SEAS Weekly 02-17-25

SEAS Weekly 02-17-25

SEAS Weekly 02-17-25

Jump to:

Important Dates:

Date	Event
February 24th	Drop Period ends
March 8th – 16th	Spring Term Break
March 17th	Classes resume
March 21st	Grade Type Change Deadline
March 24th – April 7th	Advance Registration for Fall Term
March 24th	Registration for Summer Session Begins
March 31st	Last Day to withdraw from a course
April 30th	Last day of classes
May 1st – 4th	Reading Days
May 5th – 13th	Final Examinations
May 13th	Spring Term ends
May 17th	Alumni Day
May 19th	Commencement

Announcements for the week

Orientation Peer Advisor (OPA) Applications are now OPEN!

The 2025 OPA Applications will open for students to apply beginning on Monday, February 3rd, 2025 will be open through Sunday, March 9th, 2025. OPAs are essential to new student orientation and help our new students feel welcome. OPAs are Engineering upperclassmen who are trained to mentor incoming students and assist with course selection and general questions. This is a great opportunity to get involved!

Click here to apply

Community Co-Working Sessions

Looking for a supportive environment to gain more focus, structure, and accountability in getting your work done? Join us for weekly co-working sessions (two 60-minute independent study sessions with snacks, goal sharing, and short breaks) at the Weingarten Center in Stouffer Commons.
Tuesdays and Fridays starting on February 4th
2:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Weingarten Center in Stouffer Commons
Click here to register

Events (Engineering)

SEAS Shrinky Dinks Workshop

Interested in making small Charms, keychains, and more by drawing on special plastic sheets and shrinking them down? Come to join the SEAS Shrinky Dinks Workshop!

Friday, February 21st
7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Gutmann Hall (Room TBA)
Click the QR code below to register

Events (Penn)

Penn I-Corp Application Virtual Information Session

Penn I-Corps can help you turn your vision into reality. Penn I-Corps is a program that teaches entrepreneurs how to validate their startup ideas by conducting customer interviews. The program is open to Penn-affiliated students, researchers, or faculty with ideas and technologies originating in academic research. We are currently accepting applications (For priority applications, apply by February 20th).

February 5th to February 24th
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Click here to register

Virtual Survivor Support Space for Spring

Penn Violence Prevention and the Penn Women’s Center are collaborating to create a virtual space for survivors and allies to receive support and community. We are starting the Virtual Support Space back up for the Spring semester! I’m reaching out to ask for your support in sharing the attached flyer about our Virtual Survivor Support Space with your communities via your newsletters, social media, and physical spaces.

Tuesdays 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm, Starting on January 28th
Zoom Sessions
Click here to register

Spring 2025 Tutoring Services

The Weingarten Center offers tutoring services to Penn students at no additional cost for various courses. For more information, please check the flyer below.

Scholarships & Grants Opportunities

Career Services Summer Funding program

Career Services has funds to allow select students to pursue unfunded or under-funded summer opportunities. Awards are intended to cover travel expenses, living expenses, and/or other expenses related to the summer experience up to $5,000.
The round 1 application deadline is February 23rd. Click here to learn more about this opportunity.

Identifying Funding Opportunities – Pivot Information Session

The OVPR is now providing a powerful new resource to help researchers identify funding opportunities. PIVOT-RP is a funding opportunity database that easily allows researchers to customize their search for funding based on discipline, career stage, interest, location, and other categories. This information session will walk the Penn research community through how to access and search the database and leverage additional tools like customizing automatic notifications for relevant funding opportunities.
Thursday, March 6th
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm (Virtual)
Click here to register

Funded Research Opportunities for Faculty and Students

Interested in getting to know more funded Research opportunities? The Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships connects faculty and students in support of these transformative experiences through three signature funding opportunities for undergraduates:

Jumpstart for Juniors Program
Provides funding to both a student and a faculty mentor for a research project in the summer between a student’s third and fourth years
Applications due Monday, March 17, 2025

While these programs require the involvement of a standing faculty member, we welcome proposals from collaborative teams that include non-standing faculty.

Questions about any of these programs can be addressed to Ann Vernon-Grey in the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.

University Research Foundation Award

The University Research Foundation (URF) is an intramural funding program that provides up to $75,000 for research projects and up to $5,000 for conference support. The URF provides seed funding for up to one year for research activities that are expected to lead to external sponsorship and/or peer-reviewed research publications. Conference support grants are faculty-developed events that take place on Penn’s campus.

During Fall 2024, the OVPR reviewed 83 applications (over $4.2 million in requests) from across campus. Four review panels consisting of 33 faculty reviewers assessed proposals in four categories: Humanities, Social Sciences and Management, Natural Sciences and Engineering, and Biomedical Sciences. A total of 56 new projects were recommended for funding, totaling $2,595,003.

The next cycle for the Fall 2025 URF program will open in late August, with a proposal deadline of October 9, 2025.

2025 Call for proposals-PPA Research Support

As part of its commitment to a carbon-neutral campus by 2042, the University of Pennsylvania entered into a power purchase agreement (PPA) with energy company AES to develop solar arrays that would generate enough energy to fulfill 70% of the campus and health system electricity needs. Under the PPA, AES is generously supporting related educational efforts at Penn through the PPA Renewable Energy Research Program run by the Environmental Innovations Initiative.

Now through March 15, 2025, we are accepting proposals for grant support for education and/or training associated with the technical, operational, and economic aspects of renewable energy and energy storage. Funded projects may include research directly related to the AES solar energy project or projects and activities focused more broadly on education and training related to renewable energy in all its aspects.

For more information and to submit a proposal, visit here

PARCC Announces Partnerships with AHEAD, NVIDIA and more

Penn Advanced Research Computing Center (PARCC) has reached a major milestone toward opening its high-performance computing cluster. PARCC is pleased to announce contracts with AHEAD to build an NVIDIA SuperPod backed by VAST Data Storage and powered by NVIDIA Blackwell. The cluster will be hosted by Flexential, offering an integrated on-campus research computing experience. Further updates on PARCC can be viewed on the OVPR website.

Career & Networking Opportunities

Penn Engineering Heath Tech Industry Day – Meet & Greet with Teleflex

Meet and Greets with Teleflex Wednesday, February 26, 10:30 am-1:30 pm Levine Lobby Stop by Levine Lobby to meet representatives from Teleflex, a global provider of medical technologies designed to improve the health and quality of people’s lives. Click here to register in Handshake.

SGInnovate Visit to Penn

Unlock a unique 3 – 6 months Deep Tech apprenticeship with the SGInnovate Summation Programme! Dive into hands-on projects with leading startups in AI, Biotech, Robotics, Quantum Computing, and more. Get mentored by industry experts and shape globally impactful solutions —apply now to level up your tech career in Singapore! Find out more about the Summation Programme here.

Open to all Undergraduates, Postgraduates and Fresh Graduates, the successful intern will receive a monthly stipend of $3,000 – S$6,000, monthly living allowances or S$1,500 and return airfare.

Do join us at the upcoming in-person information session to find out more.

Tuesday, February 18th
7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Wharton School – Steinberg- Dietrich Hall Room 211
Click here to register

Become a tutor for Spring 2025

The Weingarten Center hires Penn students who seek to use their knowledge & experience to support their peers. For more information check here.

Clubs & Organizations

There are many Engineering Student Clubs and Organizations Besides ESAC, EDAB, and Penn Engineering Council. Check here to find more groups for specific interests and disciplines.

Join Penn Data Science Group’s Spring 2025 Kaggle competition group!

We will be working on “LLMs—You Can’t Please Them All,” where we will find exploits in an LLM-based essay evaluation system to test its robustness. This opportunity is open to ALL students. No prior experience is required. Please sign up using our interest form . If you’re interested in participating in a different Kaggle competition and would like to form a team, feel free to email putan@seas.upenn.edu.

Engineering Entrepreneurship

More information about Engineering Entrepreneurship

Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, & X/Twitter.
Tag on these platforms @PennEngEntrep with your own posts.
Join their subscription-based semi-monthly email to notify you of entrepreneurship-related events, competitions, opportunities and more. If you wish to receive this type of information, please visit https://groups.google.com/a/seas.upenn.edu/g/pennengentrep/ and then click on “ask to join the group” (Image). You have the option to unsubscribe at any time as well and this is completely optional. Emails will be sent on the second and last Wednesday of every month.