-like patterns etched into them that spiraled and flattened as the solution they were floated in changed.
Luck Plays a Role in How Language Evolves
Read a few lines of Chaucer or Shakespeare and you’ll get a sense of how the English language has changed during the past millennium. Linguists catalogue these changes and work to discern why they happened. Meanwhile, evolutionary biologists have been doing something similar with living things, exploring how and why certain genes have changed over generations.
Karen Goldberg Is First Vagelos Professor in Energy Research
Dean Steven J. Fluharty is pleased to announce that Karen Goldberg has joined Penn as the Vagelos Professor in Energy Research. She also serves as the inaugural Director of the Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology.