Robert F. Shepherd is Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. He is leading a team exploring the use of hydraulic fluids in soft robots to also serve as a source of energy.

Soon-Jo Chung is Bren Professor of Aerospace in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS) at Caltech and research scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He and his team developed a method for using a deep neural network to help autonomous drones “learn” how to land more...

Aydin Aysu, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he helped develop a technique for detecting micro-architecture malware that uses a system’s architecture to thwart traditional security...

Ian Y. Wong, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Engineering, Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and Biotechnology at Brown University in Providence, RI. He and colleagues have developed a new type of hydrogel blocks that can be assembled like LEGO^®s.

Dr. Sultana won funding to advance a nanomaterial-based detector platform that can sense environmental parameters from minute concentrations of target gases and vapors, to atmospheric pressure and temperature, and then transmit that data via a wireless antenna — all from the same 3...

Texas A&M professor Jaime Grunlan and his team are developing a new flame-retardant coating using renewable, nontoxic materials readily found in nature that could provide effective fire protection for several widely used materials.

Working with teams from Harvard, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Boston Children's Hospital, Siyi Xu developed a soft, non-toxic, wearable sensor that attaches to the hand and measures grasp force and the motion of the hand and fingers. The sensor is designed to identify...

Mandal, along with Professors Yuan Yang and Nanfang Yu, built upon earlier work demonstrating that many simple plastics and polymers are excellent heat radiators that could be used for passive radiative daytime cooling (PRDC). Their challenge was to get these normally...

Professor Bowles has developed a method to 3D-print cells to produce human tissue. This replacement tissue can greatly improve the recovery of a person with a badly damaged ligament, tendon, or ruptured disc. Currently, replacement tissue is harvested from another...

Professor Shahsavari and graduate student Sung Hoon have demonstrated a process for producing a cement that is stronger, lighter, and more durable than the traditional Portland cement.

Professor Hopkins and University of Virginia colleagues — in collaboration with materials scientists at Penn State, the University of Maryland, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology — have studied a material that can...

A team led by UCSD has built a stretchable electronic patch that can be worn on the skin like a bandage and used to wirelessly monitor a variety of physical and electrical signals, from respiration and body motion, to temperature and eye movement, to heart and brain activity. The...

An international team of university researchers, led by Dr. Taylor, reports solving a major fabrication challenge for perovskite cells — the intriguing potential challengers to silicon-based solar cells. These crystalline structures show great promise because they can absorb...

Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering have developed a novel approach to optimizing soft-material 3D printing. The Expert-Guided Optimization (EGO) method combines expert judgment with an optimization algorithm that efficiently searches...

Plastics are excellent thermal insulators — a quality that can be an advantage in some applications. But this property is less desirable in products such as plastic casings for laptops and mobile phones, which can overheat. Dr. Xu is a member of a team that has developed...

Researchers at Oregon State University’s College of Engineering have taken an important step toward the rapid manufacture of stretchable electronic devices, including soft robots.

Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory have observed how lithium moves inside individual nanoparticles that make up batteries. The finding could help companies develop batteries that charge faster and last longer.

Researchers at Washington State University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the University of New Mexico have created a catalyst capable of reducing pollutants at the lower temperatures expected in advanced engines. Their work presents a new way to create a more...

Researchers from NC State have developed a new technique for directly printing metal circuits, creating flexible, stretchable electronics. The technique can use multiple metals and substrates, and is compatible with existing manufacturing systems that employ...

Using flexible conducting polymers and novel circuitry patterns printed on paper, researchers in Dr. Yee’s laboratory have demonstrated proof-of-concept wearable thermoelectric generators that can harvest energy from body heat to power simple biosensors...

Dr. Ahmed and scientists from NIST and American University are researching the use of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) as the basis for an inexpensive, easy-to-build gas sensing technology. The problem they faced is that newly...

Dr. Beyah and a team of researchers from Georgia Tech and Rutgers University have developed a three-layer system to verify that components produced using additive manufacturing have not been compromised.

Dr. Matthews and his team have developed a new laser-based method for 3D printing of large metal objects called Diode-Based Additive Manufacturing (DiAM). It uses high-powered lasers to flash-print an entire layer of metal powder. The process will enable...

Dr. Zheng and her team of scientists from Berkeley Lab and Nanyang Technical University in Singapore made metal-organic spongy photocatalysts that convert carbon dioxide (CO₂) to carbon monoxide (CO) in the presence of sunlight. They were able to make liquid fuels...

Gravitational waves from colliding black holes were first observed by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) instruments in 2015. Building on these efforts on the ground, an international group of scientists is working to...

Dr. Munechika — along with Alexander Kosh­elev and Giuseppe Calafiore at aBeam Technologies, and Stefano Cabrini at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — is developing a process that would enable widespread adoption of nano-optic...

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), managed at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., is responsible for early detection of potentially hazardous objects, like asteroids and comets, and issuing warnings about their potential impacts. This requires...

Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) — heatshields — form the outer surface of spacecraft and provide protection as the vehicle plunges through planetary atmospheres. Conformal ablative materials are currently being developed to improve TPS performance. Adam Sidor is...