Bioengineering Builds on a Year of Growth and Achievement

With the fall semester well underway, the Department of Bioengineering is building on another year of growth, momentum and accomplishment. From new faculty appointments and national honors to student achievements and major interdisciplinary initiatives, the past year reflects the continued strength and ambition of the Bioengineering community.

Ravi Radhakrishnan, Professor and Herman P. Schwan Chair of Bioengineering, shares highlights from across the Department and looks toward what lies ahead.

Our community now includes 250 undergraduates, 260 master’s students, 413 doctoral students and 70 faculty, each contributing to the energy and ambition that continue to propel our department forward. This momentum is unfolding during an exciting period for Penn Engineering as well. Guided by the Penn Engineering 2030 strategic plan, the School continues to expand opportunities for students, strengthen its research enterprise and invest in the interdisciplinary approaches needed to address complex challenges in health, technology and society. As Bioengineering continues to grow within this dynamic environment, I’m proud to share some of the ways our faculty and students have distinguished themselves over the past year.

Growing Our Faculty

Hanwen Xu will join us as Assistant Professor in Bioengineering and Computer and Information Science in spring 2027, further strengthening our growing expertise in artificial intelligence. Hanwen develops AI models and tools for clinical pathology and precision medicine, with research spanning multimodal biomedical data and foundation models. His work has already achieved remarkable reach, including more than 6.5 million downloads of his models on Hugging Face, demonstrating the potential for his research to translate advances in AI into meaningful tools for human health.

I’m pleased to share several faculty milestones that reflect the continued strength and leadership of Bioengineering. Dongeun Dan Huh was designated the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor in Bioengineering and appointed Director of the Bioengineering Graduate Group. An internationally recognized pioneer in organ-on-a-chip technology, Dan is advancing new approaches to modeling human physiology while taking on an important role in shaping the next generation of Bioengineering scholars.

Andrew Tsourkas was designated the Eduardo D. Glandt President’s Distinguished Professor in Bioengineering, recognizing his longstanding contributions to molecular imaging, targeted therapeutics and nanomedicine.

Michael Mitchell was promoted to Professor and designated the Hibbert Professor in recognition of his innovative work in genetic medicine and drug delivery.

We also celebrated the promotion of Lukasz Bugaj, Associate Professor in Bioengineering, to Associate Professor with tenure, as well as the promotions of Brit Shields, Practice Associate Professor in Bioengineering; LeAnn Dourte Segan, Practice Professor in Bioengineering; Katherine E. Reuther, Practice Professor in Bioengineering; and Zhiliang Cheng, Research Professor in Bioengineering. Riccardo Gottardi, Associate Professor with a primary appointment in Pediatrics and a secondary appointment in Bioengineering, was also promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.

Together, these appointments and promotions recognize the extraordinary contributions our faculty are making across research, education, mentorship and leadership and reflect the continued momentum of our department.

Faculty Honors and Recognition

Our faculty continue to earn prestigious honors that reflect the breadth and impact of their work.

Claudia Loebel, Reliance Industries Term Assistant Professor in Bioengineering, received the Society For Biomaterials Young Investigator Award, recognizing outstanding achievements in biomaterials research at the early-career stage.

Xue Sherry Gao, Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor with a primary appointment in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a secondary appointment in Bioengineering, received a renewal of the NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award, supporting her lab’s continued research program.

Iahn Cajigas, Assistant Professor with a primary appointment in Neurosurgery and a secondary appointment in Bioengineering, received the Kumar New Investigator Award from the North American Neuromodulation Society for his work advancing brain-computer interfaces and neuromodulation, including approaches to restore motor function for people with spinal cord injury.

Flavia Vitale, Associate Professor in Neurology and Bioengineering, received a Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Grant from the National Academy of Engineering to advance an interdisciplinary collaboration integrating bioelectronics with engineered tissue systems.

Yihui Shen, J. Peter and Geri Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in Bioengineering, was named a 2026 Beckman Young Investigator for her work developing non-invasive approaches to profile metabolism at the single-cell level with greater molecular precision.

César de la Fuente, Presidential Associate Professor with primary appointments in Psychiatry and Microbiology and a secondary appointment in Bioengineering, received the Biochemical Society Award for Significant Breakthrough or Achievement, recognizing his pioneering work using artificial intelligence to accelerate antibiotic discovery, and was also selected for Penn’s Discovering the Future of AI program to support the development of new AI tools for biomolecular design. His team also received an honorable mention in the Laude Institute’s Moonshots competition for an ambitious effort to use artificial intelligence to advance therapeutic design.

These honors are a powerful reflection of the creativity, ambition and scientific leadership our faculty bring to some of the most important challenges in engineering and medicine.

Student Achievement

Our students continue to distinguish themselves through an impressive range of national honors, research accomplishments and leadership achievements.

This year, Bioengineering had an especially strong showing in the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, with 27 members of our community receiving fellowships: eight current Bioengineering Ph.D. students, 13 incoming Bioengineering Ph.D. students, four undergraduate Bioengineering students continuing on to graduate study and two recent Bioengineering alumni. This extraordinary level of recognition speaks to the strength of our students across every stage of their academic development.

Yash Rajpal was selected as a 2026–27 Luce Scholar, Brianna Leung was named a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, Ian Peng received a Goldwater Scholarship and Claire Zhang and Shivek Narang were awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants. Sophia Tang received the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, while Hilda Jafarah was awarded a PhRMA Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in Drug Discovery.

Our undergraduates also excelled in research and design. Yerahm Hong received the Rose Undergraduate Research Award for her work exploring a potential gene therapy for a rare pediatric epilepsy, while senior design teams Cardion and Reel-IV earned recognition for projects addressing important clinical challenges in cardiac care and pediatric IV safety.

Beyond the laboratory and classroom, the Bioengineering student chapter of BMES received the national Commendable Achievement Award, the second-highest honor given to BMES student chapters. Together, these accomplishments reflect the intellectual ambition, creativity, leadership and commitment to impact that define our student community.

Bioengineering Across Penn

Bioengineering also continues to play an important role in major interdisciplinary initiatives across Penn.

At One uCity Square, the new $18 million NSF AIRFoundry is combining artificial intelligence, automation and RNA science to accelerate discovery, with Bioengineering students and faculty contributing to the effort.

Bioengineering is also represented in the new $21.5 million NSF AI Institute for Human-AI Cooperation, a five-year initiative exploring how artificial intelligence can work alongside clinicians and patients to improve health care and rehabilitation.

Together, these efforts highlight Bioengineering’s role at the intersection of engineering, medicine and emerging technologies and the opportunities that it creates for our faculty and students.

Looking Ahead

It remains a tremendous privilege to lead Bioengineering at a time of such remarkable growth and possibility. I am continually inspired by the creativity, dedication and ambition of our faculty, students and staff and by the ways they are advancing research, education and impact across our community.

I look forward with great excitement to what lies ahead.

 

 

Ravi Radhakrishnan, PhD.
Herman P. Schwan Chair of Bioengineering
Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering