Features

In a church where victims were massacred, a team from Penn is helping Rwandan officials develop a plan to conserve the material evidence—bullet-riddled walls, blood-stained clothing—that bears witness to the country’s genocide.

Suiting Up

Over the years, Penn has contributed an impressive number of alumni who have left their mark on the many-sided business of sports. And they all have stories to tell.

Homecoming 2016

Our annual photo gallery, plus two arts & culture anniversaries, and the Alumni Award of Merit winners and citations.

What Kids Want (to Watch)

Twenty-five years after she helped launch the original Nicktoons, Linda Simensky is still deciding what millions of kids watch on TV—and teaching Penn students who grew up loving the shows she developed.

Perry World House

Penn unveils its ambitious global policy center—which, in the run-up to the US presidential election, has wasted no time hosting a Who’s Who in the realm of world affairs.

Legal Zoom-In

Law professor and alumna Regina Austin loves star-attorney Perry Mason, but the students in her year-long Visual Legal Advocacy seminar are learning to make their cases from behind the camera.

Unconventional

Photographer Arthur Drooker C’76 has trained his lens on American Ruins and Lost Worlds. His new collection, Conventional Wisdom, covers his strangest territory yet.

Hands On History

For the past three decades, the Raab family has been buying and selling rare documents. It’s a uniquely personal way of learning—and sharing—history.

Chasing Miracles

The author wanted to know why the stem-cell treatments that worked so well for her hobbled dog aren’t being used to put the spring back in humans’ steps. Researchers at Penn’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine explained—and shared some of their own, measured, progress toward successful therapies.

Method Inventor

With an innovation portfolio that ranges from medical devices to folding bicycles to social-impact enterprises to junk food, Wharton professor Karl Ulrich has every justification to bask in entrepreneurial mystique. Only that’s exactly what he sets out to demolish in the classroom.

Director Gone Bad

Mean Girls director Mark Waters C’86 is taking a shot at R-rated comedy with Bad Santa 2 this Thanksgiving—and still trying to figure out his place in ever-evolving Hollywood.

The Christian Association at 125

At the turn of the last century, the CA pioneered the idea of service at Penn with settlement houses and summer camps, and has since been at the forefront of anti-war protests and movements for civil, women’s, and LGBT rights. In the 21st, it’s still providing a “safe space” for students and making a difference on campus and beyond.

The Man Who Put Yellowstone on the Map

As the National Park Service marks its centennial this year, let’s take a moment to celebrate Penn professor and building namesake Ferdinand Hayden, whose visionary advocacy saved what became America’s first National Park from the tawdry, commercialized fate of Niagara Falls.

Googling Cuba

Brett Perlmutter’s mission was to open up Cuba to the internet. To say that it was politically sensitive is an understatement. But the timing was just about perfect.

The New Biology

From matchbook-sized models of living human organs to the surprising alternative-energy implications of symbiotic giant clams, the work of three new faculty members represents the changing face of bioscience at Penn.

Dangerous Ideas

PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts exposes how the myth of biologically distinct races—forged in the era of slavery—continues to poison the present, affecting attitudes and policies on everything from child welfare to medical treatment.

Imagination Man

Scott Barry Kaufman has been called “the leading empirical creativity researcher of his generation.” Now he wants to use the tools he’s developed to unleash the “quiet potential” of vulnerable people—including kids like him—and help them flourish.

Alumni Weekend 2016