May 2005

May 27, 2005
Did You Know . . . that Donald Kettl, Professor of Political Science, has been named Director of the 68-year-old Fels Institute of Government at Penn? Kettl came to Penn in 2004 after 15 years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. During the past year he has directed a Century Foundation project on homeland security and coordinated the Pew Trusts' National Government Performance Project. Kettl is the recipient of the 2005 Donald C. Stone Award of the American Society for Public Administration for "significant contributions to the field of inter-governmental management over a substantial period of time." He succeeds Lawrence W. Sherman, who will step down as director to chair Penn's new Criminology Department.

For the complete press release see:
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=794

For more information on the Fels Institute see:
http://www.fels.upenn.edu/

May 12, 2005
Did you know... that engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have received a $5 million grant from the Department of Defense to develop large-scale "swarms" of robots that could work together to thoroughly search large areas from the ground and sky? The Scalable Swarms of Autonomous Robots and Sensors (also know as the Swarms Project) take organizational cues from the natural world where tens or even hundreds of small, independent robots work together to accomplish specific tasks, such as finding a bomb in a crowded city.

For the entire article, view the following link:
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=799

Footage of robots in recent MARS program tests can be seen at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/mars/site/multimedia.htm#movies

Additional information on the Swarms Project is available at
http://www.swarms.org

May 10, 2005
Did you know... that Gazette Senior Editor Sam Hughes' article, "Dentist of the Purple Sage," about 1896 Dental School alumnus Pearl Zane Gray (later Zane Grey), has won a Silver Medal for Best Articles of the Year from CASE.  It appeared in the March/April 2004 issue.

Those who missed it can read the article here:
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0304/hughes1.html

May 6 , 2005
Did you know... that Adam Kushabi ('95) is working with a team of people bringing to life Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Ornithopter'? The 'flapping wing' aircraft has been built and currently resides at the Toronto Aerospace Museum. More at www.ornithopter.info.

May 26, 2005
Donald Trump, who holds a degree from the Wharton School, formally launched Trump University, an online, for-profit business school that will offer six- to eight-hour classes in various business subjects. [more]

May 13, 2005
Elan Fuld, a 21-year-old Penn junior, studied the phenomenon of clutch hitting in baseball, and his calculations provided statistical evidence that players such as Eddie Murray, Frank Duffy and Luis Gomez were clutch hitters. A surprising finding in the study was that Bill Buckner, who has gone down in history as one of the game's worst "choke artists" for his Game 6 World Series error, was statistically proven to be a clutch hitter. [more] [more]

May 12, 2005
Albert Stunkard, emeritus professor in Penn’s Department of Psychiatry, helped lead a Penn-sponsored study on Night Eating Syndrome with three other Penn researchers, and used the results as fodder for his latest book, Overcoming Night Eating Syndrome: A Step-by-Step Guide to Breaking the Cycle, which he co-authored with Kelly C. Allison, a clinical psychiatrist and director of Penn’s Night Eating Study. [more]

May 6, 2005
Hadley Davis C’93 transformed her nostalgic musings into a screenplay, which, somewhat to her astonishment, is now a major film starring Kim Cattrall, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Joan Cusack. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, Ice Princess tells the story of a brainy teenager’s aspiration to enter the figure-skating championship circuit. [more]

May 3 , 2005
Lee Stetson, of Penn Admissions, is taking a judicious stand on the new SAT Reasoning Test, which for the first time will require students to write a timed essay. "Anything new goes through a special lens of evaluation," says Stetson. [more]