"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."
Penn President J. Larry Jameson
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.
PIK Professor Shelley Berger and colleagues explored the genetic basis of labor distribution in communal-dwelling species and discovered that pathways dating back hundreds of millions of years are conserved across animal kingdoms. Their findings offer fundamental insights into complex social behaviors.
A team of researchers from the Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Pennsylvania find that cable news has increasingly diverged from broadcast news in the topics covered and language used.
A new paper from Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center examines whether ‘I Voted’ stickers influence people’s voting intentions, and whether different language choices in this approach to voter outreach might make a bigger impact on civic engagement.
Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor Lance Freeman of the Weitzman School of Design and School of Arts & Sciences studies how people interact with the built environment.
Albarracín, a PIK Professor with appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication and School of Arts & Sciences, is being recognized for increasing ‘our understanding of how attitudes can be changed, particularly with regard to persuasive messages.’
Gutmann accepted the award, presented by five current and former university presidents, at a ceremony on Jan. 28.