Researchers in Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics, who are studying artificial intelligence as a tool for teaching, have been selected to join a $220 million National Science Foundation initiative to expand the use of AI technology in areas ranging from agriculture and food supply chains to adult and online learning. Drexel’s team will join AI researchers from around the country in an effort to use the technology to make education more accessible for Americans who are adapting to rapidly changing workplaces. The NSF’s Adult Learning & Online Education (ALOE) Institute will be supported by $20 million over five years.  

The Drexel Internal Medicine practice at 219 North Broad Street and Drexel University’s Student Health Center have rejoined the clinical practices of the College of Medicine. Previously managed by Tower Health Medical Group, the practices returned to Drexel effective July 1, which ensures continuation of these needed services and reflects Drexel’s mission-driven approach to student and population health in Philadelphia.

The ongoing pandemic and the unique challenges to health care delivery it continues to create have brought to light the need for medical professionals to have a broader skillset to solve the most complex and pressing challenges. Because of this need, and to ensure technology and clinical care are optimized to an individual patient’s needs, Drexel University recently launched an unprecedented offering for future leaders in STEM and health disciplines: a new minor in pediatric engineering.

Brandywine Realty Trust and Drexel University marked the commencement of construction of 3025 JFK, the first vertical development within Schuylkill Yards – a $3.5 billion innovation neighborhood in University City – with a groundbreaking ceremony on June 24 featuring state and local dignitaries and project partners.

The Urban Health Collaborative, housed in Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health, recently published its “COVID-19 Health Inequities in Cities” dashboard – which exposes deeply intrenched inequities in cities across the United States through the lens of comprehensive data on COVID-19 outcomes. Unlike other COVID-19 dashboards that look at data at broader scales, the Drexel website offers data on inequities at the individual (racial/ethnic disparities), neighborhood (using zip code and social vulnerability measures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and city (characteristics such as overcrowding, health infrastructure, etc.) levels on COVID-19 outcomes including vaccination rates.

Following a national search, Drexel University has named Maisha Kelly, a seasoned collegiate athletics administrator with deep Philadelphia roots, as the University’s new director of Athletics. Kelly, currently serving as Bucknell University’s senior associate director of athletics and senior woman administrator, will start at Drexel in mid-July and will succeed Eric Zillmer, PsyD, director of Athletics, who decided to step down in the spring after more than two decades of incredible service.

Drexel University will officially establish and name a new center on racism and health as The Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements and Population Health Equity. The Center was made possible through a generous gift from philanthropists Dana and David Dornsife to the School earlier this academic year. Opening in Fall 2021 and housed in the University’s Dornsife School of Public Health, the Center will be led by inaugural director Sharrelle Barber, ScD, MPH, an assistant professor at Dornsife.

An international leader in RNA biology, Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, will address the graduates of Drexel’s College of Medicine during its commencement ceremony on May 18.

Drexel University and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society celebrated the completion and opening of a new garden for the Drexel community and the public. Drexel President John Fry and PHS President Matt Rader marked the occasion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 12. Attendees at the event were limited and COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines were enforced.

Parks played an important role for people seeking respite from the toll of social isolation during the pandemic, and according to new research from Drexel University, they did so without increasing the spread of COVID-19. The study looked at how people used 22 parks in Philadelphia and New York during the height of the pandemic and it found no strong correlation between park use and the number of confirmed cases in surrounding neighborhoods.

Philadelphia Judge Frederica Massiah-Jackson will address the 2020 graduates and Senior U.S. District Court Judge C. Darnell Jones, II will address the 2021 graduates of the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law at commencement on Wednesday, May 19, at the La Salle University’s McCarthy Stadium (1900 W. Onley Avenue).

Two Drexel researchers received prestigious Individual Biomedical Research Awards from The Hartwell Foundation to support their work aimed at benefitting the health of children of the United States. Each award includes $100,000 in research funding per year for three years.

With increased media attention and political campaigns focusing on the gender pay gap, the fact that women — on average — are paid less than men, has become an important public discussion. While much of the focus has been on the corporate sector, a new study that looked at executive compensation at nonprofit organizations found that women earn 8.9% less than men with the gap becoming greater when there is room for salary negotiations.

Drexel University’s MXene material is one step closer to transforming the lives of people suffering from end-stage kidney disease. Nephria Bio, Inc., a U.S.-based spin-off of the South Korean medical device company EOFlow Co., Ltd., has signed a licensing agreement with the University to use the two-dimensional material, discovered at Drexel, as a filter in a wearable artificial kidney device it is developing. The technology could allow many of the millions of people suffering from end-stage kidney disease worldwide to move more freely, without spending hours each week anchored to large dialysis machines.

Evolution is unfolding in real time within many natural animal populations and researchers are now observing how this influences biodiversity in the field. In a newly published study in Molecular Ecology a team of Drexel University scientists examined the biological variations in pea aphids, insects that reproduce frequently enough to evolve before our eyes, by tracing the prevalence of their protective endosymbiont, Hamiltonella defensa, which the insects use to ward off parasitoid wasps.

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.

One of the nation’s most influential scholars in the field of urban inequality, Elijah Anderson, will address the class of 2021 at Drexel’s university-wide commencement ceremony on June 11. Provided that health and safety regulations and best practices allow, Drexel University will return to Citizens Bank Park to celebrate the graduating class. The ceremony will be live-streamed.

In the race to out-compete other companies– artificial intelligence (AI) design is lacking a deep understanding of what data about humans mean and its relation to equity. Two Drexel University sociologists suggest we pay greater attention to the societal impact of AI, as it is appearing more frequently than ever before.

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.

Drexel University’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery will re-open on Friday, April 2, 2021 after COVID-19 closed the doors to its contemporary art space for the last year. Fittingly, the Pearlstein Gallery will open with a new exhibition, called Breathing Room, presented in collaboration with local gallery Twelve Gates Arts.

More than one out of every 10 seniors (10.5%) enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, also known as a Medicare managed care option, and living in a rural area, switched to traditional Medicare during 2010-2016. The switch was driven primarily due to low satisfaction with care access, according to a study published this week in Health Affairs from researchers at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health. 

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.

Researchers from Drexel University will be working with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) on a partnership aimed at enhancing efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on public transportation. Through a recently formed partnership, the institutions are pursuing a federal grant for research into risk assessment, mitigation and communication strategies that will help keep riders safe and healthy.

Researchers at Drexel University’s College of Engineering have reported that fabric coated with a conductive, two-dimensional material called MXene, is highly effective at blocking electromagnetic waves and potentially harmful radiation. The discovery is a key development for efforts to weave technological capabilities into clothing and accessories.

Drexel University has appointed three new members to its Board of Trustees. The new members are Alfred F. Altomari, chair and CEO of Agile Therapeutics; Angela Dowd-Burton, president and CEO of Dowd-Burton and Associates; and Jerry James Martin, a retired senior Federal Bank regulator with over 37 years at the United States Treasury Department.

A $9 million gift from Drexel University alumna Dana Dornsife and her husband David to the University’s School of Public Health will help launch a new Center on Racism and Health, recruit and retain faculty experts on racial inequities in health and endow the deanship for public health. The longtime philanthropists, widely known for their humanitarian efforts, are the largest single benefactors in the University’s history, having donated more than $70 million. The School of Public Health was named in their honor after a $45 million gift in 2015.

Even in a strong market, tobacco smoke residue in a home may discourage buyers from considering a property, according to a survey of 329 realtors in four Philadelphia-area counties published this month in the journal Tobacco Regulatory Science.

New antennas so thin that they can be sprayed into place are also robust enough to provide a strong signal at bandwidths that will be used by fifth-generation (5G) mobile devices. Performance results for the antennas, which are made from a new type of two-dimensional material called MXene, were recently reported by researchers at Drexel University and could have rammifications for mobile, wearable and connected “internet of things” (IoT) technology.

Drexel University will celebrate the virtual opening of its new Center for Black Culture Nov. 12, with a "Virtual Kickback" to welcome Black students, faculty, professional staff, alumni and allies.  The Center will serve as a resource for the University community to gain a greater understanding of the Black experience and support a welcoming and wholly inclusive campus environment.

Using administrative data from the Medicaid Analytic eXtract (MAX), researchers from Drexel University’s A.J. Drexel Autism Institute found a substantial increase in the percent of adults receiving services for autism in the Medicaid population from 2008-2012.

In advance of Native American Heritage Month, Drexel University will present (S)Heroes Among Us, a public art event that will be streamed on the Twitch channel of Drexel’s Pearlstein Gallery on Friday, Oct.18, 2020 at 1 p.m.  Three Philadelphia-area artists, Priscilla Bell, BUSTA and Leon Rainbow, will paint murals to the sounds of a deejay informed by native music at 3401 Filbert Street in the yard of the gallery.

“Visioning the Future of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery Complex,” is a report about  the potential long-term future of the former 1,400-acre Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) oil refinery site on the Lower Schuylkill. The report was designed to spark a conversation about how to ensure the long-term development of the site allows connectivity to the rest of the city and yields equitable economic and environmental benefits to the city and its residents. The report was created through a community visioning process funded by a grant from the William Penn Foundation.   

A neighborhood’s overall socioeconomic status, including income and education-level, may influence its residents’ risk of chronic kidney disease, according to a study recently published in SSM Population Health by researchers from Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health.

A team of Drexel University College of Medicine researchers is advancing a way to destroy cancer cells exploiting "synthetic lethality," which is caused by deficiency in the DNA damage response (DDR) pathway. Synthetic lethality occurs when deficiencies in each of any two genes can be tolerated by the cell but the combination of these two deficiencies is lethal.

There’s a lot to talk about right now and social distancing hasn’t made it easy to get it all out. Drexel University Professor Frank Lee, PhD, who is known for visually appealing and nostalgic architectural art installations, is hoping to provide a forum for conversation with some assistance from a seven-story building in Philadelphia.

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.

Increasing state and local funding for environmental, educational and social services may lower infant mortality among those at highest risk, particularly among infants born to teenage mothers, according to findings published this week in the journal Pediatrics from researchers at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health.