AI-Informed Activities and Assignments to Support Student Learning

Dr. Alawi received his DDS degree from McGill University, completed a General Practice Residency at St. Barnabas Hospital, and Residency in Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens. 

His research interests address the roles of ribosome biogenesis and telomere maintenance in the pathogenesis of oral cancer, which are poorly understood. The dyskeratosis congenita 1 gene (DKC1) has important roles in both of these molecular pathways. While germline mutations in DKC1 may precipitate cancer development, in the vast majority of individuals with sporadic cancers, the gene is not mutated. Instead, DKC1 is frequently upregulated. We have recently shown that DKC1 is a direct transcriptional target of the c-MYC oncoprotein. c-MYC is one of the most important cellular proteins; it directly and indirectly regulates many of our most fundamental biological functions. Upregulation of c-MYC has been implicated in the pathogenesis of several different cancer types, including oral cancer. We are currently investigating the role of DKC1 in influencing some of these c-MYC-related functions, including cellular proliferation, genomic stability and cellular transformation.

Dr. Emery has had a lifelong interest in nutrition and a long history of teaching and clinical practice as a Registered Dietitian and Certified Nutrition Support Clinician in Philadelphia.

She has mentored many students who have gone on to practice in the field of nutrition.

Dr. Emery uses virtual and augmented reality to help students “see inside” the human body. Combining this novel technology with tried-and-true instructional design practices, she has demonstrated significant increases in knowledge and confidence for nutrition-focused physical assessment in her students.

Disparities related to systemic social injustices have profound effects on nutrition and health. Issues like food and housing insecurity directly and negatively affect our patients. Dr. Emery brings her experience working in urban environments to her classroom to sensitize future clinicians to real-life challenges experienced in the community, and encourages a strength-based, patient-centered approach to care. All individuals should have the opportunity to achieve optimal health and pursue their best lives, ultimately bringing their unique talents and gifts to the world.

A Fellow of the American Physical Society, Bhuvnesh Jain is a world-renowned cosmologist whose expertise in gravitational lensing—the shearing and magnification of light from distant galaxies—is forging new insights into some of the least-understood phenomena in the universe, such as dark matter, cosmic acceleration, and dark energy. He is currently leading the Gravitational Lensing Group of the ongoing Dark Energy Survey, which will map the images of 300 million galaxies. He has helped set the research agenda for next generation experiments as well, including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the space telescopes Euclid and WFIRST. Jain’s service to the University includes his work as co-Director of the Center for Particle Cosmology and his past membership on the Faculty Senate’s Senate Executive Committee.

James Petersson completed his undergraduate education at Dartmouth College and his graduate study under Dennis Dougherty at the California Institute of Technology. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2005, he was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University with Alanna Schepartz. He joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 and the Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Graduate Group in the Perelman School of Medicine in 2013. His research has been recognized by several awards, including the Searle Scholar, an NSF CAREER award, and a Sloan Fellowship.

Sarah Pierce brings more than a decade of transactional and courtroom experience to the Legal Practice Skills program. Prior to joining the Penn Carey Law Faculty, Pierce was Counsel at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP where she practiced for 13 years focusing on corporate and financial restructurings and reorganizations, representing companies, secured lenders, investors, and buyers.

During her time in practice, Pierce also served as an Adjunct Professor at Temple University Beasley School of Law teaching Secured Transactions.

Dr. Nat Trask's research focuses on integrating physical and mathematical structure into machine learning architectures, providing mathematically rigorous pathways for developing AI-driven tools. The techniques primarily draw from concepts in exterior calculus and geometric/variational mechanics, offering a means to extract models applicable in extreme physics settings where deriving solutions from first-principles models is intractable. He has a particular interest in the relationship between graph neural networks and traditional finite element discretizations of continuum models. Using these techniques, he constructs probabilistic digital twins and performs autonomous scientific discovery, with applications spanning combustion, energy storage, climate simulation, fusion power, multiphase flows, fracture, and soft matter.