Week of March 25-31, 2019

Weekly Edition

March 25-31, 2019
For more News from Penn, visit the Penn Today website

Thousands of high school seniors gathered breathlessly around their computers last night at 7 awaiting the regular-decision announcement from the University’s Admissions Office. From a pool of 44,960 applicants, 3,345 learned of their acceptance to Penn. They come from all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and 100 other countries. Eric Furda, dean of admissions, points out that 15 percent of the admitted students are the first in their families to attend college.

Diversity and inclusion

Grad student Jessica Pugh is headed to Google as an intern this fall thanks to connections she made through her community at Wharton. When she first entered the graduate program, she says she “didn’t realize how diverse the backgrounds of the students were.” Moving on from Penn’s uniquely diverse environment, Pugh hopes to help the growing tech industry develop “the infrastructure to develop, support, attract, and retain women and people of color.”

En garde

Julian Merchant, a senior saber on the men’s fencing team from New Rochelle, New York, discusses competing for the Quakers, the training and dedication the sport involves, and how fencing has taken him around the world. Merchant recently concluded his fencing career at Penn with a 153-103 record. He is a two-time All-Ivy honoree.

A matter of size

Postdoc Farshid Jafarpour of the School of Arts and Sciences has developed a model that describes how individual parameters, like the variability in growth and the timing of cell division, can influence population dynamics in bacteria. Progress in this new field of study at the interface of math, physics, and biology, can help scientists better understand how individual-level metrics connect to population-level changes.

Next steps

Across the country, Match Day is when fourth-year medical students find out where they will be going for residencies, the next step in their educational journey. At the Perelman School of Medicine, members of the Class of 2019 celebrated with family and friends as they learned their destinations. “I will remember this forever,” says Mallika Marar (above) who was paired with Radiation Oncology at Stanford University. (Video)

Star-reaching students

The Women in Physics student group supports student members through scholarship, mentorship, and social activities. At the fifth annual spring conference and networking event, undergraduates had the opportunity for informal get-togethers with astronomer Beth Willman (center). “We are giving female physics majors and other STEM majors a role model to look up to,” says junior Olivia Sylvester from Mendham, New Jersey, one of the group’s board members.

Sustainability report

Penn Sustainability has released its annual report, detailing progress the University made during fiscal year 2018 in meeting the goals of the Climate Action Plan 2.0. Penn Today lays out a by-the-numbers spread of the report's highlights, ranging from an 11.3 percent decrease in carbon emissions from campus buildings since 2014 to three new LEED Gold certifications.

‘Beauty out of pain’

This winter, Carol Muller of the School of Arts and Sciences and Nigel Cossar of Penn Abroad led 16 undergraduates to South Africa as part of a Penn Global Seminar course exploring that nation’s history and post-apartheid present through music and culture. The students demonstrated the impact of the journey through final projects that included a painting, a written paper, a poem, a film, a photo essay, a musical score—even a set of political cartoons. (Photos)

Treatment in the ER

Emergency rooms are trying to find ways to put proven treatments to work in the real world. According to Margaret Lowenstein (not pictured), an M.D. working on a biomedical Ph.D. at Penn, a recent study shows that treating opioid addiction at ground zero, the emergency room after an overdose, has a marked effect on treatment effectiveness in the long run; however, there are barriers to starting treatment in current ER environments.

Rarefied air

For the fourth time in as many years, senior Reeham Sedky of the women’s squash team has been named a First-Team All-American by the College Squash Association. Sedky, from Sammamish, Washington, is only the sixth player in Penn women’s squash history to have earned the honor during each of her four seasons.

Historical gold mine

By analyzing thousands of declassified images from Cold War-era U2 spy missions, Emily Hammer of the School of Arts and Sciences and Jason Ur of Harvard University discovered archaeological features such as prehistoric hunting traps, 3,000-year-old irrigation canals, and hidden 60-year-old marsh villages. They also created an online tool that allows other researchers to identify and access the photos for the first time.

STEM heroes

In celebration of Women’s History Month, five researchers share their thoughts on the enterprising women in STEM who have been a source of inspiration in their own careers. Their heroes include 18th-century mathematicians, Nobel prize winners, and the country’s first female tenure-track organic chemist, Penn’s very own Madeleine Joullie of the School of Arts and Sciences.

Whitman at 200

The Penn Libraries is leading a region-wide, yearlong celebration of Walt Whitman two centuries after his birth, including an international conference. Whitman’s poetry still resonates today, and is featured in courses, readings, and events at Penn. Four scholars in the School of Arts and Sciences read selections of his poem “Song of Myself” in a new video: (from left) sophomore Sophia DuRose, professor Simone White, graduate student Davis Knittle, and professor Al Filreis. (Video)

Who decides?

Algorithms influence one-third of our selections on Amazon and more than 80 percent on Netflix. But these formulas aren’t without bias. In his recent book, “A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping Our Lives and How We Can Stay in Control,” the Wharton School’s Kartik Hosanagar discusses how technology impacts decisions that are made both for and about us. (Audio/Video)

Out of place

When researchers led by Andrew Vaughan in the School of Veterinary Medicine examined mice that had recovered from a severe case of influenza, they came upon a surprising discovery: Taste bud cells had grown in the animals’ lungs. The team, which included Penn Vet’s De’Broski Herbert and the Perelman School of Medicine’s Noam Cohen, believe the cells may play a role in immunity.

Annual giving

The Benjamin Franklin Society held a reception at the New York Historical Society featuring a conversation with Provost Wendell Pritchett (left). Among the alumni, parents, and friends who attended was Lee Doty of the Board of Trustees. (Photos)

Risky behavior

Are adolescents naturally inclined to be greater risk-takers, or is something else at work? A policy review by the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Dan Romer and Ivy N. Defoe, a recent postdoctoral fellow, explores whether or not adolescents are actually more likely to take risks than children, as some neuroscience theories have suggested.

Flight path

Computer simulations could help airplanes carry more people and let spaceships launch with far less fuel. Today’s simulations are cheap but are not accurate enough to be completely trusted. With a NASA grant and a mind-blowing amount of supercomputing time, George Ilhwan Park of the School of Engineering and Applied Science is working on new models that could transform air travel.

Mounting debt

Even as the U.S. national debt crosses $22 trillion, Joao Gomes of the Wharton School thinks we aren’t yet at the “day of reckoning.” “For the next five years, we will be fine,” he says. “But you only need to look at, say, southern Europe and our friends in Greece or Spain to see there comes a day, and that day is not pretty.” (Audio)

‘Bachelor president’

In a piece for The Washington Post, PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel looks at the nation’s 15th president. “The United States has already had a gay president whose contemporaries knew it: James Buchanan,” he writes. “Indeed, the United States has also had a gay vice president and, maybe more surprisingly, a gay senator from Alabama.”