As aneuroscientist surveying the landscape of generative AI—artificial intelligence capable of generating text,images,or other media—Konrad Kording cites two potential directions forward:One is the“weird future”of political use and manipulation,and the other is the“power tool direction,”where people use ChatGPT to get information as they would use adrill to build furniture.“I’m not sure which of those two directions we’re going but Ithink alot of the AI people are working to move us into the power tool direction,”says Kording,a Penn Integrates Knowledge(PIK)University professor with appointments in the Perelman School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science.Reflecting on how generative AI is shifting the paradigm of science as adiscipline,Kording said he thinks“it will push science as awhole into amuch more collaborative direction,”though he has concerns about ChatGPT’s blind spots.Kording joined three University of Pennsylvania researchers from the chemistry,political science,and psychology departments sharing their perspectives in the recent panel“ChatGPT turns one:How is generative AI reshaping science?”PIK Professor RenéVidal opened the event,which was hosted by the School of Arts&Sciences’Data Driven Discovery Initiative(DDDI),and Bhuvnesh Jain,physics and astronomy professor and co-faculty director of DDDI,moderated the discussion.“Generative AI is moving so rapidly that even if it’s asnapshot,it will be very interesting for all of us to get that snapshot from these wonderful experts,”Jain said.OpenAI launched ChatGPT,a large language model(LLM)-based chatbot,on Nov.30,2022,and it rapidly ascended to ubiquity in news reports,faculty discussions,and research papers.Colin Twomey,interim executive director of DDDI,told Penn Today that it’s an open question as to how it will change the landscape of scientific research,and the`idea of the event was to solicit colleagues’opinions on interesting directions in their fields.In honor of what he called“ChatGPT’s birthday party,”assistant professor of chemistry Andrew Zahrt asked the chatbot about its use in his field and got the response,“Generative AI in chemistry serves as acreative digital assistant,helping scientists design new molecules and materials by predicting their properties and suggesting innovative combinations,ultimately accelerating the drug discovery and materials development processes.”Zahrt called that“a really good description.”He said when it comes to generative AI,the chemistry field is still in the proof of principle stage,where alot of research is asking whether scientists can use generative models to propose reasonable chemical structures. 查看详细>>

The impact of innovative legal scholarship can be profound.Thoughtfully presented new ideas—especially those that transcend disciplinary boundaries—can serve as critical tools for advocates as they push our legal system forward toward amore just future.In the Psychology of Legal Decision-Making seminar,University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School students have the opportunity to dive right into this world.Under the guidance of co-lecturers William A.Schnader Professor of Law David Hoffman and Golkin Family Professor and professor of psychology Tess Wilkinson-Ryan,students interact with scholars from across the country who are working on cutting-edge interdisciplinary research.“The best version of what academics do is that they give each other constructive feedback and try to make each other’s intellectual projects more rich and more rigorous,”Hoffman says.“That’s what we encourage the students to do in this course.”Substantively,the course introduces students to several foundational topics in psychology that come up again and again in law,like social perception and loss aversion.But both Hoffman and Wilkinson-Ryan underscored that the point of the course is not just to teach legal psychology,but rather to use that substance as ameans of encouraging students to adeptly read legal scholarship and actively participate in the production of new knowledge.“Penn Carey Law graduates will have to read empirical work in parts of their professional lives,”Wilkinson-Ryan says.“This course is agreat way to develop the skill of reading empirical scholarship and thinking about what the purpose of the scholarship is.As attorneys and citizens,when they’re reading an article about the statistics of something in the world,they will have to ask,‘How did these statistics come about?How do we find them?Do Itrust them?’”Over the course of the semester,students get to meet and engage with scholars who are actively honing their research and ideas. 查看详细>>

Autoimmune disorders are among the most prevalent chronic diseases across the globe.Emerging treatments for autoimmune disorders focus on“adoptive cell therapies,”or those using cells from apatient’s own body to achieve immunosuppression.These therapeutic cells are recognized by the patient’s body as“self,”therefore limiting side effects,and are specifically engineered to localize the intended therapeutic effect.In treating autoimmune diseases,current adoptive cell therapies have largely centered around the regulatory Tcell(Treg).Although Tregs offer great potential,using them for therapeutic purposes remains amajor challenge.In particular,current delivery methods result in inefficient engineering of Tcells.Tregs only compose approximately 5-10%of circulating peripheral blood mononuclear cells.Furthermore,Tregs lack more specific surface markers that differentiate them from other Tcell populations.These hurdles make it difficult to harvest,purify,and grow Tregs to therapeutically relevant numbers.Now,a research team led by Michael Mitchell,associate professor in Bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science,has developed alipid nanoparticle(LNP)platform to deliver Foxp3 messenger RNA(mRNA)to Tcells for applications in autoimmunity.Their findings are published in the journal Nano Letters.“The major challenges associated with ex vivo(outside the body)cell engineering are efficiency,toxicity,and scale-up:our mRNA lipid nanoparticles(mRNA LNPs)allow us to overcome all of these issues,”says Mitchell.“Our work’s novelty comes from three major components:first,the use of mRNA,which allows for the generation of transient immunosuppressive cells;second,the use of LNPs,which allow for effective delivery of mRNA and efficient cell engineering;and last,the ex vivo engineering of primary human Tcells for autoimmune diseases,offering the most direct pipeline for clinical translation of this therapy from bench to bedside.”“To our knowledge,this is one of the first mRNA LNP platforms that has been used to engineer Tcells for autoimmune therapies,”Mitchell says.“Broadly,this platform can be used to engineer adoptive cell therapies for specific autoimmune diseases and can potentially be used to create therapeutic avenues for allergies,organ transplantation and beyond.” 查看详细>>

As artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into our daily lives,it’s essential that these systems are able to accurately make decisions in the real world,and react appropriately in complex,ever-changing environments.That’s the goal of research by Kaustubh Sridhar,a doctoral student in the Penn Research in Embedded Computing and Integrated Systems Engineering(PRECISE)Center in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.Sridhar’s research on AI decision-making aims to make current models of the world more accurate,to create AI systems that can better learn from expert data,and to create systems that can adapt to new situations quickly.“I would like to continue doing AI and decision-making research,possibly in industry,after Igraduate so that Ican help improve autonomous agents in the real world,”says Sridhar.“And of course,my hope is that such agents will help people in awide range of tasks ranging from household chores to autonomous driving.”“In undergrad,I spent my efforts inventing control algorithms for quadrotors,robots with four rotors,which Ireally liked,”says Sridhar.“I later expanded my boundaries to discover that generally intelligent decision making is the most challenging problem for obtaining robots that can help humans in the real world.”Throughout his doctoral studies,Sridhar has been working to build general algorithms that are both intelligent and safe for any robot and any decision-making agent.He is atwo-time recipient of Outstanding Reviewer awards in top machine learning conferences.His work was nominated for the Best Paper award at the International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems(ICCPS)in 2023.His most recent research has focused on semi-parametric methods for machine learning and decision-making applications that can be used for robot learning and learning-enabled digital or physical systems,such as autonomous vehicles,electric grids,and cloud computing.“The key takeaways include that simple ways to combine the benefits of non-parametric components with neural networks leads to better generalization in learning both dynamics models and policies,”he says.“Some conclusions that surprised me were that semiparametric methods can provide rigorous guarantees for real-world performance in diverse domains that otherwise cannot be found.” 查看详细>>

New research finds that driving skills measured at the time of licensure on avirtual driving assessment(VDA),which exposes drivers to common serious crash scenarios,helps predict crash risk in newly licensed teen drivers.Published in the journal Pediatrics,and conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Prevention(CIRP)at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia(CHOP)with colleagues at Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center and the University of Michigan,the study brings the research community one step closer to identifying which skill deficits put young new drivers at higher risk for crashes.With this cutting-edge information,more personalized interventions can be developed to improve the driving skills that prevent crashes.Image:iStock/chombosan While drivers between the ages of 15 and 20 only make up about 5%of all drivers on the road,they are involved in approximately 12%of all vehicle crashes and 8.5%of fatal crashes.The time of greatest crash risk is in the months right after these young drivers receive their license,largely due to deficits in driving skills.However,many of these newly licensed drivers do avoid crashes.The challenge for policymakers,clinicians,and families has been identifying which drivers are at increased risk of crashing during the learning phase before they drive on their own.Early identification of at-risk drivers offers the opportunity to intervene with training and other resources known to help prevent crashes,making the roads safer for everyone.The researchers examined the ability of the VDA,delivered at the time of the licensing road test,to predict crash risk in the first year after obtaining licensure in the state of Ohio.Using aunique study design,the results of the VDA were linked to police-reported crash records for the first year after obtaining alicense.“Our previous research showed that performance on the VDA predicted actual on-road driving performance,as measured by failure on the licensing road test.This new study went further to determine whether VDA performance could identify unsafe driving performance predictive of future crash risk,”says lead study author Elizabeth Walshe,a cognitive neuroscientist and clinical researcher who directs the Neuroscience of Driving team at CIRP.“We found that drivers categorized by their performance as having major issues with dangerous behavior were at higher risk of crashing than average new drivers,”says Walshe,a former postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center(APPC).“These findings are incredibly important because they provide us with quantitative evidence that we can approach young driver safety in anew way—by predicting crash risk and aiming resources to those who need them most,”says Flaura Winston,co-scientific director of CIRP at CHOP,co-author of the study,and an APPC distinguished research fellow.“By providing this information before licensure,we can direct resources to those most at risk,and potentially prevent crashes from occurring when these teens first drive on their own.” 查看详细>>

Continuous wrist temperature monitoring can uncover insights into the potential for future disease risk for ailments like Type 2diabetes,hypertension,liver disease,kidney failure,and more.These new findings from Perelman School of Medicine researchers,published in Nature Communications,shows that accurate,continued digital monitoring of skin temperature can give deeper medical insights.Previously,disrupted temperature rhythms had only been linked to ahandful of conditions,such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes.Now,this research provides insights from alarge population,and it indicates awider spectrum of conditions are associated with poor temperature rhythms,measured in wrist temperature amplitude(the difference between the minimum and maximum temperature over the course of 24 hours).“These findings indicate the potential to marry emerging technology with health monitoring in apowerful new way,”says Carsten Skarke,an adjunct associate professor of medicine,Robert L.McNeil Jr.fellow in translational medicine and therapeutics,and the study’s senior author.“For example,there are many who have smart watches around their wrists,which already include skin temperature sensors.In the future,this information may be leveraged with their care teams as adigital biomarker,to understand their risk to develop certain diseases and to navigate treatment or preventative care options.”The findings indicate that the daily peaks and valleys observed in one’s wrist temperature curve might matter for health.The flatter this landscape becomes,the higher the risk for chronic diseases. 查看详细>>

Adults with atopic dermatitis(AD)have a34%increased risk of developing new-onset inflammatory bowel disease(IBD)compared with individuals who do not have the skin condition,and children have a44%increased risk,according to anew study from the Perelman School of Medicine.Additionally,as the severity of AD increased,the risk of developing IBD rose.These findings clear up ambiguity from previous research,especially among populations of children and between the different types of inflammatory bowel disease:ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.Insight offered from this study,published in JAMA Dermatology,could lead to new treatments for both IBD and AD.IBD encompasses the diseases ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease,which are disorders involving chronic digestive tract inflammation.While IBD is located in the gut and AD affects the skin,both diseases are driven by the immune system and are categorized by severe inflammation.“It is imperative for clinicians to understand atopic dermatitis and the trajectory of our patients with it in order to provide the best standard of care,”says senior author Joel MGelfand,the James J.Leyden,M.D.Endowed Professor in Clinical Investigation in the Department of Dermatology at Penn.“There are new and better treatments for AD today,and there will likely continue to be more.But providers have to understand how those treatments could impact other autoimmune diseases.For patients with AD and another autoimmune disease,some currently available medications can exacerbate symptoms of their other disease or can help treat two immune diseases at the same time.” 查看详细>>

rigitte Weinsteiger has been appointed the interim director of the Penn Libraries.She will also continue to serve as the Penn Libraries Gershwind&Bennett Family Senior Associate Vice Provost for Collections and Scholarly Communications,a role she has held since Sept.2022.Weinsteiger has served in multiple leadership positions since she joined the Penn Libraries staff in 2008.As senior associate vice provost,she directs the Libraries’academic and community engagement services;collection strategy;acquisitions,access,and licensing;the preservation,conservation,and exhibits programs;and library counsel and scholarly communications.In addition,she oversees the Penn Libraries’10 departmental libraries,directing personnel,facilities,access services,and operations at these locations across campus.She leads ateam of 115 staff,in addition to hundreds of student employees and interns,and has direct oversight of the Libraries’information budget of$27 million.Among the priorities Weinsteiger has championed at Penn is the preservation of global scholarship and cultural heritage,endeavoring to increase the diversity and inclusiveness of the Libraries’collections and engagement with the Penn and Philadelphia communities.She launched the Diversity in the Stacks initiative and,most recently,instituted the new Center for Global Collections.Weinsteiger has also advanced,both locally and nationally,sustainable models for scholarly communications and partnered with Penn faculty and publishers on long-term,mutually viable solutions to expanding access to scholarly literature while sustaining ahealthy publishing enterprise.In support of these and other Libraries’priorities,Weinsteiger plays acritical role in building and growing endowments for the Libraries’deep and distinctive collections,ensuring astrategic match between scholarly content needs and the resources necessary to address them.Weinsteiger assumed the role of interim director of the Penn Libraries on Sept.13,2023.Constantia Constantinou,who was appointed H.Carton Rogers III Vice Provost and director of the Penn Libraries in Aug.2018,recently stepped down from the role for personal family reasons. 查看详细>>

This month the Water Center turns 5.The community-focused water policy and research center,based in the School of Arts&Sciences,has connections with students,staff,and faculty across the 12 schools at the University of Pennsylvania.With its focus on sustainability and equity,Water Center executive director Howard Neukrug says the Center works to foster collaborations between academics,industry leaders,and communities to produce the next generation of water leaders.“Our projects have to ring abell with the community,”says Neukrug,who,before coming to Penn in 2017,was commissioner and CEO of Philadelphia Water.As ahub for water innovation and leadership,the Water Center has made strides towards these goals in its first five years.“Five years is not along time in the context of auniversity as old as Penn,but the Water Center’s done atremendous amount in that time to really establish itself as one of the leading academic water centers in the country,”says Scott Moore,Water Center senior advisor and director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives at Penn Global.Addressing community water needs At its heart,the Water Center bridges academic research and community needs.“Making our cities,towns,and communities resilient to threats including drought,extreme storms,sea level rise,climate uncertainty,and aging infrastructure requires us to think in an integrated and sustainable way with other community issues such as housing,jobs,crime and education,”Neukrug says.”The Water Center has anumber of completed and ongoing projects to improve water access and equity locally and across the eastern United States.Projects include identifying actions to improve recreational water quality of the Delaware River,developing amanagement strategy for equity-based stormwater management in Pittsburgh,and along-term commitment to Cobbs Creek,an urban waterway with substantial wetlands that separates Philadelphia and Delaware counties.“Cobbs Creek is one of our nation’s more polluted urban waterways,”Neukrug says.“Working at the Creek with experts and the community,you have to first ask why this stream is like this.”He says if you compare it to asuccessful urban waterway like Wissahickon Creek the disparity is clear.“It really comes down to issues of environmental justice,equity,and money.”This summer,Bo Nash,a Water Center research fellow and second-year student in the Master of Environmental Studies(MES)program,took on the full-time role of Cobbs Creek program coordinator.In this role,Nash is conducting awater quality monitoring project,the results of which will be more transparent and publicly accessible than previous monitoring efforts.“We want to understand what the quality of Cobbs Creek is actually like.Is it safe to fish and eat the fish out of there,and is it safe to even go walking there because it’s easily accessible by the public?”Nash says.Nash also helped host this year’s Cobbs Creek Summer Enrichment program,which introduces students from Paul Robeson High School in West Philadelphia to water and environmental research.He plans to continue working with the Water Center at Cobbs Creek this coming semester. 查看详细>>

New research is bolstering scientific understanding behind why some people are more prone to allergies than others.Researchers in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine identified how genetic differences that alter aspecific protein called ETS1 can affect our body’s response to allergies.They found that small changes in ETS1 in an animal model can lead to an increased likelihood for allergic reactions that cause inflammation.The findings were published recently in Immunity.The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that allergies rank as the sixth most prevalent cause of chronic illness in the U.S.,resulting in an annual expenditure exceeding$18 billion.While previous research has established astrong genetic basis for allergies and identified specific genetic sequence variations which predispose for these chronic diseases,how our DNA can affect our chances of developing an allergy remains unclear.But understanding this could lead to improved research and potential new treatments.By using modern genomics and imaging techniques,a collaborative team of researchers co-led by Penn’s Golnaz Vahedi,an associate professor of genetics,and Jorge Henao-Mejia,an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine,found that the ETS1 protein plays arole in controlling atype of immune cell called CD4+T helper cells,which are important in allergic reactions and help orchestrate the immune response by activating and coordinating other immune cells.DNA interactions within the genomic segment encompassing the ETS1 gene control how much of the ETS1 protein is made.“We discovered that these interactions,work like adimmer switch,”says Vahedi.“When there are changes in the DNA in this area,it can mess up the dimmer switch,causing problems with controlling the ETS1 protein.This can lead to imbalances in our immune cells and cause allergic inflammations." 查看详细>>