Penn Arts and Sciences Faculty Receive Inaugural China Research and Engagement Fund Awards

University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and Provost Vincent Price today announced the first recipients of the Penn China Research and Engagement Fund (CREF) awards. Established in March, CREF will award up to $10 million in the form of matching research grants to Penn faculty to stimulate and support research activity and engagement in China over the next five years.

“Penn’s China Research and Engagement Fund builds on the deep connections between Penn and China forged over nearly two centuries,” Gutmann said. “Advancing Penn’s dual mission of research and learning, the awards expand access to Penn's exceptional intellectual resources as one of the world’s leading research universities and strengthen collaborative relationships between Penn’s eminent scholars and researchers and our Chinese peers to spur innovative broad thinking in seeking real-world solutions on issues that confront all societies."

Among those selected for funding from Penn Arts and Sciences are Jere Behrman, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Economics; Mien-hwa Chiang, director of the Chinese Language Program and senior lecturer in foreign languages; Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Professor of Economics; Mark Liberman, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and the director of the Linguistic Data Consortium; and Guobin Yang, Associate Professor of Sociology. The Lauder Institute, which partners with the Wharton School and Penn Arts and Sciences, is also the launching pad for one of the grants.

Behrman will partner with Guangdong Women and Children’s Hospital to investigate effects of air pollution on pregnancy outcomes and children's early physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development in south China. Analyses will exploit the spatial and seasonal variation in ambient air pollution, consider the endogeneity of parental investments based on birth outcomes, and estimate a production function of early child development skills with prenatal air pollution exposure as one critical input. The project brings together leading scholars from the U.S. and China to examine these issues, challenges, and opportunities through conferences at the Penn Wharton China Center and Penn that will produce scholarly volumes, engage students and faculty at Penn, and reach wider policy and public audiences.

Chiang will partner with Inter-University Program (IUP) for Chinese Language Studies and Peking University in order to provide 10 student fellowships for Penn students to continue learning and developing Chinese speaking skills and literacy. The initiative, deemed “A Tale of Two Capitals: A Comparative Study of Development in Beijing and Ulaanbaatar,” seeks to not only enhance language skills, but to provide the requisite cultural exposure to fuel a comparative study of the development of the two rapidly changing capitals of China and Mongolia.

Fernandez-Villaverde will partner with Tsinghua University on a project that will focus on the development of an innovative book on global economic history that spans from 1405 until today. The book will highlight the deep interconnections across continents since the modern voyages of exploration created an integrated world market in the 14th and 15th centuries. It will also examine the key importance of institutional differences in legal systems among China, India, and Europe, and consider environmental history and the interconnections between institutions, economics, and the environment. In addition, this project will aim to convene scholars at Penn and to develop a class on global economic history for the Benjamin Franklin Program. This class will aim explicitly to increase the study and understanding of China at Penn and create opportunities for meaningful student engagement and possible research assistantships.

Liberman will partner with Beijing Normal University, Minzu University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Departments of Dialectology and Phonetics), and Beijing Language and Culture University (School of Linguistic Sciences). Through this project, the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC), an open consortium of universities, libraries, corporations, and government research laboratories, will extend its initiative on linguistic diversity in China, with specific emphasis on the documentation and analysis of variation in standard, regional, and minority languages. In particular, this project will conduct efforts under three interrelated headings: The Putonghua Test, Tone in Chinese Languages, and Language Change in China.  In each of these areas, the team has a record of research both at Penn and in collaboration with Chinese colleagues.

Yang will partner with Peking University (Center for Public Communication and Social Development, School of Journalism and Communication) and Zhejiang University (College of Media and International Culture) on Pennovation Media Scholars in China (PMSC), which aims to bring 16 competitively selected Penn undergraduate students to China in 2017 and 2018 for a credit-carrying four-week Summer Institute conducted in Beijing and Hangzhou. The course for the Summer Institute will be called "Media and Social Innovation in China" and will build on a course taught at Penn since 2013. The focus is on contemporary Chinese media industry, media institutions, and citizens' media practices.

The Lauder Institute, under primary investigator and director Mauro Guillen, Dr. Felix Zandman Professor and Professor of International Management, will play host to an initiative to highlight significant curricular changes in the International Studies degree program related specifically to China and the East Asia Region. With Penn CREF support, Lauder will pilot new curriculum development in the East Asia region, bringing together partners from around the region to explore historic, current, and future challenges related to east and southeast Asia. The project also supports faculty collaborations for coursework for the new curriculum and seed money to begin an intercultural immersion for non-East Asia Program students.

To view the Penn news release, click here.

A Chinese version of the release is here.