News

• January 2, 2020

  In Memoriam: Penn Remembers Artists of the World Who Passed in 2019

  Penn’s faculty and staff reflect on the giants who left us in 2019. Ones who inspired, who gifted us a better world in their wake, and left footprints that tides won’t easily wash over. Remembered here are artists of the world, like Toni Morrison, and doctors like Eli Glatstein, formerly the Morton M. Kligerman Professor of Radiation Oncology at the Perelman School of Medicine. Below, recollections of their lives and contributions.

• January 2, 2020

  Drops of Liquid Crystal Molecules Branch Out into Strange Structures

  A new study in Nature details this “weird” finding by showing how droplets containing chain-like liquid crystal molecules transform into complex shapes when the temperature drops. Conducted by Wei, graduate student Sophie Ettinger, Ph.D. alum Yu Xia, Shu Yang, and Arjun Yodh, this unexpected discovery provides new understanding about how molecular polydispersity—a condition where the lengths of liquid crystal molecules vary widely—can drive simple droplets to change into unusual shapes.

• January 2, 2020

  Philadelphia’s Media Ecosystem is Broken. Can We Fix It?

  With local newsroom numbers decimated and traditional advertising models continuing to fail, the MIC Center hopes to identify new models for media that enable communities to be engaged in shaping and lifting up narratives that better represent them and address important social problems. Led by co-directors Annenberg Professor Victor Pickard, a Free Press board member, and Rutgers Professor Todd Wolfson, a Media Mobilizing Project board member, the Media, Inequality and Change (MIC) Center, Media Mobilizing Project and Free Press aim to address these issues by understanding how social change happens, the media’s role in creating obstacles and opportunities for structural reform, and what innovative, community-centered media and media-making can and should look like in the Philadelphia region.

• January 2, 2020

  Researchers Use a Material’s ‘Memory’ to Encode Unique Physical Properties

  A new study shows that, as materials age, they “remember” prior stresses and external forces, which scientists and engineers can then use to create new materials with unique properties.

• January 2, 2020

  Contemporary Art Enhances Penn Museum’s Africa Galleries

  The recently reinstalled Africa Galleries at the Penn Museum encompass 4,000 square feet and nearly 300 artifacts from Africa and the African diaspora. In this reimagined space, the historical pieces—statues, gold coins, carved ivory, richly dyed textiles—are juxtaposed with three groupings of contemporary art commissioned by Professor Tukufu Zuberi, the Africa Galleries’ lead curator.