Penn State's Rock Ethics Institute has announced the winners of the 2026 Stand Up Awards for Undergraduate Ethical Leadership.

The Penn State community is invited to register for the inaugural Research Ethics Conference, to be held on Sept. 10. The one-day event is open to faculty, students, staff and postdoctoral scholars interested in exploring how research ethics shape the quality, credibility and impact of scholarly work across disciplines.

Penn State faculty members and Rock Ethics Institute senior research associates Daryl Cameron and Alan Wagner recently collaborated with other scholars on a journal article assessing how empathy for and from robots is considered from an interdisciplinary perspective.

S. Matthew Liao, a leading scholar in bioethics and moral philosophy at New York University, will present a lecture titled “Artificial Intelligence and Moral Status” at 5 p.m. on April 16 in 062 Willard Building at Penn State University Park. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Acclaimed science-fiction author Ted Chiang will give the Rock Ethics Institute’s 2026 Richard B. Lippin Lecture in Ethics at 6 p.m. on March 25 in Freeman Auditorium, HUB-Robeson Center, University Park. Chiang’s lecture will consider the incompatibility between generative AI (artificial intelligence) and art, a subject that he has examined extensively. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, which can be trained to reflect certain demographic attributes such as race or ethnicity, rely on superficial stereotypes that diminish the authentic experiences of the humans they're meant to represent, according to researchers in the College of Information Sciences and Technology.

The Consortium on Moral Decision-Making at Penn State is seeking proposals for Ember Grants to support up-start interdisciplinary research related to the conceptual and empirical study of human morality and ethical decision-making. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 27 at 5 p.m.

Agustín Fuentes, professor of anthropology at Princeton University, will deliver the 2026 Darwin Day Lecture on Feb. 19 and participate in a panel discussion the following day.

The Rock Ethics Institute has extended the nomination deadline for the 2026 Stand Up Awards. The Stand Up Awards recognize and celebrate undergraduate students from any Penn State campus who demonstrate exceptional ethical leadership by standing up for a cause, idea or belief. The nomination deadline is Feb. 20.

Earlier this month, empathy experts, youth representatives, youth-serving organizations and policy makers took part in a three-day summit on how empathy research can be translated into both government policy and into classrooms worldwide, as well as in non-formal, experiential learning environments.