News
The Life Cycle of an Idea
hat cellphone in your pocket likely runs on a battery that requires vast amounts of nickel and cobalt. But what’s the most sustainable, easiest, and cheapest way to extract those elements? Eric Schelter, Hirschmann-Makineni Professor of Chemistry, is working on that problem, ensuring that something most of us use daily—hourly, even—can be produced with minimal environmental damage and recycled indefinitely.
Workshop on Hybrid Cherenkov/Scintillation Detection Technologies
P&A hosted the first in a series of annual international workshops on a new technology for detecting neutrinos. The new approach combines both Cherenkov light, which is often used to detect high-energy neutrinos, with scintillation light which can detect low energy neutrinos. The two together can therefore provide a very broad physics program including both neutrino oscillations, solar neutrino detection, and the search for neutrinoless double beta decay.
Dark Energy Survey Collaboration Meeting
60 members of the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration gathered at Penn for their final collaboration meeting after 15 years of working on the project.
How Penn is reimagining research in the age of artificial intelligence
Bhuvnesh Jain of the School of Arts & Sciences has teamed up with PIK University Professor René Vidal of the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Engineering and Applied Science to create the AI x Science Fellowship offering postdoctoral researchers across the University opportunities to collaborate across disciplines.
Mathew Madhavacheril and Co-Researchers Receive Funding from RCSA for Scialog Initiative
A team including Mathew Madhavacheril, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the School of Arts & Sciences, is among the first-ever recipients of funding from a new initiative supporting an ambitious 10-year project. The undertaking aims to answer pressing questions about dark energy, dark matter, and supermassive black holes, among other space phenomena.
Justin Khoury named Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Physics and Astronomy
The chair was awarded by the university in recognition of Justin’s distinguished scholarship and teaching, as well as his service and leadership in our department and in the School of Arts and Sciences. The Kahn chairs were established through a bequest by Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn. Edmund Kahn was a 1925 Wharton graduate who had a highly successful career in the oil and natural gas industry. Louise Kahn, a graduate of Smith College, worked for Newsweek and owned an interior design firm.
Congratulations to Professor Mark Devlin
Great news!
Professor Mark Devlin has been elected 2025 Member of the National Academy of Sciences!
Appointment of Professor Justin Khoury as co-Director of the Center for Particle Cosmology
The Center for Particle Cosmology would like to announce an important leadership change. Professor Mark Trodden, who has co-directed the center since its founding in 2009, was recently announced as the new Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, and has decided to step down as co-Director, effective May 1, 2025. Professor Trodden will, however, continue as a key member and contributor to the Center.
Congratulations to Max Cohen!
We are pleased to announce that Max Cohen is the recipient of the 2025-2026 Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Innovation (CETLI) Fellowship.