{"id":749786,"date":"2026-04-24T12:09:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/749786\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T12:09:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:09:20","slug":"penn-engineering-director-departs-after-two-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/749786\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn Engineering director departs after two decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

Power Moves<\/a>\u00a0is a recurring series where we chart the comings and goings of talent across the region. Got a new hire, gig or promotion? Email us at\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A longtime Penn Engineering staff member announced his departure this month, reflecting on what he learned from working with college students over the years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sevile Mannickarottu left his position helping students develop technology and turn it into startups, but he says that the love of teaching and building makerspaces will stay with him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Philadelphia orgs in a variety of sectors have also been busy building tech tools. Local economic development organization Build Philly Now released a new interactive property data platform.<\/p>\n

Software startup Common Paper launched its new AI agent product, which cofounder Jake Stein said is reflective of the company\u2019s adjustment to the AI age.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scroll down to read all the details and see more power moves. \u00a0<\/p>\n

2-decade Penn Engineering director moves on<\/p>\n

Mannickarottu, director of technological innovation and entrepreneurship at Penn Engineering<\/a>, stepped down from his role helping students, faculty and alumni design technology and pursue entrepreneurship earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen a company spins out from a student venture, it\u2019s really the student that makes a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sevile Mannickarottu, Penn Engineering<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He ultimately decided to leave to explore new opportunities and to spend more time with family, Mannickarottu told Technical.ly. While he\u2019s not sure yet what he wants his next move to be, he still feels drawn to teaching and developing makerspaces<\/a>, which is what he spent much of his time at Penn focused on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He originally applied to work at Penn on a whim while finishing his master\u2019s degree, he said. He joined the school as the director of bioengineering educational laboratories and ended up staying, largely because of the freedom to design the program and the opportunity to work with students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoyed forming the lab. Working with the students was such an amazing experience,\u201d he said. \u201cThey also gave me a lot of flexibility and the ability to push the courses any way I wanted, push the makerspace itself in any way I wanted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

His biggest takeaway from the experience was working with his students, many of whom he still keeps in touch with, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the years, he taught students to build technology and saw many of them spin out their own companies, including the rapid diagnostic test company HueDx<\/a>. Whether or not the tech succeeded, many students will keep going and taking risks, according to Mannickarottu.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a company spins out from a student venture, it\u2019s really the student that makes a difference,\u201d Mannickarottu said. \u201cNot so much the technology.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Build Philly Now launches property data platform<\/p>\n

Build Philly Now, an org focused on improving Philly housing, transportation and energy infrastructure, launched an interactive map<\/a> that shares property data across the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The purpose of the tool was to aggregate data from multiple sources into one platform, with a focus on projects and undeveloped sites, Jon Geeting, director of policy and advocacy at Build Philly Now, told Technical.ly. The platform offers a tiered subscription service, with the paid levels featuring more data points.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe land bank is just one of multiple city land-holding agencies. All these things live in different data sets, and there\u2019s no one single map that you can view them all on, regardless of owner,\u201d he said. \u201cThis tool solves their problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geeting sees the tool as being useful for public agencies or other professionals who spend time searching for property information in a variety of databases, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For everyday Philly residents, he also sees it as a potential tool to find out what\u2019s happening in their neighborhoods. For example, if you see a zoning poster in your neighborhood, you can look up the address on the platform, find out about the project and get updates about the permitting process, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Common Paper adds AI agent for contract negotiation<\/p>\n

Common Paper<\/a>, a startup building software for contract negotiations, launched Gerri 2.0, an AI agent focused on speeding up contract negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This product launch reflects the startup\u2019s adjustment to the spread of AI, cofounder and CEO Jake Stein told Technical.ly. When generative AI first became widespread, the company only focused on adding AI features to its original product, like a contract summarizer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They realized they could use the technology to address challenges that their customers said they were still facing, he said. The final tool looks at proposed contract changes and decides what the company can or can not accept based on its standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a problem of mapping what the other side says back onto your company\u2019s positions and policies and preferences, and that is a perfect problem for an LLM,\u201d Stein said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very hard thing with the technology of even just five years ago, to adapt arbitrary, unstructured text to a level of understanding.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Startup power moves:<\/p>\n