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Penn Making History with ARRA

First, the good news:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) (www.recovery.gov) has just awarded Penn more than $30 million to fund over 100 scientific research projects in robotics, gene therapy, public education, and more -- as part of the largest increase in basic funding in the history of federally funded scientific research.

And now, the really good news:

Assistant professor Katherine Kuchenbecker, one of Penn's youngest and most celebrated rising stars, is slated to receive $500,000 of ARRA money to continue her research.

Why is that really good news? It was an endowed assistant professorship which convinced Katherine to come to Penn in the first place.  [read the full story]

Katherine's story is a terrific illustration of the power and example of investing -- in Penn, its faculty, and, most important, in its unique community of scholars.

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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.

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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.

   what is a 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."

    news release | news article

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.

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Penn Medicine's Emmy-Winning Film Puts Alzheimer's Disease on Prime Time

"Americans should see this film, their jaws should drop and they should quake in their boots," says Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, Director of Penn's Institute on Aging.

Terminator 4? Monsters vs. Aliens?

No, something more dramatic -- and real: Alzheimer's Disease: Facing the Facts.

Facing the Facts, which premiered on PBS in January and won a regional Emmy® in May, is a hard-hitting documentary conceived by Trojanowski to deliver a powerful wake-up call: America's ever-growing Alzheimer's population threatens to overwhelm both the health care system's ability to care for these patients and the country's ability to pay.

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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.

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