UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Tuesday September 17, 2019 Volume 66 Number 5 www.upenn.edu/almanac Weitzman School of Design’s Three Endowed Professorships Ritesh Agarwal, Liang Feng: $1.98 Million NSF Grant insecurity, consum- In 2016, the National Science Foundation er financial services (NSF) released a list of 10 Big Ideas—areas and financial justice. where innovative research could help catapult She is the author of Bridging the Digi- the country’s future forward. Now, in 2019, the tal Divide: Technol- NSF has begun enabling those ideas by award- ogy, Community, and ing grants to bright minds in fields like engineer- ing, including a $1.98 million grant received by Public Policy (Wi- ley, 2002), Bootstrap (continued on page 2) Capital: Microenter- prises and the Ameri- can Poor (Brookings Institution, 1999), Gender and Plan- Lisa Servon Ken Lum Sean Burkholder ning: A Reader (Rut- The University of Pennsylvania Stuart gers, 2005) and The Unbanking of America: Weitzman School of Design recently announced How the New Middle Class Survives (Houghton that three members of the standing faculty have Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Dr. Servon has contrib- been awarded endowed professorships: Lisa uted to The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Servon, Kevin and Erica Penn Presidential Pro- Wall Street Journal. fessor; Ken Lum, Marilyn Jordan Taylor Presi- Ken Lum, professor and chair of fine arts, dential Professor; and Sean Burkholder, Andrew is the inaugural endowed Marilyn Jordan Taylor Gordon Assistant Professor. Presidential Professor. Mr. Lum is internation- Ritesh Agarwal Liang Feng Dr. Servon, professor and chair of city and ally known for his conceptual and representa- regional planning, is the inaugural endowed tional art in a variety of media. His installations Kevin and Erica Penn Presidential Professor. often deal with individual and social identi- ty formation in the context of historical trau- US News & World Report Dr. Servon conducts research in the areas of ur- 2020 Rankings ban poverty, community development, econom- ma and the complications of official and non- US News official memory. He is co-curator of Monument In the newly released 2020 ic development, and issues of gender and race. & World Report ranking of United States Specific areas of her expertise include economic (continued on page 2) universities, Penn was ranked #6, tied with Stanford and the University of Chi- Penn Engineering’s Four New Scholarly Chairs cago. This is Penn’s highest position in Penn Engineering recently announced four Renyi Prize in Network Science, to name a few. the rankings since 2013. Penn was also scholarly chairs: Danielle Bassett, Russell Com- She has authored over 190 peer-reviewed publi- ranked #15 in Best Value Schools and posto, Boon Thau Loo and Mark Yim. cations as well as numerous book chapters and #27 for Most Innovative Schools. Dr. Bassett has been named the J. Peter Skir- teaching materials. She is the founding direc- The Wharton School of the University kanich Professor of Bioengineering. Dr. Bassett tor of the Penn Network Visualization Program, of Pennsylvania has retained its #1 post as is a professor in the department of bioengineer- a combined undergraduate art internship and the best undergraduate business program ing at the School of Engineering and Applied K-12 outreach program bridging network sci- in the country, which it has held for many Science. She holds a PhD in physics from the ence and the visual arts. years. It is also ranked #1 in two special- University of Cambridge and completed her Dr. Bassett’s research is in the area of com- ties: finance and real estate; ranked #2 in postdoctoral training at the University of Califor- plex systems and network science, with appli- management and marketing; #3 in pro- nia, Santa Barbara, before joining Penn in 2013. cations to biological, physical and social net- duction/operation management and quan- Dr. Bassett has received numerous awards works. She examines dynamic changes in titative analysis; #5 in entrepreneurship for her research, including an Alfred P. Sloan network architecture, the interaction between and insurance; #6 in international busi- Research Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, topological properties of networks, and the in- ness; and #7 in accounting. an Office of Naval Research Young Investiga- fluence of network topology on signal propaga- Penn’s School of Engineering and Ap- tor Award, a National Science Foundation CA- tion and system function. plied Science was listed #20 (tied with REER Award and, most recently, an Erdos- (continued on page 3) Duke University, Rice University, Uni- versity of California–San Diego and Uni- versity of Washington), and #10 in the biomedical specialty, for undergraduate engineering programs at schools whose highest degree is a doctorate. INSIDE 2 Deaths; WPPSA Meetings and Board; Council Coverage; PASEF Fall Lecture; 25 Year Club Annual Celebration 3 Lauder Institute Senior Global Fellow 4 Honors & Other Things 6 Employee Resource Fair; Models of Excellence; Weitzman School: A Celebration of Design 7 Retirement Info Sessions; Annual Family Day; Danielle Bassett Russell Composto Boon Thau Loo Mark Yim Update; CrimeStats; Volunteers for Hostile Terrain 94 8 2019 Annual Security & Fire Safety Report ALMANAC September 17, 2019 www.upenn.edu/almanac 1 $1.98 Million NSF Grant Weitzman’s Endowed Professorships Deaths (continued from page 1) (continued from page 1) a Penn-led team to work on the NSF’s Quantum Lab: A Public Art and History Project, which Gregory Eells, CAPS Leap initiative. began as a city-wide art public art exhibition in Gregory Eells, the Ritesh Agarwal, professor of materials science Philadelphia and has become a referent for other executive director of and engineering in Penn Engingeering, is head- cities in dealing with the problems of controver- Counseling and Psy- ing the research team and is working with Liang sial monuments and statues. This project led to chological Services Feng, assistant professor of materials science and a book edited with Paul M. Farber entitled Mon- (CAPS), died Sep- engineering and of electrical and systems engi- ument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadel- tember 9 in Philadel- neering, as well as researchers from the City Col- phia (Temple University Press, 2019). phia from suicide. He lege of New York and Texas A&M University. Sean Burkholder, assistant professor of land- was 52. The team will be working to engineer proof- scape architecture, is the inaugural endowed Dr. Eells earned of-concept quantum circuits that incorporate Andrew Gordon Assistant Professor. Mr. Bur- a PhD in counsel- two-dimensional quantum materials. Photonic kholder’s research considers the way ecolo- ing psychology from computing, an area in which Dr. Agarwal has gy influences the urban landscape. His work Oklahoma State Uni- previous research experience, will also be an in- has largely focused on the Great Lakes region versity, an MA in tegral part of their circuit system. The quantum in collaboration with the Ohio EPA and the US psychology from photonic circuits to be designed for this project Army Corps of Engineers. He co-directs the Eastern Illinois Uni- Gregory Eells could eventually be incorporated into quantum Healthy Port Futures project, which stresses the versity and a BA in computers that will revolutionize computing, inherent value of landscape design research in psychology and biology from Greenville Col- sensing, and communication technologies. the process of maritime infrastructure projects. lege. Before coming to Penn, he had served five Dr. Agarwal and Dr. Feng are also collab- Mr. Burkholder also serves as a design critic in- years as director of the University Counseling orating on another NSF project that is part of ternationally and his work has been published Center at the University of Southern Mississippi the Quantum Leap initiative. They are one of widely in books and journals. and was director of counseling and psycholog- eight teams selected for its Research Advanced ical services at Cornell University 2003-2019. by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering PASEF Fall Lecture: October 10 He was elected president of the Association for —Engineering Quantum Integrated Platforms This year’s PASEF Fall Lecture pre- University and College Counseling Center Di- (RAISE-EQuIP) grant program. ceding the 25-Year Celebration will fo- rectors in 2007, serving two years in that po- cus on US-China Relations in the Cur- sition, as well as chair of the Mental Health Council Meeting Coverage rent Era, featuring Avery Goldstein, Section of the American College Health Asso- On Wednesday, September 11, at the first David M. Knott Professor of Global Pol- ciation in 2014, among numerous other honors. Council meeting of the academic year, Presi- itics and International Relations. It will He published dozens of scholarly articles, dent Amy Gutmann preceded the usual agenda be held in the Class of ’49 Auditorium, winning the AUCCCD’s Award for Excellence items with comments about the recent loss of 2nd floor, Houston Hall, and is open to in Counseling Center Scholarship in 2016 and Gregory Eells, the CAPS executive director (see the campus community. For more infor- he has taught both graduate and undergraduate obit at right). President Gutmann expressed her mation contact [email protected] students in courses on counseling, social psy- commitment to ensuring that support and men- chology and developmental psychology. tal health resources are available for students, He is survived