President Liz Magill began as Penn’s ninth president on Friday, July 1. In video remarks, she extended a heartfelt “thank you” to former Interim President Wendell Pritchett and President Emerita Amy Gutmann, as well as expressed excitement about her time at Penn. “Living here in the world-class city of Philadelphia, working with you to make Penn even more extraordinary, this will be the honor of a lifetime,” she said.
Penn President Liz Magill hosted an ice cream social, where she scooped ice cream for the more than 2,000 people who came together outside College Hall. “It is so nice to have that personal connection with the president; it’s important that people in the administration get to see who is actually in their student body,” said Sarah O’Konski, a chemistry major from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. “And President Magill even complimented my Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt.”
New College House (West) at 40th and Walnut streets, which opened last fall, will be renamed Gutmann College House in honor of Penn President Emerita Amy Gutmann, who now serves as U.S. ambassador to Germany. “I am truly humbled and honored to have this deeply meaningful space bear my name,” said Gutmann. “Its community-friendly design, its Quaker kitchen, and its wide-ranging student-centered offerings are incredibly appealing. Above all, there will always be a special place in my heart for the diverse and brilliant community of students who now call—and for generations will call—this College House their home.”
A team from the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics created a biophilic room—one that connects with elements of nature—to test how nature-inspired design might affect attention, memory, creativity, and mood. A preliminary pilot study is already showing promising results. “This work really focuses on places, on the natural and built environments and their relationship to well-being,” says Anjan Chatterjee, founder of the center.
As part of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities’s Ecotopian Toolkit Project, artists supported by the program created tools for navigating unpredictable ecological challenges and envisioning a just future. These tools were presented and trialed in five public workshops at the Independence Seaport Museum, a collaborator on the project. “That is a big motivation for my creative practice: I want to learn in public with other people,” says artist Feresteh Toosi. “I know something, you know something, and we can share and also be vulnerable with each other about what we know and where does that knowledge take us?”
Undergraduate students at the Wharton School, as part of the Wharton International Program, participated in a 10-day trip to business cultural sites in England and Ireland, visiting several businesses and receiving a private tour of Parliament. “Now I can say I stood right where actual MPs converse, debate, and attend sessions,” says sophomore Shivani Desai. “Something about witnessing such grand tradition and standing in historic halls with ceilings over 500 years old makes me think a little more about the impact of what I might leave behind for the world.”
The Penn Glee Club embarked on its first traveling tour as a gender-inclusive choir. It’s also the first international tour since the pandemic. “It was great to be able to share our music with people outside the Philadelphia community for the first time in a long time,” says Daniel Carsello, Glee Club director. “And I think the students really appreciated that, too.”
The century-old American elm located in the heart of the Quadrangle residences was slated for removal the week of July 25, due to safety concerns regarding its ailing health. The site will be replanted with three white oaks at a future date. “The Quad elm is such an iconic tree,” says Bob Lundgren, University landscape architect. “Old trees like that create a special place, a place to reflect, and they are significant parts of the campus landscape.”
In a Q&A, PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts of the Law School and the School of Arts & Sciences discussed the foreshadowing and the implications of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision issued by the Supreme Court in June. “The Dobbs decision has all of these far-reaching ramifications that widely restrict multiple freedoms,” says Roberts. “But it also makes it clear that we need a broad-based movement to guarantee reproductive freedom that isn’t just focused on the legal right to make a choice to terminate a pregnancy.”
Six students from the Wharton Undergraduate Aerospace Club traveled to Hampton, Virginia, to present a vision for a greener, cleaner airport operation. The plan entails using direct air capture technology that removes carbon emissions from the air, plus electrifying airplanes and ground vehicles associated with airport operations. NASA awarded the proposal the “Most Intriguing Concept” award.
Adding to the understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 spreads, research from the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of Arts & Sciences found that aerosols musicians produce dissipate within about six feet, informing the arrangement of the Philadelphia Orchestra during the summer of 2020 and how other musical groups can safely gather and play. “You can have a big jet of air coming out, but if the aerosol concentration is very low it doesn't much matter,” says Doug Jerolmack of SEAS and SAS, a lead researcher on the study. “Or you can have a lot of aerosols that get concentrated in a narrow beam. Those things are important to understand.”
Skyla Wilson is a May graduate with school track and field records in the indoor 60m hurdles (8.29), outdoor 100m hurdles (13.45), outdoor 200m (23.54), and outdoor 400m hurdles (58.26). In a Q&A with Penn Today, she discussed her track career and her plans for the future.
The Arthur Ross Gallery debuted a new exhibition, “From Studio to Doorstep.” Thirty-seven prints from Associated American Artists, a company founded in 1934 that sold affordable, limited-run prints through mail-order, are on display in the gallery. “It was a totally new way of marketing artwork, meant to be shipped to wherever people were across the country,” says Lynn Dolby, University Art Collection manager and exhibition curator. “These prints were not necessarily meant for a museum audience; they were meant for the home and are very intimate in scale.”
Ava Irysa Kikut, a doctoral candidate in the Annenberg School for Communication, worked with high school students and Penn undergraduates to develop media messages that speak to the health needs and inequalities pertinent to Philadelphia youth. She used a method called Youth Participatory Action Research that allowed researchers to collaborate with youth to create messages that spoke to their own communities.
Researchers from the School of Dental Medicine and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, in a proof-of-concept study using real human teeth and 3-D printed ones, have demonstrated that shapeshifting microrobots can brush and slip between teeth, then producing antimicrobials that kill harmful bacteria—much like a rinse. “Routine oral care is cumbersome and can pose challenges for many people, especially those who have hard time cleaning their teeth” says Hyun (Michel) Koo of Penn Dental, a co-corresponding author on the study. “You have to brush your teeth, then floss your teeth, then rinse your mouth; it’s a manual, multistep process. The big innovation here is that the robotics system can do all three in a single, hands-free, automated way.”