Winners of the Ninth Annual Penn Grad Talks (Video)

TED-style talks on crowdfunding in ancient Greece, gender gaps in political tolerance, shyness, opera singers and language, and how to know what you don’t know, took home the day’s top prizes.

February 27, 2025

Five people standing in front of a sphinx

This year’s winners (from left to right): Peter Satterthwaite, Lauren Palladino, Suzanne Johnson, May Pik Yu Chan, and Leonardo Ferreira Guilhoto.

On a Friday at the end of February, 20 graduate students—five each in Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and the Professional Master’s Program—gave short TED Talk–style presentations to an audience, both in person at the Penn Museum and online. One winner in each category, plus an audience choice awardee, each took home $500 and bragging rights.

Kicking off the day were students in the Professional Master’s category, who spoke about immigration and culinary traditions, neurodiverse leaders, and more. Suzanne Johnson, who is in the Applied Positive Psychology program, won the category with her talk on shyness, including her own. “Shy people have an acute awareness of their environment. They’re vigilant and observant,” she explained. “Shyness is not a problem—unless you let it interfere with the things you want to do in your life.” As Johnson explained, she conquered hers with learned optimism.

Humanities went next, with Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Beth Wenger introducing the speakers. “The humanities help us understand others, through their languages, their histories, their cultures. They reveal how people have tried to make sense of the world,” Wenger said. “The humanities teach empathy and teach us how to deal with complex and imperfect information.” In this category, Peter Satterthwaite, a PhD student in Ancient History, gave the winning presentation, about crowdfunding in ancient Greece.

Social Sciences followed, with students discussing urban forests in Pakistan, chimpanzees in HIV/AIDS research, and more. Lauren Palladino, a grad student in political science, gave the winning talk about gender gaps in political tolerance. Using her own research, Palladino showed that the gender gaps here are as present as ever, but that reframing the argument to focus on “threat perception” can shrink the chasm.

The Natural Sciences category closed out the afternoon, with top honors going to May Pik Yu Chan of Linguistics for her talk about what opera singers can teach us about language. Another Natural Sciences presenter, Leonardo Ferreira Guilhoto of Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences, earned the audience choice award.

Once the talks ended, Wenger and Nora Lewis, Vice Dean for Professional and Liberal Education, announced the winners at a reception in the museum’s Sphinx Gallery. Check out the winners below, and visit our Vimeo gallery to see all of the contestants’ presentations.