The Life Cycle of an Idea

That cellphone in your pocket likely runs on a battery that requires vast amounts of nickel and cobalt. But what’s the most sustainable, easiest, and cheapest way to extract those elements? Eric Schelter, Hirschmann-Makineni Professor of Chemistry, is working on that problem, ensuring that something most of us use daily—hourly, even—can be produced with minimal environmental damage and recycled indefinitely.

The same can be said of research from Charles Kane and Eugene Mele, both Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professors of Physics, who uncovered a new class of materials known as topological insulators. With that discovery, which won the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, they advanced how we think about quantum materials with possible applications in next-generation electronics.

Then there’s the work from Arjun Yodh, James M. Skinner Professor of Science in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, who uses light fluctuations in milk to study motion in opaque systems, unearthing a useful way to measure blood flow and diagnose injury. There’s also wide-ranging work in psychology, like the efforts ongoing at the Positive Psychology Center, which is conducting research about human flourishing, or that from Michael Kahana, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Psychology, who is using electrical signals to address memory loss after traumatic brain injury.

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It’s not hard to come up with examples of innovations and breakthroughs from Penn Arts & Sciences faculty, discoveries that started as basic scientific inquiry and evolved into a pioneering product or an enhanced method, revolutionizing a field in the process.

Such research is part of a vast machine at Penn, made up of 195 centers and institutes and more than 5,000 research faculty. The University is also training the next generation of scholars, including more than 2,000 graduate students within Penn Arts & Sciences alone. Many of the ideas these academics generate go from theoretical to tangible with help from the Penn Center for Innovation, which has filed thousands of patent applications, created more than 7,000 commercialization agreements, and formed more than 300 startup companies since 2014.

You fund incredibly talented people to do what they’re passionate about, often driven by basic curiosity about how things work, the mysteries of the universe, or other fundamental puzzles that excite their imaginations.

For decades, this kind of research enterprise has been facilitated by a collaboration between universities and the government that’s been “breathtakingly successful,” says Mark Trodden, incoming Dean, School of Arts & Sciences and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Physics & Astronomy.

“You fund incredibly talented people to do what they’re passionate about, often driven by basic curiosity about how things work, the mysteries of the universe, or other fundamental puzzles that excite their imaginations,” he says. “Some fraction of the time, all that happens is you learn something entirely new about the world—which is wonderful in and of itself. But sometimes this leads to developing the science that gives you MRI machines, or understanding how Einstein’s theories allow GPS to work, or inventing the fundamental laws that underlie most of the technology in our modern lives.”

Basic scientific research, Trodden adds, allows us to study the building blocks of life to better understand mechanisms and processes that could eventually (and ideally) translate into new products and services that not only have the potential to alter how we live but could also save lives. Brain research, for instance, is on the cusp of “many tremendous breakthroughs, in areas like effective treatments for Alzheimer’s and cures for Parkinson’s and insights into how to treat psychiatric conditions,” says Professor of Psychology Nicole Rust. If the basic research engine halts, she adds, “we lose progress. It just stops, and we’re frozen where we are now, with billions of people across the world suffering.”

If the basic research engine halts, we lose progress. It just stops, and we’re frozen where we are now, with billions of people across the world suffering.

To pull back the curtain on how basic science works, we’re highlighting some of the brain research and energy science being conducted at Penn Arts & Sciences, two of many areas where this kind of groundbreaking work happens. Above, we offer a visual of just how many people it takes to do these types of science, from principal investigators to the undergraduates helping conduct the research.

It’s all with an eye toward highlighting the life cycle of a scientific idea. This is important, Trodden adds, because “there is a convincing argument to be made that essentially every drug, every technological advance, every biotech advance, every IT advance, every computational advance had its genesis in or critical contributions from a university lab funded by the federal government.”

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