With an innovative and interdisciplinary mindset, Penn places a strong emphasis on encouraging and enabling any student to carry out research. It’s an ecosystem strategically created to help foster ideas, provide the resources to help build them up, and then take them from labs to commercialization.
Competitively awarded on an annual basis, the President’s Engagement Prizes empower Penn seniors to design and undertake local, national, or global engagement projects during the first year after they graduate.
President’s Innovation Prize awards a graduating Penn senior, or a team of graduating seniors, to envision and implement an innovative, commercial venture that makes a positive difference in the world.
Penn CURF helps Penn students deepen their academic experience through participating in research, applying for nationally competitive fellowships, or engaging intellectually within a cohort of scholars.
The Innovation Fund exists to fund and support creative and meaningfully innovative ventures from the Penn student community.
Featured and recent additions to Penn’s research infrastructure.
The 58,000-square-foot anchor to the Pennovation Works campus, the Pennovation Center is a business incubator and laboratory that aligns and integrates researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs for the commercialization of research discoveries.
Wharton-led and Penn-wide, Tangen Hall is the physical “start here” button bringing together aspiring entrepreneurs across the University. It maintains a retail flex space, a virtual reality cave, a test kitchen, maker spaces, and more.
Opened in 2021, the Clifton Center for Medical Breakthroughs marks a historic opportunity for Penn Medicine to set a new benchmark for care delivery. It houses 500 private patient rooms and 47 operating rooms in a 1.5 million-square-foot, 17-story facility.
The new building, which links to the south side of Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall, is an academic hub for faculty, students, and research programs, including those focused on data and analytics.
The Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology will consolidate existing and emerging energy research programs by providing 110,000 square feet of state-of-the-art laboratory space.
A full list of research centers and institutes is available via OVPR.
The Penn Center for Innovation is the University’s innovation, venture creation, and commercialization center. It provides infrastructure, leadership, and resources needed to transfer promising Penn inventions, know-how, and related assets into the marketplace for the public good. PCI transforms the Philadelphia region’s capacity to support an ecosystem of innovative entrepreneurs, companies, and workers all making essential contributions to our collective economic future.
PCI Ventures is dedicated to supporting technology commercialization within the Penn community. Since 2010, PCIV has worked with more than 200 faculty and staff members to form and launch new companies based on selected inventions and innovative technologies.
PCI acts as a “one stop shop” for industrial partners, providing access to the services and resources needed to engage in sponsored research, collaborations, technology licenses, new venture creation, and other types of partnerships with Penn.
Browse Penn-owned technologies available for licensing.
3600 Civic Center Boulevard
9th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 898-9591
pciinfo@pci.upenn.edu
"Innovation is much more than traditional patenting and technology transfer. It is about creating an innovation ecosystem that fosters a fluid exchange of ideas and expertise across a broad spectrum of new and established knowledge."
Larry Jameson, Penn President