News

May 06, 2026

Dipanjan Pan named Huck director for innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems

Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences has named Dipanjan Pan, Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Nanomedicine and professor of materials science and engineering and of nuclear engineering, to serve as the Huck’s first director for innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems.

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May 06, 2026

How can the same genetic mutation lead to different clinical outcomes?

Individuals that share the same deletion of a portion of chromosome 16 are at risk of developing neurodevelopmental disorders, but some experience severe intellectual disability or developmental delay, while others may only exhibit milder psychiatric features like depression or anxiety. How can this be? To answer this, a team led by Penn State scientists has developed methods to evaluate how genetic variants elsewhere in an individual’s genome work with the deletion to help determine the features that the individual will manifest.

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Apr 27, 2026

Hydraulic brain: Body motion linked to fluid movement in the brain

The brain is more mechanically connected to the body than previously appreciated, scientists reported in Nature Neuroscience. Through a study using mice and simulations, the team found a potential biological mechanism underlying why exercise is thought to benefit brain health: abdominal contractions compress blood vessels connected to the spinal cord and the brain, enabling the organ to gently move within the skull. This swaying facilitates the surrounding cerebrospinal fluid to flow over the brain, potentially washing away neural waste that could cause problems for brain function.

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Apr 27, 2026

The robot Cambrian explosion: Penn State researchers advance biorobotics

Whether they’re dancing on two legs or scrambling over rough terrain on four, robots are gaining traction on social media and in everyday life. They’re already rapidly evolving in terms of capabilities and size, but according to Penn State Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Baxi Chong, they may be on the brink of something even better. Chong is one of several Penn State researchers capitalizing on unique biological features found in the living ecosystem to develop and expand the field of biorobotics.

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Apr 17, 2026

3D-printed brain sensors may unlock personalized neural monitoring

Soft electrodes designed to perfectly match a person’s brain surface may help advance neural interfaces for neurodegenerative disease monitoring and treatment, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. Neural interfaces are powered by tiny sensors capable of tracking biophysical signals, known as bioelectrodes.

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Apr 15, 2026

Four Huck Trainees Among Graduate Student Award Winners

Four Huck graduate students are among the 42 that have been recognized as outstanding scholars with Graduate Student Awards by the Office of the President and the Fox Graduate School.

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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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