November

From hard work improving the local community to hard work preparing for the next athletic season, see the best of Drexel through social media posts in October.

In hopes of limiting the disastrous environmental effects of massive oil spills, Materials scientists from Drexel University and Deakin University, in Australia, have teamed up to manufacture and test a new material, called a boron nitride nanosheet, that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in oils and organic solvents—a trait that could make it an important technology for quickly mitigating these costly accidents.

The nostalgia for childhood playthings is especially strong around the holidays. Relive your childhood in The Drexel Collection’s toy wonderland with a new exhibit opening Friday, Dec. 4.

Two of the most anticipated heralds of the holiday season – music and food – will come together at a special community dinner at the Drexel University’s Dana and David Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships (35th and Spring Garden Streets) on Tuesday, Dec.1 from 6 - 7:30 p.m. The internationally-themed dinner will include food stations featuring Chinese, Russian and Spanish cuisine prepared by culinary students from Drexel’s Center for Hospitality and Sport Management, complemented by music from those regions performed by students from the Curtis Institute of Music. One of the Dornsife Center’s monthly community dinners, this event will be free and open to residents of Mantua and Powelton and members of the Drexel community.

Drexel's Paul Clements, PhD, speaks on the influence that fictional television shows like "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" have in real-world courtrooms. He will be the keynote speaker at a conference on forensic trends in healthcare in the spring, hosted by the College of Nursing and Health Professions.

A unique fossil in the Academy of Natural Science of Drexel University’s collection continues to fuel important paleontological discoveries more than a century after it came into to the museum.

Ally Zeitz, manager of the Drexel Food Lab, offers healthier takes on traditional Thanksgiving dishes in honor of the upcoming national holiday.

It’s been a full month. We dealt with a citywide security scare aimed at local universities, elected a new mayor, honored our nation’s heroes in the city’s first annual Veterans Day parade and enjoyed an unseasonably warm Halloween.

Terry Gross is currently celebrating 40 years as the award-winning host of National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air,” which boasts nearly 5 million listeners each week across more than 450 NPR stations. The show also has a massively popular podcast. Gross is widely considered one of the country’s leading and most important interviewers, but earlier this month, the legendary interviewer became the interviewee.

American Campus Communities, Inc. (NYSE:ACC), the largest owner, manager and developer of high-quality student housing properties in the U.S., was recently presented with two awards from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) for Chestnut Square, its mixed-use student housing development located on Drexel’s campus.

A number of developments in University City’s startup ecosystem are aligning—all to the benefit of Philadelphia’s burgeoning community of entrepreneurs. Drexel University and Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania are teaming up to create a $10 million early stage seed fund that will support spin-off companies from the University. Concurrent with the launch of the new fund, Ben Franklin will join Drexel and University City Science Center’s efforts to strengthen the offerings for members at the Innovation Center @3401 (ic@3401). And the technology and healthcare growth capital provider, Safeguard Scientifics, is also joining ic@3401 in a high-level capacity.

DrexelNow’s new “Who’s Hiring” series profiles employers within the university’s vast network of employers. First up: app developer Point.io.

Using a special designed extrusion printer he created to squeeze out a mixture of hydrogel and stem cells, Wei Sun, PhD, Albert Soffa chair professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering, is making strides toward rapid prototyping the building blocks of life. His process, which was recently published in Biofabrication gives scientists a head start at growing living three-dimensional tissues and could one day be used to create micro-organs for research purposes.

In this month’s “A Fitter U Q&A,” Joe Giandonato, Drexel's manager of health promotion, tackles questions about winter exercise, stretches and lower back pain.

Eighteenth-century land surveyor William Smith was a rock star. And we mean that quite literally — Smith’s 1815 map of England, Wales and part of Scotland was the world’s first look at the organization of the earth beneath our feet. Less than 200 copies of this seminal work exist today and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University owns one of them.

Drexel Dragons on the men’s club ice hockey team are preparing for a big game at an even bigger venue: the Wells Fargo Center.

The Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs honored Donna De Carolis, dean of Drexel University’s Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship, with its Iris Newman Award. De Carolis received the award at AWE’s annual gala on Nov. 16 at the World Café Live. The Iris Newman award is presented annually to a woman who exhibits a trailblazing spirit, inspiring leadership and stalwart support for women in the entrepreneurial community.

Women with apple-shaped bodies – those who store more of their fat in their trunk and abdominal regions – may be at particular risk for the development of eating episodes during which they experience a sense of “loss of control,” according to a new study from Drexel University. The study also found that women with greater fat stores in their midsections reported being less satisfied with their bodies, which may contribute to loss-of-control eating.

Drexel’s men’s and women’s basketball teams open competition this Friday. Both squads are laden with veteran talent and will have their sights set on making strong performances in the Colonial Athletic Associations.

Go behind the scenes of the iconic Emmy® and Peabody® Award-winning satirical news program “The Daily Show” at Drexel University with a visit from writer and co-executive producer Adam Lowitton Tuesday, Nov. 17. Lowitt, himself a standup comic, will start out the evening with a standup routine and then sit down with Karen Curry, director of Drexel’s Rudman Institute, to talk about how he went from being an intern 13 years ago to one of Jon Stewart’s senior writers and then executive producer.

The College of Medicine’s Ana Núñez will soon receive an award for advocating for health equity. She talked with DrexelNow about the steps she feels are needed to achieve it.

An event hosted by a Drexel student organization will give Drexel artists the opportunity to display their work and network with co-op employers like never before.

Roger Kfoury experienced the best of both worlds during his co-op at Mars Drinks: the work culture of a small family-owned company and the international brand recognition and opportunities.

Forget Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and even Daniel Craig. There was once a real James Bond in the not-so-distant past and Drexel has a rather unique connection to him. The real James Bond was no secret agent, but he was a spy….of sorts. A bird spy.

Only one month remains to seeImmortal Beauty: Highlights from the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection, the first large-scale, retrospective exhibition of highlights from the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection (FHCC) in Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.

Co-produced by the Simpatico Theater Project and Drexel University’s Co-Op Theatre Company in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design as part of Drexel’s Mandell Professionals in Residence Project (MPiRP), "Watership Down" will feature a cast and crew comprised of students and professionals, set against the work of top-notch designers from around the region. The show will run from Nov. 4 – 22 in Drexel’s Mandell Theater (33rd & Chestnut Streets).

A ribbon-cutting ceremony on Nov. 11 will celebrate the new, fully equipped facilities thanks to a major expansion of the Stephen and Sandra Sheller 11th Street Family Health Services Center of Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions, a community-based, nurse-managed health center in North Philadelphia, which provides a holistic approach to health care.

Researchers from the A.J. Drexel Institute for Energy and the Environment issued a 97-page report to the City of Philadelphia that plots a detailed course for how the city can reduce its emission of greenhouse gasses—with the goal of an 80 percent reduction by the year 2050. Among its suggestions are retrofitting hospitals, grocery stores, schools and retail stores with better windows and insulation; drawing electricity from low-carbon sources like nuclear, wind and solar power; and encouraging the use of electric vehicles, public transportation, walking and cycling.

Drexel has a full lineup of events this week to honor our nation’s — and the University’s — veterans.

At the 143rd annual American Public Health Association meeting and expo, faculty from the Dornsife School of Public Health presented research on the health effects of everything from air pollution to your home address.

Healthy food choices and fitness were the focus of this year's Drexel Food Day, the fourth year for the event, which is held at the Drexel Recreation Center and open to all members of the Drexel community.

In December a small class of film students from Drexel University will get a chance to view Cuba through a lens. And in an opportunity that would have been impossible just a few decades ago, and a rarity even in recent years, they will be the ones directing its gaze. The Escuela International de Cine y Television, Cuba’s iconic film school, that counts Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez among its noted founders, recently formalized a relationship with Drexel to offer a two-week documentary filmmaking course in Havana this winter.

Hear from Thomas Trojian, MD, a professor in the Department of Family, Community & Preventive Medicine in the College of Medicine, on some treatment options for those troublesome tendon injuries.