AppItUP Finalists

The Penn Center for Innovation held its 2015 AppItUP competition in November. Now in its third year, AppItUP received 313 submissions. Ten semifinalists were invited to pitch their ideas to a panel of investors and developers for a chance to win pro bono prototyping by a local web development firm and possible future business support from the investors. The finalists are:

AerO2Max: Basically FitBit, if FitBit worked. AerO2Max will piggyback on existing wearables to measure an exerciser’s oxygen intake and how efficiently the body is using it, in order to track longer-term health improvements. Hansell H. Stedman, faculty physician; Hansell C. Stedman, undergraduate student; Ben Kozyak, alumnus. Development partner: PromptWorks.

Animotion: This app helps patients, doctors and physical therapists track joint function easily and in real time, to better guide rehabilitative efforts. Sylvia Qu and Peter Gebhard, graduate students. Development partners: CloudMine and Excellis Interactives.

BeyondBars: An “alternative to brick-and-mortar prisons” for nonviolent offenders. Its creator, Alan Holden, says it offers a “gamified system…a point system. See your progress as you complete prosocial tasks. When you get  100 points, maybe you get your zone of movement or your curfew extended.” Alan Holden, graduate student. Development partner: WhiteLake Interactive.

CME Recording: This app allows physicians to more easily maintain their continuing medical education (CME) credits by monitoring their consumption of educational materials. This proved to be the most popular app, with two different studios fighting over development rights. Brian Jenssen, faculty physician. Development partner: Offshorent.

Nap Sats: Now you can track your sleep quality without having to stay overnight in dedicated facilities. Milind Patel, resident physician. Development partner: BrickSimple.

Park It: Make your driveway earn its keep by renting it out. This is basically Airbnb for event parking, with eyes to more general parking in the future. Taylor Mills and John Jimenez, graduate students. Development partner: Valex.

Phillip Cohen and Carla Winter: George J. Mitchell Scholars

Two Penn students, Phillip Cohen and Carla Winter, are among the 12 Americans selected to receive 2017 George J. Mitchell Scholarships for graduate studies in Ireland or Northern Ireland. Sponsored by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, the scholarship covers tuition, accommodations, a living expense stipend and an international travel stipend. The national competition attracted nearly 300 applicants.

Mr. Cohen, a third-year medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine who works in pediatric oncology, will graduate in May 2017. He plans to pursue a master’s in global health at Trinity College in Dublin. In 2014, he served as executive director of the Penn Human Rights Clinic. Time spent volunteering at the only pediatric oncology facility in Tanzania in 2011 inspired him to pursue a medical career.

Ms. Winter, a senior majoring in bioengineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science whose research focuses on finding a cure for paralysis, will graduate in May 2016. She intends to pursue a master’s in regenerative medicine at the National University of Ireland in Galway. She works as an undergraduate researcher in D. Kacy Cullen’s Laboratory within the Center for Brain Injury and Repair in the School of Medicine.

Steve Dolan and Ray Priore: Coaches of the Year

Two Penn coaches received Coach of the Year awards: Steve Dolan, director of Track & Field and Cross Country, and Ray Priore, the George A. Munger Head Coach of Football.

Mr. Dolan was named the Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year by the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA). He earned this prestigious recognition on the heels of leading the Quakers to a second-place finish at the Mid-Atlantic Regional and the program’s first NCAA Championship berth since 1975. In addition, Mr. Dolan piloted the Red and Blue to their best Ivy Heps showing since 1973 (2nd place) last month, and the program’s first national ranking since the establishment of the USTF-CCCA Poll in 1995.

In his first year at the helm of Penn Football and his 29th year overall with the Quakers, Mr. Priore was named Ivy League Coach of the Year. To receive the honor, he beat out seven other coaches— most notably his former boss, Columbia’s Al Bagnoli. Mr. Priore led his team back from an inconsistent 1-3 start and is one of only two coaches in Penn history to bring home an Ivy title in his first year as head coach.

Gary Dorshimer: Dick Vermeil Award

Gary Dorshimer, section chief of General Internal Medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital; assistant program director, Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship Program at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania; and clinical associate professor of medicine at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, received the Otho Davis Scholarship Foundation’s Dick Vermeil Award in November. The Dick Vermeil Award honors a lifetime of achievement in the field of sports medicine.

Dr. Dorshimer has been the Philadelphia Eagles team internist and the general physician for the Philadelphia Flyers for nearly 20 years. A native of Allentown, Pennsylvania, he received his bachelor’s degree in natural science from Muhlenberg College in 1977 and his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981.

Nader Engheta and Robert Ghrist: National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows

The Department of Defense (DoD) has named Nader Engheta, the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor in Penn Engineering, and Robert Ghrist, a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor and the Andrea Mitchell University Professor in Mathematics and Electrical & Systems Engineering, as National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows (NSSEFF). The NSSEFF program awards grants to top-tier researchers from US universities to conduct long-term, unclassified, basic research of strategic importance to the DoD. Only seven scientists across the country were honored with this five-year fellowship in 2015.

Dr. Engheta will receive $3 million over five years to further his decades of foundational work on the science of metamaterials. These compound materials are engineered with nanoscale patterns that give rise to properties not found in naturally occurring substances.

Dr. Ghrist will receive $2.2 million over five years to continue his research in algebraic topology, a branch of mathematics that provides tools to visualize abstract spaces, such as finding gaps in a security network or automating robotic movement across a factory floor. His project is titled “LOCAL-to-GLOBAL: Algebraic Topology for Data, Networks and Systems” and will target “dimensionality reduction.”

Naimah Hares and Fariha I. Khan: Governor’s Advisory Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs

Naimah Hares, C’16, a senior in the South Asia studies program at Penn, and Fariha I. Khan, associate director of the Asian American studies program at Penn, have been named by Governor Tom Wolf as two of the 30 new members of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs. The commissioners were sworn in by Secretary of State Pedro Cortés prior to convening the first meeting of the Commission, which was held at the Governor’s Residence.

The Governor’s Advisory Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs, which was created by Executive Order and consists of volunteer members, advises the Governor on policies and legislation that impact the diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities; serves as a liaison to federal, state and local agencies to ensure that programs affecting AAPIs are effectively utilized and promoted; serves as a resource for community groups and provides forums for developing strategies and programs that will expand and enhance the civic, social, educational, cultural and economic status of the AAPI communities; and identifies programs, scholarships, mentoring programs and resources for the benefit and advancement of AAPIs. The Commission also acts as an advocate for policies and legislation it feels serve the best interest of APAs in Pennsylvania.

Bhuvnesh Jain and Mark Trodden: Fellows, American Physical Society

Bhuvnesh Jain, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Chair in the Natural Sciences and co-director of Penn’s Center for Particle Cosmology, and Mark Trodden, the Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics, chair of the department of physics & astronomy and co-director of the Center for Particle Cosmology, have been elected to fellowships in the American Physical Society (APS).

Dr. Jain’s election honored his “groundbreaking work in astrophysics and cosmology, including the areas of theoretical modeling of cosmological phenomena, measurement and interpretation of cosmological weak lensing, and the interface of gravity theories and experimental tests.” His work in weak lensing—the small distortions in the shapes of distant galaxies—is helping to map the mass distribution of galaxy clusters and the large-scale structure of the universe.

Dr. Trodden was honored “for pioneering work in theoretical cosmology and astroparticle physics, including explorations of theoretical explanations for the acceleration of the universe.” He is constructing and investigating models that may shed light on the fundamental physics origin of currently unsolved problems, including cosmic acceleration, the nature of dark matter and the fundamental origin of inflation.

Barbara Riegel: AHA 2015 Distinguished Scientist

The American Heart Association (AHA) named Barbara Riegel, professor of nursing, the Edith Clemmer Steinbright Chair of Gerontology and director of the Biobehavioral Research Center at Penn, a 2015 Distinguished Scientist. Dr. Riegel received this honor during the opening meeting of the AHA Scientific Sessions in November. The AHA’s Distinguished Scientists are a prominent group of scientists and clinicians whose work has importantly advanced the understanding of cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

Dr. Riegel is an established nurse scientist studying adults with cardiovascular disease. Her primary research interest is self-care of older adults with chronic heart failure. Recently her interests have expanded to include multi-morbidity, a common phenomenon in adults with heart failure. She focuses her research on the self-care issues of medication adherence and decision-making in response to symptoms. Her findings have demonstrated that poor medication adherence is a primary contributor to hospitalization in heart failure, identified intentional and unintentional factors associated with poor medication adherence, and developed an approach to improving medication adherence in these patients.

Peggy Reeves Sanday: Gender Equity Award

Peggy Reeves Sanday, professor emerita of anthropology at Penn, received the annual award for work on gender equity from the Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. The award was presented in November at the Association’s annual meeting in Denver, Colorado.

Dr. Sanday is a pioneer in the study of gender inequality across cultures with articles including “Toward a Theory of the Status of Women” and “The Socio-Cultural Context of Rape.” Her books include Anthropology and the Public Interest: Fieldwork and Theory (ed.), Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood and Privilege on Campus and A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance Rape on Trial.

Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration: 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration, which includes physicists from the University of Pennsylvania, shared the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The Prize was presented by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation “for the fundamental discovery of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the standard model of particle physics.” The $3 million prize is shared with four other international experimental collaborations studying neutrino oscillations.

The research at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), two kilometers underground in the Vale Creighton mine near Sudbury, Ontario, demonstrated that neutrinos change their type, or “flavor,” on their way to Earth from the sun, a discovery that requires neutrinos to have a mass greater than zero. The results also confirmed the theories of energy generation in the sun with great accuracy, solving a decades-old question known as the Solar Neutrino Problem.

The Penn group, led by Eugene Beier, professor in the School of Arts & Sciences’ department of physics & astronomy, began working on the SNO project in 1987. The Penn contributions included constructing specialized electronic instrumentation for the detector’s 9,600 photo sensors and leading both the detector operations and the data analysis for the project. During the time that SNO made its measurements, the Penn group included 23 scientists and a large number of undergraduate students. The award was presented at a ceremony in November at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

John Tellis: Reaxys PhD Prize

John Tellis, a doctoral candidate in chemistry at Penn, was one of three winners of the 2015 Reaxys PhD Prize, given at an annual symposium held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Sponsored by Elsevier, the Reaxys PhD Prize recognizes innovative and original research in chemistry, with an emphasis on synthesis. The prize is the world’s most prestigious award for young chemists; the 2015 winners were chosen from a field of almost 450 entrants.

Mr. Tellis works with Gary Molander, the Hirschmann-Makineni Professor of Chemistry and chair of the department of chemistry. According to Dr. Molander, “John has redefined the direction of research in the group by developing a new paradigm for cross-coupling reactions, a class of transformations that drives the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries worldwide. His seminal Science paper on the subject has already garnered over 55 citations.”

Mr. Tellis won the prize for his presentation, “Single-Electron Transmetalation: Enabling C(sp3) Cross-Coupling via Photoredox/Nickel Dual Catalysis.”

Antonia Villarruel: One of 50 Most Influential Latinos

Penn Nursing Dean Antonia Villarruel was named among the 2015 Delaware Valley Most Influential Latinos by Impacto Latin Newspaper, PHLDiversity and the Most Influential Latinos Foundation. Dr. Villarruel accepted her award at a ceremony in Philadelphia last month.

Since becoming dean of Penn Nursing in 2014, Dr. Villarruel has spearheaded a campus-wide initiative, Penn in Latin America and the Caribbean, focused on elevating Penn’s impact in Latin America and addressing health equity, access and innovation in the region. Penn Nursing also hosted the inaugural Latino Nurses Network Symposium and a conference to teach Latina nurses about navigating the Affordable Care Act.

Dr. Villarruel also has an extensive program of research in health promotion and health disparities among diverse Latino and Mexican populations. One program, ¡Cuídate!, was part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Diffusion of Evidence Based Intervention Programs.” Another current research project of hers, based in Puerto Rico, involves teaching parents how to communicate with their adolescent children about the risks involved in sexual activity.