News

Apr 08, 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 06, 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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Mar 27, 2026

Community Q&A: Brain health and neuroscience research

On March 20, Nikki Crowley, associate professor of biology and of biomedical engineering, Huck Chair in Neural Engineering, and director of the Penn State Neuroscience Institute at University Park and Santhosh Girirajan, T. Ming Chu Professor of Genomics and head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology visited The Village at Penn State, a local senior living community.

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Mar 19, 2026

Penn State engineers on multiple major projects funded by federal health agency

Penn State has been named as a sub-awardee on four teams selected for funding by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Three of the projects are funded through the ARPA-H Building Resilient Environments for Air and Total Health (BREATHE) program and aim to enhance indoor air quality, and one of the projects is funded through the ARPA-H Personalized Regenerative Immunocompetent Nanotechnology Tissue (PRINT) program and aims to bioprint organs on demand.

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Mar 17, 2026

Four Penn State researchers receive iDEA-TECH awards from Sanofi

Four Penn State researchers and their colleagues have been awarded Innovations in Data Exploration, Analytics & Technology (iDEA-TECH) Awards from Sanofi, a global R&D-driven, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered biopharma company. The awards provide $150,000 in research funding to advance cutting-edge discoveries through novel AI and digital tools and new technologies.

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Mar 16, 2026

'Brain awareness week' informs public and spotlights neuroscience expertise

From March 16 to 22, the neuroscience research community at Penn State is joining "Brain Awareness Week," a global public health movement started by the Dana Foundation in 1996 to bring attention to science and public health issues concerning the human brain.

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Feb 12, 2026

Skeleton ‘gatekeeper’ lining brain cells could guard against Alzheimer’s

Brain cells are constantly swallowing material from the fluid that surrounds them — signaling molecules, nutrients, even pieces of their own surfaces — in a process known as endocytosis that is essential for learning, memory and basic neural upkeep. New research by Penn State scientists has revealed this vital process may be governed by a previously unknown molecular gatekeeper: a lattice‑like structure just beneath the surface of neurons called the membrane‑associated periodic skeleton.

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Feb 02, 2026

Targeting the 'good' arm after stroke leads to better motor skills

Traditional stroke rehabilitation therapy focuses on restoring strength and movement to the more impaired side of the body, but a new randomized clinical trial has revealed that targeted therapy for the less-impaired arm significantly improved movement and control for stroke survivors. The trial, led by researchers from Penn State and the University of Southern California (USC), compared the new approach to the standard best-practice therapy currently in use.

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Jan 20, 2026

Penn State Neuroscience Institute announces spring 2026 speakers

Hosted in conjunction with the Neuroscience Intercollege Graduate Degree Program, the spring 2026 seminar series brings together an international slate of leading experts in neuroscience, biodevices and brain research.

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Jan 07, 2026

Medical, doctoral student earns NIH fellowship

Victoria Nudell, a doctoral and medical student in the Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Biosciences Graduate Program and the Medical Scientist Training Program at the College of Medicine, has received a highly competitive fellowship from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

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