Penn has 12 Quakers competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Penn Today highlighted the athletes representing Team USA: three competitors in track and field, one swimmer, one rower, and one breakdancer.
A 2023 Project for Progress initiative, the Breathing Room at Sayre High School, unveiled this spring, transformed a neglected school space into one that enhances student well-being and fosters community. Says Ellen Neises, a member of the project and an associate professor of practice in landscape architecture at the Weitzman School: “The aim of the project was really about reducing high school students’ stress and improving the social experience at school by getting them outside, especially at lunchtime.”
“David C. Driskell and Friends: Creativity, Collaboration, and Friendship,” at the Arthur Ross Gallery, explores Driskell’s friendships with other artists by showcasing pieces from his personal collection. Driskell, who died in 2020, was a leading American artist, scholar, and curator who was central to establishing African American art as a field of study.
Michael Mitchell and a team of researchers at Penn have developed a novel approach that leverages a compound library fabrication technique to create lipid nanoparticles—delivery vehicles for mRNA molecules—in a single step. “Think of it as an easy-to-build custom mRNA vehicle with a body kit that informs its navigation system,” Mitchell says.
As part of a Penn Global Seminar, John Kehayias of the Marks Family Writing Center led a group of first-year students on a trip to Japan with an aim of understanding the country’s relationship with science and technology—while still cherishing traditions. “I learned a lot about the history of Japan and its connection with old cultural ideas, and also creating new ones,” says Mekhi Sappleton, a rising second-year. “And how Japan is still connected between culture and technology.”
Colin Twomey, interim executive director of the Data Driven Discovery Initiative, created a work-in-progress map intended to capture all published research by current faculty in the School of Arts & Sciences. “I really think of it as like a Google Maps for research. It gives you a very fast way to get oriented to a really big and complex research environment like Penn,” Twomey says.
The Institute of Contemporary Art debuted two new exhibits: “Johanna Piotrowska: unseeing eyes, restless bodies,” a series of photographs that evoke questions about care and violence; and “Where I Learned to Look: Art from the Yard,” a curation of “yard art.” “As I’ve been working on the show, I’ve been asking people what yard art means to them, and it’s such a fun range of things,” says Josh T. Franco, a guest curator. “If I have an intention, it’s just that this helps people value the yard art in their own lives and be more attentive to it when you’re walking around.”
As part of a Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program research opportunity, rising third-year Matthew Breier is spending his summer working with David Barnes of the Department of History and Sociology of Science to learn more about the impact of 1918 influence pandemic on Black and immigrant neighborhoods. “It’s mind-boggling how little we know about this thing that happened during the age of scientific medicine, during the age of mass media,” says Barnes.
2023 Penn graduate Jackson Appel and 2024 graduate Eli Trop became the latest Penn baseball players to have their names called in the MLB Draft. Appel was picked by the Chicago White Sox and Trop was picked by the Philadelphia Phillies.
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, the Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Professor in the Department of Art History, was named the inaugural faculty director of the Arthur Ross Gallery. “This is an exciting day for Penn’s arts and culture community and the future of the Arthur Ross Gallery, as we look to strengthen the Gallery’s unique identity on our campus and its role in engaging our faculty and students, advancing our academic mission, and providing a vital hub of art practice and education,” said Provost John L. Jackson Jr.
Penn Today highlighted the Paleontologist’s Cottage at the Morris Arboretum & Gardens. The cottage is a seasonal structure made of reclaimed barn materials that holds up hundreds of bromeliads and staghorn ferns.