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THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA • FOUNDED 1885

PHILADELPHIA, THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2026

VOL. CXLII

NO. 2

Penn spent record $770,000 lobbying federal government last quarter

Here’s how Penn plans to celebrate America 250 in the nation’s birthplace

According to a recently filed disclosure, Penn lobbied the federal government on several issues including financial aid and visas

The events will take place in partnership with several groups on campus and alongside initiatives at museums across Philadelphia

KATHRYN YE Staff Reporter

ARTI JAIN Senior Reporter

Penn spent $770,000 lobbying the federal government in the fourth quarter of 2025 — the highest single-quarter expenditure on record. According to a recently filed disclosure, Penn lobbied the federal government on several issues — including higher education issues, international students and visas, student financial aid, and physician payment. This fiscal quarter, the University spent $510,000 internally and an additional $260,000 to retain the services of three external lobbying firms: BGR Group, Cassidy & Associates, and Mehlman Consulting. Penn listed Associate Vice President for Federal Affairs William Andresen and Penn Medicine Corporate Director for Government and Community Relations Kristen Molloy as individuals who lobbied on behalf of the University in its disclosure report. A request for comment was left with a University spokesperson. At the start of the last fiscal quarter of 2025 — which spanned from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025 — 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump’s administration presented Penn and eight other universities with a compact that promised preferential funding treatment in exchange for compliance with a set of sweeping guidelines. Just over two weeks later, Penn rejected the White House’s offer. At the time, White House spokesperson Liz Huston told The Daily Pennsylvanian that any university “unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms” will not benefit from “future government and taxpayers support.” Penn continued to retain BGR Group — one of Washington’s largest lobbying firms — which it first contracted in May to advocate on its behalf with federal policymakers. This quarter, the University paid the firm $140,000 to advocate on “issues related to higher education and research appropriations,” according to a filing. Six BGR Group lobbyists represented Penn — including 1994 Penn graduate and Managing Director David Urban, who served as a senior advisor to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Penn spent $80,000 to retain the services of Cassidy & Associates and paid $40,000 to Mehlman Consulting. Last year, a DP analysis projected that Penn would spend nearly $1.8 million lobbying the federal government in the fiscal year of 2025. In total, Penn’s lobbying expenditure in 2025 — both internal and external — totaled over $2 million.

Penn Libraries has planned a series of performances, conferences, and exhibitions to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In partnership with several groups on campus, the events will take place alongside initiatives at museums and institutions across Philadelphia. According to Lynne Farrington, the director of programs and senior curator of special collections for Penn Libraries, the planning process for the Semiquincentennial series began in 2021. “We hope that … by putting out exhibitions and other programming, we can get people to think about these kinds of things and understand more of the history of the country and where it comes from,” Farrington said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian. As part of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Farrington leads programming for events honoring the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent American Revolution. Other events include a discussion on Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” pamphlet and a lecture on the printing process of the Declaration of Independence. Another exhibition — open from February to July — will highlight the revolutions in France, Haiti, and Philadelphia, along with an exhibition by the Museum of the American Revolution. History professor Emma Hart, who directs the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, participated in the “Common Sense at 250” panel on Jan. 15. Hart told the DP that she aimed to help students come to terms with “the commonly understood ideas of the revolution as a basis for the nation” and why those ideas have been “contested” since 1776. This spring, Hart will teach “Revolutionary Stories: Philadelphians and the American Revolution,” a course surrounding the stories of Philadelphia residents in 1776. The course is one of 15 specifically designed to celebrate the country’s anniversary. Manager of Penn’s Common Press Jessica Peterson is leading a yearlong program intended to guide participants through the original printing process of the Declaration of Independence and create “historically accurate” replicas of the document. Peterson told the DP that students “using their hands” to make documents has “really activated their understanding of history in a different way.’ “It’s really important to understand American his-

CHENYAO LIU | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Penn slams ‘unconstitutional’ federal antisemitism subpoena A Tuesday filing stated that while the University has complied with agency demands, it remains unwilling to submit the personal information of Jewish faculty and students without their consent ALEX DASH AND LAVANYA MANI Senior Reporter and Staff Reporter

Penn filed a brief on Tuesday challenging an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission subpoena that requested information about Jewish students, faculty, and campus groups. The Jan. 20 filing echoed previous arguments made by Penn, stating that the University has complied with the agency’s demands but remains unwilling to submit personal information without the consent of the affected parties. The brief described the EEOC’s demands as “disconcerting but also entirely unnecessary,” arguing that disclosing private details would “erode trust between Penn and its employees and the broader Jewish community at Penn.” In response to a request for comment, a University spokesperson told The Daily Pennsylvanian that the filing

is “comprehensive and speaks for itself.” A request was left with the EEOC. “The EEOC insists that Penn produce this information without the consent—and indeed, over the objections—of the employees impacted while entirely disregarding the frightening and well-documented history of governmental entities that undertook efforts to identify and assemble information regarding persons of Jewish ancestry,” Penn wrote in the brief. The University argued that if the information requested by the EEOC — including home addresses and personal phone numbers — was somehow leaked, the individuals on the lists “could face real risk of antisemitic harm.” Penn added that “anti-Jewish hate and violence are seriSee EEOC, page 7

See AMERICA, page 3

From data analysis to pattern recognition: Here’s how Penn Medicine is using artificial intelligence Across the University’s Health System, scientists are now using artificial intelligence to enhance their understanding of biological systems and modern medicine SAMEEKSHA PANDA AND ADDISON SAJI Senior Reporter and Staff Reporter

As the use of artificial intelligence across medicine increases nationwide, The Daily Pennsylvanian spoke to professors, doctors, and researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine about how they are integrating AI and machine learning into their research. Across the University of Pennsylvania Health System, scientists are now using AI to enhance their understanding of biological systems and modern medicine. According to multiple Penn Med faculty members, the technology has been used in a variety of ways — from conducting translational research and analyzing data to optimizing healthcare delivery.

tism and other conditions. He added that identifying these “signatures” can aid in early diagnosis, which could be “very beneficial for families.” Perelman School of Medicine Neurology professor Brian Litt is working on a project “testing implantable brain devices that talk to their hosts,” which incorporates AI to report fluctuating levels of risk. “Your medical device might text you and say, ‘What did you do? Your probability of having a seizure just went up by 60%,’” Litt told the DP. “And you might have had a beer, or taken a new antibiotic or something like that.”

Pattern detection and risk prediction Radiology and Electrical and Systems Engineering professor Christos Davatzikos described how he uses AI to identify early signs of disease and inform preventative treatment plans in an interview with the DP. His lab — one of the first AI-guided radiation therapy projects in the field — used AI to develop methods to analyze brain MRI scans and predict the future progression of a tumor. Davatzikos works with patients suffering from glioblastoma — a deadly form of brain cancer — and told the DP that AI pattern recognition helped lead to “much longer survival” of affected individuals. He described AI as a “fundamental” research tool for detecting patterns, since the increasing number of biomarkers used to track diseases makes it “difficult” for one person to visualize how the brain is constantly changing. “We look at the MRIs, and you don’t know where the tumor is infiltrating,” Davatzikos said. “But the AI is able to look at many different MRI contrasts and create a signature that predicts or detects very subtle changes that later give rise to tumor currents.” Professor of psychiatry Birkan Tunç — who also serves as a research scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — told the DP that he uses AI to study “almost all psychiatric conditions,” including depression, anxiety, ADHD, and autism. Tunç described how AI helps his team “capture cues and signals” from video or audio recordings and allows them to compare observations of individuals with au-

Large-scale data analysis Informatics in Biostatistics and Epidemiology professor Li Shen described how he integrated AI into one of his major research projects — a machine learning and informatics method that analyzes data and identifies specific Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers. “We want to identify genetic risk factors and also protective factors, because that can be used for drug development, to try to understand the disease mechanism and accelerate therapeutic discovery,” Shen told the DP. Associate Dean for Computing at the Medical School Li-san Wang — who serves as co-director at the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science for Integrated Diagnostics — also uses AI in his Alzheimer’s disease research. In a statement to the DP, Wang wrote that in his research, AI could help integrate genetic findings with other types of biological data — such as RNA, protein, and epigenomic data — which could prove “essential” for understanding the biological mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s disease. Professor of bioengineering, biochemistry, and biophysics Greg Bowman spoke with the DP about using AI in multiple aspects of his work. Bowman described how he uses AI to design peptides that bind to proteins not previously considered “viable targets,” and at the data analysis stage. “It is really useful for helping us find patterns that are difficult to pull out by eye, given the massive amounts of data we generate over time,” Bowman said.

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The Penn Medicine campus on Feb. 24, 2023.

Streamlining research workflows Davatzikos noted that while AI has been fundamental to his work, general improvements in computational and mathematical methods also allowed his research process to evolve. “For example, analyzing brain scans was an art by visual inspection,” Davatzikos told the DP. “Now we have tools that precisely go in and measure certain things.” “My work has been primarily in making imaging more quantitative and more scientifically grounded,” he said. According to Shen, using AI to help reduce “tedious time computing” has had a “big impact” on his research. “It actually has all the knowledge rights available, say on the Internet, or whatever knowledge base it has access to ... so it can provide additional thoughts, new sales insights to the expert,” Shen said. Litt spoke with the DP about Penn’s Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation, which is using AI to assist in operating room scheduling across Penn’s hospitals.

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“You have to be really smart about how you schedule time in operating rooms, if you have downtime, it’s pretty expensive,” Litt said. “There’s a special Penn Health tech fellow, Kevin Shea, who has an algorithm that could potentially save half a million dollars a month in downtime from the operating room by using AI to schedule.” Wang echoed Litt’s sentiment that AI can be beneficial for daily operations within his work — including data organization, annotation, and management — which he said remain “major challenges in large, collaborative research efforts.” He clarified, however, that AI remains “resource-intensive and expensive,” which places limitations on its potential uses. Tunç also acknowledged that AI, in its current state, is a tool to “improve clinical workflows” and not a substitute for human labor. “We never see it as a replacement, like trying to replace a human construct, because even the idea of psychology is a human construct,” Tunç said. “You need a human at the center.”replace a human construct, because even the idea of psychology is a human construct,” Tunç said. “You need a human at the center.”

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