Global Engagement Fund Award
The Office of the Vice Provost for Global Initiatives announced ten awards from the Global Engagement Fund. This Fund is designed primarily to support projects that collaborate across Schools and disciplines; involve multiple faculty members and engage regions in which Penn has active academic partnerships and collaborative ventures.
The Fall 2012 Global Engagement Fund Awards’ recipients are:
David Galligan (VET), James D. Ferguson (VET), Zhiguo Wu (VET): Developing Agricultural Technologies and Equipment Marketable in China to Increase Dairy Production Efficiency
Mauro Guillén (Wharton), Frederick Dickinson (SAS), Lee Cassanelli (SAS): ACI Conference–Interdisciplinary conference exploring Chinese and Indian state- and firm-level interventions in Africa and Latin America
Kathleen Hall (GSE): Global Distinguished Lecture–Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
Emily Hannum (SAS): Peking University– Penn Population Center
Devesh Kapur (SAS): Distinguished International Scholar Dr. C. Raja Mohan
Frank Matero (Design), C. Brian Rose (SAS), Julian Siggers (Penn Museum): The Future of Archaeological Heritage in a Rapidly Changing World: A Global Conversation
Andrea Matwyshyn (Wharton), Peter Decherney (SAS): International Accountability and Information Harms
Lisa Mitchell (SAS): Conference on Contested Spaces in India and South Asia
Monroe Price (ASC): New Technologies, Human Rights and Transparency: A Cross Disciplinary and Public Interest Approach
Susan Wachter (Wharton), Eugenie L. Birch (Design): Real Estate Markets in Informal Settings: India and Brazil |
First Prize at World Embedded Software Competition: Heart-on-a-Chip
Heart-on-a-Chip, an embedded systems platform that was the 2012 Senior Design Project of Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE) students Sriram Radhakrishnan, Varun Sampath and Shilpa Sarode, received first prize in the High-Tech Medical Service category at the 2012 World Embedded Software Competition held in Seoul, South Korea. The competition is an annual event for exhibiting student work in the field of embedded systems.
The platform, originally called Pacemaker Verification System, was developed in the laboratory of Dr. Rahul Mangharam, Stephen J. Angello Term Assistant Professor in ESE and included collaborations with Zhihao Jiang and Miroslav Pajic, doctoral students in computer and information science and ESE. The project was awarded first prize in the Penn Engineering school-wide Senior Design Competition in May 2012.
Heart-on-a-Chip is an open platform for cardiac pacemaker testing. Pacemakers are implanted medical devices designed to regulate the heartbeat and have hundreds of thousands of lines of embedded software code for handling patient heart conditions known as arrhythmias. Programming errors are a reality of implanted cardiac pacemakers today. In the past decade, over 600,000 of these devices were recalled, one-third of those due to embedded software issues. The FDA currently does not check software code when approving a device for sale. |
Child Advocacy Award: Ms. Ferman
Ms. Risa Vetri Ferman, district attorney of Montgomery County, PA, is the recipient of the 2012 Alan Lerner Child Advocacy Award. The award was presented in October by the Field Center, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Penn’s schools of Social Policy & Practice, Law, Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Ms. Ferman was the driving force behind the creation of Missions Kids Child Advocacy Center and is co-founder of Montgomery County Child Advocacy Project. |
Penn Amongst 20 Smartest Colleges
Lumos Labs conducted a study using the training cognitive site Lumosity to test America’s leading higher education institutions. The University of Pennsylvania ranked 12th and was one of four Ivy League universities included in the list.
The study tested 60,000 students over colleges and universities to play games that measured various cognitive skills including attention, memory, speed of processing, problem solving and flexibility. |
Favorite Radio Station: WXPN
WXPN was voted Favorite Radio Station by the readers of Philadelphia Weekly. It was stated that “public radio rarely gets this good.” WXPN, the nationally recognized leader in Triple A radio and the premier guide for discovering new and significant artists in rock, blues, roots and folk, is the non-commercial, member-supported radio service of the University of Pennsylvania. |
Kids Corner 25th Anniversary
Kids Corner, America’s longest-running daily call-in radio show for kids, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. The show is a production of WXPN-FM, member-supported radio from the University of Pennsylvania. They are celebrating this milestone with the annual Kids Corner Music Festival, featuring performances and a kid journalist press panel. The event is Sunday, February 17, at Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St.; 10:30 a.m.; $12, $8/XPN members. For information, see http://kidscorner.org |
Privacy Pioneer: Dr. Turow
Dr. Joseph Turow, the Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School, is a featured subject of a series of stories honoring privacy leaders.
Published by TRUSTe, a data privacy solutions provider, Dr. Turow is featured along with subjects who are considered leaders for “their significant achievements in privacy innovation, encompassing technology, regulation, public opinion, academic research and industry solutions.” Entitled “The TRUSTe Privacy Pioneers and Mavericks Series,” the program will interview and feature individuals whose contributions have made a difference in advancing data privacy management innovation over the past decade and a half. You can see Dr. Turow’s interview on the TRUSTe website, www.truste.com/resources/pioneers-and-mavericks/joseph-turow |