Biology is fundamental to our changing world. The 21st century challenge for our students, our scholars, and the greater society is to understand our place in this changing world and to create fundamental knowledge for informed policies, economies, and social structure.
Upcoming Events
Monitoring and forecasting epidemic outbreaks in real-time using multiple data sources and machine learning techniques: Applications to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
Mauricio Santillana from Harvard University
The next talk at the mathematical biology seminar will be tomorrow (Tuesday, October 19) at 4pm. Our speaker is Mauricio Santillana from Harvard University, whose talk is titled "Monitoring and forecasting epidemic…
Hidden Forces: Unconscious Bias at Work
Ralph DeLucia, Associate Director
This program considers how forms of bias are reflected in our prejudicial, stereotypical, and assumptive belief structures that can have a detrimental impact on our academic culture and our interpersonal interactions…
Feedbacks between symbiotic nitrogen fixation and temperature Seminar
Dr. Duncan Menge, Columbia University
Nitrogen plays multiple key roles in climate change. Trees currently absorb about 1/3 of human-caused CO2 emissions, but their ability to continue to do so depends on how much nitrogen they can access. Thus, nitrogen…
News
Dr. Larry Rome on Innovation Nation
May. 26, 2021
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Dr. Yun Ding named 2021 Searle Scholar
May. 20, 2021
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Congratulations Class of 2021!
May. 17, 2021
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Mapping words to color
Researchers led by postdoc Colin Twomey and professor Joshua Plotkin developed an algorithm that can infer the communicative needs different linguistic communities place on colors.
Interact, adapt, repeat
Sophomores Linda Wu and Nova Meng spent the summer studying coevolution among plants, mutualistic bacteria, and parasitic nematodes in Corlett Wood’s biology lab.
Evolutionary ‘arms race’ may help keep cell division honest
Research from the lab of Michael Lampson in the School of Arts & Sciences suggests that certain proteins may have evolved to reduce the likelihood of chromosomes ‘cheating’ to bias their chance of winding up in an egg during the cell-division process meiosis.
Rewiring cell division to make eggs and sperm
Research by the School of Arts & Sciences’ Michael Lampson and Jun Ma, collaborating with Whitehead Institute researchers, reveals how a key protein enables the process of meiosis to unfold.
High-ranking hyena mothers pass their social networks to their cubs
Using 27 years of detailed data on hyena social interactions, a team led by Penn biologists nailed down a pattern of social network inheritance and its implications for social structure, rank, and survival.