- [Voiceover] How does an idea grow?
At America's first university,
we live by our founder's advice
that an investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
We're in the business of growing and nurturing
the ideas that change the world.
More than 50 years ago,
Penn engineers constructed the ENIAC
and jump-started the computer edge.
- Innovation and engagement are part of Penn's DNA.
Our students and faculty thrive in an atmosphere
that provides access to diverse ideas
and encourages service to a larger cause,
not on our own but by engaging the world collaboratively
through our research and discoveries.
We transform our world for the better
one breakthrough and one innovation at a time.
- [Voiceover] Today, Penn veterinarians,
oncologists, physicists and engineers
are working to detect cancer faster than ever before
through nanotech devices that work like electronic noses.
Researchers are growing vegetables
that can help deliver vaccines safely and efficiently
to the most remote parts of the world.
A biologist turned physicist
and a material scientist are collaborating
to solve alternative energy challenges.
By unlocking the evolutionary secrets of giant clams
they convert sunlight to biofuel.
Nanotechnologists are developing an invisible spray
that keeps water from adhering to any surface,
revolutionizing everything from electronics to architecture.
Penn's research powers innovation and breakthroughs
on an unprecedented scale
with one of the largest research portfolios in the world.
- Our multidisciplinary research accomplishments
drive our success.
At Penn, we go beyond the cutting edge of research.
We take fundamental discoveries
and put them up against the problems facing the world
today and tomorrow.
We give our innovators the tools
and help them find the capital
and the connections they need
to turn data into action,
creating new technologies that literally change lives.
- [Voiceover] Once completed,
the reinvigorated industrial space at the South Bank
will serve as a nucleus of innovation at Penn,
fostering progress and development in the Philadelphia area.
It will continue Penn's legacy of supporting students
who develop cutting edge businesses
that include a social conscience
as part of their business plan.
Penn is also a place where student computer programmers
meet hardware hackers
to create something that's a lot more
than the sum of its parts.
- We're more than an incubator,
we're an innovation ecosystem.
We grow ideas,
we create brainstorms and controlled conditions,
we celebrate the art of science.
Interdisciplinary collaboration is real here,
we succeed not in isolation
but by joining our intellectual forces together.
We're a community of thinkers
joining with a community of doers
to serve a larger cause than our own.
As Benjamin Franklin said,
make new knowledge practical
and that's exactly what we're doing.
- [Voiceover] Penn is ushering in a new age
where the impossible becomes the doable
and the improbable becomes the everyday.
Quadrotors fly in perfect unison,
opening up a surprising world of possibilities.
Engaging for the good of all
on a global and a local scale.
Nobody knows the impact of that better than Emily,
the young leukemia patient in complete remission
after Penn researchers altered her own immune cells
to save her life.
Emily's doctors are part of the Penn team
that engages knowledge in a cause larger than ourselves.
You never which ideas will change the world
but if the past is any predictor,
it's a safe bet those ideas are taking root
right here, right now
at the University of Pennsylvania.