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David J. Farber, celebrated Penn professor emeritus and pioneering ‘uncle’ of the internet, has died at 91

David J. Farber, 91, formerly of Landenberg, Chester County, celebrated professor emeritus of telecommunication systems at the University of Pennsylvania, former professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Delaware, professor at Keio University in Japan, award-winning pioneer in pre-internet computing systems, entrepreneur, and known by colleagues as the “uncle” and “grandfather” of the internet, died Saturday, Feb. 7, of probable heart failure at his home in Tokyo.

A longtime innovator in programming languages and computer networking, Professor Farber taught and collaborated with other internet pioneers in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. He helped design the world’s first electronic switching system in the 1950s and ’60s, and the first operational distributed computer system in the 1970s.

His work on the early Computer Science Network and other distributive systems led directly to the modern internet, and he taught many influential graduate students whom he called the “fathers of the internet.” He was thinking about a World Wide Web, he said in a 2013 video interview, “actually before the internet started.”

“Farber may not be the father of the internet. But he is, at least, its uncle,” Penn English professor Al Filreis told the Daily News in 1998. “Few have paid such close attention for so long to new trends in the information age.”

Colleagues called him “part of the bedrock of the internet” and a “role model for life” in online tributes. Nariman Farvardin, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., said: “Professor Farber did not just witness the future, he helped create it.”

In 1996, Wired magazine said Professor Farber had “the technical chops and the public spirit to be the Paul Revere of the Digital Revolution.”

He joined Penn as a professor of computer science and electrical engineering in 1988 and was named the endowed Alfred Fitler Moore professor of telecommunication systems in 1994. He left Penn for Carnegie Mellon in 2003 and joined Keio in 2018.

Gregory Farrington, then dean of Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, told The Inquirer in 1996: “He’s one of the most engaging, imaginative guys who sometimes alternates between great ideas and things that sound nuts. And I love them both. His life is an elaboration on both.”

He was a professor at Delaware from 1977 to 1988 and at the University of California Irvine from 1970 to 1977. Among other things, he created innovative computer software concepts at UC Irvine, studied the early stages of internet commercialization at Delaware, and focused on advanced high-speed networking at Penn. He also directed cyber research laboratories at every school at which he worked.

He earned lifetime achievement awards from the Association for Computing Machinery, the Board of Directors of City Trusts of Philadelphia, and other groups, and was inducted into the Internet Society’s Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Stevens Institute of Technology Hall of Achievement in 2016.

Stevens Institute also created a “societal impact award” in 2003 to honor Professor Farber and his wife, Gloria. “I think the internet has just started,” he said in 2013. “I don’t think we’re anywhere near where it will be in the future. … I look forward to the future.”

Professor Farber earned grants from the National Science Foundation and other organizations. He received patents for two computer innovations in 1994 and earned a dozen appointments to boards and professional groups, and an honorary master’s degree from Penn in 1988.

He advised former President Bill Clinton on science and engineering issues in the 1990s and served a stint in Washington as chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission. Clinton called him a “pioneer of the internet” in a 1996 shoutout, and Professor Farber testified for the government in a landmark technology monopoly court case against Microsoft Corp.

Professor Farber (left) worked with Professor Jiro Kokuryo at the Keio University Global Research Institute in Tokyo.

He championed free speech on the internet, served on technical advisory boards for several companies, and wrote or cowrote hundreds of articles, papers, and reports about computer science.

He was featured and quoted often in The Inquirer and Daily News, and lectured frequently at seminars and conferences in Japan, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere around the world. He wrote an email newsletter about cutting-edge technology that reached 25,000 subscribers in the 1990s, and he liked to show off his belt that held his cell phone, pager, and minicomputer.

He cofounded Caine, Farber, & Gordon Inc. in 1970 to produce software design tools and worked earlier, from 1957 to 1970, on technical staffs for Xerox, the Rand Corp., and Bell Laboratories. In a recent video interview, he gave this advice: “Learn enough about technology so that you know how to deal with the world where it is a technology-driven world. And it’s going to go faster than you ever imagined.”

David Jack Farber was born April 17, 1934, in Jersey City, N.J. Fascinated by gadgets and early computers in the 1940s, he built radios from wartime surplus components as a boy and helped make a unique relay device with a punch card in college. “The card reader was three feet big, but it worked,” he told the Daily News in 1998.

Professor Farber enjoyed time with his family

He considered being a cosmologist at first but instead earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in math at Stevens.

He met Gloria Gioumousis at Bell Labs, and they married in 1965. They had sons Manny and Joe, and lived in Landenberg from 1977 to 2003. His son Joe died in 2006. His wife died in 2010.

Survivors give advice about mourning their loved ones, as told to The Inquirer’s obit writer

Professor Farber enjoyed iced coffee and loved gadgets. He was positive and outgoing, and he mixed well-known adages into humorous word combinations he called “Farberisms.”

He was an experienced pilot and an avid photographer. In 2012, to honor his son, he established the Joseph M. Farber prize at the Stevens Institute for a graduating senior.

Mr. Farber was an experienced pilot who could fly solely on cockpit instruments.

“He was bold,” his son Manny said. “He connected to a lot of people and was close to his friends. He worked on big projects, and it wasn’t just theoretical. He built things that work.”

In addition to his son, Professor Farber is survived by his daughters-in-law, Mei Xu and Carol Hagan, two grandsons, and other relatives.

A memorial service is to be held later.

February 19, 2026
Philly’s economy is among the nation’s strongest for the first time in generations | Expert Opinion

Philadelphia is a happening place. No, I’m not referring to the winning sports teams or the great restaurants. I’m talking about the economy. For the first time in generations, Philadelphia’s economy is among the nation’s strongest.

Among the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the country with populations of more than 3 million, Philly enjoyed the strongest job growth last year. Soak that in for a second. Our hometown’s economy grew faster than those of high-flying cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and Phoenix.

This economic success is also evident in the major development projects underway across the region, including the redevelopment of the old oil refinery in Southwest Philly, the planned transformation of the area around the stadiums, and all the action at Penn’s Landing, in Center City, and the Science Center.

To be transparent, Philadelphia’s economy looks good, in part, because the nation’s economy is struggling to create jobs. Since so-called Liberation Day in April, when President Donald Trump announced massive tariffs on all our trading partners, many nervous businesses stopped hiring, and job growth has come to a standstill.

Some industries are actually suffering serious job losses, especially those on the front lines of the global trade war, including manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and distribution. These are big industries in many parts of the South and Midwest, but not in Philadelphia.

Federal government jobs have also been hit hard by the Trump administration’s workforce cuts, which began soon after he took office a year ago. Of course, the broader Washington, D.C., area has struggled with these job losses. These positions were also important to many communities across the country, but less so in Philadelphia.

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Eds and meds

In fact, Philadelphia’s economy is fortunate to be powered by education and healthcare — eds and meds — the only industries consistently adding to payrolls nationwide. The largest employers in the region are world-class institutions of higher education and healthcare providers, including the University of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson University, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Temple University.

Employers in eds and meds are especially attractive, as demand for the services they provide is fueled by the insatiable need for highly educated workers in the age of artificial intelligence, and the inexorable aging of the population. Baby boomers have aged into their 60s and 70s and will require high-quality healthcare for years to come. And since healthcare is largely delivered in person, it is less vulnerable to losing jobs to AI.

These large institutions employ workers of all skill levels. There are highly trained physicians, nurses, and researchers, as well as middle-skilled technicians and administrators, and lesser-skilled maintenance workers. An entire economy can be built on eds and meds, and that’s Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia region also has the good fortune of being home to successful companies across a diverse range of industries. Examples include the media giant Comcast, the financial services powerhouse Vanguard, the global software company SAP, and the technology giant Siemens.

Cost of living

It isn’t cheap to live and work in Philadelphia, but it is highly affordable when compared to neighboring New York and D.C. For example, the typical-priced home in Philadelphia costs about $400,000, which is almost four times the typical household income. In D.C., houses typically cost close to $600,000, or 5.5 times income, and New York house prices exceed $1 million, or 10 times income.

I could go on, but I’m beginning to sound like a Chamber of Commerce, and Philadelphia certainly has big challenges. The nation’s universities and research centers are facing large budget cuts and heightened federal scrutiny. This is a huge shift from the financial largess from D.C. they’ve come to rely on.

Challenges and what’s ahead

Poverty and all the attendant social ills, like crime and drug use, are also long-standing problems in the city. Although the poverty rate has dipped a bit recently, close to one-fifth of the city’s residents live below the poverty line, a disturbing stat. Of the nation’s big cities, only Houston has a higher rate.

The high poverty rate is the result of a complicated brew of factors, but the severe shortage of rental housing for lower- and middle-income residents is one of them. Putting up more homes is a priority for the city’s mayor, and with good reason.

The city’s high wage tax remains a barrier to even stronger growth. It is encouraging that it has declined since peaking more than 40 years ago, but it remains prohibitively high, hindering the city’s efforts to attract workers back into its office towers. The lower-taxed suburban Pennsylvania counties are the key beneficiaries.

It won’t be easy for Philadelphia to consistently remain among the nation’s best-performing economies. We need to support our institutions of higher education and healthcare, work to address poverty, and make it more affordable to live and work here. If we do, we have a good chance of always being in the mix. Kind of like our Eagles.

February 19, 2026
After 20 years of growth, this Philadelphia-born company says it’s ready to help in the caregiver crisis

Just over 20 years ago, when Geoff Gross founded Medical Guardian, his vision was to empower older adults to live more independently.

The company launched in 2005 out of Gross’ apartment in Center City with a focus on emergency response for seniors and individuals with disabilities.

“At the time, the industry was largely reactive and built around moments of crisis,” he said.

It now has 630,000 active members, who can choose from lightweight medical alert devices worn as a necklace or on the wrist. One of them, which looks like any other smartwatch on first glance, allows users to track health and activity stats.

The company employs more than 600 people and is approaching $250 million in annual revenue. Gross said it is poised to step in as aging-in-place becomes an urgent challenge facing families, healthcare systems, and policymakers.

By 2034, the number of older adults in the U.S. will surpass the number of minors for the first time in history, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Simultaneously, families and caregivers are experiencing increased demands, and traditional care models are proving to be less sustainable. Over 53 million Americans serve as unpaid family caregivers, according to a recent study from the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, and they provide an estimated $600 billion worth of unpaid labor each year.

“Caregiving is now widely recognized as a public health, workforce, and economic issue, not just a personal one,” Gross said. “Burnout, anxiety, and sleep deprivation are increasingly common, yet caregivers are still underserved by technology that focuses almost entirely on emergencies instead of daily reassurance and support.”

From peace of mind to longevity

Gross founded Medical Guardian based on a “simple but deeply personal belief” that “people deserve to age with confidence, dignity, and the freedom to live life on their own terms,” he said.

That was informed by his family’s experience with Gross’ grandmother, Freda, a retired nurse who lived alone later in life and experienced frequent falls. “She was fiercely independent, but those moments created real anxiety for our family,” he said.

She became Medical Guardian’s first member.

The MGMini Lite by Medical Guardian.

“People who are older, frail, or have a disability or chronic illness” need to be able to easily, reliably contact family or emergency services, said Richard C. Wender, who chairs the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school.

He recommends choosing a system that’s affordable and delivers on promises made. These services can offer more independent options for vulnerable individuals.

“Most people want the same things as they get older, as they did before: control over their daily lives, privacy, and the ability to remain in their own homes and communities for as long as possible,” Gross said. “When done thoughtfully, connected health and safety tools can remove barriers rather than impose them.”

People often find Medical Guardian through referrals from adult children, caregivers, clinicians, and community organizations, Gross said. He noted that such decisions are “often made collaboratively, and our approach is designed to reflect that reality.”

The company also does direct-to-consumer marketing, as well as social media advertising and influencer outreach. And it works closely with health plans, providers, senior living operators, and state programs focused on helping aging adults remain safely at home.

“That blend of consumer and healthcare channels mirrors how aging and caregiving actually happen, in real homes, with real families, over time,” Gross said.

Gross says Medical Guardian members have shared feedback that their devices’ biggest impact is not a dramatic moment, but the everyday reassurance.

Medical Guardian’s MGMini device, which is worn around the neck.

“Feeling steady taking a shower, walking outside without hesitation, or knowing help is there if something feels off,” Gross said. “Those small moments of confidence shape how people experience independence.”

With that in mind, one of the company’s goals is to support people earlier — before a fall, a health scare, or a rushed decision.

“Our services often come years before in-home care or assisted living, which gives us the opportunity to build trust while people are still living independently and confidently,” he said.

Medical Guardian also has wellness advocates, many of whom have social work backgrounds, as well as emergency response specialists and care teams.

“Our platforms use data, automation, and intelligence to notice patterns and surface insights, but when something matters, a real person is always involved,” Gross said.

Philly-based medical device competes with Big Tech watches

Many of the people answering Medical Guardian’s emergency calls, building its software, supporting members, and working with health plans are doing so from Philadelphia, where the company is headquartered. More than half its employees are based in the area.

Geoff Gross, CEO of Medical Guardian, in the Technology Product Innovation Lab at the company’s Center City Philadelphia office.

“We’ve built and scaled this company in Philly, and that matters to us,” Gross said. “There’s a strong work ethic here, a deep healthcare ecosystem, and a sense of community responsibility that aligns with our mission.”

Some of Medical Guardian’s partners are based in the region — such as AmeriHealth Caritas, Independence Blue Cross, and Jefferson Health.

Some may feel that an Apple Watch can do as much as one of Medical Guardian’s devices by providing vital stats, location tracking, and communication capabilities. But Gross said Medical Guardian’s products offer a unique alternative.

“Many of our members do not want dozens of apps or daily charging. They want something reliable, intuitive, and built for real life, especially in moments when clarity and speed matter,” he said.

Gross cited that Medical Guardian can monitor location and, when appropriate, biometrics like oxygen levels or blood pressure. That’s not meant to overwhelm people with data but to create meaningful context for families and care teams.

“For many older adults,” he said, “that focus on usefulness over features is more appealing than a general-purpose smartwatch that tries to do everything.”

February 18, 2026
‘He loved Philadelphia, and Philadelphia loved him’: Jesse Jackson in Philadelphia through the years

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, a civil rights icon and a regular presence in Philadelphia who energized Black voters both locally and nationally for more than five decades, died Tuesday at his home in Chicago following a prolonged battle with a rare neurological disorder. He was 84.

“Jesse Jackson will be remembered in Philadelphia as a civil rights hero, and a leader in terms of independent Black politics nationwide,” said former Councilmember W. Wilson Goode Jr., the son of Philly’s first Black mayor, W. Wilson Goode Sr. “He loved Philadelphia, and Philadelphia loved him.”

A native of Greenville, S.C., Rev. Jackson initially rose to prominence in the mid-1960s, when he joined the 1965 voting rights march that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. In the years following King’s assassination in 1968, Rev. Jackson largely came to be considered his successor.

Rev. Jackson would go on to become a prominent Black political and cultural leader in his own right, with his lengthy time in the public eye including presidential runs in 1984 and 1988. His visits to Philadelphia date back to the 1970s, and run the gamut from time in town supporting his own presidential campaigns — though neither of which were successful in the ‘80s — to appearances at the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, acknowledges the cheers of delegates as he walks to the podium to deliver remarks on the third night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 27, 2016.

Hillary Clinton supporters and the Rev. Jesse Jackson (right) on the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center on July 28, 2016.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson visits Baltimore’s turbulent intersection of West North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue on April 28, 2015.

Across that time, Rev. Jackson served as a sort of rallying figure for Black Philadelphians at large, who largely supported his candidacy during his presidential runs, despite him failing to secure the Democratic nomination statewide. Still, his impact for Black voters both in Philadelphia and nationally remains everlasting.

“That was the Rosetta stone to everything Jackson was trying to achieve,” said former Daily News scribe Gene Seymour, nephew of legendary People Paper columnist Chuck Stone. “We aren’t to be ignored or dismissed or cast aside — we matter.”

In that sense, Goode Jr. said, Rev. Jackson will remain a political icon who inspired the nationalization of Black political empowerment.

“Jesse Jackson is also a cultural icon in terms of telling people to be proud of being Black, and telling themselves, ‘I am somebody,’” Goode Jr. said, referencing Rev. Jackson’s famed refrain. “That is something that was indelible in the soul of Black people across the nation and world, and in Philadelphia here as well.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson visits the turbulent intersection of West North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore on April 28, 2015.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson visited Occupy Philadelphia protesters on Nov. 13, 2011. He told them to “never surrender.”

The Rev Jesse Jackson at Joe Frazier’s funeral at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church on Cheltenham Avenue in Philadelphia on Nov. 14, 2011.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson (center) visits the Interfaith tent, donated by Quakers, to talk to the Rev. Peter Friedrich (left) and (from right) Phillip Hall, Hollister Knowlton, and Joyce Moore in 2011.

Though Philadelphia’s Black community generally was supportive of and receptive to Rev. Jackson’s messaging historically, Seymour said, he maintained something of a complicated relationship with the city’s prominent politicians. Wilson Goode Sr., for example, officially supported Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis for president in the 1980s. At least in 1988, Seymour said, Rev. Jackson likely had “the people’s hearts,” despite lacking the official nomination.

Wilson Goode Sr. was not immediately available for comment.

“His presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 reshaped American politics,” said the Rev. Gregory Edwards, of the Philly-based POWER Interfaith, in a statement. “Those campaigns widened the political imagination of this country and helped cultivate a generation of Black elected leaders.”

Rev. Jackson’s relationship with Goode Sr. was somewhat complicated following the 1985 MOVE bombing, which brought the civil rights leader to tour the ruins of the 6200 block of Osage Avenue in its aftermath. Rev. Jackson urged a congressional investigation into the incident, which he called “excessive force,” but avoided criticizing Goode directly in subsequent meetings. Goode, meanwhile, said that the city would cooperate with any groups investigating the incident, The Inquirer reported at the time.

“He was not happy with what happened in ‘85 with MOVE,” Seymour said.

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson speaks during during funeral services for civil rights activist C. Delores Tucker at Deliverance Evangelistic Church on Oct. 21, 2005. Seated in front row behind him, left to right are Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation; Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, and Philadelphia Mayor John Street.

Rev. Jackson is projected live on a large screen monitor (camera operator in foreground) as he participates in a panel discussion laying out a legal and political strategy for fulfilling Brown v. the Board of Education, at the annual NAACP meeting on July. 14, 2004 at the Convention Center.

Her family stands by as husband (partially hidden) William T. Tucker covers the body of civil rights activist C. Delores Tucker in her casket at the beginning of funeral service at Deliverance Evangelistic Church on Oct. 21, 2005. At right is the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow Coalition/PUSH, who later delivered the eulogy. Seated in rear at right is former Vice President Al Gore.

AIDS quilt panels flank the podium as the Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks at an African American AIDS conference at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel on Feb. 28, 2005.

Still, Rev. Jackson often served as a defender of Philadelphia’s famed Black figures. In 2011, for example, Rev. Jackson spoke at the funeral of legendary world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier, who had long competed with the fictional Rocky Balboa for recognition. As Jackson put it at the time, Frazier was the “real champion,” not the “Italian Stallion.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has a sleeping bag draped around his shoulders, is talking and praying with Occupy Philadelphia demonstrators: Brad Wilson (from left); the Rev. Bill Golderer, pastor of Broad Street Ministry; and Donna Jones, pastor of the Cookman Baptist Initiative.

“If you were of importance as a Black person in America during the time [Jackson] was in the public eye,” Seymour said, “he was there to speak on your behalf.”

Goode Jr.’s most prominent memory of Rev. Jackson, meanwhile, dates back to the mid-1980s, when he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, he said, Rev. Jackson attended a National Black Student Union conference following an invitation from its organizers, Goode Jr. included. It was, Goode Jr. said, an inspiration.

“It meant a lot to us,” Goode Jr. said. “Not just Black leaders at Penn, but across the nation, who were gathered there.”

Striking Red Cross worker Lenny Lerro takes a picture of himself with the Rev. Jesse Jackson as they walk the picket line in 2011 on Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia.

Rev. Jesse Jackson visits with folks at Occupy Philadelphia, just outside City Hall on Nov. 20, 2011.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson visits with folks at Occupy Philadelphia, just outside City Hall on Nov. 20, 2011.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis (second from left) is presented with the Civil Rights Champion Award in 2013 by (from left) the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Marc Morial, president of the Urban League.

February 17, 2026
Penn is part of a $135.7M federal effort to demystify a blind spot in medicine: the lymphatic system

The University of Pennsylvania is getting $7.8 million over the next two years to study an overlooked aspect of human health: the lymphatic system.

Often described as the body’s sewer system, its main job is to maintain the body’s balance of fluid and filter out waste. Millions of Americans live with dysfunction in the system, often unknowingly.

The time to diagnose some lymphatic disorders is at least five years, said Maxim Itkin, an interventional radiologist who directs Penn’s center specializing in lymphatic disorders.

He’s even had a patient who experienced unexplained symptoms for 50 years before getting treatment.

“Right now, most healthcare providers simply aren’t equipped — or trained — to recognize lymphatic dysfunction, and the tools they need are virtually nonexistent,” said Kimberley Steele, a program manager at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), the federal agency organizing the research effort.

That’s why the government, through ARPA-H, is investing $135.7 million toward research headed by 11 institutions in the U.S. and Canada, including Penn, to improve detection of issues in the lymphatic system.

With its slice of funding, the team at Penn will develop ways to image the network and identify hidden signs of disease.

An inside look

Similar to plumbing, fluids in the lymphatic system can be flowing, obstructed, or leaking.

Doctors are able to “close” these leaks and even “open” obstructed areas, but the problem is knowing when those procedures are needed.

Existing contrast agents — substances used to increase visibility of tissues during imaging — for the lymphatic system are largely considered obsolete and offer poor resolution, said Itkin, who is leading the Penn project, which started last October.

When he began researching the system 20 years ago, he “started to realize that it’s of enormous importance, and it’s forgotten primarily because nobody can image [it] and do interventions,” he said.

Maxim Itkin, an interventional radiologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, found a way to track the flow of lymphatic fluid using X-ray imaging equipment.

Itkin and his team have come up with ways of imaging by injecting dye into lymph nodes and tissues and tracing the dye’s location. This has enabled him to diagnose hidden conditions and develop new treatment methods.

The ARPA-H funding will allow them to go even further, developing imaging agents that focus on the parts of the lymphatic system in the liver and gut — organs that generate the majority of the network’s flow in the body.

These will be used for CT (computed tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans.

One of the imaging candidates is designed to be swallowed and absorbed in the intestine, so doctors can see the lymphatic system in the gut. The second imaging agent will be administered via IV to show the system in the liver.

“It was my dream to see the lymphatic system from inside by itself,” Itkin said.

The Penn team will also be looking for biomarkers, or molecules in the body that indicate biological processes, that could give early hints of disease.

They’ll be using an approach called AI-driven multi-omics, where AI will analyze samples for unique molecules being excreted by the lymphatic system in the liver.

Penn and several other funded groups are working with the New York-based nonprofit Lymphatic Education and Research Network to help with research and patient recruitment.

Current funding is for two years, with the potential to extend for another three years.

Itkin says seeing the lymphatic system in the liver will be a thrill.

“It’s absolutely a black hole,” he said.

February 17, 2026
From East Berlin to Philadelphia: Springsteen’s long arc of protest

Philadelphia has always understood that music is never just music; sometimes rhythm becomes resistance. In this city, songs have spilled out of union halls and church basements, echoed off rowhouse walls, and marched alongside movements for labor rights and racial justice.

That tradition shows why Bruce Springsteen’s music, and his choices, still matter, decades after a summer night in East Berlin when rock and roll quietly challenged both sides of a superpower rivalry.

In 1988, nearly 300,000 young East Germans gathered for the largest rock concert in the history of the German Democratic Republic. The performer was Springsteen, a working-class songwriter whose music had already been widely misunderstood in the United States.

Ronald Reagan appropriated the pounding chorus of “Born in the U.S.A.” as a patriotic anthem while ignoring its verses — the story of a Vietnam veteran sent off “to go and kill the yellow man,” only to return home abandoned by the country he served.

In East Germany, those lyrics landed differently. Listeners heard the betrayal beneath the beat. They recognized themselves in the song’s moral tension. That understanding is why, unlike most Western rock stars, Springsteen was invited to play behind the Iron Curtain.

Pressure to stop the concert came from both sides of the Cold War. The U.S. Embassy urged Springsteen to cancel, fearing the show would legitimize a communist regime. At the same time, the East German youth organization sponsoring the concert — without Springsteen’s knowledge — advertised it as a “solidarity concert” for Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

Springsteen refused both. He told U.S. officials he would not cancel. He told East German organizers he would not perform unless Sandinista banners were removed. His music, he insisted, belonged to ordinary working people, not to politicians.

About an hour into the concert, Springsteen stopped and addressed the crowd in halting German. “It’s great to be in East Berlin,” he said. “I’m not here for or against any government. I came to play rock and roll for East Berliners in the hope that, one day, all barriers will be torn down.”

He had wanted to say “walls,” but anxious officials begged him to soften the language. So he let the music finish the thought, launching into Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom,” a song written for the refugees, the silenced, the imprisoned, which Springsteen has lately reprised. A year later, the Berlin Wall fell. Many described the night as a widening crack — a moment when imagination briefly outran fear.

Late last month, Springsteen’s new song “The Streets of Minneapolis” reached No. 1 on iTunes in 19 countries. Written in response to police violence and racial injustice, the song was dismissed last week by the White House as “irrelevant.” Millions of listeners disagreed.

People protest against ICE outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building on Jan. 30 in Minneapolis.

This pattern is familiar. Springsteen’s work has long been embraced by audiences while misread, or deliberately misunderstood, by power. His songs are moral arguments set to melody, like the Academy Award-winning tune “Streets of Philadelphia.” They insist the American dream is fragile. It collapses when dignity, accountability, and justice are denied.

That message resonates deeply in Philadelphia, a city shaped by labor battles, civil rights struggles, and ongoing demands for racial justice. It also resonates with the white working-class men who have always been at the center of Springsteen’s audience — many of whom now make up the backbone of the MAGA movement.

His message to them has never changed. Freedom does not come from walls. Power does not come from cruelty. The streets belong to everyone, or they belong to no one. Will this be the moment when they hear Donald Trump’s administration is destroying whatever is left of the American dream?

Music alone does not tear down barriers — or walls. But it shapes what people are willing to imagine, what they are willing to demand, and who they are willing to stand beside.

Springsteen’s music calls us to rise up against injustice, whether in the streets of Philadelphia, Berlin, or Minneapolis.

Kristen Ghodsee is a professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of 12 books and is currently on academic sabbatical as an honorary fellow of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany. Susan Neiman has been the director of the Einstein Forum since 2000. She is a philosopher, essayist, and the author of 10 books.

February 17, 2026
One of the nation’s oldest hospitals will now be one of Philadelphia’s newest museums

Before 1751, sick Pennsylvanians had few healthcare options other than often expensive home visits from doctors. That changed when Benjamin Franklin and physician Thomas Bond established a medical institution to treat the physically and mentally ill for free.

The result was the Pennsylvania Hospital on Spruce Street. The 275-year-old institution became home to the country’s first surgical amphitheater to teach students, the oldest medical library, and a nursing museum, among other historic firsts. It continues to advance medical research as part of Penn Medicine.

Now the nation’s oldest chartered hospital will become Philadelphia’s newest museum.

The hospital’s Pine Building, which started construction in 1755, will be converted to the Pennsylvania Hospital Museum, Penn announced on Monday. The museum in the majestic Georgian architecture building at Eighth and Pine Streets, designed by architect Samuel Rhoads, is scheduled to open to the public on May 8.

“It’s a very Philadelphia story to hear the history of the hospital because it really is about caring for other people,” said Stacey Peeples, lead archivist at Pennsylvania Hospital.

Stacey Peeples, lead archivist at Pennsylvania Hospital, described artifacts in the hospital’s new museum.

The medical library, surgical amphitheater, and apothecary have all been restored for the museum. Eight galleries will feature videos, hands-on activities, and archival objects describing the history of the hospital and the care it delivered.

The opening of the museum in the hospital’s 275th year coincides with America’s Semiquincentennial celebrations. (The University of Pennsylvania Health System, which merged with the hospital in October 1997, will run the museum.)

One of Peeples’ favorite items on display is a collection of medical cases compiled by the hospital’s doctors in the early 19th century.

Housed in the historic library, the book is flipped to a page showing a man with a seven-pound tumor in his cheek and neck area. Visitors can also find the actual preserved tumor from 1805 on display in the back of the room.

A historic medical book compiling interesting cases at Pennsylvania Hospital shows an image of Pete Colberry, a patient who fell from ship rigging and was stabilized on a bed to hold him in place, circa 1804.

A look at early medicine

Pennsylvania Hospital’s apothecary — where medicines were mixed and sold — was last used for that purpose in the early 1900s.

Most recently, it served as a conference room.

It’ll now be restored to its original layout, based on historic images from the 19th century. That includes bringing back alcoves filled with shelves of bottles, the scale used to weigh ingredients, as well as a giant counter where the apothecary could mix medications, Peeples said.

An archival image of Mildred Carlisle working in the Pennsylvania Hospital apothecary, circa 1920s.

In the historic library, the only room ready for news media to view this week, the artifacts remained scattered around.

A tonsil guillotine, designed to remove tonsils using a blade, sat next to early surgical tools and stethoscopes. Some objects, such as the scalpel, have not changed significantly in form through the years.

“But how we treat those objects certainly is very, very different. We want to make sure everything’s sanitized now,” Peeples said.

Surgical instruments belonging to Dr. James Wilson from the 1800s.

Other artifacts included old tools of medical education. Like three anatomical casts of women who died during childbirth in the mid-1700s that were used for anatomical study in lieu of cadavers.

The museum’s exhibits will showcase the hospital’s history of delivering care related to behavioral health and women’s health, as well as its role treating patients during times of conflicts, beginning with the Seven Years’ War, and through pandemics.

“People would always talk about us being able to do something on a larger scale like this, and I honestly wasn’t sure that was ever going to happen,” said Peeples, who has been at the hospital for 25 years.

Tickets will go on sale at the end of the month and cost $12 per person, with discounts for those 12 and under, 65 and over, and the military.

The plan is for the museum to be a permanent fixture, open Wednesdays to Sundays. The rest of the hospital will keep operating as normal.

Interior of the Historic Library of Pennsylvania Hospital, located at Eighth and Pine Streets.

The hospital, older than the nation, houses 517 licensed inpatient beds, and saw 19,759 adult admissions, 54,023 emergency department visits, and 5,163 births in fiscal year 2025, per Penn Medicine’s statement.

“Pennsylvania Hospital is a jewel in the crown that is Penn Medicine, where our staff draw energy from our rich history to shape the future of medicine,” Alicia Gresham, CEO of Pennsylvania Hospital, said in a statement.

February 16, 2026
Former Penn president Liz Magill will lead Georgetown’s law school

Former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill has been named the new executive vice president and dean of Georgetown University’s law school in Washington, D.C.

The move comes a little more than two years after Magill resigned from Penn following a bipartisan backlash over her testimony to a congressional committee about the campus’ handling of antisemitism.

“I am honored to join Georgetown Law, one of this country’s great law schools, and the university, an exceptional and distinctive research institution,” Magill said in an announcement posted Friday on the Jesuit institution’s website.

Penn president Liz Magill has resigned following backlash over her testimony about antisemitism

Magill did not immediately return a request for comment.

Magill, a lawyer and academic, previously served as dean of Stanford’s law school from 2012 to 2019 and had been executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia before joining Penn. She resigned from Penn in December 2023 — just 18 months after she started the job — but has remained a faculty member at Penn Carey Law.

She starts at Georgetown Aug. 1.

“Liz Magill brings the experience and leadership that we need to lead Georgetown Law,” Thomas A. Reynolds, chair of Georgetown’s board of directors, said in the school’s announcement. “Her ability to connect with others, her humility and her unwavering belief in higher education will make her an exceptional next dean.”

Three of Magill’s siblings have degrees from Georgetown Law School, the announcement noted.

Magill became Penn’s president July 1, 2022, following the record-setting 18-year tenure of Amy Gutmann. Tensions began to mount about a year into her tenure, and her departure from Penn followed a tumultuous semester, marked by near-weekly student protests and complaints from deep-pocketed donors over the school’s response to antisemitism following Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023. There was also unrest over the school’s allowing the Palestine Writes Literature Festival to be held on campus in September of that year.

Then, during her congressional testimony, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) asked her about whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate Penn’s code of conduct. “It is a context-dependent decision,” Magill had answered.

Less than a week later, she stepped down. Scott L. Bok, then chair of the board of trustees, also resigned. And former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who also testified that day, resigned, too, less than a month later.

Former Penn board chair Scott Bok and President Liz Magill discuss the upheaval that led to their resignations

“I provided this 30-second sound bite that went viral and just swamped everything else about what I’d said and my record at Penn,” Magill said last May when she and Bok talked about their experiences at the New York Public Library following the publication of Bok’s book that discussed the controversy. “And I really regret that. It hurt Penn. It hurt Penn’s reputation, and my job was to protect the institution that I led.”

February 16, 2026
After a Philadelphia cancer patient ran out of options, a novel T-cell therapy at Rutgers kept her alive

Jefferson Health oncologist Jennifer Johnson had exhausted all the standard treatment options for her 49-year-old patient with esophageal cancer, who was likely to die within months.

Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy had kept the Northeast Philadelphia woman alive for six years after her diagnosis, but no longer were enough to stop her cancer from spreading.

Johnson knew her patient needed something novel. She recalled a presentation several years prior at a conference for head and neck cancers, where a doctor discussed an experimental treatment called T-cell receptor (TCR) therapy.

This type of cancer immunotherapy works by engineering the immune system to fight cancer, and falls into the same family of treatments as CAR-T, or chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, an approach pioneered at the University of Pennsylvania that has revolutionized treatment for blood cancers.

She thought TCR therapy’s clever approach could work against solid tumors, where CAR-T had not been effective.

“I just remember sitting in the room and watching him present, thinking, I’m gonna use that one day,” the oncologist and cancer researcher recalled.

As it would happen, the approach was being tested in a phase II clinical trial at Rutgers Cancer Institute against tumors just like her patient’s: metastatic cancers driven by a virus called human papillomavirus 16. One of the most common strains, HPV16 causes roughly half of cervical cancer cases worldwide, as well as cancers of the head and neck area, anus, and genitals.

A virus gave a man an aggressive blood cancer. Philadelphia doctors want people to know about it.

Cases that reach the metastatic stage like Johnson’s patient often run out of treatment options. Whether T-cell receptor therapy would work was unknown, but the alternatives were expected to fail.

“Anything that you might offer them would definitely not be expected to make their cancer go away completely and do it for a long time,” said Christian Hinrichs, the oncologist and scientist heading the trial whose presentation Johnson saw.

But interim results from the first half of the trial showed improvement in six out of 10 patients, whose tumors at least partially shrank. And two of them had no evidence of cancer after treatment.

Johnson’s patient, Maria Pascale, was one of the two whose promising early results were presented at a medical conference and highlighted in a research abstract in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer in November.

She arrived at the health system in New Jersey in the summer of 2024 in such poor health that her lungs were starting to collapse.

The therapy has enabled her to celebrate two birthdays, start martial arts classes, reunite with old friends visiting from Argentina, and see her 23-year-old son get engaged.

“Imagine the wedding, then later the grandkids, I’m always thinking about [that],” she said.

What is a T-cell receptor therapy?

In the immune system, T cells act as frontline defenders against viruses, bacteria, and other threats.

Sometimes, these cells aren’t great at their jobs.

In the face of cancer, T cells can become exhausted over time, and fail to recognize invaders or mount attacks.

The idea behind immunotherapy is to transform these regular immune cells into cancer-fighting super-soldiers.

The Rutgers approach, an engineered TCR therapy, involves collecting T cells from a patient’s blood and genetically engineering them to better target a cancer cell for attack.

Afterward, the scientists grow more of the enhanced T cells in the lab and infuse them back into the patient.

The “prototype” for this style of therapy is CAR-T, a treatment that has saved tens of thousands of lives since the first FDA approval in 2017. Scientists have not yet been able to replicate the therapy’s success in blood cancers in solid cancers, although some early stage trials have shown potential.

TCR therapy is thought to be more promising against the latter cancer type — which is what’s being treated in the Rutgers trial — due to differences in the way the engineered T cells identify cancer cells.

CAR-T therapy uses what’s called a chimeric antigen receptor, a protein that recognizes a cell as cancer based on what’s on the outside of the cell.

It’s like knowing you’re at your friend’s house because of a specific doormat or set of house numbers on the exterior.

TCR therapy uses what’s called a T-cell receptor, which can recognize cancer cells based on what’s inside the cell.

It’s like knowing you’re at your friend’s house because you can see your friend inside.

Sometimes cancer cells have more unique identifiable elements on the outside, but other times they don’t. Imagine if multiple houses had the same doormat.

“That target would be on other cells that aren’t cancer cells and cause lots of toxicity,” said Carl June, the pioneering cancer scientist at Penn who developed the first FDA-approved CAR-T therapy and was not involved in the Rutgers trial.

Penn’s CAR-T pioneer Carl June talks about the future of his award-winning work to train the body to fight cancer

That’s been the problem that’s held back CAR-T’s use in solid tumors.

The target in the Rutgers trial is a protein called HPV16 E7, found inside the cell. In tumors driven by the virus HPV16, it plays a key role in turning a cell into cancer.

“That’s like going after its Achilles’ heel,” June said.

Swarming the cancer

Pascale first arrived at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Center City in 2018 after suffering injuries in a car accident.

Doctors found a mass in the 43-year-old’s neck that turned out to be cancer.

Surgeons removed the mass, and she was fine until 2021 when doctors, including Johnson, found the cancer at the top of her esophagus.

They treated her with a combination of chemotherapy and radiation, which worked until March of 2022, when the cancer started appearing in Pascale’s lungs.

“All bets were off,” Johnson said.

Doctors gave Pascale chemotherapy and immunotherapy over the next couple of years, but in the spring of 2024, she developed an allergy to one of her chemotherapy drugs.

Around the same time, the cancer spread to the skin on Pascale’s back.

That’s when Johnson transferred her care to Hinrichs’ team at Rutgers.

Pascale started preparations for the treatment in July 2024, spending a couple weeks in the hospital.

The Rutgers team took T cells from her blood, gave her chemotherapy to knock her immune system down, and then transfused the engineered cells back into her body.

Within 48 hours, Pascale started feeling horrible.

“It was painful. It was my whole body, like I had pneumonia,” she said.

She had trouble breathing as the cells fought the cancer in her lungs. Hinrichs described it as “the T cells swarming the cancer,” leading to an inflammatory reaction.

The same thing occurred on her back. When Pascale’s sister came over, she saw one of the tumors in her skin was suddenly the size of a lemon.

Another one appeared red and felt like someone was burning a cigarette on her back.

The pain continued for three days, and then she felt well enough to go home. Pascale and her sister could see and feel the nodules on her back get smaller, until eventually they were gone.

Roughly five months later, Pascale’s scans showed no evidence of cancer. As of last month, a year and a half after she received the treatment, that was still true.

“What’s three days of pain compared with the opportunity that I have to live a lot of beautiful things with my family and friends?” Pascale said.

Maria Pascale walks with her sister Maria Durante and her doctor Christian Hinrichs at Rutgers.

The future of the treatment

Hinrichs said his team is working to figure out why two of the patients, including Pascale and a patient with anal cancer, responded better to the treatment.

He cautioned that it’s too early to draw sweeping conclusions since the sample size is small. (Researchers will seek to recruit another 10 patients for the ongoing trial.)

The patients who had complete responses will need follow-up scans every few months to make sure their cancers have not returned.

It will still take years to finish evaluating safety and efficacy. Treatments tested in clinical trials often do not advance to become standard practice.

June, the Penn scientist, called the trial’s early results promising and noted that there weren’t any major safety problems reported.

Adverse effects seen in the trial were mainly those caused by the chemotherapy.

However, the drawback of using TCR therapy is that patients need a certain genetic background for it to work, June said. This is similar to how not every organ donor would be a good match for a recipient.

The genetic profile chosen for the Rutgers therapy is the most common in America. However, it is less common in Black and Asian people compared to white people.

Scientists hope it could one day be possible to manufacture the therapy with a warehouse approach, where TCR therapies that work across genetic backgrounds could be mixed and matched.

“It’s a practical issue that the drug companies face,” June said.

CAR-T, in comparison, can be used more broadly across different genetic backgrounds.

What matters most, since the treatment is expensive to make, is that the responses hold up over time, June said.

(The TCR therapy’s cost has not yet been set, Hinrichs said, since it is currently manufactured individually for each patient.)

“If they’re long lasting, then it’s really going to be a huge advance because nothing else works in the patients he’s treated,” June said.

At Jefferson, Johnson is cautiously optimistic about the treatment that has kept her patient alive.

If the therapy makes it through the rest of the trial process and proves effective, she hopes it could become “another thing in our armamentarium against this type of cancer.” (A type that doctors would hope to see less of since the introduction of the HPV vaccine in 2006.)

“I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to have a patient responding and living well when you saw things going the wrong way,” Johnson said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify where the research has been presented and a reference to the prevalence of the genetic profile used in TCR therapy.

February 16, 2026
Family Practice & Counseling Services Network won a $3.4 million federal heath center grant

Family Practice & Counseling Services Network won a $3.4 million federal health center grant that will allow the nonprofit to continue providing medical and mental healthcare in Southwest Philadelphia and other low-income Philadelphia neighborhoods, officials confirmed this week.

The clinic had been part of Resources for Human Development, a Philadelphia human services agency that a fast-growing Reading nonprofit called Inperium Inc. acquired in late 2024. As a federally qualified health clinic since 1992, the clinic had received an annual federal grant, higher Medicaid rates, and other benefits.

Federal rules prohibited the clinic from continuing to retain that status and those benefits under a parent company. That meant Family Practice & Counseling Network had two options: close or spin out into a new entity that would reapply to be a federally qualified clinic.

With financial and operational help from the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Family Practice & Counseling formed a new legal entity last July and reapplied for the grant. Last week, the organization’s CEO Emily Nichols learned that the federal agency that oversees federal health centers awarded it the grant.

February 13, 2026