Innovation | Penn Today

Rapid response to COVID-19 puts the power of innovation to the test

With a critical need for equipment that can help protect frontline healthcare workers, the Penn community has come together to help fabricate 20,000 face shields by mid- to late-April.

DIY origami face masks for COVID-19

The professor of materials science and engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering is leading an effort to design an effective face mask that can be made at home.

Yumin Gao, Leo Li, Minhal Dhanjy, Darsham Bhosale, Kateryna Kharenko and Ryan Goethals (clockwise from top left) pose with their prototypes and trophies.

Scrap metal-powered lights win Y-Prize 2020

The winning team of this year’s Y-Prize, an invention competition in which entrants are challenged to pitch an innovative business plan for a technology developed at Penn Engineering, Metal Light, proposes technology to provide illumination for houses not connected to electrical grids.

View of white garments hanging at the Designs for Different Futures exhibit, with a white shirt on a stand and a futuristic wheelchair and mechanical upright walking device on display.

Designs for what the future can be

The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s “Designs for Different Futures” exhibition includes contributions and installations from several Penn faculty and alumni who seek to answer questions about what the not-so-distant future may look like.

Hand holding a magnifying glass over back of disassembled smartphone

Engineers collaborate to create electroadhesive grippers

A collaborative team has developed a method for electroadhesion—which exploits the same phenomenon as static cling—to manipulate microscale objects.

An artist’s illustration of nanoparticles transporting mRNA into a T cell, allowing the latter to express surface receptors that recognize cancer cells.

Penn nanoparticles are less toxic to T cells engineered for cancer immunotherapy

By using messenger RNA across the T cell’s membrane via a nanoparticle instead of a DNA-rewriting virus on extracted T cells, CAR T treatments could have fewer side effects.

a person walking through a line of curved TV screens with forest pictures

Q&A

The future of innovation in consumer technology

Wharton’s David Hsu discusses what the recent Consumer Electronics Show says about the consumer technology landscape and what innovations will become prevalent in the future.

Tough conversations and innovative outlooks in higher ed

President Amy Gutmann and Graduate School of Education scholar Robert Zemsky took part in a “fireside chat” at this year’s Higher Education Leadership Conference at Penn, which also awarded Gutmann the Zemsky Medal.

Evan and the chocolate factory

Engineering student Evan Weinstein fixated on the idea of liberating bespoke chocolates from the confines of both the bar and the mold. Rather than cast a chocolate shape, why not build it? Cocoa Press is his solution.

Virginia Lee stands smiling in a lab surrounded by three colleagues

An Alzheimer’s research pioneer, right here at Penn

Virginia Man-Yee Lee, a professor and researcher at the Perelman School of Medicine, is the 2020 recipient of a Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, earning $3 million for her innovative, inspiring work that could one day cure various neurodegenerative diseases.

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