Selected Research Highlights

This fiscal year, externally-sponsored research expenditures in the School of Engineering totaled $34.1 million, the highest in the School’s history. Faculty submitted 331 new and supplemental funding requests, and invention disclosures from the School of Engineering continued to make up nearly half of the university’s total technology transfer activity.

Energy, water, and the environment: In research published in Nature Communications, Assistant Professor Jonathan Lamontagne (CEE) and colleagues found that not only can localized water shortages impact the global economy, but changes in global demand can have ripple effects in river basins across the globe. In an NSF-funded project co-led by Professor Lenore Cowen (CS), researchers are using data science methods to understand the exact factors that determine whether corals will be more or less resilient to stresses caused by climate change. Assistant Professor Prashant Deshlahra (ChBE) received an NSF CAREER Award to study the effects of surface coverage and catalyst composition on vinyl acetate synthesis.

Human health and bioengineering: Stern Family Professor of Engineering David Kaplan (BME) and his lab received a $375,000 award from Merck’s competitive worldwide grant program. The team’s proposal for a new concept in bioreactor design to grow food was selected as the Merck competition winner in the category of cultured food. Assistant Professor Madeleine Oudin (BME) and her team found that specific proteins in the extracellular matrix may play an important role in triggering the invasion of cancer cells in the breast fat tissue of obese individuals.

Prashant Deshlahra

When corals are healthy, they look like these, in shallow water at Baker reef in the Pacific A new computer model of climate effects and human economic activity reveals weaknesses and strengths of hundreds of river and water basins across the globe, as we face increasing levels of climate stress

Madeleine Oudin

Human breast cancer tumor (blue) near fat tissue (red), with abundant Collagen VI (green). Photo — Sydney Conner, Oudin Lab

A prototype robot with an ultraviolet C germicidal lamp at the top Scanning electron microscopy of threads coated with electrically conducting carbon-based ink

Human-technology interface: Professor Sameer Sonkusale (ECE) and a team of researchers that included undergraduate student and first author Yiwen Jiang (ECE) created thread sensors that can be attached to skin to measure movement in real time, with potential implications for tracking health and performance. Professor Matthias Scheutz (CS), Professor Diane Souvaine (CS), and visiting scholar Matias Korman (CS) collaborated on a better and cheaper ultraviolet C light device for disinfecting indoor spaces.

Intelligent systems: Professor Soha Hassoun (CS) and Assistant Professor Liping Liu (CS) received funding from the National Institutes of Health to investigate machine learning techniques that could advance discoveries in biomedical research. Associate Professor Mark Hempstead (ECE) and colleagues were nominated for the ISPASS 2021 Best Paper Award for their research on distributing deep learning recommendation models across multiple servers.

Yiwen Jiang

Mark Hempstead Liping Liu Soha Hassoun