Penn Integrates Knowledge Professorships

"The time has come to lower the barriers that separate departments and schools. Discipline must reach across to discipline and build bridges of common understanding and shared purpose across all 12 of Penn’s schools and throughout the campus."

Former Penn President Amy Gutmann

Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professorships

As the challenges of our time grow more complex and consequential, Penn is poised like no other to innovate and lead. Through the recruitment of faculty who cross disciplinary boundaries, Penn fosters innovation and expands the world’s knowledge in new and unanticipated ways. Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professors hold appointments in two or more schools at Penn, and draw on their breadth of knowledge to collaborate with colleagues on boundary-breaking research.

With 12 schools on one contiguous campus, our world-class faculty – especially PIK Professors – are masterful collaborators. As they pursue their path-breaking work, they bring knowledge together across disciplines and use that knowledge to illuminate some of the most fundamental issues of our time.

On Campus and in the World

Peter Sterling recently next to mugshot from 1961.

‘From the Freedom Rides to neuroscience’

In conversation with Professor of Practice Ben Jealous, neuroscience professor Peter Sterling returned to campus to talk about activism in his youth and how that informed his research in health.

A person pressing play on a YouTube video on a smartphone.

The YouTube algorithm isn’t radicalizing people

A new study from Annenberg School for Communication’s Computational Social Science Lab finds that the YouTube recommendation system is less influential on users’ political views than is commonly believed.

Dorothy Roberts speaks at a podium. The wooden podium has the words "University of Pennsylvania" and its seal.

‘Are Civil Rights Enough?’

During the 23rd annual Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture in Social Justice, PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts addressed this question in a conversation with Marcia Chatelain of Africana studies.<br />  

Researchers Mike Mitchell and Emily Han examining a microfluidic device used to make LNPs by mixing lipids and mRNA.

Breaching the blood-brain barrier

A team of researchers in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has devised a method to deliver mRNA into the brain using lipid nanoparticles, potentially advancing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and seizures.