ng School,[53] the $13 million Morris Arboretum’s Horticulture Center,[54] the $15 million Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at Wharton,[55] and the $13 million Translational Research Center at Penn Medicine.[56] With these additions, Penn now counts 165 research centers hosting a res

 the College of Arts and Sciences and former home of the Wharton School
Penn is considered a "very high research activity" university.[47] Its economic impact on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 2010 amounted to $14 billion.[48] In 2011 Penn topped the Ivy League in research expenditures with $814 million worth of research,[2][49] of which about 70% comes from federal support and in the most part from the Department of Health and Human Services.[50] Penn also enjoys strong support from the private sector, which in 2010 contributed almost $400 million to Penn, making it the 6th strongest US university in terms of fundraising.[51] In line with its well-known interdisciplinary tradition, Penn's research centers often span two or more disciplines. In the 2010–11 academic year alone 5 interdisciplinary research centers were created or substantially expanded; these include the Center for Health-care Financing,[52] the Center for Global Women’s Health at the Nursing School,[53] the $13 million Morris Arboretum’s Horticulture Center,[54] the $15 million Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at Wharton,[55] and the $13 million Translational Research Center at Penn Medicine.[56] With these additions, Penn now counts 165 research centers hosting a research community of over 4,000 faculty and over 1,100 postdoctoral fellows, 5,400 academic support staff and graduate student trainees.[2] To further assist the advancement of interdisciplinary research President Amy Gutmann established the "Penn Integrates Knowledge" title awarded to selected Penn professors "whose research and teaching exemplify the integration of knowledge."[57] These professors hold endowed professorships and joint appointments between Penn's schools. The most recent of the 13 PIK professors is Ezekiel Emanuel, who started at Penn in September 2011 as the Diane S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor with a joint appointment at the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy, which he chairs in the Perelman School of Medicine, and the Department of Health Care Management in the Wharton School.[57]
As a powerful research-oriented institution Penn is also among the most prolific and high-quality producers of doctoral students. With 487 PhDs awarded in 2009, Penn ranks third in the Ivy League, only behind Columbia and Cornell (Harvard did not report data).[58] It also has one of the highest numbers of post-doctoral appointees (933 in number for 2004–07), ranking third in the Ivy League (behind Harvard and Yale), and tenth nationally.[59] In most disciplines Penn professors' productivity is among the highest in the nation, and first in the fields of Epidemiology, Business, Communication Studies, Comparative Literature, Languages, Information Science, Criminal Justice and Criminology, Social Sciences and Sociology.[11] According to the National Research Council nearly three-quarters of Penn’s 41 assessed programs were placed in ranges including the top 10 rankings in their fields, with more than half of these in ranges including the top 5 rankings in these fields.[60]


ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, was born at Penn in 1946
Penn's research tradition has historically been complemented by innovations that shaped higher education. In addition to establishing the first medical school,