Spark Therapeutics, a member of the Roche Group (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) and a fully integrated, commercial gene therapy company dedicated to challenging the inevitability of genetic disease, announced plans to invest an initial $575M in the creation of a new, state-of-the-art gene therapy innovation center on Drexel University’s campus in the heart of Philadelphia’s University City neighborhood. Through a 99-year ground lease of Drexel University’s F Lot, the new center will be located at the intersection of 30th and Chestnut Streets and will create opportunities for collaboration with Drexel University and Philadelphia’s booming life sciences community. Terms of the ground lease, including financial terms, were not disclosed.

New research on dampwood termites shows select members of the colony will experience brain changes in anticipation of cognitive demand. Drexel researchers measured developmental differences in the relative sizes of visual processing brain regions, called optic lobes, among dampwood termite castes to test whether optic lobe investment matches caste differences in exposure to visually complex environments.

A decade after Drexel University researchers made the pathbreaking discovery of a family of versatile, two-dimensional materials, which they dubbed MXenes, the University is helping to establish a global trade association for researchers, manufacturers and companies that are working with the materials. Called the MXene Association, it will serve as the professional body to establish standards and best practices, connect researchers and corporations and promote the research and development involving the materials.

Markers of the pandemic’s impact – testing rates, positivity ratio (cases among total tests), case rates by overall population and deaths – are clustered in neighborhoods, with low-income and predominantly minority communities experiencing worse outcomes than wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods. The findings, part of the first research to look at comprehensive neighborhood-level data from March through September 2020 from three large U.S. cities – Chicago, New York and Philadelphia – were published today in Annals of Internal Medicine by researchers from Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health.

Researchers from the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute collected and reviewed published research about how autistic youth and adults use the internet to communicate and provide a framework for understanding contributions, gaps and opportunities in online autistic communities.

Researchers from the Center for Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Science (WELL Center) in the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University systematically reviewed numerous independently published guidelines for having conversations with children about weight status to analyze their content, consistency, actionability and scientific support. They recommend future guidelines unify their messages for caregivers and health care professionals and be better supported by scholarly data.

Just over $100,000 was awarded to 22 faculty and professional staff through Drexel's Rapid Response Research & Development Fund.

Before China declared giant pandas a protected species in 1962 – hunters in pursuit of the black and white bear used dogs to track them. Since then measures have been put in place to protect the vulnerable pandas, but more than half a century later, dogs are still jeopardizing their safety, according to a group of researchers that included Drexel’s James Spotila, PhD.

A new neuroimaging study out of Drexel University's Creativity Research Lab points to an answer of what may have driven the evolutionary development of creativity.

A new brain-imaging study out of Drexel University's Creativity Research Lab sheds light on the controversy on which side of the brain is responsible for creativity by studying the brain of jazz guitarists during improvisation. 

Drexel University and Stillman College, a historically black university based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, signed a Memorandum of Understanding in May 2018 which created unique opportunities for students from both schools — and expansion plans are already underway.

A new way of measuring the relative habitability of freshwater environments for fish and aquatic insects suggests that New Jersey’s water monitoring and treatment standards could use a boost.

Two Drexel University faculty members from different disciplines have come together to provide a unique opportunity for graduate students: learn how to flex their creative muscles.

A new study by Drexel environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, shows that between 2000 and 2016, lobbyists spent more than two billion dollars on influencing relevant legislation in the US Congress. As the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of climate lobbying data, Brulle’s research confirms the spending of environmental groups and the renewable energy sector was eclipsed by the spending of the electrical utilities, fossil fuel, and transportation sectors.

The University was included among the colleges and universities in the Top 100 Worldwide Universities Granted U.S. Utility Patents report authored by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and the Intellectual Property Owners Association (POA).

A new Drexel University study found strong potential for consumer acceptance of a new category of foods created from discarded ingredients.

Drexel researchers explore why cells are unable to cope with the challenges associated with getting old.

Starting in 2017, researchers from around the university will have the opportunity to access the nation’s highest-quality Census data for analysis of U.S. economy and public policy issues as a partner with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, The University of Pennsylvania and Penn State University in a new Federal Statistical Research Data Center that will be located in Philadelphia.

Researchers have introduced a new concept of how the brain is involved in this essential function, providing new insight into how breathing disorders could be treated in the future.

The U.S. Department of Defense has tapped Drexel University as a key leader in the creation of a $75 million national research institute that will support American textile manufacturers in bringing sophisticated new materials and textiles to the marketplace. The institute, called Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, will be a national manufacturing resource center for industry and government to draw on academic expertise in new fibers and textiles. The result will be fabrics engineered to see, hear, sense and communicate; serving an array of industries including aerospace, apparel, architecture and health. 

After more than half a decade of speculation, fabrication, modeling and testing, an international team of researchers led by Drexel University’s Yury Gogotsi, PhD, and Patrice Simon, PhD, of Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, have confirmed that their process for making carbon films and micro-supercapacitors will allow microchips and their power sources to become one and the same.

A new study co-authored by scientists at Drexel University, published in the most recent issue of Biological Conservation, reveals the devastating impact of illegal logging on bird communities in the understory layer of Ghana’s Upper Guinea rain forests, one of the world's 25 “biodiversity hotspots” where the most biologically rich ecosystems are most threatened.

The bushmeat market in the city of Malabo is bustling—more so today than it was nearly two decades ago, when Gail Hearn, PhD, began what is now one of the region’s longest continuously running studies of commercial hunting activity.  Hearn’s team has now published its comprehensive results of 13 years of daily monitoring bushmeat market activity.

The thickness of the brain’s cerebral cortex could be a key to unlocking answers about intellectual development in youth with Down Syndrome, according to a new study led by a Drexel psychologist.

A new Drexel study suggests that social behavior evolved very differently in the brains of social insects than in vertebrate animals such as mammals, birds and fish.

Creating a symbiotic relationship in which historic sacred spaces, such as churches, help to alleviate performing artists’ need for space could benefit both groups and better integrate them into the community, according to a new study from Drexel University. However, an intermediary is needed to help facilitate these relationships, the study found. The study was led by Neville Vakharia, an assistant professor and research director of arts administration in Drexel’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, and Partners for Sacred Places, a national organization dedicated to the stewardship and active community use of historic sacred spaces.

Autism does not end when children reach adulthood—yet most public awareness, public policy and research about autism focus on the needs of children. A new national report from the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute answers critical questions about the experiences and outcomes of young people on the autism spectrum with transition planning, living arrangements, social participation, employment, postsecondary education, health and mental health, safety and other domains.

Drexel public health researchers published a review of the state of the science on which policy and infrastructure changes have a real impact on obesity prevention.

Federal laws explicitly addressing post-traumatic stress disorder have overwhelmingly focused on the needs of military personnel and veterans, according to a new study by a Drexel public health professor. It's the first study to examine how public policy addresses traumatic stress and PTSD.

More than a thousand residents and visitors to southern New Jersey will dig their own fossils and learn from the Drexel University paleontologist and students who conduct globally significant scientific research at Mantua Township's third annual Community Fossil Dig Day.

A Drexel-led team has described a new dinosaur species with the most complete skeleton ever found of one of the largest animals to ever walk the Earth. At 85 feet (26 m) long and weighing about 65 tons (59,300 kg) in life, Dreadnoughtus schrani is the largest land animal for which a body mass can be accurately calculated.

Two newly announced “dream teams” of researchers will shape innovative solutions to address unmet pediatric medical needs, as part of Drexel's new research partnership with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In the first pilot study asking adults on the autism spectrum about their experiences with driving, researchers at Drexel University found significant differences in self-reported driving behaviors and perceptions of driving ability in comparison to non-autistic adults. As the population of adults with autism continues growing rapidly, the survey provides a first step toward identifying whether this population has unmet needs for educational supports to empower safe driving – a key element of independent functioning in many people’s lives.

In a study that began as a sixth-grade science fair project, researchers at Drexel University have found that a popular non-nutritive sweetener, erythritol, may be an effective and human-safe insecticide. Erythritol, the main component of the sweetener Truvia®, was toxic to Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies in a dose-dependent manner in the Drexel team’s study, published in PLOS ONE. The flies consumed erythritol when sugar was available and even seemed to prefer it. No other sweeteners tested had these toxic effects.

A recent study from researchers from the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia and Karolinska Institute in Sweden provides more insight into how the higher risk of having a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among older parents varies between mothers’ and fathers’ ages, and found that the risk of having a child with both ASD and intellectual disability is larger for older parents.

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University will coordinate and oversee ecological monitoring projects by more than 40 national and regional environmental organizations in eight designated geographic areas in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware. The $3.2 million grant also calls for the Academy to develop baseline water-quality data and to integrate its existing long-term watershed research and monitoring into new datasets and models aimed at targeting specific areas in the Delaware watershed for restoration and conservation.

A new study conducted by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort. Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are “dark money,” or concealed funding.

The shutdown of the federal government that took effect Oct. 1 is already causing delays for some Drexel researchers, though student financial aid has been largely unaffected.

The second-most-common catch on Costa Rica’s longline fisheries in the last decade was not a commercial fish species. It was olive ridley sea turtles. These lines also caught more green turtles than most species of fish. These findings and more, reported in a new study in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, indicate that the Costa Rican longline fishery represents a major threat to the survival of eastern Pacific populations of sea turtles as well as sharks.

Two new treatment methods under investigation at Drexel University aim to help people reduce binge-eating behavior. One is a smartphone app designed to alert peopleat times when they are at risk for binge behaviors, among a comprehensive suite of other features. Another treatment is a new, evidence-based approach to small-group behavioral therapy.

Due to a complex and vicious cycle of biological and behavioral factors, dieters and weight loss researchers know, the more weight you’ve lost, the harder it is to keep it off. But eating disorder research has largely overlooked this influence, and Dr. Michael Lowe, a professor of psychology at Drexel University, has published a flurry of research studies showing that needs to change.

Drexel University has received a grant for a five-year study of medical marijuana and its impact on drug use and physical and psychological health among young adults in Los Angeles. It is the first large-scale NIH project funded to directly investigate medical marijuana use among young adults aged 18 to 26.

Researchers from the Drexel University School of Public Health say that health care organizations have an untapped opportunity to use data analysis methods on their own administrative data as a “springboard to problem identification” at the leading edge of preventing medical errors.

Living in a neighborhood that supports a healthy lifestyle can make a measurable difference in preventing obesity, according to a longitudinal study recently published in the journal Obesity. The multi-city, multi-ethnic study was led by Dr. Amy Auchincloss in the Drexel University School of Public Health.

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University has received a major grant from the William Penn Foundation to support watershed protection and restoration in the Delaware watershed that is intended to coordinate and demonstrate a region-wide impact on improving water quality.

A subtle change to hospital data collection policies could make a big difference in preventing occupational health and safety hazards, according to workplace safety researchers at the Drexel University School of Public Health.

As the share of employed teens across the nation has plummeted over the last decade, a new study from Drexel University’s Center for Labor Markets and Policy and the Commonwealth Corporation reveals some practical solutions to the challenge of declining teen employment.

Scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University have described another new lobe-finned fossil fish species from the same time and place in the Canadian Arctic as the famous precursor to limbed animals, Tiktaalik roseae, which they discovered several years ago. 

Dr. Clyde Goulden, a pioneering ecologist and director of the Asia Center of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, has devoted his life to studying climate change and how it is affecting Mongolian herders and the pristine 2-million-year-old Lake Hövsgöl. His efforts have now been recognized with Mongolia’s highest award to foreigners, the Order of the Polar Star. In a separate honor, Dr. Jon Gelhaus, Academy curator of entomology and professor in Drexel University’s College of Arts and Sciences, has received the Kublai Khan medal for his scientific achievements in Mongolia.

On National Coming Out Day, October 11, Drexel University’s Goodwin College for Professional Studies will launch the research and activism network “LGBT Issues in Sport: Theory to Practice,” which aims to be the definitive resource for research on LGBT issues in sport.

Drexel University was awarded a three-year, $1 million fire prevention and safety grant last month to develop tools to improve on-the-job safety for firefighters. Researchers will develop a survey to measure the safety climate – the measurable aspect of an organization’s or group’s attitudes toward safe behavior or “culture of safety”– for use in fire departments and by fire safety researchers.

New research recently published in Neuron, co-authored by Drexel's Dr. Jeffery Twiss, is one of the strongest indicators yet of molecular signaling from end to end in peripheral nerve cells. The team's new discoveries may help scientists better understand nerve cells' distress signals and nerve cell repair, so they can eventually control and enhance the process to speed up recovery from nerve injuries.

Many of the world’s tropical protected areas are struggling to sustain their biodiversity, according to a study just published in Nature by more than 200 scientists from around the world. Among them, Drexel's  Dr. Sean O’Donnell, highlighted the important, beneficial role of private landowners who work to preserve biodiversity in their land surrounding tropical reserves.

The newly established A.J. Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University is hitting the road with design assistance from students in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. Students are developing designs for the interior and exterior of a vehicle that will be used as a mobile clinic for research and community outreach, the first mobile unit for autism in the Philadelphia region. 

Harriet Cole, a maid employed at what is known today as Drexel’s College of Medicine, willed her body to science just before her untimely death in the late 1800s. Her sacrfice can still be appreciated today at Drexel's Queen Lane Campus.

New research suggests that climate change could exacerbate existing threats to critically endangered leatherback turtles and nearly wipe out the population in the eastern Pacific. Deaths of turtle eggs and hatchlings in nests buried at hotter, drier beaches are the leading projected cause of the potential climate-related decline, according to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change by a research team from Drexel, Princeton University, other institutions and government agencies.

A side mirror that eliminates the dangerous “blind spot” for drivers has now received a U.S. patent. The subtly curved mirror, invented by Drexel University mathematics professor Dr. R. Andrew Hicks, dramatically increases the field of view with minimal distortion. 

Drexel University researchers have found that the climate conditions at a major leatherback turtle nesting beach affects the early survival of turtle eggs and hatchlings. They predict, based on projections from multiple models, that egg and hatchling survival will drop by half in the next 100 years as a result of global climate change.

Working with West Philadelphia residents, researchers from Drexel's School of Public Health and Penn's School of Nursing created Briana and Damon, digital animation characters voiced by members of the community, as a novel strategy to communicate anti-violence messages grounded in community-based research.

Following the signing of a groundbreaking, $1 million agreement with Shima Seiki USA, Genevieve Dion, assistant professor and fashion design program director in Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, will now have the state-of-the-art laboratory to conduct research for the development of new smart textiles, wearable technologies and to explore new methods of production that will ultimately impact a number of market sectors.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded Drexel University College of Medicine a $ 2 million grant for a four-year project to investigate molecular pathways targeted by antimalarial pyrazole compounds. These compounds were first discovered by a research team from Drexel.

Seven adult-sized humanoid robots took the stage during Drexel University’s celebration of National Engineers Week, in a first-of-its-kind assembly of robotic technology. A showcase event on Feb. 20  introduced all seven of the Korean HUBO robots to the community. Their presence -together in one place- is a unique event that serves as a key milestone for a nationwide, collaborative robotics research effort funded by the National Science Foundation.

Researchers are bringing the latest technological advancements in 3-D printing to the study of ancient life. Using scale models of real fossils, for the first time, they will be able to test hypotheses about how dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals moved and lived in their environments.

A safe working environment for nurses is also a safe environment for the patients in their care, according to a new study led by public health researchers at Drexel University, published online in BMJ Quality and Safety in October.

Drexel University and the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute (SARI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have signed a collaboration agreement that will bring together researchers from the two institutions for pioneering work in scientific and technological innovation.

The Drexel Smart House has been selected by the World Green Energy Symposium (WGES) to receive a 2011 NOVA Award during the third annual symposium from October 19 – 21 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The Smart House was nominated in the Educational Case Study category for its student-led, multidisciplinary approach to developing a sustainable model for urban residential living and entrepreneurial innovation.

Drexel's new Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building features a five-story vertical wall of living plants – the largest such wall in North America and the only one at a U.S. university. Scientists and students at Drexel are studying the biowall, an active living filter that removes volatile organic compounds from the air, to get a better understanding of how it works.