Introducing OMNIA

For those of you accustomed to seeing Penn Arts & Sciences Magazine on the cover—welcome to OMNIA, our new identity. In Latin, omnia translates to all things, which speaks to the incredibly diverse array of disciplines that define Penn Arts and Sciences. Whether we’re covering an undergraduate history major or an astrophysicist faculty member, our core mission remains: to keep you connected to the important research and tremendous creativity of the School’s faculty, students, and alumni. Our cover story explores a major challenge facing the world of science and technology—big data—while our multi-faculty perspective on mass incarceration provides expert analysis on one of today’s most critical issues. Also featured in the issue is a new program that is uniting students as they work to redefine ideas about sustainability, and, in a special infographic-driven feature, we examine two of our faculty members’ participation in a think tank that is influencing policy on a global level.

We are also nearing completion of a new web presence for OMNIA. As the saying goes, content is king, so we have designed our new homepage to be a universal destination for fresh content. One day the top story might be a discussion with an alumna filmmaker like Jean Lee, featured as the subject of this issue’s Movers and Quakers, and the next, a profile on an award-winning chemistry doctoral student. The new site will put an emphasis on visual content as well, including photo essays, video, and infographics. And a new section called (Ins)omnia will offer lighter content informed by our faculty.

Our ultimate goal is to bring you closer to Penn Arts and Sciences with the stories we tell. We will do our best to continue to tell them in a way that lives up both to the eminence of our scholars and the expectations of you, the reader.