The U.S. electricity industry is facing a convergence of pressures unlike anything in its modern history. Since 2020, consumption has risen at 1.7% per year—nearly 17 times the prior decade’s rate—driven by data centers, electrification, and AI infrastructure. Equipment like transformers and turbines that once took months to procure now…Read More
As companies race to build the next generation of AI, data centers have become the focus of heated debates over electricity demand, water use, and economic impact. But how much of what we’re hearing is guesswork, and what still needs to be understood? Learn more in this webinar.…Read More
Every year, university researchers make discoveries that could change the way we treat disease, power our communities, or improve the technologies we rely on every day. But promising discoveries don’t always make it out of the lab. A researcher may have years of validated data behind an invention and still have no…Read More
MACK INSTITUTE WEBINAR AI Data Centers: Separating Fact from Fiction Wednesday, August 5 | 12:00 PM ET As companies race to build the next generation of AI, data centers have become the focus of heated debates over electricity demand, water use, and economic impact. But how much of what we're…Read More 
Lennart Meincke, Senior Applied Scientist at the Mack Institute and Wharton Generative AI Labs (GAIL), followed an unusual path to his current role. A software engineer in his native Germany, he originally came to Penn to study in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, where he took classes in…Read More
For Hasan Pasha WEMBA’26, the Mack Institute’s Collaborative Innovation Program (CIP) offered a chance to apply classroom ideas to a real business challenge. The experiential learning course pairs Wharton students with corporate partners to tackle complex problems and develop innovation strategies. Pasha entered Wharton after more than two decades working across consulting, hardware product design,…Read More
Innovation in Sports Fan Engagement Spring 2026 Conference Report Digital transformation has expanded the ways fans engage with sports, creating new opportunities for personalization, global reach, and interactive experiences. At the same time, it has introduced fragmentation. Fans now follow teams and leagues across multiple platforms and streaming services, often…Read More 
For many students, asking ChatGPT for homework help has replaced raising a hand in class or going to office hours. As AI becomes a default classroom tutor, educators are grappling with a new question: how do you design these tools so they actually support learning? A new paper from Angel Tsai-Hsuan Chung (Wharton, PhD…Read More
Happy Birthday, Joseph Wharton! 🎉 This Tuesday, March 3, marks the 200th birthday of the industrialist and philanthropist who gave his name to this institution. In honor of our namesake hitting his bicentennial year, we’re sharing four lessons that innovators can learn from Joseph Wharton’s story. 1) Bet early on…Read More
On February 18, the Mack Institute partnered with the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Commerce to host the latest installment of Tech Talks, a series designed to convene the region’s founder community around topics in innovation. Held on Wharton’s campus, From Promise to Pilot: How Pilots Can Drive Business…Read More
Photo by Lamont Abrams for Penn Engineering Congratulations to this year’s Y-Prize winners, CarboWells! The team proposed a 3D-printed concrete well plug that captures carbon and is designed to reduce failure rates in abandoned oil and gas wells. There are an estimated 2 million abandoned wells across the United States,…Read More 
Artificial intelligence has already proven it can perform specific medical tasks, such as interpreting X-rays or flagging risks in patient data. But caring for patients is not a series of isolated decisions. It is a dynamic process that unfolds over time, requiring clinicians to interpret signals from multiple sources and…Read More
Digital Twins 2.0: Making the Invisible Visible Fall 2025 Conference Report Digital twins are moving rapidly from niche technology to a central tool for business innovation. From factory floors and operating rooms to autonomous vehicles and global enterprises, the technology is shifting from experimental pilots to scalable, revenue-generating systems. The…Read More 
Congratulations to the four student teams chosen as finalists for this year’s Y-Prize competition: Aeronyx, Carbo Wells, Haven and Lattica! The Y-Prize competition challenges students to build their entrepreneurial skills by creating business plans for technologies invented at Penn Engineering. The team with the best commercial application wins $15,000 to help…Read More
On Tuesday, November 19, the Mack Institute co-hosted, along with Pennovation Works and the Penn Center for Innovation, the semester’s first installment of the Entrepreneurship Speaker Series featuring Wharton Professor Tyler Wry. His presentation, “Brace for Impact: Value Creation Beyond the Bottom Line,” explored how businesses can pursue a “hybrid…Read More
Many of today’s most transformative technologies have their origins in university research, from life-saving drugs and medical devices to advanced building materials. When these discoveries succeed in the marketplace, they not only improve lives but also become an important source of revenue for universities. But the path from lab to…Read More
On Friday, September 26, the Mack Institute, in partnership with EVERSANA, AWS and Modus Create, hosted Disrupting the Life Sciences Commercial Model: Exploring the Future Impact of AI and Patient-Centric Healthcare. This intimate event brought together senior executives from pharma and medtech with Wharton and Penn faculty to explore how AI,…Read More
The U.S. Department of Defense is one of the most complex organizations in the world — so how is it approaching generative AI? A new report from Wharton’s Prof. Serguei Netessine and WG’25 Andrew Stiles examines the DoD’s early steps toward integrating GenAI and highlights lessons that industry leaders can…Read More 
The Mack Institute is pleased to announce a new course for MBA students, Commercialization of Academic Science, piloting in Fall 2025. This hands-on course pairs student teams with Penn researchers who are developing cutting-edge technologies across healthcare, robotics, artificial intelligence, and more. Students will be tasked with conducting customer discovery,…Read More
Startup acquisitions by established firms are becoming more common, especially in fast-moving industries like tech and healthcare. But integrating a newly-acquired startup presents challenges, and can end up quashing creativity and worsening innovation outcomes. A new study, funded in part by the Mack Institute and conducted by Mack Core Team…Read More 
