Melissa PappasAs the Senior Vice Provost for Research at Penn, Dawn Bonnell, Henry Robinson Towne Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, forges paths that allow Penn Engineers to strategically plan and execute pioneering research. Bonnell plays an important role in developing strategies that anticipate future directions in scientific innovation, feeding the ongoing, thriving research enterprise and providing the underlying structures and programs that enable frontier research at Penn. Her leadership in this role, combined with her own extensive research across materials science, chemistry and physics, gave rise to her recent nomination to the American Philosophical Society.
The American Philosophical Society is the oldest learned society in the United States, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin for the purpose of “promoting useful knowledge.” Today, the society honors leading scholars, scientists and professionals through elected membership and supports research and discovery through grants and fellowships, lectures, publications, prizes, exhibitions and public education. Bonnell was welcomed as a member of the society in May 2024.
“It is a great honor to be associated with such distinguished intellectuals, in history and present day,” says Bonnell. “I am looking forward to meeting colleagues and learning from their ideas and perspectives on topics way beyond my area of research. I am particularly excited to bring the insight I gain from collaboration and interaction with the American Philosophical Society back to the community at Penn.”
Earlier in Bonnell’s career, she volunteered in professional organizations, including serving as President of one which taught her how to lead groups with diverse goals. She has also served on several federal agency strategy committees, which provided her insight into trending research directions and how to approach their funding. These experiences enabled Bonnell to help bring the NanoBio Interface Center to Penn in 2003, and led to her position as Senior Vice Provost for Research at Penn.
“As Senior Vice Provost for Research, I have enjoyed creating programs and partnerships that advance research and enable faculty, graduate students and postdocs to explore new frontiers,” she says. “It has also been very rewarding to be able to provide, with partnerships in the schools, the infrastructure required for frontier research and new system technologies that drive our functions.”
Bonnell supports the research endeavors of the greater Penn community with her own roots as a researcher on nanotechnology tools used to measure and image atoms at surfaces and interfaces. Her work looks at how to understand the behavior of atoms to manipulate properties that implicate a wide range of future devices including biomedical sensors, solar cells, computer chips, next-generation batteries, memory storage and energy harvesting and storage.
“My research has been in fundamental science,” says Bonnell. “We uncover new knowledge, and it is exciting to be in a position where you know something new that no one else knows, albeit for only a little while. It is then very gratifying to see others build on that knowledge to advance their research.”
Through Bonnell’s many roles at Penn, her passion lies in helping others succeed.
“One of the most satisfying components of research is seeing and helping students and postdocs become researchers,” she says. “To watch them develop skills and knowledge and then see the excitement when they make their first discovery or solve a problem is what I look forward to the most.”