Better Than a Hole in the Head Mon, March 20, 2023 At Carnegie Mellon University, Jana Kainerstorfer (GAFOE 2019) is engineering noninvasive alternatives to sense intracranial pressure that will ease risk of infection, pain, and medical expenses with new monitoring capabilities for brain injuries and conditions, from stroke to hydrocephalus. Read More
NAE Awards the 2023 Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Grants for Advancement of Interdisciplinary Research Wed, March 15, 2023 Two Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Grants of $30,000 have been awarded to attendees of The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering 2022 Symposium, a program of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). The grants provide seed funding for US FOE participants who are at ... Read More
Tiny Origami Robots Mon, March 13, 2023 Inspired by origami, the University of Michigan's Evgueni Filipov (CAFOE 2022) is engineering tiny three-dimensional robots that start out as flat, thin wafers of layered silicon, gold, and plastic and could access hard-to-reach places in buildings, the body, and other possible applications. Read More
Reclaiming Valuable Resources Flushed Down the Drain Thu, March 09, 2023 FOE alum Richard Parnas at the University of Connecticut is engineering biofuel from fats, oils, and grease as well as sewage that end up at wastewater treatment plants, some of it delivered by truck, and some of it arriving via the main pipes. Read More
A Rover for Cell Communication Mon, March 06, 2023 MIT's Deblina Sarkar (USFOE 2022) has engineered a miniature antenna that can transmit data from inside cells without using damaging microwaves. Read More
Nighttime Car Charging Thu, March 02, 2023 Ram Rajagopal (CAFOE 2017), a civil and environmental engineer at Stanford, found that charging electric vehicles at home at night would stress the electric grid. Read More
Soft Robots That Grow Like Plants Mon, February 27, 2023 Christopher Ellison (CAFOE 2015) at the University of Minnesota has engineered a plant-inspired process that enables synthetic material growth and will enable researchers to build better soft robots that can navigate hard-to-reach places, complicated terrain and, potentially, areas within the body. Read More
Gravity’s Impact on Bone Cells Thu, February 23, 2023 The University of Michigan's Allen Liu (GAFOE 2019) engineered experiments being conducted at the International Space Station that can shed light on osteoporosis, a condition affecting hundreds of millions of people around the world—as well as how to keep astronauts safer. Read More
A Natural Gas Bridge to Net Zero? Thu, February 16, 2023 Destenie Nock (USFOE 2020), an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, has co-authored a study that helps illuminate the future of natural gas-fired power on the road to mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Read More
Robot Learns New Tricks Mon, February 13, 2023 Pieter Abbeel (USFOE 2012) at the University of California, Berkeley is engineering quadruped robots, also known as robot dogs, to learn to walk on their own in the real world in record time using reinforcement learning, or RL, algorithms. Read More
Thirteen FOE Alumni Elected to NAE Thu, February 09, 2023 Thirteen FOE alumni are among the 106 new members and 18 international members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those ... Read More
Stronger and Better with Engineering Mon, February 06, 2023 NAE member and FOE alum Reginald DesRoches is bringing his background in civil and environmental engineering to his role as president of Rice University to solve problems and build a better university that helps build a better world. Read More
A Transparent, Accessible, Unhackable Voting Machine Thu, February 02, 2023 Juan Gilbert's (USFOE 2005) Computing for Social Good Lab at the University of Florida aims to solve big, ambitious problems, like engineering the "most secure voting technology ever created." Read More
Game-based Tech Detects and Intervenes for Stress and Anxiety Mon, January 30, 2023 Meeting kids and others where they are, Purdue University’s Wenzhuo Wu (CAFOE 2022) is engineering game-based interventions to help users identify stress- and anxiety-related events in real time and receive a personalized intervention of deep breathing techniques and relaxation. Read More
Freestanding Membranes of Smart Materials Thu, January 26, 2023 Bharat Jalan (USFOE 2022) at the University of Minnesota has engineered a new method for making smart materials that can change in response to stimuli like light, magnetic fields, or electric fields for better devices such as sensors, smart textiles, and flexible electronics. Read More
And Now, Artificial...Smelling? Mon, January 23, 2023 Google's Alex Wiltschko (USFOE 2020) has engineered a type of AI known as a graph neural network to predict what a compound will smell like to a person—rose, medicinal, earthy, and so on—based on the chemical features of odor molecules. Read More
Cloaking Objects That Trick Light and Sound Thu, January 19, 2023 FOE alum Andrea Alù at City University of New York has engineered a cloak that reduces radio waves, making them hard to detect by radar. Metamaterial cloaks for small objects and longer wavelengths, such as those of sound, could change radar, wireless communications, and sensor technologies. Read More
Printing Degradable Polymers Using Salt Mon, January 09, 2023 Emily Pentzer (USFOE 2020) at Texas A&M University is engineering a 3D-printed polymer process which she hopes will lead to creating packaging materials like boxes and tape that can degrade quickly rather than sitting in a landfill for years to come. Read More
Discovery of Obscure Heat Transfer Behaviors Thu, January 05, 2023 UCLA's Yongjie Hu (USFOE 2019) has discovered a new physics principle that may lead to novel materials for smart energy systems with built-in "pressure windows" with systems that only switch on within a certain pressure range before shutting off automatically after reaching a maximum pressure point. Read More
Bias and Vulnerability in Remote Proctoring Software Thu, December 15, 2022 NAE member Edward Felten (USFOE 2007) at Princeton University conducted a study on remote proctoring software used by educators and licensing boards and found bias towards minorities as well as issues surrounding cybersecurity, data privacy, and artificial intelligence. Read More