Origami-inspired Medical Solutions Thu, May 13, 2021 MIT's Xuanhe Zhao (USFOE 2013) is engineering a medical patch that can be folded around minimally invasive surgical tools and delivered through airways, intestines, and other narrow spaces to patch up internal injuries. Read More
The Secret of Why Hummingbirds Hum Mon, May 10, 2021 Stanford's David Lentink (USFOE 2016) studies biological flight as an inspiration for engineering design. He recently used 3D sound mapping to show aerodynamic forces during flight that explain the hummingbird's eponymous sound. Read More
New Treatments Post-Heart Attack Thu, May 06, 2021 FOE alum W. David Merryman, a bioengineer at Vanderbilt University, has identified the protein receptor in specialized heart cells that, when removed, preserves cardiac function after a heart attack. A promising therapeutic development is now underway. Read More
Vaccination by Inhalation Mon, May 03, 2021 FOE alum Darrell Irvine at MIT is engineering a method to deliver vaccines directly to the lungs, which can boost immune responses to respiratory infections from viruses such as COVID-19, or lung cancer. Read More
Organ Engineering for Chronic Disease Thu, April 29, 2021 NAE member, FOE alum, and bioengineer Linda Griffith at MIT aims to change the conversation about endometriosis from one of women’s pain to one of biomarkers, genetics, and molecular networks. Read More
Optimizing Health Care Systems for Both Pandemics and Natural Disasters Mon, April 26, 2021 Civil engineer and FOE alum Hussam Mahmoud at Colorado State University recommends better resource allocation and mitigation strategies during natural disasters such as wildfires to achieve fewer COVID cases and deaths at the same time. Read More
A 100% Renewable Energy Road Map Thu, April 22, 2021 Energy systems engineer Paul Denholm (IAFOE 2008) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that coal-burning Los Angeles is capable of achieving 98% clean energy within the next decade and 100% by 2035 without causing blackouts or disrupting the economy. Read More
A Guide for Women in Aerospace and Aviation Mon, April 19, 2021 Purdue University's Alina Alexeenko (USFOE 2015) recently contributed to "Flight Paths to Success,” where women engineers share their in-depth, personal perspectives on the habits, motivations, triumphs, defeats, and lessons learned in their top jobs in the industry. Read More
Nobel Prize Summit: Our Planet, Our Future April 26-28 Thu, April 15, 2021 The first-ever Nobel Prize Summit, co-hosted by the National Academy of Sciences, will bring together Nobel Prize laureates, scientists, policymakers, business leaders, and today’s youth leaders to explore actions that can be achieved in this decade to put the world on a path to a ... Read More
Peer-Reviewed by Reality: What Mars and Texas Tell Us About Engineering Thu, April 15, 2021 For every 33.9-million-mile distant technological high point like the Mars rover, there’s a counterpart, like the Texas grid just beneath our feet that undergirds our daily survival. Read more . Read More
Teaching a (Robot) Dog New Tricks Thu, April 15, 2021 Robert Playter (2010 EU-US FOE) at Boston Dynamics has engineered a robot dog that can grab and carry objects, open doors, and right itself, among other functionality designed for hazardous tasks in workplaces such as nuclear plants and offshore oil fields. Read More
Batteries To Power Long-Range Freight Trucks Mon, April 12, 2021 Anthony Eggert (JAFOE 2004) of the ClimateWorks Foundation writes that both battery-electric and fuel-cell long-range trucks can soon be engineered to out-compete diesel on cost while providing massive benefits for public health and the climate. Read More
New Worm-Like Robots ‘Swim’ in Soil to Collect Crop Data Thu, April 08, 2021 FOE alum Robert Shepherd at Cornell University is engineering worm-like robots to gather data on soil properties, water, soil microbiome, and how roots grow to directly improve food productivity and security. Read More
Food and Climate Change Mon, April 05, 2021 Biosystems engineering professor Jason Hill (GAFOE 2013) at the University of Minnesota co-authored a recent study showing that we don't all have to go vegan to impact improvements to the big climate change problem caused by how we grow, eat, and waste food. Read More
Strong as a BioPolymer Mon, March 22, 2021 At the University of California, Heather Maynard (JAFOE 2005) and Megan Valentine (USFOE 2014) are engineering new high-performance alternatives to petroleum-based polymers for strength, flexibility, and durability that can be produced sustainably from biological sources. Read More
All-terrain Microrobot Flips Over Rough Muscle Mon, March 22, 2021 Purdue mechanical engineer David Cappelleri (GAFOE 2015) is engineering a robot as tiny as a few human hairs that can travel throughout a colon by doing back flips directly to its target site, which could reduce side effects that the drug may cause by interacting with other organs along the way. Read More
Organ-on-a-Chip Monitoring System for Chemotherapy Thu, March 18, 2021 FOE alum Ali Khademhosseini of the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation has engineered an organ-on-a-chip to monitor how breast cancer chemotherapy can affect tissue damage to the heart, the heart's pumping ability, or clinical heart failure. Read More
Surviving Weed-Out Classes in Science May Be a State of Mind Mon, March 15, 2021 Ainissa Ramirez (USFOE 2004) of Science Underground discusses how weed-out classes in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disproportionately hinder underrepresented groups, including women, Black, Native American, and Hispanic people, from pursuing STEM degrees. Read More
Hidden Figures - Perseverance's Secret Code Thu, March 11, 2021 FOE alum Ian Clark at NASA embedded a message in the parachute that landed the Perseverance rover on Mars to inspire others as well as improve on past engineering design. Read More
Critical All-Season Infrastructure Mon, March 08, 2021 Carnegie Mellon's Constantine Samaras (EU-US FOE 2016) discusses how systems engineering could help alleviate major energy and resource supply and demand problems like the recent loss of power, heat, and water to a huge swath of Texas. Read More