Alumna, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs will deliver the address at the 2021 University of Pennsylvania Commencement on May 17. “We are honored to bestow our highest degree on Penn alumna Laurene Powell Jobs and thrilled to have her address our graduates at Penn’s 265th Commencement,” said Penn President Amy Gutmann. Jobs earned a B.A. in political science from the College of Arts and Sciences and a B.S.E. from the Wharton School.
Physician-scientist Kevin Johnson was announced as the 27th Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor. Johnson will hold joint appointments in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics in the Perelman School of Medicine, and in the Department of Computer and Information Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication.
Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli discussed the University’s latest Economic Impact Report, analyzed every five years. This year’s findings demonstrated that the University generated $15.5 billion in economic activity in Philadelphia, $20.5 billion within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and $21.5 billion in the region. “This economic activity touches one in eight Philadelphians,” explains Carnaroli. “I think that’s something people can think about in their own circles—or now, in our new vernacular, our pods—and say, wow, there’s a connection here, either directly or indirectly, to the economic activity of Penn. I think that gets at the tangible nature of it.”
Penn Medicine is working with the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative (WPSI), a workforce development program led by University City District, to hire people trained through the program. Fifty newly hired lab assistants were trained through WPSI. “Hiring our talented neighbors not only ensures that we will continue to meet the testing needs of the community, but also that we are creating pathways to healthcare and laboratory science careers for local jobseekers, many of whom have been living in intergenerational poverty,” says Kevin Mahoney, CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
Collective Climb, a winner of the 2020 President’s Engagement Prize, began as a West Philadelphia-based financial literacy project and has shifted to engage with young people around the issue of community violence. Since winning the award, alumni Kwaku Owusu, Mckayla Warwick, and Hyungtae Kim have created a six-month program that recruits West Philadelphians aged 15 to 19 and teaches them research and analysis skills, restorative justice training, and conflict resolution. They’ve also advocated for diversion techniques as an alternative to arrest.
Nikil Ragav, a winner of the 2020 President’s Innovation Prize, discusses his progress with inventXYZ since winning the prize. The goal of inventXYZ is to bring high-tech, hands-on education to high school students by setting up makerspaces at partner schools across the country. Among other accomplishments, Ragav has launched inventXYZ.com and deployed a curriculum project virtually, called “inventcurriculum.”
Aarogya, a social-enterprise organization led by three 2020 President’s Engagement Prize winners, aims to match unused medicines in India that have met their expiry with people in need. Adapting to the pandemic, they spent the past year focusing on development of their digital redistribution platform, which could be done remotely. They’ve recently begun testing their platform with charitable hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.
Public Health Management Corporation and Penn Medicine announced the official transition of the Mercy Catholic Medical Center-Mercy Philadelphia Campus to the PHMC Public Health Campus on Cedar. The campus serves the West and Southwest Philadelphia communities and is founded on the guiding principle of providing high-quality, community-informed, patient-centered health care and social services.
Penn senior Adam Konkol and December graduate Abigail Timmel have been awarded a Churchill Scholarship for a year of graduate research study at the University of Cambridge in England. This is the first time Penn has had two affiliates receive the award in the same year; Penn has had 12 Churchill scholars since the program was founded in 1963.
Senior history and political science major Samuel Orloff was named a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow. One of 12 fellows selected, the program supports students interested in careers in international affairs by offering them substantive work experience.
Guided by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and written by the Office of University Communications, Research at Penn released its 19th annual issue. The brochure looks at the year in research at the University, taking a special focus on COVID-19 research and how Penn has responded.
In recognition of anti-Asian violence and rhetoric in the past year, the pan-Asian community at Penn has been gathering virtually for restorative circles, inspired by indigenous practices in North America. The goal of the restorative circles is to establish a safe space to engage Asian faculty of different backgrounds, says Anh Le of Penn Dental Medicine, who serves on the Task Force on Supporting Asian and Asian American Students and Scholars at Penn. “We experience more by sharing lived experience and by listening to others; people feel that they can process it and they are not alone.”
For Penn Today, members of the Penn community posed for portraits while wearing their masks. Some sported Penn masks while others opted for fashion, matching eye shadow with mask color.
Physicians, engineers, and scientists from Penn are collaborating with The Philadelphia Orchestra to study aerosol droplets that come from wind and brass musicians while playing. The objective is to understand how to safely perform together again. “What has been fascinating about this is that we thought we lived in a world with greater certainty,” says Matías Tarnopolsky, president and chief executive officer of The Philadelphia Orchestra. “We thought we understood our music, our work. But what we’ve found is that we needed to learn about how our breathing behaves, how wind and brass instruments behave, how air circulation works in our concert hall, in order to carry on with our mission.”
Artist and alumna Jessica Vaughn displayed her first major solo exhibition, “Jessica Vaughn: Our Primary Focus is to Be Successful,” at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The exhibit, on display through May 9, contains photographs, sculptures, paintings, and video that examine the cultures of work, labor, and affirmative action policies, plus the modular designs that revolutionized the American office.
