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

Artist rendering of fertility decline. Depopulation, demographic crisis. Baby bottles in the form of graph and down arrow.

Addressing declining fertility

In a Q&A with Penn Today, Michael Platt talks about the socioeconomic and emotional factors leading to plummeting fertility rates.

Clockwise from top left: Dolores Albarracín, T. Tony Cai, Noam A. Cohen, Shu Yang, Edward A. Stadtmauer, and Michael Lampson.

Six from Penn elected 2024 AAAS Fellows

Researchers from the School of Arts & Sciences, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Perelman School of Medicine, Wharton School, School of Nursing, and Annenberg School for Communication join a class of scientists, engineers, and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines.