Penelope holds a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University.  She was a postdoctoral researcher in the Departments of Cell Biology & Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University and teaching faculty in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology prior to joining the Council on Science at Technology at Princeton University.  In her role as Associate Director of STEM Initiatives, she supports the Council's mission to create interdisciplinary courses and programming to promote the fundamentals of science and engineering throughout the entire Princeton community.  Penelope develops and teaches integrative courses at the intersection of the arts, humanities, social and life sciences, and engineering. Further, she works to recognize and endorse equity-minded initiatives to stimulate STEM interest and literacy in all of Princeton University’s diverse constituents.

Among her research interests are the study of the body as material, how tissues change their flexibility when they shift from healthy to pathological conditions and how cells respond uniquely to these changes.   The aim of this work is to contribute to the development of biocompatible materials for medical device fabrication, as well as to the advancement of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Her publications have appeared in the journals Nature Materials, Biophysical Journal, the American Journal of Physiology, Soft Matter, Molecular Neurobiology, Methods in Cell Biology, and others.