Inspiring Impact Magazine
(Image: Courtesy of Inspiring Impact Magazine)
Each day, in every school at Penn, researchers are making strides to cure diseases, improve lives, and better understand our world. With more than $1.45 billion in research awards during 2024, Penn is one of the nation’s top research universities—generating new knowledge and applying it to critical, real-world challenges.
Dawn Bonnell, Penn’s Senior Vice Provost for Research, shares why a robust research enterprise is at the core of the University’s educational mission.
What kinds of research does Penn conduct? What are some of Penn’s most notable discoveries and innovations?
At Penn, our research spans virtually every discipline—from the life sciences and medicine to engineering, business, social policy, education, and the humanities. What makes Penn distinctive is the way we work across disciplines, which is helped by our interconnected campus. Our researchers collaborate across schools and specialties, which leads to groundbreaking ideas with practical applications. With experts in all stages of research and development—from theory to policy, to bench research, analytics, business, and entrepreneurship, all in one place—Penn is ideally set up to translate concepts into tangible new medicines, technologies, or processes for the benefit of society. Some of Penn’s most transformative discoveries have truly changed the world.
The best-known recent example is the foundational mRNA technology behind the COVID-19 vaccines—work led by Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó. But that’s just one example. Penn researchers have also pioneered new approaches in CAR T cell therapy to treat cancer, created life-changing assistive robotic devices, developed new protections against chemical warfare, offered critical insights into the Higgs boson and the search for dark matter—and so much more.
How do Penn researchers secure funding, and what is the role of government grants versus private sources?
Most research at Penn is funded through a combination of federal grants, philanthropic support, and the University’s general operating budget. Agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Department of Defense are crucial sources of support.
In 2024, we received over $1 billion in total awards from government sources, making up nearly 70% of Penn’s total research awards. These grants are highly competitive, and Penn is consistently ranked among the top recipients nationally.
Private foundations and individual donors play an increasingly vital role—especially in supporting high-risk, high-reward ideas that may not qualify for federal funding, or in helping early career researchers as they launch their work. Philanthropy enables us to pursue bold questions and explore the frontiers of visionary thinking. Suppose we experience a decline in federal funding. In that case, private philanthropy will become more important than ever.