News
Jan 13, 2026
Female athlete health, well-being focus of updated report
When active and athletic girls and women don’t eat enough food to meet their body’s energy needs, it can disrupt key systems in the body and lead to irregular or absent menstrual cycles and impaired bone health, including osteoporosis and bone stress injuries.
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Jan 08, 2026
Huck Institutes seeks faculty applicants for leadership fellows program
The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences seeks to appoint one or two Leadership Fellows with a strong background in interdisciplinary research for a one-year term, with the possibility for an additional year extension. This program is aimed at providing professional development and a potential pathway to Penn State leadership for tenured and non-tenure-line life sciences faculty (at the associate or professor level only). The deadline to apply is Feb. 13.
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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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Jan 05, 2026
Moving neural implant research closer to commercialization
A startup based on research conducted at Penn State is developing a soft, minimally invasive neural implant intended to reduce inflammation and improve communication with the brain for individuals with drug-resistant epilepsy or living with paralysis.
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Jan 05, 2026
Back pain linked to worse sleep years later in men over 65, according to study
About half of older men suffer from sleep problems, back pain or both, according to Soomi Lee, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State. Lee recently led a study to investigate whether one precedes the other and found that back problems can increase sleep problems years later in men over 65 years old.
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Dec 22, 2025
Dipanjan Pan named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors
Professor Dipanjan Pan, the Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Chair Professor in Nanomedicine at Penn State has been named a 2025 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Being named an NAI Fellow is the highest professional distinction currently awarded to inventors in the nation.
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Dec 18, 2025
Genetic teamwork may be the secret to climate-resilient plants, researchers find
A plant’s success may depend on how well the three sets of genetic instructions it carries in its cells cooperate, according to a new study led by plant scientists at Penn State.
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Dec 17, 2025
$1.74M grant to fund Eastern Fire Network
Large wildfires are becoming more frequent in the eastern U.S., signaling accelerated risks to the built environment, human health and national security. To help address these threats, a researcher at Penn State is leading a new network — the Eastern Fire Network (EFNet) — that was awarded a $1.74 million, three-year grant.
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Dec 16, 2025
For certain life-essential proteins in E. coli, repair is more likely
Proteins need to fold into specific shapes to perform their functions in cells, but they occasionally misfold, which can prevent them from properly functioning and even lead to disease. A new study by researchers at Penn State found that, in E. coli, proteins containing a widespread structural 3D pattern, known as a motif, are more likely to misfold than proteins that lack it.
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Dec 16, 2025
Opposing forces in cells could hold clues to treating disease
A newly revealed molecular tug-of-war may have implications for better understanding how a multitude of diseases and disorders — including cancers, neurodegenerative diseases and immune disorders — originate, as well as how to potentially treat them, according to researchers at Penn State.
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