University Communications

Penn's picturesque urban campus features some of the most impressive architecture in Philadelphia, including buildings that are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. For 120 years, Penn was located in Center City Philadelphia before the campus relocated to West Philadelphia in 1872. The Gothic Revival style College Hall, designed in 1872 by architect Thomas Webb Richards, was the first building constructed on the new campus. The multi-purpose building housed faculty offices, classrooms, a gym, the library and research labs. The original building included clock towers on each side of the center portion of the building. The west tower, which had a large bell that called students to class, was removed 1914 (the bell is now on display in Houston Hall). The east tower was torn down in 1929. Professor David Brownlee of Penn's Department of the History of Art, says, "the University relocated itself really on the crest of a wave of prosperity and achievement. Those buildings built in the first decade or so after we moved to West Philadelphia reflect the energy of an industrial America and of its greatest industrial city." Brownlee, an architectural historian, co-authored "Building America's First University: An Historical and Architectural Guide to the University of Pennsylvania." Fisher Fine Arts Library, designed by prominent Philadelphia architect Frank Furness in 1891, is also in the National Register of Historic places. The Furness building was renovated and restored to its original grandeur in 1991, and it was renamed Fisher Fine Arts Library in honor of donors Anne and Jerome Fisher. In 1957, during a second building boom on campus, Penn hired renowned architect Louis Kahn to design the Richards Medical Research Building. It was completed in 1960, and Brownlee says Kahn's innovative design changed the world of modern architecture. "It was, in every conceivable way, as different from the architecture from the recent past as it was possible to be," Brownlee says. "Rough and granular, where that architecture [of the recent past] was smooth. Irregular and picturesque where that architecture had been composed defined by simple geometric forms. Highly specialized with respect to its purpose and to its place as that architecture had been generic." Having designed the structure to fit in with surrounding buildings, Kahn, a Penn alum, incorporated complementary colors and textures from the Morgan Building, and the Quad dormitories. Today, the Richards Medical Research Lab is among the buildings on an elite list of National Historic Landmarks, under a program run by the National Park Service. Text by Jeanne Leong

A behind-the-scenes look at how we made the viral video: Robot Quadrotors Play James Bond Theme (http://youtu.be/_sUeGC-8dyk)

Dr. Amy Gutmann, Penn's President, talks with students from the Village Academy High School during their visit to the University of Pennsylvania on May 8, 2008. President Gutmann discussed making an excellent Penn education available to all outstanding students of talent and high potential who can benefit from and contribute to the University. Dr. Gutmann http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/amy_gut... is at the forefront of the national debate to urge that private colleges and universities pay more attention to the need to attract a student body as diverse in class background as it is in geography, gender, race, and religion. Village Academies, a network of college preparatory charter schools serving low-income, minority children in Harlem, New York, was founded by Dr. Deborah Kenny, who graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania. Under Kenny's leadership, Harlem Village Academy produced dramatic student achievement gains, ranking among the highest performing urban schools in the country.

Match Day 2011 at the University of Pennsylvania. For more information, visit http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/featur...

A bird's-eye view of Penn's campus provides a unique perspective on some of the University's iconic structures, such as Huntsman Hall, Franklin Field, and the brick pathways that lace College Green. Penn's beautiful urban campus stretches from Penn Park to 40th Street, and is open to all. Committed to sustainability and urban green space, the University plans to add more than 1,700 trees to campus by 2015. More than 500 have already been planted throughout Penn Park. The Park has increased the University's green space by 20 percent. It also has created a new gateway uniting West Philadelphia with Center City. As President Amy Gutmann said in September, during the park's grand opening: "Penn Park marks the first time that the University has, by design, developed open space for the use of the Penn community and beyond." For additional information on Penn's greening initiatives visit the Penn Green Campus Partnership website. More information: http://www.upenn.edu/spotlights/sky-v... Video by Kurtis Sensenig Text by Julie McWilliams

The Penn Relays (also Penn Relays Carnival) is the oldest and largest track and field competition in the United States, hosted annually since April 21, 1895 by the University of Pennsylvania at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It regularly attracts more than 15,000 participants from high schools, colleges, and track clubs throughout North America and abroad, notably Jamaica, competing in more than 300 events over five days. Historically, the event has been credited with popularizing the running of relay races. It is held during the last full week in April, ending on the last Saturday in April. Attendance typically tops 100,000 over the final three days, and has been known to surpass 50,000 on Saturday.

Freshmen and their families pushed, pulled and carried thousands of boxes, bags and carts filled with everything from bedding to cases of bottled water. Penn President Amy Gutmann made her traditional visit to dorms to welcome some of the nearly 2,500 freshmen and their families. To read more and to see a Flickr slide show, visit the Penn Current at http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current... The Penn News page also has a slide show of Move-In photos http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/

A group of about 40 graduate and undergraduate students from the School of Arts and Sciences, Penn Engineering and Wharton, is preparing to show the world what they have been working on for the last five years: an all-electric race car. The carbon-fiber-clad Renegade is a product of Penn Electric Racing, a student-run, interdisciplinary club of engineers and designers who aim to push the envelope of what electric vehicles can do. "We want to help the general public, and the University community, understand EV (electric vehicle) technology, and the benefits both environmentally and economically of driving EVs," says team captain and Penn Engineering student William Price. Penn Electric Racing grew out of the University's solar racing group, founded in 1989. But the club has expanded its focus to include other electric power sources, and now it wants to change the public perception of electric vehicles. Environmentally friendly cars such as the hybrid Toyota Prius, or the all-electric Nissan Leaf, are often seen as sacrificing power for sustainability. But Penn's Renegade has been specially designed to handle electric car drag races, high-performance competitions that test cars' acceleration and handling at top speeds. The Penn Electric Racing club plans to unveil its Renegade in mid-April, and hopes to compete in a National Association of Electric Drag Racers competition by the end of that month. Beyond putting an electric vehicle on a racetrack, club members hope to put them in peoples' garages; next steps include designs that they hope will eventually end up being made into street-legal cars. Text by Evan Lerner Video by Kurtis Sensenig

Since 1993, every incoming freshman in Wharton has been required to take the course called Management 100 during the fall semester. Stressing group dynamics, leadership and the fundamentals of project management, the class provides students with a semester-long glimpse into the very real challenges, and the ultimate rewards, of teamwork.

In July, the U.S. scored a major international soccer victory. While the nation was unable to bring home the Women's World Cup, Team DARwIn took first place in the Humanoid Kid Size competition at the 2011 RoboCup tournament in Istanbul, Turkey. The robots, whose name stands for "Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence," are a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Tech. Penn Engineering team members who traveled to the competition included Stephen McGill, Seung-Joon Yi, Yida Zhang, along with Jordan Brindza, Ashleigh Thomas, Spencer Lee, and Nicholas McGill, who are undergraduate and graduate students in the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory. Team members from Virginia Tech included Jeakweon Han, a Ph.D. student in the RoMeLa Lab, and Taylor Pesek, an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering For the competition, Penn developed the software framework that provided each robot with artificial intelligence (AI). This AI operates on multiple levels. At the most basic, it provides instructions on how to move each joint of the leg in order to walk; at the most complex, it incorporates all of information gathered by the robot—such as whether a collection of red pixels in its camera represents the ball, or the distance between itself, other robots and the goal — and uses it to make gameplay decisions. The engineers their team's overarching strategy should focus on speed at the expense of strength and accuracy. "Our goal was to get to the ball the fastest, which allows us to block other teams' kicks and move the ball upfield," Yi said. "The strategy for one of our rivals, the German team, was to make strong, accurate kicks, but it took them a long time to get into the kicking position. Our faster, shorter kicks were more effective." RoboCup, and competitions like it, drive the advancement of sophisticated locomotion and intelligence for humanoids in a specific scenario where humans already display their prowess in motor skills and decision-making. "These competitions are important for robotics because they take the amazing research done in laboratories and push it to be more robust in real world situations," McGill said. "In competitions, there are rarely 'do-overs' and it is important to make sure that robots can adapt to many unforeseen obstacles. The end results are resilient and feature-full humanoid robots that are better able to work alongside humans." In the Kid Size Class, Team DARwIn beat several teams, including one from Japan for the championship. The DARwIn 1 platform was introduced in 2004 and was a revolutionary humanoid robot prototype at the time, and has been followed by several incarnations since. DARwIn-OP was introduced this past year and is a fully open source design, where all information on the hardware is to be shared on-line for free, including detailed plans and drawings, manuals for fabrication and assembly. Video by Kurtis Sensenig Text by Evan Lerner

On August 12, J. Larry Jameson, the newly inaugurated executive vice president of the University for the Health System and dean of the Perelman School of Medicine, helped launch the medical school careers of 170 first-year students as they donned their first white coats and marked the beginning of their journey into the art and science of healing. During the ceremony, each student was presented with a white clinician's' coat, a vivid symbol of their entry into the medical profession. The students also received another esteemed symbol of the medical profession—their first stethoscopes. At the ceremony's conclusion, the entire class recited the Hippocratic Oath, one of the oldest pledges in history, calling upon them to treat the ill to the best of their ability, to preserve a patient's privacy, and to teach the secrets of medicine to the next generation. Video by Kurtis Sensenig kurtiss@upenn.edu

In this demonstration, Dr. David Brainard shows how a black object reflecting more light than a white object, appears to the human eye. Here is an in-depth explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2spb...

When Brendan McHugh was about 12 or 13 years old, he realized the 2012 Olympic Games would occur the same year he would graduate from college, so he set two goals for himself: to attend an Ivy League university and to qualify for the Olympics in swimming. In May, McHugh graduated from Penn's School of Arts and Sciences. On June 25, he will be one of three swimmers representing Penn at the U.S. Olympic Swimming Team Trials in Omaha, Neb. Rising juniors Rhoads Worster and Shelby Fortin will join McHugh in what is considered one of the most competitive swim meets in the world. Swimmers from across the nation, whose times have qualified them to compete in the trials, will race over three days in a contest that will determine who will be on the U.S Olympic Team. The swimmers with the top two fastest times in each event will become America's 2012 Olympians. McHugh, who served as captain of Penn Swimming this past year, is a two-time All American. During his Penn athletic career, he set University records in the 200-meter freestyle, as well as the 200-meter and 100-meter breaststroke. At the Olympic Trials, he will compete in the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke. His strategy for the trials is to "swim smart," paying particular attention to "the little things, like turns and starts" that he says "can get sloppy" when a swimmer is focusing on speed. Worster, who was recently elected to be the Penn team's newest captain, will compete in the 100-meter butterfly event at the trials. To prepare, Worster, who lives in Yardley, Pa., is swimming about four hours each day at Penn, and lifting weights every other day. "This is such an unbelievable opportunity. I just want to go there and take it all in," he says. "I'm not nervous. I'm a really competitive person so I'm amped up to race. I want to get there and do it." Fortin, who will swim the 400-meter freestyle at the trials, is training with her YMCA club team in Connecticut. Since arriving at Penn, she has set four University records, and has been honored as a two-time First Team All Ivy athlete. "This is the fastest meet in the world," she says of the upcoming trials. "I'm not nervous yet. But when I step on that deck, I might be. Mostly, though, it is going to be an awesome experience." Also competing at the trials will be three incoming Penn freshmen—Chris Swanson, of Tampa, Fla., Bradley Wachenfeld, of Basking Ridge, NJ., and Annie McCotter, of Cherry Hill, NJ.—who will join the Penn swimming team in September. The U.S. Olympic Swimming Team Trials will be broadcast on NBC and NBC Sports Network beginning June 25 through July 2. Find a schedule of television coverage at the NBC Olympics website. Text by Tanya Barrientos Video by Kurtis Sensenig

A group of about 40 graduate and undergraduate students from the School of Arts and Sciences, Penn Engineering and Wharton, is preparing to show the world what they have been working on for the last five years: an all-electric race car. The carbon-fiber-clad Renegade is a product of Penn Electric Racing, a student-run, interdisciplinary club of engineers and designers who aim to push the envelope of what electric vehicles can do. "We want to help the general public, and the University community, understand EV (electric vehicle) technology, and the benefits both environmentally and economically of driving EVs," says team captain and Penn Engineering student William Price. Penn Electric Racing grew out of the University's solar racing group, founded in 1989. But the club has expanded its focus to include other electric power sources, and now it wants to change the public perception of electric vehicles. Environmentally friendly cars such as the hybrid Toyota Prius, or the all-electric Nissan Leaf, are often seen as sacrificing power for sustainability. But Penn's Renegade has been specially designed to handle electric car drag races, high-performance competitions that test cars' acceleration and handling at top speeds. The Penn Electric Racing club plans to unveil its Renegade in mid-April, and hopes to compete in a National Association of Electric Drag Racers competition by the end of that month. Beyond putting an electric vehicle on a racetrack, club members hope to put them in peoples' garages; next steps include designs that they hope will eventually end up being made into street-legal cars. Text by Evan Lerner Video by Kurtis Sensenig

Biking is one of the most efficient ways to navigate busy city streets and is an increasing popular way to navigate around campus. In recent years, the University has seen the number of bikes on campus double. But biking on city streets can pose a number of safety risks to riders, according to Maureen S. Rush, Penn's vice president for public safety. Specifically, cyclists riding in dedicated lanes on the right side of streets must steer around SEPTA and LUCY buses that pull over to drop off or pick up passengers. In addition, parked vehicles can create obstacles by temporarily blocking the lanes, and driver's-side doors can quickly open in a cyclist's path. In an effort to improve public safety, the Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation have moved the bike lane on Walnut Street to the left side, starting at 22nd Street and continuing to 48th Street. The new buffered bike lane on the left side of Walnut Street makes riding safer for cyclists pedaling from Center City to West Philadelphia. Riding on the left side of the street minimizes the interference from buses and cars, and can lower the potential for accidents and injuries. Bicycle safety on campus is one of the key components to the Division of Public Safety's annual "Share the Road" campaign. "Share the Road" educates bicyclists and motorists about local laws and basic safety practices. The city will resurface the entire length of Walnut Street, and plans to add left-side buffered bike lanes on Walnut that will stretch from 22nd to 63rd streets.

In 2007, the University of Pennsylvania acquired 14-acres of asphalt parking lots on the western edge of the Schuylkill River from the United States Postal Service. As part of its Penn Connects campus development plan, the University would replace the concrete and asphalt with a sustainable, vibrant green swath of open space and athletic fields. Penn Park opened to the public in September, 2011. A major feature of Penn Park is its commitment to creating a sustainable landscape while also meeting athletic and open space needs of the community. Video Produced by Kurtis Sensenig kurtiss@upenn.edu Still Photos by Steven Minicola, Scott Spitzer and Steve Belfiglio Narration by Jeanne Leong

Penn Engineering students demonstrate state-of-the-art haptic human-computer and human-machine interfaces. The PR2 robot finds objects on a table via tactile scanning. A smart "seeing eye" cane alerts users to overhead and waist-high obstacles. Students demo a game of virtual catch with a virtual ball that you can feel in your hand.

Making History: The Campaign for Penn, a $3.5 billion fundraising campaign, will empower Penn to create a new kind of university: one prepared to tackle the pressing problems of the 21st century and to improve the lives of people around the globe. http://www.makinghistory.upenn.edu/

2008 University of Pennsylvania Financial Aid Video

Watch the full interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oE_mV... Samuel George Morton, a 19th-century physician and physical anthropologist, best known for his measurement of human skulls, has long been held up as a prime example of scientific misconduct. According to the late Stephen Jay Gould, one of the world's preeminent evolutionary biologists and scientific historians, Morton skewed his data about cranial size to fit his preconceived and racist notions about human variation. But a team of six anthropologists has taken another look at Morton's collection of skulls (which include 1,200 in the original collection, and 2,000 in total) and has determined that Morton did not manipulate his data to support his controversial ideas, as Gould claimed. The authors write that Morton took measurements of the skulls to determine whether human populations were separate species from multiple divine creations or a single species created once, a central question in pre-Darwinian science. Photos of the Skull Collection: http://www.flickr.com/photos/universi...

If you say "wooder ice" when you order a water ice treat or cheer "Go Iggles!" when the Eagles football team is playing, chances are you're from Philadelphia or "Fluffya." A new Penn linguistics study shows that traditional Southern inflections associated with Philadelphia native-born speakers are being affected by Northern influences. "A Hundred Years of Sound Change," published in the March issue of the journal Language, documents Philadelphia's changing accent through an analysis of speech patterns of city residents spanning more than a century. The study is co-authored by William Labov, professor of linguistics and director of Penn's Linguistics Laboratory; Josef Fruehwald, a doctoral candidate in linguistics and Ingrid Rosenfelder, who worked on the National Science Foundation supported study as a postdoctoral student at Penn. The team developed new computational methods to research how Philadelphian's pronounce vowels and applied the computations to years of language data, which Labov's students first began collecting in 1973. "This is a breathtaking view of language change over a long period of time," Labov says. Approximately 1,000 people were involved in the study with 380 analyzed so far. Nearly a million measurements show that two-thirds of the Philadelphia vowels are in the process of change. In one instance, the vowel used in the word "ate" has steadily moved closer to the vowel of "eat," as shown by the speaker's date of birth from 1888 to 1992. This results in the word "day" pronounced "dee" as in "Sundee" rather than Sunday. The change in progress affects equally people of all educational levels, both men and women. "A 'snake' in the grass becomes a 'sneak' in the grass as the long vowel 'a' is pronounced with the speaker's jaw in a higher position," Labov says. The vowel of "out" and "down" has reversed direction, after moving toward a distinctively different Philadelphia sound for the first half of the century. For those born in the '50s and later, this vowel moved progressively back towards its position in 1900. In the earlier period, many Philadelphia features resembled those found in Southern dialects, and these are the changes that have reversed direction. Those that have not are movements towards patterns heard in the Northern dialects of western New England, New York state and the Great Lakes Region. The "Northernization" of the Philadelphia region is related to other findings on the direction of linguistic change in North America. The full study is available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/language....

What Are Metamaterials? We live in a world of waves. The radio waves hitting your car's antenna and the light coming in through its windshield, the X-rays that can detect a tumor and the gamma radiation that can destroy it are all different facets of the same phenomenon: electromagnetism. As one of the fundamental forces of nature, its imprint can be felt on almost everything in the universe. The difference between these waves that permeate the everyday aspects of our lives is where they fall on the electromagnetic spectrum, or how long it takes for each of these waves to crest, fall, and repeat. The waves carrying a radio broadcast might be a meter long, for example—long enough to swerve around obstacles on their way to your receiver. The light waves that are coming from the screen and into your eyes are a million times smaller than that, and radioactive gamma waves are a million times smaller still. Mastering the movement of these waves is at the heart of much of modern technology, and at Penn, no one does that quite like Nader Engheta. The H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Engheta is a leading figure in the nascent field of metamaterials. Combining several branches of physics and engineering with a healthy dose of nanotechnology, metamaterials can bend and manipulate waves like nothing in nature can. Objects made from natural materials have atoms and molecules that are arranged in certain patterns dictated by the laws of physics and chemistry; those patterns give natural materials their electromagnetic properties, which in turn determine how they influence the properties of waves. With researchers' increasing abilities to engineer materials on ever-smaller scales, they can take these principles and apply them in more complex ways. Engheta and his colleagues start with the patterns of naturally occurring materials, but organize those patterns into larger ones. The atomic patterns found in a nanoscale cube of gold might be incorporated into an array of many cubes of gold, precisely spaced within a block of glass. This composite material would have properties that couldn't be achieved in either gold or glass alone. By designing arrangements of shapes with features that are smaller than a given wavelength, Engheta and other metamaterials researchers are developing "super lenses," which have unprecedented magnification abilities, and "cloaking devices," which can bend waves around an object, rendering it effectively invisible. Engheta is also working on structures consisting of metamaterials arranged in even larger patterns—effectively, meta-metamaterials. Text by Evan Lerner Video by Kurtis Sensenig

Officially, the three-day seminar tailored to students getting ready to start their first year at Penn Vet, is called "Introduction to Dairy Production Systems." But it's more commonly known as, "I've Never Touched A Cow, But I Want To." The immersion program takes place in mid-August at Marshak Dairy, located at Penn Vet's New Bolton Center campus. Students who volunteer to attend the seminar get a crash course in the basics of dairy production, the role veterinarians play in keeping herds healthy, and key concepts of the dairy farm business, including milk production and processing. The hands-on portion of the seminar involves milking the cows, doing barn maintenance, and feeding calves. This year, students had the opportunity to feed a calf that was only a couple of hours old. For many students, the cow class is the first time they have ever been around farm animals or had anything to do with the food animal industry. Text by Tanya Barrientos Video by Kurtis Sensenig

It's been three months since the Penn Vet Working Dog Center welcomed its inaugural class of puppies, seven rambunctious balls of energy destined to become highly trained detection dogs performing jobs that range from police and rescue work, to bomb and drug detection. The dogs—Bretagne, Kaiserin (called Kai), Morgan, PApa Bear, Sirius, Socks, and Thunder—are known as the Class of 2013. Each weekday, the puppies are delivered by their foster parents to the Center's headquarters at Penn's South Bank, where they spend the day training to be expert detectors and also learn how to remain physically fit. At the end of their year of training, the dogs will be expected to perform an extended search for a hidden object or person in an area that is unfamiliar to them. They will be able to ignore distractions, and they will be able to follow off-leash directions with agility. In addition to training the dogs, the Center is conducting scientific research on how to optimize the health and performance of all working dogs. Text by Tanya Barrientos Video by Kurtis Sensenig and Penn Vet Working Dog Center

On 40 acres of Chester County, Pennsylvania's lush pasture land, close to 90 ponies roam relatively free of human interference. Their social interactions, reproductive behavior, and physical well-being give researchers like Sue McDonnell, founding head of the Equine Behavior Program at Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, a window into the lives of horses in a near-natural state

In this demonstration, Dr. David Brainard shows how a black object reflecting more light than a white object, appears to the human eye. Here is an in-depth explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2spb...

The Quidditch Team at Penn from the Harry Potter Series

In his new book, On Wings of Diesel, Jamal Elias, professor of Religious Studies, takes readers on journey through the world of Pakistani truck decoration. These ornately adorned vehicles depict all aspects of life and fuel an extensive artisanal industry. To provide a unique understanding of Pakistan's complex society, Elias explores designs and motifs in truck art, the motivations of those involved in the practice and its cultural significance. An accomplished amateur photographer, Elias illustrates his research with vivid photos of these "mechanical dinosaurs adorned in full courtship colors." In this audio slideshow, view Elias' pictures of Pakistani truck art and listen to him discuss his research. Rachel Witte and Nikkolai Davenport contributed to this story.

Vision is amazing because it seems so mundane. Peoples' eyes, nerves and brains translate light into electrochemical signals and then into an experience of the world around them. A close look at the physics of just the first part of this process shows that even seemingly simple tasks, like keeping a stable perception of an object's color in different lighting conditions or distinguishing black and white objects, is, in fact, very challenging. University of Pennsylvania psychologists, by way of a novel experiment, have now provided new insight into how the brain tackles this problem. Produced by Kurtis Sensenig kurtiss@upenn.edu

Peter Decherney is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the forthcoming book Hollywood's Copyright Wars.

A short video detailing the undergraduate experience at the University of Pennsylvania.

This is a simulation, showing possible uses for these robotic boats. The first question is, why not have the quadrotor lift the patient over the water? In the real world, that's probably the easiest solution, but here we wanted to demo the boats. Which got us thinking, would there be any real-world situation using all three robots the way we do in the video? Perhaps in an area with a no-fly zone implemented, or tunnels through mountains too high to fly over. Add any of your real-world scenarios in the comments, get creative! A video showing how the boats work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OY3nB... How these boats will be used: Imagine sailing a container ship to help with cleanup at the site of a massive oil spill. Now imagine if each container were actually an autonomous robotic boat. Dumped into the ocean, the boats could link up to form an ad-hoc platform for landing a helicopter or operating a crane. That's the aim of DARPA's Tactically Expandable Maritime Platform, and Engineering professors Vijay Kumar and Mark Yim are leading a Penn team working on the early stages of the project. Similar to work with the GRASP Lab's quadrotors, Kumar and Yim are trying to figure out how to give swarms of robots general instructions on how and where to move. The team wants each robot to determine how to best accomplish its task without getting in the way of the other autonomous boats. The researchers have built a fleet of 100 scale model robotic boats, each about a foot-and-a-half long, and are testing them in a pool to improve the algorithms that control this collective behavior. The boats are labeled with a visual identifier that can be read by a camera, much like a QR code. The camera system feeds location information to each boat's onboard computer, enabling them to assess where they are in relation to their fleet-mates. Operating in the open ocean with no cameras overhead, the full-size boats will use GPS for their location information. Once deployed, the researchers only need to provide the boats with a desired final shape, and the robots do the rest. "We give them a structure, and then each boat figures out where to go and in what sequence to go to make that structure," Yim says. Once in place, they connect to one another via a hook-and-tether mechanism, developed by QinetiQ NA, the company that will make the full-sized boats. Critically, each of these connections can be dynamically tightened and loosened. While the surface of the gymnasium pool where the team is testing the robots is relatively placid, the full-size boats will have to contend with stormy seas and unpredictable conditions. Individual boats need to tightly lock together to allow a vehicle to drive over them, but a totally rigid platform could be broken apart by waves. "You need to make stiff connections to have a flat surface with no cracks," Yim says. "So we could tighten only the connections right underneath a vehicle as it's moving, for example." DARPA envisions such a system to be used in dealing with natural and man-made disasters, or in helping deliver humanitarian aid. For more information: http://www.upenn.edu/spotlights/robot... Text by Evan Lerner Video by Kurtis Sensenig

See how this video was made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfxS6... Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this "couch guitar" by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of the quadrotor. A special microphone attached to the frame records the notes made by the "couch guitar". These flying quadrotors are completely autonomous, meaning humans are not controlling them; rather they are controlled by a computer programed with instructions to play the instruments. Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science is home to some of the most innovative robotics research on the planet, much of it coming out of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab. This video premiered at the TED2012 Conference in Long Beach, California on February 29, 2012. Deputy Dean for Education and GRASP lab member Vijay Kumar presented some of this groundbreaking work at the TED2012 conference, an international gathering of people and ideas from technology, entertainment, and design. The engineers from Penn, Daniel Mellinger and Alex Kushleyev, have formed a company called KMel Robotics that will design and market these quadrotors. More information: http://www.upenn.edu/spotlights/penn-... Video Produced and Directed by Kurtis Sensenig (Twitter: @ksensenig) Quadrotors and Instruments by Daniel Mellinger, Alex Kushleyev and Vijay Kumar

PhillieBot, designed by the University of Pennsylvania, gives the first pitch at a Phillies game, pitching to the Phillie Phanatic. Unfortunately, the Phillie Phanatic apparently broke its wrist catching a pitch last year. This time, at the last minute, the robot's engineers were told to turn the pitching arm's power down, so as not to hurt the Phanatic again. This robot has the potential to throw a ball at very high speeds, if the settings were set to allow for it.

RHex is an all-terrain walking robot that could one day climb over rubble in a rescue mission or cross the desert with environmental sensors strapped to its back. Pronounced "Rex," like the over-excited puppy it resembles when it is bounding over the ground, RHex is short for "robot hexapod," a name that stems from its six springy legs. Legs have an advantage over wheels when it comes to rough terrain, but the articulated legs often found on walking robots require complex, specialized instructions for each moving part. To get the most mobility out of RHex's simple, one-jointed legs, Penn researchers are essentially teaching the robot Parkour. Taking inspiration from human free-runners, the team is showing the robot how to manipulate its body in creative ways to get around all sorts of obstacles. The RHex platform was first developed through a multi-university collaboration more than a decade ago. Graduate student Aaron Johnson and professor Daniel Koditschek, both of the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, are working on a version of RHex known as XRL, or X-RHex Lite. This lighter and more agile version of the robot, developed in Koditschek's Kod*Lab, a division of Engineering's General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab, is ideal for testing new ways for it to run, jump, and climb. By activating its legs in different sequences, XRL can execute double jumps, flips, and, through a combination of moves, even pull-ups. For the tallest obstacles, the robot can launch itself vertically, hook its front legs on the edge of the object it's trying to surmount, then drag its body up and over. The researchers fully demonstrated this particular maneuver under more controlled conditions in the lab. The paper where Johnson and Koditschek outlined these capabilities—"Toward a Vocabulary of Legged Leaping"—was selected as a finalist for best student paper at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May. "What we want is a robot that can go anywhere, even over terrain that might be broken and uneven," Johnson says. "These latest jumps greatly expand the range of what this machine is capable of, as it can now jump onto or across obstacles that are bigger than it is." For more info: http://www.upenn.edu/spotlights/robot... The scientific paper from the lab: http://kodlab.seas.upenn.edu/Aaron/IC... Video Produced and Directed by Kurtis Sensenig (Twitter: @ksensenig) Text by Evan Lerner Music: "Stretched Out" by Hedgehog's Dilemma

This never-before-seen footage from a laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Physics and Astronomy shows microscopic particles moving in a drop as it dries. Penn physicists have recently shown that simply changing particle shape can eliminate the ring-shaped stain that is left behind when drops of certain liquids dry. In this video microscopy footage from their experiments, watch as spherical particles get swept to the edges, while oblong particles are distributed consistently. Video and Music Composition by Kurtis Sensenig kurtiss@upenn.edu

For students in the School of Engineering and Applied Science's Design of Mechatronic Systems class, "the finals" are more than an exam; they are a tournament in which the winners hoist a trophy high above their heads in victory. Throughout the school year, members of the class, led by Jonathan Fiene, director of laboratory programs, design pint-sized robotic hockey teams that faceoff in an annual competition known as The Robockey Cup. Each team produces three robots that skate on wheels, shoot with pistons, and see the puck, the goals, and each other using a variety of sensors. More info: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current... Video by Kurtis Sensenig kurtiss@upenn.edu Text by Evan Lerner

Bioengineers have been steadily advancing toward the goal of building lab-grown organs out of a patient's own cells, but a few major challenges remain. One of them is making vasculature, the blood vessel plumbing system that delivers nutrients and remove waste from the cells on the inside of a mass of tissue. Without these blood vessels, interior cells quickly suffocate and die. Scientists can already grow thin layers of cells, so one proposed solution to the vasculature problem is to "print" the cells layer by layer, leaving openings for blood vessels as necessary. But this method leaves seams, and when blood is pumped through the vessels, it pushes those seams apart. Bioengineers from the University of Pennsylvania have turned the problem inside out by using a 3D printer called a RepRap to make templates of blood vessel networks out of sugar. Once the networks are encased in a block of cells, the sugar can be dissolved, leaving a functional vascular network behind. "I got the first hint of this solution when I visited a Body Worlds exhibit, where you can see plastic casts of free-standing, whole organ vasculature," says Bioengineering postdoc Jordan Miller. Miller, along with Christopher Chen, the Skirkanich Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering, other members of Chen's lab, and colleagues from MIT, set out to show that this method of developing sugar vascular networks helps keep interior cells alive and functioning. After the researchers design the network architecture on a computer, they feed the design to the RepRap. The printer begins building the walls of a stabilizing mold. Then it then draws filaments across the mold, pulling the sugar at different speeds to achieve the desired thickness of what will become the blood vessels. After the sugar has hardened, the researchers add liver cells suspended in a gel to the mold. The gel surrounds the filaments, encasing the blood vessel template. After the gel sets it can be removed from the mold with the template still inside. The block of gel is then washed in water, dissolving the remaining sugar inside. The liquid sugar flows out of the vessels it has created without harming the growing cells. "This new technology, from the cell's perspective, makes tissue formation a gentle and quick journey," says Chen. The researchers have successfully pumped nutrient-rich media, and even blood, through these gels blocks' vascular systems. They also have experimentally shown that more of the liver cells survive and produce more metabolites in gels that have these networks. The RepRap makes testing new vascular architectures quick and inexpensive, and the sugar is stable enough to ship the finished networks to labs that don't have 3D printers of their own. The researchers hope to eventually use this method to make implantable organs for animal studies. Text by Evan Lerner Video by Kurtis Sensenig

The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, was created under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of Penn's Moore School of Electrical Engineering (now the School of Engineering and Applied Science). Construction of the 27-ton, 680-square-foot computer began in July 1943 and was announced to the public on Feb. 14, 1946. It was built to calculate ballistic trajectories for the Army during World War II, a time- and labor-intensive process that had previously been performed by teams of mathematicians working with mechanical calculators. ENIAC stored information in the form of electrons trapped in vacuum tubes, making it the first all-electronic, general-purpose digital computer. The long string of adjectives distinguishes it from earlier mechanical computers, which were essentially gear-driven abacuses that could aid in complex math but could only calculate a small subset of equations.

Robocup 2010

Asafa Powell, Michael Frater, Nesta Carter, Steve Mullings run and win for Jamaica in the 4x100 meter dash at the Penn Relays on April 30, 2011. After winning, they run off the track and pose for media and fans. This is the behind the scenes footage. Shot by Kurtis Sensenig, University of Pennsylvania

Lentil is a French bulldog puppy with a mission. Born with bilateral cleft lips and midline cleft palate, Lentil, at three months old, is nevertheless a "total pistol" who "rules the house," according to his foster mom Lindsay Condefer. An internet star with his own blog and Facebook page—more than 67,000 "Likes" and counting—Lentil's photos have been featured on Today.com, The Huffington Post, and Buzzfeed.com. His endearing appearance has led many to donate to the French Bulldog Rescue Network, the organization that took him in when he was born. "I think he has acquired such a following because he represents something simple and pure," says Condefer. "He makes people smile." Cuteness aside, however, Lentil's cleft palate poses a serious threat to his health. The opening in the roof of his mouth puts him at risk of aspiration pneumonia because food or other materials enter his airway. That risk is why Condefer has turned to oral surgeons at Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine to help Lentil. Though they acknowledge the severity of the puppy's condition, John Lewis and Alexander Reiter of Penn Vet's Dentistry and Oral Surgery Service are hopeful that they can give Lentil the opportunity to live a long, healthy life, and serve as an example to children with similar conditions. Condefer is director of the Philadelphia-based Street Tails Animal Rescue and owner of the pet store The Chic Petique. For more than a dozen years, she has cared for special needs dogs but had never had a case quite like Lentil's. Her research on his condition led her to travel out of state to consult with a group of veterinarians who left her with little hope that his condition could be effectively repaired. But then she sought a second opinion in her own city. She knew Lewis from a previous job she had, working in the intensive care unit at Penn Vet's Ryan Veterinary Hospital. After connecting with him by email, she sent a few photos of Lentil's cleft palate. "To put it in medical terms, what Lentil's got is a complete cleft of the secondary palate and complete bilateral clefts of the primary palate," says Lewis, who is an assistant professor at Penn Vet. "It's rare to see all of those in one patient." Still, Lewis was not deterred by the severity of the malformations. "I told Lindsay, 'Well, it's going to require some work, but I think it's too early to give up on him at this point,'" says Lewis. "Things can change as the patient grows." Fortunately for Lentil, his outlook has improved as he's gotten older. His head has enlarged in relation to the size of the defect in his palate, and Lewis and Reiter now believe they'll be able to provide a functional repair in the roof of Lentil's mouth. See photos of Lentil's visit to Penn Vet: http://www.flickr.com/photos/universi... Read more: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current... Video by Kurtis Sensenig Text by Katherine Unger Baillie

Part 2: How the Soccer Robots Work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ULcse... In July, the U.S. scored a major international soccer victory. While the nation was unable to bring home the Women's World Cup, Team DARwIn took first place in the Humanoid Kid Size competition at the 2011 RoboCup tournament in Istanbul, Turkey. The robots, whose name stands for "Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence," are a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Tech. Penn Engineering team members who traveled to the competition included Stephen McGill, Seung-Joon Yi, Yida Zhang, along with Jordan Brindza, Ashleigh Thomas, Spencer Lee, and Nicholas McGill, who are undergraduate and graduate students in the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory. Team members from Virginia Tech included Jeakweon Han, a Ph.D. student in the RoMeLa Lab, and Taylor Pesek, an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering For the competition, Penn developed the software framework that provided each robot with artificial intelligence (AI). This AI operates on multiple levels. At the most basic, it provides instructions on how to move each joint of the leg in order to walk; at the most complex, it incorporates all of information gathered by the robot—such as whether a collection of red pixels in its camera represents the ball, or the distance between itself, other robots and the goal — and uses it to make gameplay decisions. The engineers their team's overarching strategy should focus on speed at the expense of strength and accuracy. "Our goal was to get to the ball the fastest, which allows us to block other teams' kicks and move the ball upfield," Yi said. "The strategy for one of our rivals, the German team, was to make strong, accurate kicks, but it took them a long time to get into the kicking position. Our faster, shorter kicks were more effective." RoboCup, and competitions like it, drive the advancement of sophisticated locomotion and intelligence for humanoids in a specific scenario where humans already display their prowess in motor skills and decision-making. "These competitions are important for robotics because they take the amazing research done in laboratories and push it to be more robust in real world situations," McGill said. "In competitions, there are rarely 'do-overs' and it is important to make sure that robots can adapt to many unforeseen obstacles. The end results are resilient and feature-full humanoid robots that are better able to work alongside humans." In the Kid Size Class, Team DARwIn beat several teams, including one from Japan for the championship. The DARwIn 1 platform was introduced in 2004 and was a revolutionary humanoid robot prototype at the time, and has been followed by several incarnations since. DARwIn-OP was introduced this past year and is a fully open source design, where all information on the hardware is to be shared on-line for free, including detailed plans and drawings, manuals for fabrication and assembly. Video by Kurtis Sensenig Text by Evan Lerner

In 2007, the University of Pennsylvania acquired 14-acres of asphalt parking lots on the western edge of the Schuylkill River from the United States Postal Service. As part of its Penn Connects campus development plan, the University would replace the concrete and asphalt with a sustainable, vibrant green swath of open space and athletic fields. Penn Park opened to the public in September, 2011. A major feature of Penn Park is its commitment to creating a sustainable landscape while also meeting athletic and open space needs of the community. Video Produced by Kurtis Sensenig kurtiss@upenn.edu Still Photos by Steven Minicola, Scott Spitzer and Steve Belfiglio Narration by Jeanne Leong

In July, the U.S. scored a major international soccer victory. While the nation was unable to bring home the Women's World Cup, Team DARwIn took first place in the Humanoid Kid Size competition at the 2011 RoboCup tournament in Istanbul, Turkey. The robots, whose name stands for "Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence," are a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Tech. Penn Engineering team members who traveled to the competition included Stephen McGill, Seung-Joon Yi, Yida Zhang, along with Jordan Brindza, Ashleigh Thomas, Spencer Lee, and Nicholas McGill, who are undergraduate and graduate students in the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory. Team members from Virginia Tech included Jeakweon Han, a Ph.D. student in the RoMeLa Lab, and Taylor Pesek, an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering For the competition, Penn developed the software framework that provided each robot with artificial intelligence (AI). This AI operates on multiple levels. At the most basic, it provides instructions on how to move each joint of the leg in order to walk; at the most complex, it incorporates all of information gathered by the robot—such as whether a collection of red pixels in its camera represents the ball, or the distance between itself, other robots and the goal — and uses it to make gameplay decisions. The engineers their team's overarching strategy should focus on speed at the expense of strength and accuracy. "Our goal was to get to the ball the fastest, which allows us to block other teams' kicks and move the ball upfield," Yi said. "The strategy for one of our rivals, the German team, was to make strong, accurate kicks, but it took them a long time to get into the kicking position. Our faster, shorter kicks were more effective." RoboCup, and competitions like it, drive the advancement of sophisticated locomotion and intelligence for humanoids in a specific scenario where humans already display their prowess in motor skills and decision-making. "These competitions are important for robotics because they take the amazing research done in laboratories and push it to be more robust in real world situations," McGill said. "In competitions, there are rarely 'do-overs' and it is important to make sure that robots can adapt to many unforeseen obstacles. The end results are resilient and feature-full humanoid robots that are better able to work alongside humans." In the Kid Size Class, Team DARwIn beat several teams, including one from Japan for the championship. The DARwIn 1 platform was introduced in 2004 and was a revolutionary humanoid robot prototype at the time, and has been followed by several incarnations since. DARwIn-OP was introduced this past year and is a fully open source design, where all information on the hardware is to be shared on-line for free, including detailed plans and drawings, manuals for fabrication and assembly. Video by Kurtis Sensenig Text by Evan Lerner

Discovering a multi-million year old human fossil may represent a truly one-of-a-kind look into the history of the human species, but even the most well preserved specimen is not much use in a vacuum. Fossils must be compared to each other to give scientists insight into where they fit in the long progression to humans of today, and here, the rarity of such finds are a real obstacle. Janet Monge has a solution. As the associate director and manager of the Casting Program at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, she and her volunteer assistants make replicas of these priceless fossils that are identical at up to 4,000 times magnification.

Since 1993, every incoming freshman in Wharton has been required to take the course called Management 100 during the fall semester. Stressing group dynamics, leadership and the fundamentals of project management, the class provides students with a semester-long glimpse into the very real challenges, and the ultimate rewards, of teamwork.

Studying Climate Change Through Tree Rings

Neither gray skies nor a blustery cold front could cloud the sunny smiles or curb the enthusiasm of those who came out to enjoy the opening of Penn Park. In fact, a rainbow crowned the closing of the event. Perhaps the brightest smile of all belonged to Penn President Amy Gutmann as she thanked the many people who helped to make the park a reality. "Seeing is believing: With your strong support, Penn has transformed an asphalt parking lot into a bit of paradise for our entire community," she said during the celebration on Sept. 15., topped off with a commemorative tree planting with Penn trustees, project donors and elected officials. Following the planting, Gutmann was escorted by Penn cheerleaders, the Quaker mascot and the Penn Band to the center of the park where she cut a ribbon held by athletes and coaches in an official opening to the new athletic fields.