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Penn Connects > Campus Master Plan
A Vision for the FuturePenn is Making History -- every day
- September 2, 2009
Penn's Center for Neuroscience and Society: The Brains Behind Brain Science
How do we keep up with the rapid advances in neuroscience? What are the ethics of "brain enhancement"? Memory mapping? Can we discipline a discipline? Mind our best minds? Where are the brains behind all this new brain science?
The answer: Penn’s newly-launched Center for Neuroscience and Society.
Through research and teaching, this new center will confront the social, legal, and ethical implications of the fast pace of neuroscience -- by increasing our understanding of the impact of neuroscience and encouraging the responsible use of neuroscience.
And, as part of the University's world-class neuroscience research community, the Center will extend Penn's reach beyond academia to engage policy makers, advocacy groups, and professionals -- in fields such as business, the military, law, and education.
"The new Penn Center for Neuroscience and Society typifies our resolve to integrate and to apply knowledge for humanity’s benefit," says President Amy Gutmann.
more >» more like this in Medicine
- July 31, 2009
Lessons of A Robot: Building Smarter Engineering at Penn
You have to see it to believe it:
A robot, puttering along, gets clobbered -- its parts scattering in all directions -- and then begins to reassemble itself.
watch on YouTube | nytimes.com
This ability -- to design something that reassembles itself, on the fly, in order to do the best job -- is a specialty of Mark Yim, the Gabel Family Term Junior Professor in Penn's Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. It's also a product of Penn's GRASP Lab (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, and Perception Lab), a truly interdisciplinary research center focused on robotics, vision, perception, control, automation and learning.
» more like this in Arts | Faculty | Innovation
- July 20, 2009
Young Penn Alum, Helen Lu, Receives Presidential Honor
Penn people are making history -- again.
This time, it's a young Penn alumna, Helen H. Lu, who received her BSE, MSE, and PhD from Penn and who is now an associate professor at Columbia University's Department of Biomedical Engineering.
From Columbia's website:
Helen H. Lu has received the nation’s highest honor for young scientists.
Associate Professor Helen H. Lu of the Department of Biomedical Engineering has been selected to receive the nation’s highest honor for scientists at the outset of their professional careers. She is one of 12 National Institutes of Health-nominated winners of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).
In announcing the awards, President Barack Obama said, "These extraordinarily gifted young scientists and engineers represent the best in our country. With their talent, creativity, and dedication, I am confident that they will lead their fields in new breakthroughs and discoveries and help us use science and technology to lift up our nation and our world."» more like this in Alumni | Innovation | Medicine | Penn People
- June 18, 2009
Ten for Penn: Shelley Berger Named Penn's 10th PIK Professor
Shelley L. Berger, a world-renowned genetics researcher, was named the 10th Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor.
Known for her research in epigenetics -- the study of genetic changes caused by factors other than genes -- Berger will integrate knowledge from the disciplines of genetics and biochemistry to study critical diseases in her new role as the Daniel S. Och University Professor.
"Shelley Berger is revolutionizing our understanding of genetic information" Gutmann said. "Her work is intrinsically interdisciplinary and holds tremendous potential for not only treating devasting diseases such as cancer, but also preventing them entirely."
Berger will hold appointments in the School of Medicine's Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and the School of Arts and Sciences' Department of Biology. SAS Dean Rebecca Bushnell and Medical School Dean Arthur Rubenstein both emphasized that Berger will be teaching both graduate and undergraduate students.
"It's a great home run for Penn, for medicine, for arts and sciences, and for the University," said Amy Gutmann. "Her research and her teaching are both truly path-breaking."
The Daniel S. Och University Professorship is the gift of Jane and Daniel S. Och. He is a Penn alum, a University Trustee, serves on the Wharton Undergraduate Executive Board and mentors Penn students through the Jewish Heritage Program.
- June 10, 2009
Penn PIK Professor Phillippe Bourgois: Book Smart, Streetwise
It seems that everything about Philippe Bourgois, Penn's fifth Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor, is a provocative contradiction in terms, including the title of his latest book, Righteous Dopefiend.
Dubbed a "rogue sociologist" who practices "participant observation" in his anthropological field work, Bourgois is an Ivy League professor who was once mistaken for -- and arrested as -- a junkie.
But all that is part of his method. As a cultural anthropologist and professor of medicine, Bourgois studies our most vulnerable, at-risk populations in urban subcultures, moving in with drug addicts and homeless people to better grasp their contexts and perspectives. He then uses that understanding to inform (and, often, to reform) our responses to critical, complex societal problems.» more like this in Faculty | Innovation | Medicine