Administrator

Penn State's Office of Faculty Affairs has named 14 new distinguished professors for 2026.  

A stretchy, conductive type of plastic could help power the next generation of implantable biomedical devices, like longer-lasting pacemakers or glucose monitors, according to Enrique Gomez, professor of chemical engineering at Penn State.

In the race to lighter, safer and more efficient electronics — from electric vehicles to transcontinental energy grids — one component literally holds the power: the polymer capacitor. Seen in such applications as medical defibrillators, polymer capacitors are responsible for quick bursts of energy and stabilizing power rather than holding large amounts of energy, as opposed to the slower, steadier energy of a battery.

DNA, the genetic blueprints in every living organism, is nature’s most efficient storage mechanism, capable of storing about 215 million gigabytes of data per gram. That storage capacity, if applied to electronics, could enable significantly more efficient data centers, speedier data processing and the ability to process far more complicated data. The trick to making this technological leap is getting DNA, a biological material, to work with electronics.

Allison Beese, professor of materials science and engineering and of mechanical engineering at Penn State, has been named the senior associate director of Penn State’s new National Security Institute. She will begin her appointment on May 15.