Research at Penn

Penn's Innovative Spirit

At Penn, there is a tradition of innovation that began with Penn’s founder himself, Benjamin Franklin. The philosopher, writer, and Founding Father sought to create an institute of higher learning that was unlike others in the 18th century, where the growing business and governing classes in the American colonies could learn useful and practical subjects, including natural history, geology, geography, and modern languages. Franklin’s innovative idea sparks brighter than ever today. At Penn, researchers cross disciplines and schools, cultivating and improving how we think about and solve the world’s greatest needs. Teams are exploring how immunotherapy can treat cancer, asking why more women than men suffer from autoimmune diseases, and studying how a part of the brain associated with negative behaviors also influences kindness. Experts are developing a process to recycle rare-earth magnets, assessing the public’s knowledge about the Zika virus, and finding that increasing numbers of Americans are giving up personal data. The opening of the new Pennovation Center at the Pennovation Works site stands as a testament to the value Penn places on big ideas. It is a place where University scholars, doers, and problemsolvers, including those from the Penn Engineering Research and Collaboration Hub, are working side by side with IT, biotechnology, and robotics startups, Fortune 500 companies, and a host of technologists, researchers, and venture capitalists to explore and push new ideas into reality and expand our frontiers of knowledge. To keep up with all the University’s research news, visit Penn’s research website: www.upenn.edu/researchdir.