06/11/09 5:00am
Roughly 8,000 hours from now, I will be graduating. I will be leaving Penn with a bevy of experiences, a slightly different outlook and an Ivy League education - things that will, I hope, guide me well both in life and in this uncertain job market. Yet, despite all of this uncertainty, I am sure of one thing: whoever turns up as our graduation speaker next year will not influence my life that much.
04/23/08 5:00am
Nanotechnology - a field that involves manipulating matter on the atomic scale - is helping scientists reshape the technological world by making things smaller and smaller. At Penn, though, the attention being paid to nanotechnology has never been bigger.
So when the state announced earlier this month it was giving a $3.
04/17/08 5:00am
Students, faculty and three distinguished speakers met at the Engineering school's Kanade Symposium yesterday to discuss the state of robotics and computer science and to honor the winner of one of the Franklin Institute's highest awards.
The symposium, co-sponsored by Penn's General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Laboratory and the Franklin Institute, featured speeches and culminated with an open house at which GRASP showed off its Levine Hall laboratory.
04/14/08 5:00am
As engineering becomes an increasingly global profession, officials at the Engineering school say their students are going abroad more than ever before - but still not as much as they would like them to.
Getting more students to go overseas is a tricky issue, they argue - and one that will require changing student perceptions about the feasibility of such opportunities.
04/11/08 5:00am
A generous-paying job offer can mark a happy finale to a Penn education, but at the Engineering school, making sure students are ready can be a difficult task.
With zealous recruiters, job-hungry students and a field changing faster than ever before, SEAS administrators and professors are now questioning how much weight to put on career-training in the school, one whose curriculum has long been rooted in teaching students fundamentals.
04/08/08 5:00am
A pair of awards given by the Army Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research will give the Engineering School nearly $30 million in grant money over the next 10 years for robotics research, officials at the school said.
The grants, which total $22 million and $7.
04/08/08 5:00am
Life in a new city can be a challenging experience for any young college graduate.
It's even more difficult when that city is on a different continent and doesn't even have so much as a street sign for guidance.
Such was the experience for Jareau Wade, a 2007 Engineering alumnus who returned to Penn last week having spent much of the last year working a dream job that has tested the skills he learned as a Quaker - teaching much of what he learned at Penn to students at a startup school in Ghana.
04/02/08 5:00am
For many students in the College, Barbara Woodford has a voice and a face you know, but a name you probably don't.
To many, Woodford is simply the middle point between you and a meeting with your academic advisor, but she may be the most important person at the College office in Logan Hall, ensuring things run smoothly and giving visitors their first impression of Penn's staff.
03/07/08 5:00am
Penn Electrical and Systems Engineering professor Nader Engheta received one of Penn Engineering's top honors on Wednesday.
Engheta, who has been named one of the 50 most important leaders in science and technology in America by Scientific American magazine, was presented with the Heilmeier Faculty Award for Excellence in Research.
03/07/08 5:00am
Despite weeks of research, students in one Electrical and Systems Engineering class are still pondering the best way to climb the fabled "Rocky steps" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Of course, their task is more difficult than it sounds: While climbing those stairs may be an easy trek for tourists, getting a robot to make the same jaunt isn't so simple.
03/06/08 5:00am
The national flag of Ghana may be red, yellow and green, but students and faculty at Penn Engineering are working to give the African nation a healthy dose of the red and the blue.
Through a partnership with the nation's main science and technology university and a variety of service projects and programs, SEAS has made Ghana a primary focus of its global outreach efforts - efforts they hope will provide benefits to both Penn and the African nation.
02/21/08 5:00am
Yesterday at Skirkanich Hall, a crowded computer-science class struggled with questions about programming code until Engineering sophomore Isaiah Greene explained the answers.
For Greene, this wasn't a chance to impress his teacher. It was a chance to teach the class, which in this case was comprised of 12 high-school sophomores from Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy.
02/11/08 5:00am
When Penn officials broke ground on Skirkanich Hall in October 2003, they claimed they were making a strong statement about the architectural vision for Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
And now, with the planning phase underway for the Singh Center for Nanotechnology - which will be built at 32nd and Walnut streets as part of the Penn Connects eastward expansion project - that vision is being realized.
02/04/08 5:00am
One of Penn's top scientists received the Engineering School's most prestigious award last week.
Thomas Cech, president of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was given the Berger Award for not only his engineering expertise, but also for his ability to integrate engineering with other fields of science in some of the medical field's most innovative multidisciplinary research.
01/30/08 5:00am
For 13 Penn students, the opportunity to help a developing nation improve its water supply was the opportunity of a lifetime, one so attractive they even gave up their winter vacations to do it.
The students, members of a campus student organization called Engineers Without Borders, have worked since the start of the year to help the residents in the town of Kobe, Cameroon to design and build a sustainable water distribution system.
01/24/08 5:00am
If Greek architecture is a riddle, producers of PBS' NOVA series think one Penn professor might have cracked it.
That's the reason, they say, for featuring Art History professor Lothar Haselberger as a primary expert in their "Secrets of the Parthenon" special, premiering Jan.
01/22/08 5:00am
For many in the Penn community, yesterday's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday was not simply a day off from classes - it was a chance to reflect on the life of a hero and to live out his message of social justice.
From painting with youngsters to cleaning a school to an evening candlelight vigil, the University community celebrated King's 79th birthday with a jam-packed day of tributes and community service.
12/06/07 5:00am
It has taken a "media mix" to publicize Penn's plans for eastward expansion into the postal lands said University spokesman Tony Sorrentino.
But after weeks of PowerPoint presentations and distributing brochures, University officials feel their best publicity tool may just be warming up - the project's 150-page Web site, which they hope will help people broaden their understanding of Penn's future and its past.
12/04/07 5:00am
Philadelphia may be best known for its cheesesteaks, but Penn researchers have given chocolate a home here as well.
No, not M&Ms; and hot cocoa. Their research has uncovered a much more primitive form of chocolate - one that has earned widespread acclaim as the earliest known use of the cacao plant.
12/03/07 5:00am
It's not often that Penn is called a "real underdog" at anything.
But those are the words members of the Penn Environmental Group use to talk about the University in next semester's RecycleMania, a 10-week contest sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, designed to promote waste reduction.
