User:Ryan Vesey/Research at the University of Pennsylvania

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Penn is considered a "very high research activity" university.[1] In 2011 Penn will top the Ivy League in research expenditures with $814 million worth of research,[2] of which about 70% comes from federal support and in the most part from the Department of Health and Human Services.[3] Penn also enjoys strong support from the private sector, which in 2010 contributed almost $400 million to Penn, making it the 6th strongest US university in terms of fundraising.[4] In line with its well-known interdisciplinary tradition, Penn's research centers often span two or more disciplines. In the 2010-11 academic year alone 4 interdisciplinary research centers were created or substantially expanded; these include the Center for Global Women’s Health at the Nursing School,[5] the $13 million Morris Arboretum’s Horticulture Center,[6] the $15 million Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at Wharton,[7] and the $13 million Translational Research Center at Penn Medicine.[8] With these additions, Penn now counts 165 research centers hosting a research community of over 4,000 faculty and over 1,100 postdoctoral fellows, 5,400 academic support staff and graduate student trainees.[2] To further assist the advancement of interdisciplinary research President Amy Gutman established the "Penn Integrates Knowledge" title awarded to selected Penn professors "whose research and teaching exemplify the integration of knowledge."[9] These professors hold endowed professorships and joint appointments between Penn's schools. The most recent of the 13 PIK professors is Ezekiel Emanuel, who will start at Penn in September 2011 as the Diane S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor with a joint appointment at the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy, which he will chair in the Perelman School of Medicine, and the Department of Health Care Management in the Wharton School.[9]

As a powerful research-oriented institution Penn is also among the most prolific and high-quality producers of doctoral students. With 487 PhDs awarded in 2009, Penn ranks third in the Ivy League, only behind Columbia and Cornell (Harvard did not report data).[10] It also has one of the highest numbers of post-doctoral appointees (933 in number for 2004-07), ranking third in the Ivy League (behind Harvard and Yale), and tenth nationally.[11] In most disciplines Penn professors' productivity is among the highest in the nation, and first in the fields of Epidemiology, Business, Communication Studies, Comparative Literature, Languages, Information Science, Criminal Justice and Criminology, Social Sciences and Sociology.[12] According to the National Research Council nearly three-quarters of Penn’s 41 assessed programs were placed in ranges including the top 10 rankings in their fields, with more than half of these in ranges including the top 5 rankings in these fields.[13]

ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, was born at Penn in 1946

Penn's research tradition has historically been complemented by innovations that shaped higher education. In addition to establishing the first medical school, the first university teaching hospital, the first business school, and the first student union, Penn was also the cradle of other significant developments. In 1852 Penn Law was the first law school in the nation to publish a law journal still in existence (then called The American Law Register); under the deanship of William Draper Lewis, the law school was also one of the first schools to emphasize legal teaching by full-time professors instead of practitioners, a system that is still followed today;[14] The Wharton School was home to several pioneering developments in business education. It established the first research center in a business school in 1921 and the first center for entrepreneurship center in 1973,[15] and it regularly introduced novel curricula for which BusinessWeek wrote, "Wharton is on the crest of a wave of reinvention and change in management education."[16][17] Several major scientific discoveries have also taken place at Penn. The university is probably best well known as the place where the first general-purpose electronic computer (ENIAC) was born in 1946 at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering.[18] It was here also where the world's first spelling and grammar checker were created as well as the popular COBOL programming language.[18] Penn can also boast some of the most important discoveries in the field of medicine. The dialysis machine used as an artificial replacement for lost kidney function was conceived and devised out of a pressure cooker by William Inouye while he was still a student at Penn Med;[19] the Rubella and Hepatitis B vaccines were developed at Penn;[19][20] the discovery of cancer's link with genes, cognitive therapy, Retin-A (the cream used to treat acne), and Resistin were all discovered by Penn Med researchers.[19] More recent gene research has led to the discovery of the genes for fragile X syndrome, the most common form of inherited mental retardation, Kennedy's disease, a disorder marked by progressive muscle and bulbar atrophy, and Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the hands, feet, and limbs.[19] Conductive polymer was also developed at Penn by Alan J. Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa, an invention that earned them the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The university has also contributed major advancements in the fields of economics and management. Among the many discoveries are conjoint analysis, widely used as a predictive tool especially in market research, Simon Kuznet's method of measuring Gross National Product,[21] and the "Wharton Model"[22] developed by Nobel-laurete Lawrence Klein to measure and forecast economic activity. The idea behind Health Maintenance Organizations also belonged to Penn professor Robert Eilers, who put it into practice during Nixon's health reform in the 1970s.[23]

University of Pennsylvania Major Innovations and Discoveries
Year Image Description Associated People
1852 The Law School publishes the first law journal in the country under the name "The American Law Register" still in existence today as the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. George Sharswood
1946 The first general purpose electronic computer, ENIAC, is manufactured by Penn engineers at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
1951 The Dialysis machine was invented out of a pressure cooker It is used worldwide today to purify blood of patients who suffer kidney failures. William Inouye
1960s Cognitive therapy, one of the main cognitive behavioral therapies, seeks to identify and change dysfunctional thinking and behavior. Aaron T. Beck
1960s The Wharton Econometric Forecasting Model used to forecast fluctuations including national product, exports, investments, and consumption, and to study the effect on them of changes in taxation, public expenditure, oil price, etc.. Lawrence Klein
1969 The Rubella vaccine was developed by Joseph Stokes, chair of the Department of Pediatrics from 1939 to 1963. Joseph Stokes
1969 Research conducted at Penn was instrumental in the development of the Hepatitis B vaccine (patent numbers 3,636,191 and 3,872,225). Baruch Blumberg and Irving Millman
1975 Retin-A, the drug used to treat acne and superficial wrinkles was developed at Penn's dermatology department. Albert Kligman
1990s Gene research at Penn has led to the discovery of the genes for fragile X syndrome, Kennedy's disease, Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease. Kenneth H. Fischbeck

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Carnegie Foundation Basic Classification".
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Facts and Figures was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Penn Research Statistics".
  4. ^ "Colleges And Universities Raise $28 Billion In 2010 Same Total As In 2006" (PDF) (Press release). Council for Aid to Education. February 2, 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-19.
  5. ^ "Nursing Goes Global".
  6. ^ "Morris Arboretum's Horticulture Center is a Model of Workaday Sustainability".
  7. ^ "Wharton School Announces $15 Million Gift from Patty and Jay H. Baker to Establish the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center".
  8. ^ "Penn Med receives $13 million for new research center".
  9. ^ a b "Penn's PIK Professors".
  10. ^ "Association of Research Libraries Annual Tables".
  11. ^ "MUP Post Doctoral Appointees Table".
  12. ^ "The Chronicle of Higher Education Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index".
  13. ^ http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/national-research-council-ranks-penn-s-graduate-programs-among-nations-best
  14. ^ Owen Roberts, William Draper Lewis, 89 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1 (1949)
  15. ^ "Wharton History".
  16. ^ "Wharton: A Century of Innovation".
  17. ^ http://www.businessweek.com/1989-94/pre94/b339564.htm
  18. ^ a b "Important Milestones and Fascinating Innovations During the Last Fifty Years of Computing Research at the University of Pennsylvania".
  19. ^ a b c d "Some Research Highlights at PENN Medicine".
  20. ^ http://www.nndb.com/people/390/000130997/
  21. ^ "125 Influential People and Ideas" (PDF).
  22. ^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/727461/Wharton-Model
  23. ^ "125 Influential People and Ideas" (PDF).

External links[edit]


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