‘Cities in water’ A transdisciplinary project looks to transform the current climate crisis into future possibilities for India’s coastal cities. A 2013 flash flood coursed through Himalayan villages in the state of Uttarakhand, killing over 6,000 people and leaving tens of thousands stranded. Scientists attributed the event to climate change a combination of heavy rain, a warm, loose groundcover of snow, and glacial instability. Here, the village of Gangotri is shown on June 13 just a few days before what was termed the “Himalayan Tsunami.” (Image: Mathur/da Cunha)
On the western edge of Mumbai, over a landscape of marshlands and mangroves, construction on an 18-mile-long coastal road snakes its way up out of the silt. The $3 billion development is one of India’s most ambitious infrastructure projects: a proposal to create land out of water, a highway on stilts over the Arabian Sea. An eight-lane freeway
Mystics and visionaries: A fine arts seminar The Weitzman School’s Jackie Tileston’s seminar looks at the ways in which alternative forms of knowledge have fed artistic practices, both in the past and for contemporary artists in cultures around the globe. (Pre-pandemic image) Exhibition view of Hilma af Klint’s “The Ten Largest” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, 2018. (Image: Courtesy of Ryan Dickey)
Hilma af Klint was an early 20th century Swedish painter and spiritualist who began creating radically abstract paintings in the early 1900s, long before the likes of Vasily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian embarked on their efforts. Her body of work has only recently begun to receive serious attention, culminating in a Guggenheim 2018-19 exhibition, “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future.” It was the first solo exhibition of af Klint in the United States and became the most-visited exhibition i
Studying plants from 400 miles up Using remote sensing data, senior Paul Lin looked for signals of climate change in the grasslands of the Great Plains. Paul Lin completed a senior thesis grounded in his dual interests in the environment and data science. (Image: Courtesy of Paul Lin)
For the last several decades, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has sent satellites to orbit the earth, using radiation reflected by the planet’s surface to generate data on weather to wildfires to urbanization.
To make sense of the reams of data these satellites accumulate requires expertise and coding that Paul Lin, a senior on the cusp of graduating, has acquired taking courses across schools and departments at Penn.
How has COVID-19 changed ‘superstar cities’? A new analysis found that overall mobility in large U.S. cities has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, and some are also experiencing changing segregation patterns, with potential implications that could last well beyond the pandemic. A new study, recently presented at the GISRUK conference, found that overall mobility in large U.S. cities has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. Using tools from geographic information system (GIS) analysis and data science, geospatial researcher Andrew Renninger also found that some of these cities are experiencing changing segregation patterns.
Just over a year since the pandemic led to shut-downs and stay-at-home orders across the world, the rollout of vaccines and gradual reopening of long-shuttered parts of the economy have many wondering when life will return to a pre-pandemic normal. But amidst the numerous changes this
Inaugural Presidential Ph.D. Fellows announced
President Amy Gutmann, Provost Wendell Pritchett, and Deputy Provost Beth Winkelstein today announced the recipients of the inaugural class of Presidential Ph.D. Fellows. Drawing from the most accomplished and diverse Ph.D. trainees, the 2021 Presidential Ph.D. Fellows come from across the nine schools at Penn that offer Ph.D. programs.
“Our Ph.D. students embody our profound mission of creating new knowledge, understanding, and teaching that will shape the future,” said President Amy Gutmann upon the launch of the President’s Ph.D. Initiative last fall. “They make a tangible impact by tackling the world’s most significant challenges and most perplexing questions. Sustaining their world-changing scholarship will be more important than ever in a post-pandemic world.”