Carl June, of the Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center, has been named a 2021 Dan David Prize Laureate. June has been recognized for his contributions to molecular medicine, including his work to develop CAR T cell therapy. “This global honor could not be more well deserved,” said Penn President Amy Gutmann.
Penn President Amy Gutmann and Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor Jonathan Moreno, who coauthored the book “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die,” discussed pandemic ethics with journalist and Penn alumna Andrea Mitchell. Gutmann discussed, in part, the tension between making a living and actually living. “We have to come together to resolve this,” Gutmann said. “To make a living, we first need to be alive, but the only good way of resolving this terrible tension is to use what we call the least restrictive means possible to get it under control. I live this day to day as Penn’s president.”
The University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees approved a 2.8% increase in tuition for the coming year, while also approving a $259 million undergraduate financial aid budget.
Penn experts demystified the vaccination process, from shipping to inoculation. They also addressed some of the current challenges and the need for flexibility. “The interdisciplinary approach is the realization that this problem is a systems problem,” says Gad Allon of the Wharton School. “It’s not capacity only for the vaccines, but for the vaccines and everything around it. The constraints are shifting continuously, and the Penn way to think about this is that to realign, you continuously need to understand not just your location in the network and optimize not only that, but the entire relationship in the network.”
Captain Nicole McCoy of the Penn Police Department has been promoted to the newly created position of commanding officer of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The position was created to respond to the concerns of students, faculty, and members of the West Philadelphia community. “What we want it to do is have a central person who has a strategic plan to work with the community in West Philadelphia, to work with the community inside of Penn—its faculty, staff, and students—and also to work within the Police Department on the issues of diversity, equity, inclusion,” says Maureen Rush, vice president for Public Safety and superintendent of Penn Police.
Results from two of the largest-ever research studies aimed at increasing vaccine adoption found that simple communications that reminded individuals a flu shot was “waiting” or “reserved” for them boosted vaccination rates by up to 11 percent. The studies were a collaboration between the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the Wharton School, the School of Arts & Sciences, and the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit.
Julian Francis Abele was a highly regarded African American architect from Philadelphia and graduate of what is today the Stuart Weitzman School of Design. His design portfolio includes the central branch of the Free Library and Penn’s President’s House, among others, largely credited under the office of Horace Trumbauer. “He is one of many gifted designers working in other people’s offices who you don’t hear about,” says David Brownlee, the Frances Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Professor Emeritus of 19th Century European Art in the School of Arts & Sciences.
Mia Bay, a professor of American history, discussed her new book “Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance,” which dissects travel segregation and African American struggles for freedom of movement, from the antebellum era to the present. “People need to take away that infrastructure is really important,” says Bay. “The way people move through the world is not something that we simply do as free agents. We move through the world easily or with more difficulty depending on how our society provides for us and depending on how our rights are protected.”
A new approach to community monitoring of COVID-19, a team of researchers at Penn are working on a new “electronic nose” to detect infections. At the onset of the pandemic, the lab of physicist Charlie Johnson would collect T-shirt samples from people being tested for COVID-19 and analyze the odors. The goal is to create a fast, portable COVID-sniffing device. “This is our version of Warp Speed,” says Johnson. The project is supported by a $2 million grant from the NIH.
Penn faculty and students discussed the changing dynamics of philosophy departments and their forward momentum. “Departments are advertising positions to hire philosophers who primarily work on race, or who specialize in African American philosophy,” says doctoral student Daniel Fryer, who studies philosophy of law, political philosophy, and the philosophy of race and ethics. “You just didn’t see that 10 years ago.”
Undergraduate students Joey Lohmann, Rupa Palanki, and Preethi Kumaran, among others, worked to send more than 13,000 letters of appreciation to front-line workers. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the project, dubbed Lockdown Letters, has reached workers in 40 states and has expanded to reach out to not only hospital workers and teachers, but grocery workers and firefighters as well.
Part two of a two-part series on the state of American democracy, Penn experts spoke on public health, election legitimacy, student loan debt, and more. One counterintuitive observation made by Diana Mutz of the School of Arts & Sciences and Annenberg School for Communication is that voter turnout from November may not necessarily indicate a healthy democracy. “We had record-setting turnout, but much of that occurred because people were angry and dissatisfied with how government was working, not because democracy was working smoothly,” she says.
Justin Watson, a 2018 Penn alumnus, won the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, becoming one of only two former Penn football players with Super Bowl Rings. Watson said the football and life lessons he learned at the University were integral on his ride from Penn to the Super Bowl. “It’s just that grit mindset that Coach [Ray] Priore always talks about,” he said. "Whatever it takes, that’s what we’re going to do.”
In a Penn Today profile, Vice Provost for University Life Mamta Motwani Accapadi talks about her career path, leadership, diversity, and service. “Life as service is to me the exemplar of who we are as humans,” she says. “There’s a reciprocity,” she says, “a cycle of care that we all contribute to.”
In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Christopher Woods, the incoming director of the Penn Museum, discussed his career trajectory, his experience with Chicago’s Oriental Institute, and why he’s passionate about the Penn Museum. “Museum work is about telling stories,” Woods said. “This opens up the entire world for you at the Penn Museum. So it was really an opportunity that I felt compelled to seize.”