College Announces 2015 Graduation Speakers

Maria T. Zuber, C’80, E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics and Vice President for Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Nadia Y. Laher, C’15, will speak at this year’s graduation ceremony for the University of Pennsylvania College of Arts and Sciences. The event will take place on Sunday, May 17, at 6:30 p.m. at Franklin Field.

A distinguished planetary scientist, Zuber has held leadership roles on nine NASA missions aimed at mapping the moon, Mars, Mercury, and several asteroids. At present she remains involved with six of these missions and is the principal investigator for NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, which is measuring the gravitational field of the moon in order to reveal its internal structure and thermal history. Responsible for research administration and policy at MIT, Zuber oversees more than a dozen interdisciplinary research laboratories and centers. Previously, she served as the head of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. President Obama appointed her to the National Science Board in 2013. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of NASA's Outstanding Scientific Achievement Medal. In 2004 Zuber served on the Presidential Commission on the Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy.

Nadia Laher, from Burke, Virginia, is a graduating political science major with a minor in creative writing. She received the John Thouron Prize for summer study at Cambridge University in England in 2013, and spent the fall of 2013 at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. Last summer she served as an Immigrant Rights Program intern at the Equal Rights Center in Washington, D.C. She facilitated discussions on the impact of race on society and the campus community as director and board member of Penn’s Race Dialogue Project, and sat on the Admissions Dean’s Advisory Board as admissions and outreach chair of the United Minorities Council. Laher works with Philadelphia youth as a dance mentor through CityStep and has volunteered as a creative writing tutor through Write On. A staff member at Kelly Writers House, she has received awards for her fiction and creative nonfiction. She is a member of the Pi Sigma Alpha political science honor society. After graduation she will be a Venture for America Fellow, working at a startup in an emerging U.S. city.

Arts & Sciences News

University of Pennsylvania, Neubauer Family Foundation, and Philadelphia Police Department Partner to Support Police Leadership Education

The first-of-its-kind graduate degree in the U.S. for police leaders launches this fall at the School of Arts & Sciences.

View Article >
Marisa C. Kozlowski Named Next Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences

Kozlowski, who joined the Penn faculty in 1997, succeeds Mark Trodden, who transitions to the Dean of Penn Arts & Sciences on June 1.

View Article >
One Fourth Year, One Alum Receive 2025 Hertz Fellowship

Eric Tao, C’25, Gr’25 (left), and Suraj Chandran, C’23, were awarded the honor, part of a group of 19 fellows selected this year. Each one receives five years of funding toward a doctoral program.

View Article >
Benjamin Nathans Wins 2025 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction

Nathans, Alan Charles Kors Endowed Term Professor of History, won for his book “To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement.”

View Article >
Mark Devlin Elected to National Academy of Sciences

He joins three others from Penn to receive the honor this year, all recognized for “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.”

View Article >
Michael Jones-Correa and Sophia Rosenfeld Elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

They join three others from the University of Pennsylvania, selected as part of the Academy’s mission to convene leaders from “every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together.”

View Article >