News
Apr 13, 2026
Communication, Science & Society Initiative awards four interdisciplinary grants
The Communication, Science & Society Initiative (CSSI), a research partnership between Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences in the College of the Liberal Arts, has announced the grant recipients from its 2025 request for proposals. The initiative has awarded $52,000 to four projects that bring together teams of life scientists, humanists and social scientists who aim to address multi-dimensional societal problems.
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Apr 09, 2026
Huck Distinguished Lecture Series brings leaders in AI, biodiversity and cryo‑EM
This April, the Huck Distinguished Lecture Series will feature two experts who have established themselves as leaders in life sciences applications for artificial intelligence and cryo-electron imaging.
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Apr 09, 2026
Simple vineyard growing practice impacts soil microbiome deep below surface
In an effort to produce more and better grapes at a lower cost and with less environmental impact, vineyard growers have increasingly planted grass between rows of vines. These "groundcovers" root shallowly, but can benefit vineyard soils and reduce the need for herbicide applications. Now, a team of plant scientists in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences has found that implementing this practice impacts far more than previously thought. It not only alters the biology and ecology at the surface, where the grasses are planted, but also alters the system far below the surface, the researchers reported in a new study published in Phytobiomes Journal.
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Apr 08, 2026
Martell receives Award for Administrative Excellence
Emily Martell, managing director for the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, has been honored with the 2026 Award for Administrative Excellence. The award, established in 1970, is given to a faculty or staff member whose performance, methods and achievements exemplify the highest standards of administrative excellence.
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Apr 07, 2026
Medina, Paris receive 2026 Excellence in Advising Award
Scott Medina, the William and Wendy Korb Early Career Professor and Dorothy and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Nano Bioengineering; and Heather Paris, associate director of the advising center and career services at Penn State Wilkes-Barre, have been selected to receive the 2026 Penn State Excellence in Advising Award.
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Apr 07, 2026
Kaye honored with Graduate Program Chair Leadership Award
Jason Kaye, distinguished professor of soil biogeochemistry in the College of Agricultural Sciences and chair of the Ecology Intercollege Graduate Degree Program, is the 2026 recipient of the Graduate School Alumni Society Graduate Program Chair Leadership Award.
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Apr 07, 2026
Undergrad research featured in American Chemical Society journal
Undergraduate students at Penn State Brandywine developed an environmentally friendly and easy method to synthesize compounds from plant-derived molecules for potential use in therapeutics. Their work, conducted under the supervision of Penn State Brandywine Assistant Professor of Chemistry Anna Sigmon, was published in a special issue of the journal American Chemical Society (ACS) Omega titled “Undergraduate Research as the Stimulus for Scientific Progress in the USA.”
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Apr 06, 2026
WATCH: Cell ‘snowball’ may be answer to large-scale tissue engineering
Cell cultures — single layers of cells grown in a small dish — have enabled researchers to study biological growth, develop or test drugs and even discover what causes some diseases. Cell spheroids, 3D versions of cell cultures built using a process known as cell aggregation, are the next step in advancing this work, capable of more closely modeling real tissue.
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Apr 01, 2026
Molecular entomologist Jason Rasgon named AAAS Fellow
Jason L. Rasgon, Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Endowed Chair in Disease Epidemiology and Biotechnology at Penn State, has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Mar 30, 2026
Q&A: Robots can’t feel; these sensors could change that
A research team, including Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, James L. Henderson Jr. Memorial Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Penn State, is using pressure sensors — tiny devices, roughly the size of a paperclip, that can measure the force applied over an area — to design a highly sensitive electronic “skin” to use alongside robots and prosthetic limbs.
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