Celebrating Innovation and Showcasing Penn’s Pennovation Works |
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November 4, 2014, Volume 61, No. 12 |
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Friday’s celebration included a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Pennovation Center, which will form a central part of the complex when it opens, repurposing 52,000 square feet of reinvigorated industrial space (above) as a hub to facilitate and accelerate entrepreneurial activities, creative collaborations and new approaches to the commercialization of research discoveries at Penn.
All photos by Marguerite F. Miller |
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President Amy Gutmann (at left) and Walter Isaacson (at right) during the recent Silfen forum |
University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and David L. Cohen, chair of Penn’s Board of Trustees, hosted Penn students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees and friends, as well as the region’s business and tech community, at a series of events last Friday to celebrate innovation at Penn and showcase Penn’s Pennovation Works, at the South Bank, a hub for innovation and new business ventures.
The afternoon featured the 2014 David and Lyn Silfen University Forum, From Idea to Innovation: The Impactful University, a conversation between President Gutmann and special guest Walter Isaacson, who drew from his new book, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution.
Epitomizing the impactful and innovative research being done at Penn, four faculty members gave brief “Pennovation Talks.” The presenters were the SAS’s A.T. Charlie Johnson, the School of Engineering & Applied Science’s Katherine Kuchenbecker, the Perelman School of Medicine’s John Trojanowski and the Wharton School’s Karl Ulrich. They discussed topics such as robotic surgery, Alzheimer’s as an infectious disease and the importance of innovation.
“We are creating an innovation ecosystem at Penn that is expanding at an unprecedented pace,” said President Gutmann. “The celebration is designed to highlight the impressive range of innovative activities already taking place on campus.
“The Pennovation Center will be a dynamic hub that maximizes Penn’s impact by bringing together researchers, students and the private sector to foster innovation and development in the region. Our signature strength in integrating knowledge across disciplines gives this approach to innovation and technology transfer new muscle, and important new momentum.”
“The research discoveries hatched at Penn are having a real societal and economic impact in our region, our country and the world,” said Vice Provost for Research Dawn Bonnell. During this event, people interacted with thought leaders at Penn and saw inspiring examples of innovation in a variety of venues. They highlighted the infrastructure the University is creating to further support entrepreneurship, industry and community partnering and technology transfer.
Penn’s investment in the campus expansion at the South Bank—a 23-acre development at 34th Street and Grays Ferry Avenue acquired by Penn in 2010—and now being called Pennovation Works (the new name for the South Bank) is focused on advancing innovation and supporting the rapid application of research discoveries into new ventures that meet society’s pressing needs.
The property is being developed as a home to tenants from both the University and the private sector, with an emphasis on innovation-based economic development and entrepreneurial activities.
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Henry Daniell (above) in the Penn Dental Research Greenhouse. |
A quad rotor built by KMel Robotics. |
Already it has attracted such innovators as the Penn School of Veterinary Medicine’s Working Dog Center (see here), the School of Dental Medicine’s Research Greenhouse and Arts & Sciences’ Bio Garden; PCI Ventures and the UPstart company Novapeutics; KMel Robotics; Edible Philly magazine publishing; and The Philadelphia Free Library archives. And it will soon be home to the expansion of Penn Engineering’s GRASP Lab. As the University’s robotics research arm, its projects range from advancing a computer vision that will eventually inform self-driving cars to sensitive mechanical fingertips that can assist with surgeries to bacteria-powered nano-motors.
The building will also house the Penn Ventures initiative of the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI). As part of the University’s focus on innovation, PCI is designed to help accelerate the translation of Penn discoveries and ideas into commercial products, businesses and services.
Tours were given of these three entities:
• The Working Dog Center (WDC), founded and directed by veterinarian Cynthia Otto, works to determine how best to breed, rear and train dogs that aid humans with tasks as vital and varied as search and rescue, explosives or drug detection and diabetes alert. In partnership with researchers in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences and Perelman School of Medicine, the WDC has also been involved in using dogs to sniff out ovarian cancer (Almanac August 27, 2013).
• KMel Robotics was spun off from Penn’s GRASP lab in 2011 by Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger, then recent Penn graduates. KMel designs and builds high-performance flying robots for use in research.
• The Penn Dental Research Greenhouse, a high-tech, $2 million greenhouse purpose-built for Henry Daniell’s plant-based drug delivery research system, which uses genetically engineered lettuce leaves grown to treat or prevent diseases as varied as Alzheimer’s, polio, diabetes and hypertension.
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Vice President of Public Safety Maureen Rush, EVP Craig Carnaroli, Officer Julie Wesley and Socks. |
Vice President of Public Safety Maureen Rush, EVP Craig Carnaroli, Officer Julie Wesley with Socks and Officer Sean Mackey with Zzisa. |
Related: Three Graduates from Penn Vet Working Dog Center: First Diabetes Alert Dog, Narcotics Detection Dog and Urban Search and Rescue Dog |