Franklin Institute gets $250k grant for capital campaign

As the Philadelphia Business Journal reported on Monday, the US Airways Community Foundation provided $250,000 to the Franklin Institute for its museum expansion and $62 million capital campaign, according to a press release.

From the release:

“US Airways’ support is vital in allowing the Institute to further its mission – to inspire a passion for learning about science and technology,” said Don Callaghan, Institute Trustee and Chair of the Inspire Science! campaign. “Their assistance with this campaign allows us to continue to expand our efforts to provide one-of-a-kind, world-class science experiences that impact hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren and families every year.”

Rajat Ghosh: ‘Philly’s like a playground,’ says Canadian-born UPenn breast cancer researcher

Rajat Ghosh got his PhD in quantum physics. But he’s not spending spending his days pondering theoretical abstractions. Instead, he’s found a very practical and important application of his work: early detection of breast cancer.

On any given day, Rajat may find himself programming MRI machines in C, tangling with string theory equations, or using nitrous oxide and a blowtorch to pressurize liquids. Thanks to his physics research, the signal strength of MRI scanners can be boosted by a factor of a million – though only for a short amount of time.

The diversity Rajat loves in his work is also what he loves about Philly.

Since moving last August, the Penn researcher has joined the Capoeira community (a Brazilian martial art set to music), found a core group of friends through the Network of Indian Professionals and attended many Fourth Wall Arts salons. [Full Disclosure: This author is a board member of Network of Indian Professionals.]

Read on to see why this Canadian-born researcher moved to Philadelphia, and what restaurants the former bartender and self-proclaimed foodie enjoys.

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Deb Crawford, Drexel Vice Provost for Research on evaluating cells a thousand times smaller than a human hair and more: Q&A

Debbie Crawford isn’t from around here.

The native of Glasgow, Scotland moved from Alexandria, VA to take the Vice Provost for Research gig at Drexel University in September and is awash in a continued University City renaissance that most Philadelphians from even five years ago wouldn’t recognize.

The engineer-by-training spent 20 years at the venerable National Science Foundation and is here to push forward Drexel’s reputation as a serious research institution.

“The tipping point for that is going from the individual cottage industry notion of research with deep expertise to a place where we are bringing the researcher across a variety of other fields to create a sum greater than the parts that can attack bigger challenges,” Crawford tells Technically Philly , her accent aglow. “So it’s taking new technologies and bringing together the creative arts and engineering or whoever else and pull them in that sandbox to have the largest impact possible.”

Now living in Center City, Crawford says she brings from NSF “an understanding of the topic barriers in these large projects.”

Below, Crawford talks about why Drexel was the right choice, the coolest research happening at the university right now and more.

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Links: Drexel incubator in Bristol, working on nuclear threats and More

DEFINITE READS

• Mike Armstrong of the Inquirer reports that “the Eastern Technology Council will combine with an affiliate of the Greater Philadelphia  Chamber of Commerce, called the Mid-Atlantic Capital Alliance.” Armstrong goes on to say: “I say it’s overdue, because the Philadelphia region seems to have as many entrepreneurial, technology, and other business groups as school districts.”
• The Philadelphia Business Journal’s Peter Key reports that Drexel University is starting an incubator program in Bristol for sustainable businesses for the military.
• The Drexel Triangle reports that a professor from that university is developing a new tool that will ‘see’ chemical and nuclear threats, and, just to be clear, the headline of this story is “Drexel prof. creates device.”

Below, a Drexel professor works on nuclear threats, a bait-and-tackle shop smart phone app and more.

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TNT: Study shows two times as many U.S. science, engineering graduates as needed

A new study co-authored by a Rutgers professor shows a steady number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates, but a plummeting retention rate of highest-performing students. Source: Study "Steady as She Goes," linked below.

It’s a common refrain of politicians, educational advocates and many business leaders. The output of science and technical graduates in the United States is dangerously behind other countries.

But a new study [PDF], led in part by a Rutgers University professor, posits instead that the last 30 years has seen no significant change in the number of U.S. graduates in so-called STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — fields.

However, this new research shows the highest-achieving students in those majors are increasingly fleeing those fields at a higher rate than in the past.

“It’s a mistake to focus solely on boosting the number of science and math students,” says Harold Salzman, the Rutgers sociologist who teamed with B. Lindsay Lowell, a demographer at Georgetown University on the study. “Employers want more employment readiness, not more employees.”

That comes in contrast to a national dialogue in recent years.

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Friday Q&A: Darlene Cavalier, the Science Cheerleader, on the700Level

It never seems fair when brains and beauty are so adeptly synchronized.

Yet, there is Darlene Cavalier, a former 76ers cheerleader, leading a science literacy movement, right from her Society Hill rowhome, while managing a beautiful family stuffed with four young kids.

Today, as a partnership with the700level.com, the best damn sports blog in all of Philadelphia, our Friday Q&A is running on their site.

Click over now to read what Cavalier has planned for her Science Cheerleader site and who won her poker game with Michael Jordan.

Below, some goodies from our interview with Cavalier that didn’t squeeze into the700level piece, including what synthetic biology has to do with NFL franchises.

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