THE MAGAZINE OF
THE MA GAZINE OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERI NG
DESIGNING THE FUTURE
BU ENGINEERS ARE CREATING MATERIALS BY DESIGN TO SOLVE SOCIETAL CHALLENGES.
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RANK AMONG PRIVATE GRADUATE ENGINEERING PROGRAMS IN THE U.S.*
EMBRACING THE POWER OF CONVERGENCE AND COLLABORATION.
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RANK IN RESEARCH EXPENDITURES PER FACULTY MEMBER AMONG PRIVATE ENGINEERING SCHOOLS*
TOP 20% OF ENGINEERING SCHOOLS IN THE U.S.*
$150 MILLION IN ENGINEERING-RELATED RESEARCH EXPENDITURES
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RANK AMONG ALL GRADUATE ENGINEERING PROGRAMS IN THE U.S.*
21
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CENTERS
11 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF INVENTORS FELLOWS
Convergence Takes Root
BY DEAN AD INTERIM ELISE MORGAN
When the College of Engineering made convergence—bringing the respective talents of multiple disciplines together to solve societal challenges—central to its education and research strategy, a noticeable shift happened. We were naming, celebrating, and doubling down on a strategic approach that combined our long history of working across disciplinary boundaries with our mission-driven ethos of using engineering in service to society. By formalizing that connection and making convergence our North Star, we anticipated we could have even greater impact. Just three years after we adopted that strategy, we are seeing convergence bearing fruit across the college.
Examples can be found in the pages of this magazine. In Materials by Design, advancements in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can dramatically improve
diagnostics; new materials codesigned by autonomous systems and people are better at absorbing impact, whether in shipping containers or helmets; and available debris can form temporary, yet strong, structures in the wake of a disaster. All of these innovations bring together researchers who are outstanding in their respective disciplines to address engineering challenges with far-ranging applications in our society.
On the educational front, the college’s new Robotics & Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center (RASTIC) is combining expertise in mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering as students learn to build autonomous robots and turn their ideas into reality. They will take this convergent approach to problem-solving with them as they embark on their careers.
These accomplishments and many others are possible because of the culture of collaboration and limitless creativity in our college. Unlike many other engineering schools, faculty from all disciplines are involved in designing courses in our core curriculum, and they work together to hire new faculty through college-wide convergent searches. By establishing habits of working together, we have fostered an organizational commitment to imagining new things and getting them done.
This continual forward momentum is another of the college’s great strengths. When we embarked on our strategic plan, we identified six convergent research themes as powerful examples of our collective strengths, but they weren’t the sum total of our convergent work, nor have they stayed static. Already, we can see new convergent ideas emerging as research advances and conditions in the world change. For instance, faculty across the college are pushing forward in the convergent area of computational imaging, an area fed by our strengths in Intelligent & Autonomous Systems and Photonics & Optical Systems.
While we make convergence central to our teaching and research mission, we are
By formalizing that connection and making convergence our North Star, we anticipated we could have even greater impact. Just three years after we adopted that strategy, we are seeing convergence bearing fruit across the college.
careful not to let our disciplinary expertise get watered down. As the stories in this magazine illustrate, our students are gaining rigorous education in their individual disciplines, and it is precisely that expertise that brings value to the convergent project and enables solutions that simply didn’t exist before.
I invite you to learn more, through the stories in this magazine and on our website. Convergence is a collective endeavor across our community, and our shared success to date is only a fraction of what is to come.
The Hub of the Robotics Universe
GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY TECH LEADERS CELEBRATE RASTIC GRAND OPENING
With a robotic-assisted ribbon cutting and remarks from a who’s-who of New England’s technology leaders, on March 4 Boston University formally opened the Robotics & Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center (RASTIC), a state-of-the-art facility where students can design, build, and test a range of robotic solutions to real-world problems. RASTIC, BU’s flagship center for robotics, partners with industry to ensure students can expand and hone their hands-on, applied robotics skills beyond the classroom and be ready to make an immediate impact in the workplace
Appearing before a standing-roomonly crowd in the 200-capacity Pho-
tonics Colloquium Room, Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development Yvonne Hao remotely operated a robotic vehicle that cut the ceremonial ribbon at the entrance to RASTIC. The scene, taking place across the street at 730 Commonwealth Avenue, was shown to the crowd via live video feed.
“It’s amazing that in two weeks you have this incredibly passionate set of students who are so engaged in solving big, ambitious problems, integrating all these robotics and tinkering with them in the lab. Looking at the data, Massachusetts is already one of the prominent leaders in robotics in the world,” Hao said.
She added that as the industry grows worldwide, the Bay State, which boasts more than 400 robotics companies. must work to stay competitive: “This is a time for us to ensure that we lead for future generations.”
Hao’s office has issued an economic development plan under the heading Team Massachusetts “because we do have the best team,” she said. “And you can see that exemplified in RASTIC. When you combine our academia, incredible companies, startups, nonprofits, state government, and city government, great things happen.”
“The opening of RASTIC is the
culmination of a tremendous amount of work, and it would not be possible without some exceptionally talented and dedicated people collaborating toward a shared goal,” said Kenneth Lutchen, former dean of the College of Engineering. “That goal is to advance the BU-corporate partnership approach to producing a future workforce immediately able to ensure that Massachusetts is a leader in the robotics and autonomous systems industry.”
“It’s amazing that in two weeks you have this incredibly passionate set of students who are so engaged in solving big, ambitious problems, integrating all these robotics and tinkering with them in the lab.”
Carolyn Kirk (left), MassTech executive director, and Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development Yvonne Hao tour RASTIC and hear about student work.
That workforce will be produced “not in isolation in academia,” Lutchen said, “but in partnership with industry, so that graduates are ready to make an impact right away.”
“I’m energized by having seen students show off their projects with incredible breadth, enthusiasm and rigor,” said Elise Morgan, ENG dean ad interim. “Engineering discoveries transform lives. They revolutionize medical treatments, the speed and flexibility of transportation and communication, and the possibility of a sustainable world for generations to come. Here at BU, we view these feats of engineering with not just a sense of pride in our profession, but also a sense of duty to do even more.”
To meet our societal and workforce needs in the robotics arena, Morgan said, ENG has created a master’s degree program in robotics and autonomous systems and is planning an undergraduate robotics concentration. “Critically, these programs are college-wide, meaning they bring together students and faculty from all our departments and divisions,” she said. “We know
that our students become better engineers when they are challenged with new ways of thinking, when they’re exposed to different viewpoints and given the ability to integrate concepts across disciplines.”
“Massachusetts is literally the hub of the robotics universe,” said Tye Brady (ENG’90), chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, which is headquartered in North Reading, Mass. “Innovation spaces like RASTIC help hone those skills in ways that make an immediate impact.” Brady, a member of the ENG Dean’s Leadership Advisory Board, helped design the robotics master’s degree program and has supported RASTIC since its conception.
Other speakers included Kenn Sebesta, founding director of RASTIC, and Carolyn Kirk, executive director of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a public agency supporting business formation and growth in the commonwealth’s technology sector that cofunded the $9 million startup capital investment to get RASTIC off the ground.
Distinguished Professor of Engineer-
ing Yannis Paschalidis (ECE, BME, SE), who was also instrumental in establishing RASTIC, emceed the event. Paschalidis is director of the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering.
Following the ceremony, visitors toured RASTIC, where they met students who discussed and demonstrated their projects, ranging from autonomous vehicles to softrobotic surgical tools. Andrew Morrissey, a mechanical engineering undergraduate, showed his team’s senior design project, a robotic goose chaser—an autonomous flying drone trained to detect and deter Canada geese from congregating and soiling public spaces.
Undergraduate biomedical engineering student Mark Lucas has started development on a wearable device that would alleviate symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. “For two years, I’ve had this idea for helping people with Parkinson’s,” Lucas said. “Now in two weeks, I’ve started printing parts. Without RASTIC, this wouldn’t be happening.”
Students demonstrate model autonomous vehicles at RASTIC.
Ramachandran Named an AAAS Fellow
PHOTONICS PIONEER AMONG THREE BU FACULTY RECOGNIZED BY WORLD’S LARGEST GENERAL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY
Apioneer of spiral-shaped light beams that might improve internet capacity, medical imaging, and more, Distinguished Professor of Engineering Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE, MSE) has been selected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The world’s largest general scientific society, AAAS annually bestows this honor on scientists, engineers, and innovators in recognition of scientifically and socially distinguished achievements throughout their careers.
“Siddharth is a leading scholar in photonics and optics,” says Boston University College of Engineering Dean ad interim Elise Morgan. “He has been at the forefront of his field for decades and has a long track record of innovative advances in the science and engineering of light.”
Ramachandran studies the use of structured light, or light beams that travel in twisting paths rather than in straight lines. He and colleagues famously demonstrated in a 2013 Science paper that these corkscrew laser beams can be wielded to double or even quadruple the capacity of fiber optic cables—the kind that carry data across the internet.
Last year, his team leapfrogged that mark: In a second groundbreaking Science paper, they showed it’s possible to use the tornado-shaped light beams to transmit 50 or even 100 times more data than today’s networks could handle. And in the bargain, the researchers made an interesting scientific discovery: photons traveling in these spiral paths show the same orbital motion as binary stars in outer space.
While the internet capacity implications of Ramachandran’s work have attracted the
most attention, the techniques his lab is pioneering have the potential to advance other industries as well. They might be applied to more efficient quantum computing, high-powered lasers, and even neuro-imaging.
Ramachandran, who is also affiliated with the CAS physics department and the BU Photonics Center, considers it a signal honor to be named an AAAS Fellow. “As the umbrella body for all the sciences in the US,” Ramachandran says, “not only does the AAAS publish Science, one of the most prestigious journals covering all the sciences, but they also have a very positive role as strong advocates for robust science policy.”
Ramachandran says he relishes making connections across fields. “Because what we’ve been working on is a basic building block on how to send light from one point to another point, it ends up finding applications in a variety of disciplines, and that is really exciting. Sometimes I’m talking to biomedical engineers, sometimes I’m talking to neuroscientists, or earth-to-satellite communication experts.”
In a way, those kinds of crossdisciplinary conversations led Ramachandran and his students to hit upon the analogy between spiral-traveling photons and binary stars. “That is the essence of science,” he says. “Are there more fundamental questions that describe not only how a ball flies but also how a photon flies? That serendipity is what motivates me: You find something interesting, and then you dig into it and make more discoveries. That digging is its own reward— for me, that’s self-propelling.”
Two other BU faculty were also named among this year’s 502 AAAS Fellows: Professor of Biology Daniel Segrè and Professor of Physics Lee Roberts.
“As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the AAAS Fellows tradition, AAAS is proud to recognize these newly elected individuals,” says Sudip Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. “This year’s class embodies scientific excellence, fosters trust in science throughout the communities they serve, and leads the next generation of scientists while advancing scientific achievements.”
— PATRICK L. KENNEDY
Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE, MSE) famously demonstrated corkscrew laser beams.
Joyce Wong Joins Biomaterials Elite
ELECTED A FELLOW OF BIOMATERIALS SCIENCE AND
ENGINEERING
Professor Joyce Wong (BME, MSE) has been elected a Fellow of Biomaterials Science and Engineering, joining a group of fewer than 500 of the most respected biomaterials scientists around the globe. Bestowed by the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering (IUSBSE), the title is the field’s highest honor
Wong was selected a fellow for “innovative discoveries of how cell-biomaterial interfaces modulate fundamental cellular processes and [for] applying fundamental principles to regenerative medicine and theranostics; for significant contributions to the Society of Biomaterials and the broader biomaterials community; [and] for national recognition of exceptional leadership in promoting and advancing women in STEM at all levels,” the IUSBSE announced. Wong was formally inducted into the International College of Fellows at the World Biomaterials Congress in Daegu, South Korea.
“It’s a great honor,” says Wong. “I think it’s a recognition of the advances that my lab has made in such a broad area of biomaterials, ranging from the fundamentals to applications, in combination with my advocacy efforts” as past president of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). “The science, the research, and the findings are important, but I think you can do so much more, because it’s the policies that will ensure health equity.”
Long active in pediatric vascular tissue engineering, Wong has in recent years focused her research on maternal and child health, in particular on identifying and treating abdominal adhesions—scar-tissuelike knots that can arise after cesarean deliveries and cause female infertility. She is developing a semi-noninvasive
“theranostic” (therapeutic and diagnostic) tool using engineered microbubbles that aid the ultrasound imaging of adhesions.
Wong and colleagues are also working on an imaging tool using iron-oxide nanoparticles to detect and treat cancer cells, which grew out of her fundamental work of developing contrast imaging agents to detect oil deposits in the earth. “The particles are so versatile,” Wong says. “We’re now trying to do magnetic-guided drug delivery. The goal of theranostics as I see it is early detection and prevention and treatment, before cancer or another disease gets to an extreme stage.”
Moreover, Wong is working on treatments for preeclampsia—pregnancy complications caused by high blood pressure—by developing a placenta-on-achip model. “This ties back to my earlier
“We’re now trying to do magnetic-guided drug delivery. The goal of theranostics as I see it is early detection and prevention and treatment, before cancer or another disease gets to an extreme stage.”
cardiovascular research,” she says. “All of that requires an understanding of cellmaterial interactions.”
As president of AIMBE for her two-year term, which ended this year, Wong has done much to set the group’s course for the next decade. She oversaw the hiring of AIMBE’s new executive director and placed an emphasis on advocacy at the regional and national levels.
“So much is happening in the state legislatures,” Wong says. “I’m very interested in engaging more of our faculty and industry colleagues in important matters—not just advocating for more funding, but also educating people and spreading awareness of what the role is that medical and biological engineers can play and helping to define the criteria for health equity—and just getting people excited about science and engineering.”
Wong was the inaugural director of Advance, Recruit, Retain & Organize Women in STEM (ARROWS), an initiative of the Boston University Provost’s office. In fact, it was her gender equity work that led her to focus her research on maternal and child health. In addition to IUSBSE and AIMBE, she is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Biomedical Engineering Society, the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Controlled Release Society. — PLK
Joyce Wong (BME, MSE) was honored for her biomaterials advances and advocacy efforts.
Optica Honors Moustakas With Prestigious Holonyak Award
Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Photonics and Optoelectronics Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE, Physics) has received the Nick Holonyak Jr. Award from Optica, the prestigious professional association formerly known as the Optical Society of America (OSA). The group conferred the honor on Moustakas for his pioneering contributions to nitride semiconductor materials and optical devices that helped build the foundation for efficient blue and ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Optica also named Moustakas a fellow in 2021
Moustakas, who joined BU in 1987, discovered and patented methods for making gallium nitride (GaN) films with high crystalline quality, which led to the development of blue LEDs and, eventually, white LEDs. The latter paved the way for modern smartphone and computer screens and kicked off the ongoing transition from incandescent to LED bulbs.
Intellectual property related to Moustakas’ discoveries has been licensed by BU to more than 40 companies around the globe, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony.
“I am pleased to receive the award, named after Professor Nick Holonyak Jr., whose distinguished contributions to the field of optics through the development of semiconductor-based light-emitting diodes and lasers were an inspiration to me during my entire career,” says Moustakas.
Moustakas, who holds 41 US patents and has authored 363 papers for technical journals that have been cited more than 19,000 times, was a motivating force in the creation of the BU Photonics Center and ENG’s MSE division. He was named BU Innovator of the Year in 2013.
Nazer Wins Gitner Award for Innovation in Teaching
Spurred by major disruptions—blizzards in 2015 and the pandemic in 2020— that shut down campus, Associate Professor Bobak Nazer (ECE, SE) completely overhauled Probability, Statistics, and Data Science for Engineers, a course that is required for all engineering majors. He recorded close to 50 short videos that broke down complex concepts with animated versions of whiteboard notes, narrating over those videos to explain each lesson. Students now watch these videos before class and get to spend the lecture period expanding on them with games and activities. The videos not only give them a chance to pause and rewind during lessons that can be tricky to absorb, but also the time spent together in class reinforces and broadens what they’ve learned
The videos have been so transformational that Nazer has been honored with the
2024 Gerald and Deanne Gitner Family Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology, which recognizes a faculty member or team that best exemplifies innovation in teaching by use, development, or adaptation of technology. The award celebrates novel solutions that result in positive learning outcomes for undergraduate students and are also recognized or adopted by faculty colleagues within or outside BU.
“Every year, I get a few emails from students who mention the videos specifically and how much they appreciated them,” Nazer says.
In an anonymous class evaluation, one student described the videos as “amazing” and added, “The way [Nazer] explains the content makes it incredibly easy to understand and implement.”
— MOLLY CALLAHAN
Bobak Nazer (ECE, SE)
Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE)
Vivek Goyal Named a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow
AWARD RECOGNIZES GROUNDBREAKING WORK IN COMPUTATIONAL IMAGING, INCLUDING SEEING OBJECTS
He might spend his days testing computer chips for the most minute of devices, or developing tech that spies could use on covert assignments. But if you ask Professor Vivek Goyal (ECE) to name one of the coolest things about his job, he doesn’t pick inventing technology or testing gadgets.
“I really love the generation and analysis of probabilistic models,” says Goyal, who is also associate chair of doctoral programs for ECE.
These prediction-making algorithms might not be as glamorous as aiding secret agents, but they play a critical role in his burgeoning research on improving microscopy. That research is partly what earned Goyal a Guggenheim Fellowship, a prestigious grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Each year, the foundation awards approximately 180 fellowship grants to individuals making significant contributions in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the creative arts, and the humanities.
Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded to “mid-career individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts and exhibit great promise for their future endeavors,” according to the foundation.
“Vivek is the third College of Engineering faculty member to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in recent years, which speaks to the outstanding depth and quality of research at the college,” says Elise Morgan, ENG dean ad interim. “Professor Goyal is a preeminent scholar
Vivek Goyal (ECE) is at the forefront of non-line-of-sight imaging.
and outstanding member of our faculty. His research on non-line-of-sight imaging—at the intersection of optics/photonics and computers and mathematics—has great potential for making the world safer for many people.”
Goyal came to BU in 2014. Since then, his research has largely revolved around computational imaging—such as photonefficient active imaging, where he’s shown how few photons are actually needed to capture crisp images with a camera, and non-line-of-sight imaging, where he uses surprisingly simple equipment to take photos of objects hidden from view. In one study, Goyal and his team used a pulsed laser and a single-photon detector array to take pictures of a post, mannequin, and staircase placed behind a wall, as well as to track moving objects. Goyal says the technology could eventually be used to aid rescue and armed forces teams, and potentially to improve vehicle warning systems.
“It is an incredible honor for Professor Goyal to join the exceptional group of artists, writers, scholars, and scientists
“One thing I love about the Guggenheim Fellowship is that it’s an award based on both what you say you plan to do, but also on your track record of creativity.”
awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship this year,” says Gloria Waters, BU’s provost and chief academic officer. “This award, along with the multiple other distinguished awards he has received, is a clear recognition of the importance of his cutting-edge research.” Last year, Goyal was also named an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow.
Recently, Goyal’s research has also involved electron microscopes, highresolution microscopes that form images of a specimen using a focused beam of particles, such as electrons or ions, instead of photons. His groundbreaking work in electron imaging has significant potential implications for biomedicine and manufacturing, among myriad other applications.
According to Goyal, his microscope research is exciting, even a little off-thewall, because it upends what have long been considered the fundamental limits of electron imaging.
“One thing I love about the Guggenheim Fellowship is that it’s an award based on both what you say you plan to do, but also on your track record of creativity,” Goyal says. “It’s very validating to feel like my track record was valued enough that this foundation wants to support me in trying to do something a little crazy.
“I take that compliment, and I appreciate it.”
— ALENE BOURANOVA
Ji-Xin Cheng Delivers 2024 DeLisi Lecture
MICROSCOPY PIONEER SHARES
DISCOVERIES AT SIGNATURE ENG EVENT
Moustakas Chair Professor in Photonics and Optoelectronics
Ji-Xin Cheng (ECE, BME, MSE) has been honored with the 2024 Charles DeLisi Award and Lecture, conferred annually on a researcher who has advanced their field and society through outstanding, high-impact research. In April, Cheng presented his talk, “Seeing the Unseen Using Molecular Fingerprints,” to a packed Photonics Colloquium Room.
Dean Emeritus Charles DeLisi, the event’s namesake, was in attendance. Elise Morgan, ENG dean ad interim, thanked him for his generosity, service and philanthropy to the college, and former ENG Dean Kenneth Lutchen presented this year’s DeLisi Award to Cheng, whom he called “a science visionary,” with more than 30 patents and over 320 peer-reviewed articles with an h-index of 98.
Cheng, who also holds appointments in the CAS physics and chemistry departments in addition to his primary affiliation with ENG, spoke of how his team’s trailblazing breakthroughs in chemical imaging over the past two decades have, in part, been due to serendipity and persistence.
“Optical microscopy is a foundational tool for the life sciences,” Cheng said, but the technology faced gaps once thought insurmountable. After some years of failed experiments followed by “unexpected observations,” Cheng helped bridge those gaps by coinventing coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy as well as mid-infrared photothermal (MIP) microscopy to detect chemical bond vibration. These and other methods he developed have since been applied in labs and clinics around the globe.
At BU, Cheng, with Distinguished Professor M. Selim Ünlü (ECE, MSE, BME)
and Associate Professor John Connor at BU’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, applied the infrared technique to distinguish an RNA virus from a DNA virus based on chemical content. Published in Nature Communications, this method allows for virus subtyping and checking the quality of vaccines by imaging their chemical content.
Cheng’s vibrational photothermal microscopy techniques have many other important applications, such as imaging cell metabolic activity inside a living tumor spheroid and 3D in vivo imaging of tissue content without slicing or tissue clearance.
In 2017, the MIP microscope Cheng reported in Science Advances was commercialized as mIRage by Anasys Instrument Inc., which has since brought 100 units to 15 countries for a variety of applications. From nanoscale imaging a Van Gogh painting in Belgium, studying protein aggregation in Alzheimer’s disease in Sweden, and being used by Apple to examine the hard-to-reach crevices of semiconductor chips, Cheng’s invention has had a global, cross-industry impact.
During a Q&A session following Cheng’s lecture, a student asked the researcher about his thought process in designing novel technologies.
“You need a dedication when you pursue this career,” Cheng said. “I think about research when I drive, when I eat, maybe
Ji-Xin
(ECE,
“Optical microscopy is a foundational tool for the life sciences,” Cheng said, but the technology faced gaps once thought insurmountable.
even when I fall asleep. The other thing you need is teamwork.”
Prior to Cheng’s lecture, Interim Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development Ayse Coskun presented this year’s Early Career Research Excellence Award to Assistant Professor Rabia Yazicigil (ECE, BME), director of the Wireless Integrated Systems and Extreme Circuits Laboratory.
As dean of the college from 1990 to 2000, DeLisi recruited leading researchers in biomedical, manufacturing, aerospace and mechanical engineering, photonics, and other engineering fields, establishing a research infrastructure that ultimately propelled the college into the top ranks of engineering graduate programs. In 1999, he founded, and went on to chair for more than a decade, BU’s bioinformatics program, the first in the nation. —
ISABELLA BACHMAN
Cheng
BME, MSE) has blazed a trail in chemical imaging.
Proposal to Push Space Junk to “Graveyard Orbit” Earns BU Duo First Prize in National Contest
NOVEL WAYS TO DECLUTTER THE SKIES IS AIM OF SMALLSAT ALLIANCE’S COLLEGIATE SPACE COMPETITION
Athousand miles and more above our heads, satellites form a critical modern infrastructure, aiding global communication, navigation, and weather forecasting. But once a satellite is decommissioned or dies, it doesn’t disappear. It stays up there, an orbiting hunk of junk, joining cast-off rocket parts and other space debris. If current trends continue—nearly 12,000 working satellites already encircle Earth, with up to 60,000 more expected in just the next six years— that could eventually mean a lot of litter clogging the orbital skyways. Collisions could result, taking out the operational
satellites before their time and disrupting communications on the home planet. Even more frightening, space debris can and does crash to Earth—most recently in Saskatchewan, Canada
But a pair of BU ENG students have devised a potential solution. Mechanical engineering majors Anisa Chowdhury (ENG’25) and Nick Leung (ENG’24) took up the challenge issued by the SmallSat Alliance in its second annual Collegiate Space Competition: In six months, research and write a detailed proposal for a realistic way to declutter the skies. The technology would need to
be feasible technically as well as financially and politically.
When winners were announced in the spring, Leung and Chowdhury took first prize, splitting $2,000.
The two call their proposed technology GRASP-Sat, short for Geostationary Orbit Rendezvous and Space Debris Pusher Satellite Swarm. Most of the conversation about space debris today focuses on objects in low earth orbit (LEO), 1,200 hundred miles up, but Leung and Chowdhury set their sights higher—21,000 miles higher. That’s geostationary orbit (GEO), where a satellite is positioned to travel ever in sync with the same spot on Earth. “It’s where some of the most vital weather satellites are located,” Leung says. It’s also a uniquely challenging tier of the heavens in which to clear debris, simply because it is so distant.
The concept developed by the BU team is a system of modular nanosatellites, also known as cubesats, measuring 20 centimeters wide by 30 centimeters long and 20 centimeters deep. An “agent” (one of the tiny satellites) would set a course
“We think the judges really appreciated our unique focus on an area of space not currently being tackled.”
for a specified piece of space junk. As the agent nears the region of its target trash, it uses an onboard light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system to precisely track the debris—“to the centimeter,” Leung and Chowdhury write. Once it has guided itself to a careful rendezvous with the dead satellite, the agent uses its solar-powered ion thrusters to gently push on the junk, gradually propelling it a safe 200 miles away, beyond the heavily trafficked GEO belt and into the unused outer belt known as graveyard orbit (GO).
“We think the judges really appreciated our unique focus on an area of space not currently being tackled,” says Leung. “The judges noted that the relatively inexpensive and simple approach of our integrated system was admirable, considering the costs to launch a [larger] satellite into this area.”
Another advantage to GRASP-Sat is that it cuts down on fuel waste; currently, satellites have to burn a portion of their fuel to move themselves to the GO before shutting down. “You might lose a couple of years of use because of that,” SmallSat Alliance chairman Charles Beames says. In contrast, Leung and Chowdhury’s system “allows the satellite to use all the fuel on board” for its main mission, he says, adding, “It’s a very clever idea.”
The students received advice and feedback from postdoctoral researcher Emil Atz (ENG’22) of the BU Center for Space Physics. Associate Professor Hua Wang (ME, SE) checked their math. And Leung drew upon his experience working with Associate Professor Brian Walsh (ME, ECE) on space instrumentation.
“We would love to fully implement GRASP-Sat past the systems proposal, but would first have to secure significant funding,” Leung says. “Further research and development would need to be completed.”
For now, Chowdhury is conducting research at Bangladesh’s Dhaka University on the properties and effects of metafluid in a vacuum environment (with potential space applications), while Leung is interning at Pratt & Whitney, working on aviation systems analysis.
Beames, who as an investor has heard hundreds of space technology pitches, believes Leung and Chowdhury “absolutely” have a future in the industry in general—and likely could succeed with GRASP-Sat in particular. “Not only would it work, but frankly, it’s kind of necessary, to extract more value out of these geostationary satellites,” he says. “I hope they make a go of it.”
— PATRICK L. KENNEDY
The GRASP-Sat system would clear away dead satellites.
Nick Leung (ENG’24)
Anisa Chowdhury (ENG’25)
Four NSF CAREER Award Winners from ENG
Four ENG faculty have earned highly competitive Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance scientific research in their fields.
GENERATING NEW TISSUE FOR ARTHRITIS SUFFERERS
Assistant Professor Michael Albro (ME, MSE BME) is developing an advanced method of tissue engineering to repair joint and tissue damage from degenerative diseases like osteoarthritis, which affects about 600 million people. His project focuses on growth factors, molecules that coordinate tissues and organ growth.
“Growth factors conduct the whole orchestra of the body,” Albro says.
The Albro team’s unique approach is two-pronged. First, they’re developing bio-inspired scaffolds—the materials that are embedded with engineered cells to support tissue growth. Then, they’re using computational modeling to tailor those scaffolds to the needs of the cells, so that they can better receive the messages from growth factors.
“What we’re trying to do is not just identify the growth factors that need to be used for tissue regeneration, but also identify how they need to be delivered,” he says.
SMARTER AND SAFER AI
A common way experts teach artificial intelligence (AI) systems to perform a task is by imitation learning (IL), allowing an algorithm to learn by watching human demonstrations. But it’s difficult to teach a system negative outcomes or pitfalls—for example, teaching an autonomous driving system exclusively with safe driving practices could fail to provide the context necessary for the system to recognize unsafe situations and how to avoid them.
Assistant Professor Wenchao Li (ECE, SE) is working to improve the way machines learn through IL demonstrations.
Li is proposing IL “guardrails”: instead of relying only on demonstrations, an AI system will have safety parameters and precise guidance to complement the process. These guidelines will be based on a mathematical framework that Li is developing.
SOFT ROBOTS FOR HEALTHCARE
Assistant Professor Andrew Sabelhaus (ME, SE) believes that robots made of soft materials, like rubber, have the potential to perform healthcare tasks such as blood pressure checks, flu shots, or nasal swabs. But to be a successful medic, a soft robot would have to be intelligent enough to know precisely what to do in unpredictable situations—and, if it’s handling a needle, exactly where and how to inject it.
Sabelhaus is using his NSF CAREER funding to design algorithms for soft robots to meet safety requirements like these. If it’s possible to ensure that the robot will not unintentionally cause injury, “that makes healthcare less expensive and a lot
more accessible,” he says. One important additional goal: eliminating healthcare disparities and ensuring human biases in data are not unintentionally passed on to the robot.
MONITORING DISEASE WITH A BIOSENSOR
Assistant Professor Rabia Yazicigil (ECE, BME) is establishing a new field called cyber-secure biological systems. She has already codeveloped a tiny, safe-to-swallow capsule that monitors gut health, detecting early signs of irritable bowel disease (IBS) flare-ups and transmitting that data wirelessly. Yazicigil made the capsule energy-efficient, running on nanowatt-level power.
For her NSF project, she will modify that system to run on even lower power, including by harvesting energy from the gastrointestinal tract itself, which will reduce the size of the pill and make it even easier to swallow. Yazicigil will also add cybersecurity safeguards to make it safe to transmit the health data.
“The goal is to perform real-time, in-body sensing so that you can accurately track changes related to disease biomarkers,” says Yazicigil. “And that will give you critical information to achieve early intervention and better disease management.” — JESSICA COLAROSSI, PATRICK KENNEDY, AJ KLEBER
Li is proposing IL “guardrails”: instead of relying only on demonstrations, an AI system will have safety parameters and precise guidance to complement the process.
Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME)
Wenchao Li (ECE, SE)
Rabia Yazicigil (ECE, BME)
Andrew Sabelhaus (ME, SE)
Bifano is BU’s Innovator of the Year
PHOTONICS CENTER DIRECTOR HAS PIONEERED DEVICES TO ADVANCE ASTRONOMY, MICROSCOPY, EYE EXAMS
The light from the stars filling the sky travels mind-boggling distances to reach us: the nearest star, beyond our own, is about 25 trillion miles from Earth. For most of its journey to our planet, that light is undisturbed, flying parallel and unimpeded through the vacuum of space. But then, in the very last microseconds, our atmosphere gets in the way, and the light bends.
If you’re looking through a telescope, “the result is that the image is blurry, because not all of the light is getting to the right focus,” says Professor Thomas Bifano (ME, MSE, BME, ECE).
For astronomers studying distant stars, blurry just won’t cut it.
But Bifano created a solution: a mirror that can shift its surface as quickly as every millisecond to compensate for the atmosphere’s fluctuating effect, pulling the image into focus. It’s a technology called MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) deformable mirrors, that he’s also used to improve eye exams, satellite communications, and imaging research— and that’s helped earn Bifano BU’s Innovator of the Year award.
The award is given to an “outstanding faculty member who has translated world-class research into an invention or innovation that benefits humankind.” Bifano holds 10 patents and is also CTO and cofounder of Boston Micromachines Corporation.
Before Bifano’s MEMS deformable mirrors, existing peer technologies for bending light were big, expensive, and drained lots of power. That meant they were mostly only viable in large instruments— think a hulking telescope in a desert rather
than a small microscope in a lab. His innovation was leveraging microfabrication techniques used for making microscopic objects—like inkjet printer nozzles—to develop tiny mirrors moved by electrostatic actuators. By creating deformable mirrors that were smaller, faster, cheaper, and more efficient, Bifano vastly opened up their range of applications.
As head of the BU Photonics Center—a hub for the study of light—Bifano has helped many others nurture their own innovations.
The center is home to 70 faculty research labs and the Business Innovation Center, which hosts tech, biotech, manufacturing, and medical device companies.
“Tom’s leadership at Boston Micromachines, where he solves real optics problems, and his role in connecting innovative research groups across the University via the Photonics Center, demonstrate his ability to think creatively and foster interdisciplinary collaboration,” says biotech entrepreneur David Freedman (ENG’10), whose first company, NanoView Biosciences, was incubated and funded through the Photonics Center.
“I have known Tom since I was 18 years old. He has been a teacher, a mentor, a
business partner, and a friend,” says Paul Bierden (ENG’92,’94), a former student and now CEO of Boston Micromachines. “He is a true engineer, which in my opinion, [means] that he is always trying to solve problems.
“Tom has always instilled in me to not be afraid to try something new. Dive into a problem, break things, flip switches, turn knobs, learn from your mistakes, and try again.”
Those lessons in innovation are ones Bifano continues to share today, encouraging students to roll with the failures, keep playing and discovering—but also focus on the end goal.
“I tell my students early on—and the ones who grasp it do much better than the ones who don’t—that you need to own the problems you’re working on,” Bifano says. “You’re not working on it because somebody assigned it to you; you own it, it’s yours. The motivation is not to satisfy me or your doctoral committee, it’s to knock down the problem.
“You’re not really a good engineer unless the things you do turn into helpful benefits for society.” — ANDREW THURSTON
Thomas Bifano (ME, MSE, BME, ECE), associate provost ad interim for research, pioneered deformable mirrors.
Boston Teens Pitch Biotech Concepts to BU “Investors” at STEM Pathways Event
SENIORS FROM NEW MISSION HIGH COMPETE IN SHARK TANK-LIKE EVENT, WITH HELP FROM BU MENTORS
Swallowing jitters and marshaling a semester’s worth of research, 11 teams of local high schoolers arrived at Boston University on a spring day to pitch products to a panel of BU faculty and affiliates playing the part of skeptical investors. It was the second annual Synthetic Biology Shark Tank Competition, held at the BU Life Sciences & Engineering Building.
Mentored by undergrad and graduate students from the College of Engineering, the 28 seniors from Boston’s diverse New Mission High School conceived of, and fleshed out, synthetic biology solutions to real-world problems. Among the products they pitched: crops modified to survive unseasonable cold snaps; marine bacteria engineered to clean up oil spills; and a microorganism that warns mountain climbers of impending altitude sickness.
No actual dollars were invested in these on-paper concepts, but the experience taught the students valuable skills and
got them thinking like real engineers and biotech developers.
“Eventually, I want to run a lab that does its own research,” says Mario Fils, whose team proposed Jurassic Plastic (tagline: “Making Plastic Extinct”), a plastic-eating bacteria that would be deployed in landfills, where at least half of plastic waste ends up.
“The deeper I got into it, the more I realized that this is a big, big issue. So I can see myself continuing this research and maybe even releasing the product that we came up with.”
“Whether in academia or industry, you have to get your stuff funded,” says Sarah Goldberg, the students’ biotechnology instructor at New Mission High. “Either to get grants for your research or to get investors to invest in your product, you have to pitch your idea.”
And students chose these ideas on their own. “I didn’t give them a list of topics,” Goldberg says. “I said, ‘What matters to
“The deeper I got into it, the more I realized that this is a big, big issue. So I can see myself continuing this research and maybe even releasing the product that we came up with.”
New Mission High School seniors Darareaksmey Chhim (from left), Mario Fils, and Dorian Planto pitching their plastic-eating bacteria concept at the Biological Design Center’s Synthetic Biology Shark Tank Competition.
you? What interests you?’ And that’s where we start. Some of them picked plastic degradation or treating heroin addiction or detecting and treating high blood pressure. No matter how far they get into the actual science, they’re pushing themselves to learn and create in some form.”
Jackelyn Merida wanted to tackle cancer because “it has impacted my family,” she says. “At a young age I witnessed my grandmother go through stage 4 breast cancer, and recently my uncle was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer.”
Merida suggested focusing on inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), a rare and aggressive type of breast cancer with worse outcomes for people of color, and her teammate Calia Sutton agreed.
“As a woman of color, the fact that we have a higher death rate [from IBC] struck me,” Sutton says. “Not only is it a disease that is causing extraordinary pain, and the cost to treat it is atrocious, but my people are suffering and there’s not enough being done about it.”
That kind of disparity is a big part of why BU’s Biological Design Center launched STEM Pathways, the STEM outreach program that sponsored the competition. When technology is developed without diverse perspectives integrated into the process from the outset, the results can be things like pulse oximeters and facial recognition programs that are stymied by brown skin, as well as uneven treatment for some diseases.
“I can’t expect them all to go into biotech,” Goldberg says of her students, “but before they come into the class, they don’t even know it’s an option.”
Goldberg’s class at New Mission slightly predates STEM Pathways, but her students have benefited a great deal from the partnership over the past couple of years, she says. Many of the competitors at the Shark Tank event had attended Saturday STEM workshops at BU, and several worked full time for five weeks last summer in labs at the BU Biological Design Center. Merida, for example, helped Associate Professor Wilson Wong (BME) in his efforts to develop cancer-killing T-cells.
Once the high schoolers settled on a
product idea, BU student and staff mentors helped guide them as they researched the global challenges they wanted to solve, studied the pros and cons of current solutions (existing or under development), assembled slideshows, and rehearsed presentations.
“Having that additional support, the projects have gotten so much better,” says Goldberg.
“Whenever we were confused,” Fils says, “there was never a time when our mentor wasn’t able to help us find articles or help us get everything organized. Honestly, we wouldn’t have made it this far in the project without her help.”
“Oh, stop!” Kristen Sheldon, a senior lab technologist at BU’s DAMP Lab and a mentor to Fils’ team, says with a laugh as the contestants sit at tables awaiting the results of the judges’ deliberations. “It gave me an opportunity to apply my skills and knowledge to help them and help shape them as scientists. I think it was important that they got to choose a product [idea] they were passionate about.”
That choice was by design, says Hailey Gordon, director of STEM Pathways. “We aimed to make each mentor session mentee-led, so that the high school students had agency within their project development.”
At the same time, Gordon adds, the experience was useful for the student mentors
as well, building skills they’ll need if they enter academia and run their own labs.
Some of the product pitches were delivered with confidence, others were peppered with the “likes” and “ums” that are almost to be expected in public presentations given by teenagers (and many adults). But it was obvious that all the students had done their homework. Their slideshows were clear and well organized, and students like Merida and Sutton shined in the follow-up Q&A. They answered judges’ questions about IBC statistics without hesitation and rattled off the risks of both their proposed cure and prevailing treatments.
At the end, awards were given out in categories such as Most Innovative and Highest Potential Impact. Fils and his teammates Darareaksmey Chhim and Dorian Planto won no less than three awards—Most Engaging Pitch, Most Invested, and People’s Choice (a poll of their peers)—for Jurassic Plastic.
Goldberg also handed out medals to all students, recognizing their hard work and perhaps spurring them to keep at it in the biotech game. “I know people [criticize] ‘participation awards,’” she said, “but this was a high-level task, and you all did a great job. I’m truly proud of each and every one of you.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY
Trophies were awarded by a panel of judges, among them Liangliang Hao, an ENG assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Stephen Sweet (ENG’23), an engineer at General Dynamics.
AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, RESEARCHERS WORK ACROSS DISCIPLINES TO PIONEER NEW MATERIALS THAT SOLVE A VARIETY OF PRESSING SOCIETAL CHALLENGES. WE CALL THIS FIELD
MATERIALS BYDESIGN
BY KAT J. MCALPINE, JESSICA COLAROSSI, AND PATRICK L. KENNEDY
DESIGN.
aterials with properties—like the ability to manipulate magnetic fields, leading to crisper MRI—that are not found in nature. The most efficient, energy-absorbing material ever, promising better crash helmets and packaging. And a MacGyver-like post-disaster repair job that gets a boost from biology.
At Boston University College of Engineering, researchers work across disciplines to pioneer new materials that solve a variety of pressing societal challenges. It’s a convergent area that we call Materials by Design.
MATERIALS BEYOND LIMITS
Copper, fabric, plastic, television cables. Would it surprise you to learn that these ordinary materials can be engineered into metamaterials, capable of supercharging the power of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)? Distinguished Professor of Engineering Xin Zhang (ME, ECE, BME, MSE), with her team at BU ENG and the Photonics Center, is proving it’s both a science and an art to invent metamaterials—materials with properties not found in nature—that can manipulate magnetic fields for the greater good.
“MRI is a cornerstone of healthcare imaging,” Zhang says, allowing clinicians to noninvasively look inside the human body, aiding injury and disease detection as well as treatment planning and monitoring. However, today’s best MRI technology is bulky and expensive, limiting access to it in low-resource and remote areas.
“How can we improve MRI technology to enable clear imaging that’s also affordable, accessible, and tolerable for patients?”
The team’s work toward that end has led to a string of breakthrough devices that can sharpen and speed MRI imaging of knees, ankles, spines, and more. Each new metamaterials tool and method—from resonators that manipulate magnetic fields to wearable, jewelry-like bracelets that cut background noise—is capable of dramatically boosting the power of MRI. The researchers have reported their findings in a series of recent journal articles.
Zhang has studied the applications of metamaterials in a variety of fields, notably including sound-canceling technology. A major focus for her team in recent years has been metamaterials’ potential to improve MRIs. By 2022, they had developed a helmet that could channel an MRI machine’s magnetic field to deliver clearer images of the brain and drastically cut scanning time. Recently, they have built upon that work with computationally designed wearable metamaterials that can be fitted to any part of the body—even to an irregularly shaped area like the elbow or knee. The researchers showed how the metamaterials could be used to improve scans of the ankle with a cage-like brace of connected discs surrounding the joint.
“OUR RECENT DESIGNS DEMONSTRATE SEVERAL STRATEGIES FOR USING METAMATERIALS TO BOOST MRI USING LOWCOST MATERIALS,” ZHANG SAYS, “WHICH WE HOPE WILL BE TRANSLATED INTO TECHNOLOGIES THAT ALLOW MORE PATIENTS AROUND THE WORLD TO BENEFIT FROM MRI.”
“While we could manually design the helmet from our earlier work, we recognized that free-form deployable metamaterials fitted to other parts of the body would require computational aid,” says Ke Wu, a postdoctoral fellow in Zhang’s lab.
Wu developed algorithms and programs capable of analyzing a 3D scan of a part of the body and, within less than a second, calculating the geometry and arrangement of helical resonators— structures made of plastic and thin copper coils—that can manipulate the magnetic field of MRI. Critically, these arrays of coils help to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of MRI of the target area, reducing the fuzziness of imaging that’s caused when background electromagnetic signals seep into view.
Wu’s computational programs use the principles of circle packing—a geometric approach to squeezing circles together without any of them overlapping—to determine the best array and architecture for arranging the magnetic coils. They can also be tuned to resonate with a particular radio frequency, while the freeform shapes can be integrated into comfortable, wearable cuffs.
Xin Zhang (ME, ECE, BME, MSE)
It’s not a piece of artisan jewelry or a must-have fashion accessory. This is one of the ultracompact, lightweight coils engineered by BU researchers to wirelessly and passively enhance MRI imaging.
In related work, Zhang’s team demonstrated an alternative wearable metamaterial design for MRI that replaces copper and plastic coils with loops made from coaxial cables—the same cables used to bring you the internet. Coaxial cables are designed to transmit high-frequency electrical signals and shield them from their surroundings, preventing unintended loss of signal. “This material has inherent advantages because it is lightweight, flexible, and restricts the electrical field to exactly where you want it,” says Xia Zhu, a graduate student in Zhang’s lab.
Zhu created fabric-based wearable metamaterials—each using only about $50 of materials—designed to bring loops of coaxial cables as close as possible to the part of the body undergoing a scan. For example, a potential knee scan consists of a pad of lightweight fabric, covered with a handful of coils, bending to the curve of the patient’s leg as they lie in the MRI machine. The researchers found it achieved “substantial electric field attenuation in its proximity, thereby minimizing electric field exposure to the imaging subject.”
Pushing even further, the team sought to develop an entirely wireless, form-fitting wearable metamaterial that could boost SNR and passively tune and amplify the MRI signal. “To create a design this simple and elegant, we had to solve several problems first,” says Zhang, who’s affiliated with the BU Photonics Center, which provided technical assistance for much of the latest research.
With their longtime collaborator Stephan W. Anderson, a BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine professor of radiology, Zhang’s team demonstrated that the coaxial cables can be arranged into freestanding cuffs without additional support materials—no fabric needed. They prototyped rings and cuffs sized to enhance MRI scans of the spine, the wrist, and a single finger—and in every experiment, proved their seemingly simple design could amplify
SNR and enable crisp MRI. The looped and ringed cables look like modern art or custom jewelry.
“Our recent designs demonstrate several strategies for using metamaterials to boost MRI using low-cost materials,” Zhang says, “which we hope will be translated into technologies that allow more patients around the world to benefit from MRI.”
A ROBOT ON A MISSION
Inside a BU ENG lab, a robot arm drops small, plastic objects into a box placed perfectly on the floor to catch them as they fall. One by one, these tiny structures—feather-light, cylindrical pieces, no bigger than an inch tall—fill the box. Some are red, others blue, purple, green, or black.
Each object is the result of an experiment in robot autonomy. On its own, learning as it goes, the robot is searching for, and trying to make, an object with the most efficient energy-absorbing shape to ever exist.
To do this, the robot creates a small plastic structure with a 3D printer, records its shape and size, moves it to a flat metal surface—and then crushes it with a pressure equivalent to an adult Arabian horse standing on a quarter. The robot then measures how much energy the structure absorbed and how its shape changed after being compressed, and records every detail in a vast database. Then, it drops the crushed object into the box and wipes the metal plate clean, ready to print and test the next piece. It will be ever-so-slightly different from its predecessor, its design and dimensions tweaked by the robot’s computer algorithm based on all past experiments—the basis of what’s called Bayesian optimization. Experiment after experiment, the 3D structures get better at absorbing the impact from getting crushed.
THEY’RE ALL ROBOTS THAT DO RESEARCH,” BROWN SAYS. “THE PHILOSOPHY IS THAT THEY’RE USING MACHINE LEARNING TOGETHER WITH AUTOMATION TO HELP US DO RESEARCH MUCH FASTER.”
These experiments are possible because of the work of Associate Professor Keith A. Brown (ME, MSE, Physics) and his team in the KABlab. The robot, named MAMA BEAR—short for its lengthy full title, Mechanics of Additively Manufactured Architectures Bayesian Experimental Autonomous Researcher—has evolved since it was first conceptualized by Brown and his lab in 2018. By 2021, the lab had set the machine on its quest to make a shape that absorbs energy, a property known as its mechanical energy absorption efficiency. This current iteration has run continuously for over three years, filling dozens of boxes with more than 25,000 3D-printed structures.
Why so many shapes? There are countless uses for something that can efficiently absorb energy—say, cushioning for delicate electronics being shipped across the world or for kneepads and wrist guards for athletes. “You could draw from this library of data to make better bumpers in a car, or packaging equipment, for example,” Brown says.
To work ideally, the structures have to strike the perfect balance: they can’t be so strong that they cause damage to whatever they’re supposed to protect, but they should be strong enough to absorb impact. Before MAMA BEAR, the best structure anyone ever observed—a particular kind of balsa wood—was about 71 percent efficient at absorbing energy, says Brown. But on a chilly January afternoon in 2023, Brown’s lab watched their robot hit 75 percent efficiency, breaking the known record. The results have been published in Nature Communications.
The record-breaking structure looks like nothing the researchers would have expected: it has four points, shaped like thin flower petals, and is taller and narrower than the early designs.
“We’re excited that there’s so much mechanical data here, that we’re using this to learn lessons about design more generally,” Brown says, who is collaborating on the project with doctoral
Keith A. Brown (ME, MSE, Physics)
student Kelsey Snapp and CAS Associate Professor of Computer Science Emily Whiting.
Their extensive data is already getting its first real-life application, helping to inform the design of new helmet padding for US Army soldiers. The team worked with the US Army on field testing to ensure helmets using their patent-pending padding are comfortable and provide sufficient protection from impact. The 3D structure used for the padding is different from the record-breaking piece, with a softer center and shorter stature to help with comfort.
MAMA BEAR is one of several autonomous research robots in Brown’s lab. For example, the lab’s “nano BEAR” studies the way materials behave at the molecular scale using a technology called atomic force microscopy.
“They’re all robots that do research,” Brown says. “The philosophy is that they’re using machine learning together with automation to help us do research much faster.”
“Not just faster,” adds Snapp. “You can do things you couldn’t normally do. We can reach a structure or goal that we wouldn’t have
been able to achieve otherwise, because it would have been too expensive and time-consuming.” Snapp has worked closely with MAMA BEAR since the experiments began in 2021 and gave the robot its ability to see—known as machine vision—and clean its own test plate.
Brown says doctoral students like Snapp—who had no problem making the leap from mechanical engineering to autonomous systems—seem to flourish in BU ENG’s convergent culture. “We’re training problem-solvers,” says Brown. “You have to understand how to critically evaluate things that are outside your discipline that are challenging. So this is something that we teach our students by having them live it every day.”
Going forward, Brown plans to keep collaborating with scientists in various fields who need to test incredibly large numbers of structures and solutions. Even though they already broke a record, “we have no ability to know if we’ve reached the maximum efficiency,” Brown says, meaning they could possibly break it again. So, MAMA BEAR will keep on running, pushing boundaries further.
To find the most efficient shape, the robot designed and crushed more than 25,000 different structures, experimenting over and over again.
ROCKS AND ROPE, STRENGTHENED BY SEEDS
The gamut of Materials by Design research is wide. While one project might involve tiny structures carefully constructed through thousands of iterations via robotic 3D printing, another centers on piles of rubble from a blast of dynamite. But it’s what the researcher does with that rubble that turns a chaotic mess into a material by design.
With funding from a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) grant, Associate Professor Douglas Holmes (ME, MSE) is working on efficient methods for quickly repairing a bomb-damaged airfield, then shoring up those repairs with biology. As with many defense projects, these methods might someday be used in civilian life—emergency shelter construction following an earthquake, for example, or even nonemergency construction applications.
“WE SEED THE CRATER WITH ENZYMES THAT WILL GROW INTO A NETWORK OF REALLY TINY FIBERS, ACTING ALMOST LIKE A GLUE.”
In the case of an airfield hit by a bomb, the immediate problem is a big crater in the runway. (Among Holmes’ collaborators is a munitions expert from Battelle Memorial Institute who will use dynamite to create test craters.) When a base is attacked, Holmes says, “The goal at that point is to fly everybody out to safety as quickly as possible.”
The crater could be filled temporarily, but it’s not practical for an airbase to keep an entire cement-mixing apparatus and crew on hand just in case, nor is there time for the concrete to cure. Plus, the patch would have to be “rock-solid” and perfectly smooth to bear the load of an F-18 jet, Holmes says. “Otherwise, you’re at real risk of snapping that front axle on that plane.”
The solution that Holmes is working on, along with colleagues from Battelle, MIT, and South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, is to take the rocky rubble from the blast and stick it back in the hole—in a smart way.
In previous work, Holmes and his then-student Arman Guerra (ENG’23) determined that it is possible to turn a loose pile of rocks into a sturdy column that can withstand an impressive amount of compressive force. The method for achieving this effect, which Holmes and current doctoral student Amani Campbell are now applying to the airfield project, is to loop elastic fibers (rope, for example) around the pile, in a mathematically intentional way, such that the fibers bind the rocks together. Campbell, who previously worked for a construction management firm, is even experimenting with pre-knitted “socks” for the rocks, to make it as easy as possible for emergency crews to reshape the rubble into upstanding columns.
MICHAEL
Douglas Holmes (ME, MSE)
“So you’re returning this collection of jumbled rocks into, essentially, one really stiff rock,” says Holmes. “And that stiffness is coming from the elastic material that’s preventing the rocks from moving.” The process is called “elasto-granular jamming,” in which the “elastic” material is the rope, and the “grains” are the rocks or other objects constrained by the elastic.
This MacGyver-like method might serve on its own as a quick fix. The elastically bound rock structures will hold for a while, and when a steel plate or other smooth covering is placed atop the refilled crater, evacuation flights can take off. However, a jammed structure is only “marginally stable,” says Holmes. Like in a Jenga tower, “Some of the grains are doing nothing, while others are bearing all the load.” Given that these structures are below the surface, eventually groundwater will seep in, likely shifting some rocks and compromising the system.
Hence, a second step. “This is where the biology comes in,” says Holmes. “We seed the crater with enzymes that will grow into a network of really tiny fibers, acting almost like a glue.” Sand is
added to the mix as well. So, just as the ropes jam the rocks (the big grains), the tiny fibers jam the small grains of sand. In this way, the system actually becomes more stable. “The biological component takes that temporary structure and adds the possibility for it to become more permanent.”
The airfield project will make a good case study, Holmes says. “We’ll test it under a variety of conditions and temperatures, and if we get this right, hopefully we can broaden its applicability.” In the future, Holmes would like to see such methods being used to build more natural sea walls and other grand structures that keep in harmony with their surroundings. “There’s something to be said for building structures that both integrate with the environment and get stronger over time.”
Campbell, whose home country of Jamaica was hit by Hurricane Beryl, especially hopes her work can someday be useful in the aftermath of natural disasters. “I think my generation is a bit more conscious of the environment,” she says. “It would be nice to see some of these techniques being implemented.”
ANDREW THURSTON CONTRIBUTED TO THIS FEATURE.
Using a process called elasto-granular jamming, Holmes and his student Amani Campbell turn a jumble of rocks into a single, solid column.
RENEWABLE WITHOUT THE POWER-WASHING POWER
AN ENG-BRED STARTUP AIMS TO HELP SOLAR FULFILL ITS PROMISE
BY PATRICK L. KENNEDY
growing source of renewable energy, solar power is a vital part of our sustainable future. But in many regions, solar infrastructure comes with its own carbon footprint. Vast arrays of solar panels are being erected in deserts around the globe, which makes sense—after all, deserts get plenty of sun, and they boast lots of room for rows of the large structures.
Unfortunately, deserts also have lots of sand blowing around that can cover the panels, which of course are supposed to be kept clear in order to let in all that sunlight. So, maintenance crews must regularly drive “water buffalo” tanker trucks out to the solar plants—traveling many miles in, typically, fossil-fuel-powered vehicles. There, they power-wash the panels—using gallons of water, in arid regions that can ill afford it.
In India, where Annie Rabi Bernard (ENG’15,’20) grew up, that water is often diverted from farms and rural residents who still lack running water. “You would see trucks bringing in water to clean these panels, while literally on the other side of the road, you’d see women and children walking towards wells to get water,” Bernard recalls. “It’s almost criminal to deprive a society of affordable water.”
But to Bernard, the solution to this disconnect isn’t to shut down the solar fields. Rather, it’s to find a smarter way to keep them clean.
At Boston University, working with Ryan Eriksen (CAS’10, ENG’15) in the lab of Research Professor Malay Mazumder (ECE, MSE), that’s just what Bernard did. The team developed a system whereby a small amount of static electricity pushes dust and sand from the surface of a solar panel. It takes less than two minutes, once a day, so the electricity used is “minimal to negligible,” Bernard says. She and Eriksen estimate their technology can save around 4 billion gallons of water per year—and that’s just on the solar panels that are installed already.
In 2020, with the help of BU’s technology development office, Bernard and Eriksen cofounded Sol Clarity to bring their technology to market. The startup’s slogan is: “Dust settles; we don’t.” With Eriksen as CEO and Bernard as CTO, they’ve joined forces with Malav Sukhadia (Questrom’21) as head of growth and finance. Sol Clarity has garnered pre-seed funding from venture capitalists and landed grants from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a state economic development agency.
Operating out of their headquarters at Greentown Labs in Somerville, Mass., Sol Clarity started out building their own prototypes by hand. Now they’re contracting with manufacturers to produce one-by-two-meter panels to meet a growing demand from multinational utilities for pilot installations.
Bernard and Eriksen cofounded Sol Clarity to bring their technology to market. The startup’s slogan is: “Dust settles; we don’t.”
Sol Clarity’s product, a transparent electrodynamic screen (EDS), can be applied as overlay sheets onto existing solar panels or integrated into the manufacturing of new panels. The technology works by sending pulsed voltage through rows of electrodes. The electrodes rapidly reverse polarities, alternately repelling and attracting dust particles so that the particles jump from one electrode to the next, until they reach the end of a row and are ejected. This all happens incredibly quickly. “Usually, within 30 to 40 seconds, you’ll see more than 90 percent of the dust being removed,” says Bernard, and in less than two minutes the panel is completely clear.
Last December, Sol Clarity installed a dozen EDS-enabled panels at a site in Massachusetts—so far the world’s largest deployment of this pioneering technology, according to U.S. Glass Magazine. As they add sites around the world, the company plans to collect more data on the technolo-
gy’s benefits, and continue to grow, ultimately serving the large-scale arrays in arid regions in California, Chile, Saudi Arabia, India, and elsewhere.
While Eriksen and Bernard have worked hard to hit their milestones, they credit a combination of people and experiences at BU with helping them to launch this effort—starting with their collaboration in Mazumder’s lab.
“The fact that I joined as an electrical engineer, and Ryan came in with a materials background—that by itself was super helpful,” says Bernard. “And I found a similar advantage in having Professor Mazumder as my advisor, because he represented both the materials and the ECE side.”
Both alumni say they were trained well by Rana Gupta, then-director of BU’s technology development office. Through an accelerator program run by Gupta, they met with scores of solar plant owners to learn about their needs and float the EDS concept. After all the work she put into the technology, Bernard at first found it hard to keep her composure when solar industry pros said they weren’t interested.
“We learned it doesn’t matter if you have the coolest technology,” Bernard says.
“We had to start thinking about the return-on-investment, which we didn’t always consider as engineers,” says Eriksen. That’s just one area where Sukhadia, the Questrom alum, has been integral to the company, Eriksen adds.
“If Malav didn’t bring his MBA skills into the company, we wouldn’t have made such progress,” agrees Bernard.
Sukhadia was also an excellent fit for Sol Clarity in that he had an engineering background before earning his MBA at BU, and he is also a native of India. Like Bernard, he can never forget seeing mothers waiting in line for rationed water in rural areas.
Even without those firsthand observations, Eriksen shares his startup teammates’ motivations. “I’ve always wanted to have a positive impact on society,” he says. “With Sol Clarity, we’re trying to revolutionize the solar space with a disruptive solar panel–cleaning technology. If we succeed, we can make renewable energy easier, more affordable, and more effective—and then we’re having that positive impact.”
research
Abundantly Clear
WITH $5 MILLION FROM THE DoE, BU TEAM AIMS TO MAKE GREEN HYDROGEN PART OF THE ENERGY SOLUTION
Atrio of BU mechanical engineering professors landed a $5 million grant from the US Department of Energy (DoE) to lead a collaborative project aimed at solving crucial elements of the world’s renewable energy puzzle by making green hydrogen
For the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen is hard to harness. Theoretically, the gas is a mighty alternative to the fossil fuels that have caused the climate crisis. When hydrogen is burned, the only byproduct is water vapor. That means hydrogen could power long-haul trucks, electricity turbines, even steel plants, and much more, all without emitting carbon dioxide.
But there’s a catch. Currently, most hydrogen is produced using natural gas, a process that does emit CO2
A better way exists, though. In the electrolysis process, an electric current splits water molecules to produce hydrogen. If that electric current could be sourced from excess wind and solar power, then not only could clean-burning hydrogen itself be produced cleanly, but that would also solve a problem holding back renewable energy: intermittency. This green hydrogen could be used in fuel cells that could then run regardless of whether the sun is shining or the wind blowing.
The catch there is cost. Currently, it takes $5 to produce one kilogram of green hydrogen. The DoE wants to get that down to one dollar per kilogram by 2030, and is betting that professors Srikanth Gopalan, Soumendra Basu, and Uday Pal (all ME, MSE) can help.
A big reason for the cost barrier today is a materials problem— and all three of the BU faculty researchers are experts in different aspects of materials science.
Mechanical engineering professors (from left) Uday Pal, Srikanth
30 MOBILE AIR QUALITY SENSORS 34 A LIQUID BIOPSY TOOL TO TRACK TUMORS
Cross-section of an electrolysis cell.
During electrolysis, oxygen pressure builds up at the interfaces between materials, resulting in one of the electrodes detaching from the cell, degrading the whole system.
“We’re solving that problem with a whole new class of materials called Ruddleseden-Popper phases,” says Gopalan, the PI. “The structure of this material is such that it can accommodate high oxygen pressure—it can basically suck up all this oxygen.”
Another kind of degradation occurs in a hydrogen fuel cell, says Basu. A key component of a fuel electrode is nickel, which coarsens over time. “What if you could add a very thin layer of something that stabilizes the nickel? So, we have been looking at using a material called gadolinium-doped ceria to stabilize the nickel and also enhance electrode kinetics, and we have shown that the performance degradation is dramatically decreased.”
Gopalan says that by partnering with Saint-Gobain Research North America and Upstart Power, Inc., the team will eventually translate their findings into replicable stacks of fuel cells that will meet and perhaps exceed the DoE’s goals: “The companies are going to bridge the gap between what we’re doing at the lab scale, and what we eventually want to build at commercial scales.” Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute are also collaborating.
As part of the grant, the researchers will also design minicourses and experiments for underrepresented and minority high school students in BU’s Upward Bound Math Science program. The grant includes funds for at least one BU student per year to undertake a summer fellowship at BU’s Institute for Global Sustainability, where they’ll learn about energy policy.
The professors credit BU with priming the pump by investing in their work more than a decade ago. The results of their first collaboration led to bigger and bigger grants from the DoE. “But this [$5 million grant] was the big one, where it all came together,” says Basu. “And I think the nature of collaboration here really helped. BU is kind of unique in the way it encourages collaboration.”
— PATRICK L. KENNEDY
Gopalan, and Soumendra Basu.
Innocent Mole or Skin Cancer? FDA Clears Device with BU-Developed Technology That Makes Detection Easier
USING OPTICAL TECHNIQUE PIONEERED BY BME’S IRVING BIGIO, DERMASENSOR COULD CUT NUMBER OF MISSED CANCERS BY HALF
Maybe it’s just a funky-looking, unique-to-you mole. But that irregular patch or evolving mark could signal bad news: skin cancer, the most common form of cancer in the United States. Although spotting skin cancer early could save your life, it can be tough for even some medical professionals to judge if a mark is benign or potentially
harmful. A new noninvasive skin cancer detection device—powered by technology pioneered by Professor Irving Bigio (BME, ECE)—aims to make telling the difference easier and faster. And now, the FDA has cleared the device for US markets
DermaSensor uses light and AI to examine skin lesions and assess whether a patient should be referred to a specialist. The company bringing the handheld device to market says it has the potential to slash the number of missed skin cancers by half. DermaSensor’s underlying sensing technology, elastic scattering spectroscopy (ESS), was developed and refined by Bigio and his Biomedical Optics Lab at BU. Bigio is a scientific advisor to the eponymous company selling the device, which also licensed patents from Bigio and BU.
“The FDA had designated this as a breakthrough technology, which means they gave it higher priority for review because they see it as having a real impact,” says Bigio. “And the trials showed that it actually does work.”
“It’s a positive statement about BU’s commitment to interdisciplinary research that involves the engineering and physical sciences, as well as the medical school,” adds Bigio, who also holds positions in BU’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and College of Arts & Sciences physics department. “They are supportive of collaborative research across schools.”
According to the American Academy of Dermatology, one in five of us will grapple with skin cancer at some point in our lives, which is why it recommends regular skin exams. In its pivotal FDA study—the research that makes or breaks a new clinical technology—DermaSensor says researchers found the device had “a sensitivity of 96 percent across all 224 skin cancers.” It can detect the most frequent forms of skin cancer—basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma—and the less common, but more deadly, melanoma.
An optical technique, ESS involves directing pulses of light at tissue, then scrutinizing which colors of light bounce back to reveal important information about cellular and subcellular structures. In the case of
Irving Bigio (BME, ECE)
DermaSensor, the light can reveal whether tissue is potentially cancerous, as malignant and benign lesions scatter light differently. Bigio says it works equally well on different skin tones.
“The word elastic means that the light scatters but doesn’t change its wavelength; on the other hand, how efficiently it scatters and in what direction it scatters does depend on the wavelength,” says Bigio. “And that wavelength dependence is informative about the size and density of the microscopic structures in the tissue.”
In the clinic, a physician or nurse puts the tip of the DermaSensor on a lesion. The device then fires off a pulse of light and analyzes the spectral information of the backscattered light using an AI-powered algorithm. Eladio Rodriguez-Diaz (ENG’09), a former PhD student in Bigio’s lab and a coinventor on some of the patents, developed much of the sensor’s machine learning and data analysis technology.
“It’s incredibly gratifying to see Dr. Bigio’s innovative research incorporated into an FDA-cleared medical device, especially one with the potential to noninvasively detect skin cancer,” says Frances Forrester, director of business development in BU Technology Development. “Early detection is known to save lives, and now a new tool is available to US-based primary care providers and their patients through BU research.” — ANDREW THURSTON
DermaSensor’s underlying technology was developed and refined by Bigio at BU.
Algae Fuel Cell Tops Imagineering Competition
WITH A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY TEAM, A LEAP STUDENT DEVELOPS HIS CHILDHOOD DREAM INTO A PROMISING POWER SOURCE
Hatched in a ten-year-old’s kitchen and honed in Boston University’s cutting-edge makerspaces, a device that harvests electricity from algae won first prize in the 2024 Dean’s Imagineering Competition. The contest encourages the ideals of the Societal Engineer by giving students the opportunity to turn original ideas into entrepreneurial products with realworld impact
Jonathan Miller became obsessed with microbial fuel cells at age 10, after seeing a simple one in a science fair. “I would regularly trash the family kitchen,” he says, “attempting to make mud or algae batteries.” As a young adult, Miller earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology before returning to the science of renewable energy via the Late Entry Accelerated Program at BU’s College of Engineering, where he is earning a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering (ECE).
During a gym workout his first week at BU, Miller struck up a conversation with mechanical engineering (ME) junior Gustav Yang. Miller shared his concept for the first microbial fuel cell that would generate electricity directly from algae using cost-effective and nontoxic materials. Before long, Miller and Yang assembled a team including ME junior Rejwan Himel and two CAS juniors, Abigail Hassan (political science) and Mohammed Warde (biology).
In October, they entered their project, “Green Machine,” in the Imagineering Competition. Over the
course of the academic year, competing teams use machinery and tools in the Binoy K. Singh Imagineering Laboratory (SILab), along with a small stipend for additional materials, to design and build original technological solutions to societal problems. Green Machine and other teams also used the Bioengineering & Technology Entrepreneurial Center (BTEC) to run experiments and garnered support from the Engineering Student Innovation Fund.
“This project took a tremendous amount of research and time,” says Miller. “It is an algae microbial fuel cell solar panel, in that it harvests electricity from the sun through photosynthesis and generates electricity by the algae giving off electrons onto the anode through reduction, oxidation, and photosynthesis.” The result is an affordable, carbon-negative form of renewable energy.
In mid-April, nine teams presented their projects before a panel of judges consisting of Professor of the Practice Diane JosephMcCarthy (BME, Chem), Senior Associate Dean for Finance and Administration Richard Lally, and Professor Thomas Little (ECE, SE).
For their creativity, the quality of their prototype, the functionality of the project, and its potential to impact society, the judges awarded the Green Machine team first prize, $3,000.
“I will continue developing and perfecting my prototypes in BTEC, upscale them, and make a product that can be used commercially,” says Miller. “My vision is [that] this technology will be used as home solar panels at a fraction of [today’s] cost; on city buildings to generate electricity in
addition to cleaning city air; [as] a huge farm that could be used to power cities; and as a DIY instructional manual that people in remote areas can follow to create their own algae fuel cells to generate electricity.”
Second prize—$1,500—went to BME juniors Yash Patel, Luca Pungan, and Nikita Vinay Kishan for BreatheRight, a respiratory function monitoring device for asthma patients.
Several teams won $250 awards for bestin-class projects: ME seniors Nathan Sun, Zhonghao Wei, Zizai Ma, Yiming Yu, and Peng Qiu; BME junior Everett Guermont; and ECE first-year students Soud Alkharji, Charlie Van Hook, and Arav Tyagi.
— PATRICK L. KENNEDY
The Green Machine harnesses solar power by way of the natural metabolic processes of the microalgae Chlorella vulgaris
The Green Machine team presents at the Singh Imagineering Lab.
Big Award for Bold Plans in 3D Printing
BOLEY RECEIVES $2.23 MILLION DEFENSE GRANT
It takes eight hours for Assistant Professor William Boley (ME, MSE) and his team to test a material that’s been 3D printed from a combination of “inks” (such as liquid metals, polymers, and solvents). Eight hours—and he’s a materials synthesis expert with a state-ofthe-art lab. But with some new equipment and some bold ideas, Boley believes he can slash that time to one hour—and perhaps even down to a matter of minutes, if not less. He might even be able to assess the material while he’s printing it
That’s why the US Department of Defense has awarded Boley $2.23 million under the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP). The grant will enable Boley to accelerate the discovery and fabrication of advanced 3D printing inks.
Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing carries enormous potential.
But to make the highly complex, multifunctional materials and systems of the future—better robotic and optoelectronic devices, sensors, actuators, living materials, wearables, and implantables—the technology needs to take a giant leap in efficiency, Boley says.
While pushing 3D printing technology to its limits, Boley and colleagues have been crafting some extremely complex, multiingredient inks. “Our least complex ink could have three different components,” Boley says. “One of our more complicated inks has seven different ingredients.”
For example, Boley’s team created an ink that featured liquid metal droplets dispersed in a stretchable polymer (or elastomer) solution. The target property there was high electrical conductivity in a rubbery, flexible material, which might be useful in a soft robotic device.
Boley and his student researchers have succeeded in developing several such advanced inks, but “we arrived at these concentrations a bit by trial and error,” he says. After printing a structure, the researchers had to bring it to other labs to test it for the target properties.
But with the new high-tech scanners and custom printers that Boley is purchasing with the DURIP funds, and with his unique vision for setting up that equipment, “We can do all that in-house,”
Boley says. “We can produce different ink compositions and characterize them at the same time, all in one space.”
In other words, to see whether the materials are meeting their goals, Boley’s team will be assessing the materials as they print them, using a novel integration of chemical mapping scanners. “We can really use all those knobs that we have available to us to tailor our compositions on the fly,” says Boley.
Moreover, the new gear will help Boley build his own array of unique printheads, enabling the team to print structures at submicron scale, making for even more complex—and effective—materials.
— PATRICK L. KENNEDY
Boley is working towards the highly complex, multifunctional materials of the future.
William Boley (ME, MSE)
Air Quality Sensors Could Be Coming to a Bicycle Near You
ENG SENIORS’ DEVICE WINS 2024 JANETOS CLIMATE ACTION PRIZE
Imagine being able to contribute to scientific research just by riding a bike, your bicycle automatically collecting air quality data from the different neighborhoods you pedal through, helping to assemble a mobile network of air quality monitors. That’s the vision of an awardwinning team of ENG students.
For their senior design project, the team created a compact air quality sensor pack that can be attached to the front of a bicycle from Bluebikes, Boston’s public bike rental network. As air passes through the sensor box, it measures local levels of carbon dioxide, methane, particulate matter, and nitrous oxides, while also recording temperature and humidity. The sensor is equipped with a GPS to pinpoint where data is being collected, as well as an accelerometer, a device that senses the bike’s motion, so it knows when to switch on and off.
Squeezing all those gadgets into a 5˝x8˝ box, ensuring the electrical equipment could be jostled around without damage, all while remaining protected from harsh weather, proved to be a challenge.
“All of the components of the project are equally important,” says Sofiya Filippova
Globally, air pollution is getting worse. Cars, roads, fossil fuel infrastructure, wildfire smoke, industrial facilities, and other human activities often make air dirty and unhealthy.
One of the biggest challenges facing the students: fitting all their components into a 5”x8” box that could withstand the rigors of daily riding.
(ENG’24), who started working on the project in fall 2023. “Because if we don’t have the electronics working, or don’t have the communication, or don’t have the physical enclosure in place, everything falls apart.” There was also the added task of making sure the sensor box didn’t interfere with the Bluebikes’ operating system or the rider experience.
Filippova, along with her teammates— Lorenzo Barale (ENG’25), Luisa DiLorenzo (ENG’24), Maya Lobel (ENG’24), Leon Long (ENG’24), Benjamin Pedi (ENG’25), and Kai Raina Tung (ENG’24)—tackled all these elements over two semesters with Associate Professor Emily Ryan (ME). After months of tinkering and wiring, the team landed on a final design and took the sensor box out for a spin, attaching it with small zip ties to the front basket of a Bluebikes bicycle. The students took turns riding the bike, each through different Boston neighborhoods, and at the end of their test rides, reviewed the recorded data in a cloud-based communication system that showed data points mapped block-by-block throughout the city.
“You can clearly see where the data is mapped, on the scale of one city block, and that’s a huge success in our eyes,” Filippova says. With such promising results and potential, the team won the 2024 Janetos Climate Action Prize, an award given to students working on a high-impact project. The prize is open to projects funded by the Campus Climate Lab, a program led by BU’s Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS) in partnership with the University’s sustainability and research offices.
Globally, air pollution is getting worse. Cars, roads, fossil fuel infrastructure, wildfire smoke, industrial facilities, and other human activities often make air dirty and unhealthy. But the quality of the air we breathe can vary from town to town and neighborhood to neighborhood. Ryan, an associate director of IGS, helped lead this project as a way to get a more complete picture of air pollution in Boston.
“Does the current data being collected reflect air quality in every neighborhood? Absolutely not,” Ryan says. Currently, Boston reports air quality data from five sensors located around the city—in Kenmore
“All of the components of the project are equally important because if we don’t have the electronics working, or don’t have the communication, or don’t have the physical enclosure in place, everything falls apart.”
Square, Chinatown, Dorchester, Chelsea, and Roxbury. So, having an expansive network of air sensors constantly collecting and mapping data could provide valuable insights about places where there isn’t any air monitoring, and could even help utility companies find areas where there are gas pipes leaking methane, or pinpoint urban
heat islands that could use more trees and shade.
“We know that local conditions really affect air quality locally,” Ryan says. “The weather affects it, but also the trains, the buses, and the highways, so there are a lot of stakeholders who could be interested in this data.”
Before we start seeing air sensors attached to public rental bikes, there’s a lot more work to be done. Since winning the Janetos prize, the team has continued consulting with the company, which has been supportive and interested in the idea, and working on validating the data collected by testing it against commercial air sensors that are already used for research purposes around the BU campus. Ryan is also in conversation with BU Facilities Management & Operations to explore the possibility of adding sensor packs to the BU shuttle buses.
Filippova, who began the master’s program in mechanical engineering this fall, says she thoroughly enjoyed the bike project.
“Our team had the best time together,” she says. “I think our ability to produce a good product in the end is because we had so much fun doing it.” —
JESSICA COLAROSSI
From left: Leon Long, Luisa DiLorenzo, Kai Raina Tung, Emily Ryan, Benjamin Pedi, Sofiya Filippova, Lorenzo Barale.
Bringing the Brain Into Focus
WANG TEAM DEVELOPING NEW TYPE OF LIGHT SOURCE
Assistant Professor Tianyu Wang (ECE) has received a $2.5 million grant from the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative for a collaborative project on multiphoton microscopy, a technology used for deep-tissue imaging. Wang joined the ENG faculty in January 2024 Wang and his team, which includes researchers from Yale and Cornell, are developing a new type of light source that will substantially enhance the probability of nonlinear fluorescence excitation during the imaging process of multiphoton microscopy. This improved signal will increase both speed and imaging depth,
How Do Ceramic Materials Stay Solid at 2,000 Degrees Celsius?
SEAN LUBNER RECEIVES YOUNG INVESTIGATOR PROGRAM AWARD
Assistant Professor Sean Lubner (ME, MSE) has received a prestigious Young Investigator Program award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. His project, titled “Investigating Coupled Thermal, Mechanical, and Electrical Phenomena in High-Temperature Materials Using Thermal Wave Sensors (TWS),” focuses on the use of thermal wave sensors and a technique Lubner codeveloped that uses them to comprehensively explore and understand the intricate interplay between thermal, mechanical, and electrical properties in high-temperature solid materials
enabling novel but currently challenging experiments such as “direct imaging of the voltage of thousands of neurons within an entire neural circuit, and visualizing the communication among numerous neurons via neurotransmitters,” says Wang.
To achieve this goal, Wang’s team will use AI tools to search for the optimal excitation pathway for various fluorescent molecules, improving their brightness without modifying their structure. If successful, the new light source will enable researchers to capture faster dynamics within deeper sites for in vivo tissue imaging, resulting in some of the most detailed, high-quality data that has ever been gathered on activity deep within the brain.
In 2017, Wang won SPIE Photonic West’s JenLab Young Investigator Award for his work on developing the technique of three-photon calcium imaging; in 2023, he was awarded the Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship. His
Working with mainly ceramic composites, Lubner will seek to understand how these materials stay solid after hundreds of cycles of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius.
“Normally, it is hard to get a reading at these extreme temperatures, but with TWS, we think we can achieve real-time
areas of interest include physics-inspired computing, biomedical optics, optical information processing, and AI for science. He earned his PhD from Cornell University in 2018. — LEA RIVEL
measurements to see what gives them that property,” says Lubner.
With this type of data, Lubner and his team can go on to build theoretical models that describe properties in the ceramic— such as thermal conductivity and thermal transport—and explore how they are coupled to and interact with one another.
“Currently, we do not have a good way to model how this works, and we do not have a robust measurement system or platform that is capable of accurately evaluating all these different properties,” Lubner says. “I’m excited to build these theoretical models to fill and push past this gap in our current knowledge.”
Developing this understanding will help the team learn how to control and tune such properties, leading to the creation of composite materials with enhanced performance and stability. These new materials can then be used for a variety of applications requiring something that is strong, durable to high temperatures, and able to undergo fatigue of cycling—for example, in car engines—or in more cost-effective ways to store high-temperature thermal energy.
— CHARISMA NGUYEN-LAI
Tianyu Wang (ECE)
Sean Lubner (ME, MSE)
Can We Predict Deadly Lung Diseases Before It’s Too Late?
HADI NIA RECEIVES 2024 SLOAN RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP
Assistant Professor Hadi Nia (BME) has been named a 2024 Sloan Research Fellow, a competitive award presented annually to early career researchers across a range of scientific disciplines. Along with two other BU faculty, astronomer Chuanfei Dong and neurobiologist Meg Younger, Nia joins 126 scientists from the United States and Canada in receiving the honor
“This prestigious award is another recognition of the College of Engineering’s strength in mechanobiology, which is one of our core convergent research areas. Hadi’s work holds incredible promise for unlocking secrets behind cancer and pulmonary diseases,” says Elise Morgan, ENG dean ad interim. “The ultimate purpose of our research is improving people’s lives. This Sloan fellowship is the
“The ability to predict the stage at which a disease’s course is reversible—potentially leading to disease resolution instead of organ failure and patient mortality—could significantly impact disease management and treatment.”
latest of several major awards Hadi has earned that demonstrate his commitment to that pursuit.”
With each inhale, oxygen enters your lungs and gets moved to your blood, while carbon dioxide moves back to the lungs and is breathed out—a process essential for life. That’s why the effects of lung diseases, like a respiratory illness or cancer, can be so devastating and deadly.
To study how the lungs function in air-breathing animals, Nia uses a technology he developed nicknamed the “crystal ribcage.” More formally known as LungEx, the system allows for studying mouse lungs ex vivo by using a ventilator and perfusion pump to keep the lung functioning and a transparent container around the lungs to allow for real-time observation. The Sloan fellowship will help Nia use the technology to advance work to better understand lung resilience against diseases like cancer and pneumonia.
“As these diseases progress, there comes a critical point where the progression becomes irreversible, leading the lung toward collapse rather than resolution. Our goal is to predict these critical points at which the entire lung is at risk of collapse,” says Nia. The crystal ribcage will allow him to study the lung at the molecular level and see the air sacs and capillary vessels in mouse lungs at work.
To study how the lungs function in air-breathing animals, Nia uses a technology he developed nicknamed the “crystal ribcage.”
“The ability to predict the stage at which a disease’s course is reversible— potentially leading to disease resolution instead of organ failure and patient mortality—could significantly impact disease management and treatment,” he says.
The funding will help him bring together a diverse team of biomedical engineers, physicists, mathematicians, biologists, and immunologists to illuminate lung resilience in response to critical diseases.
“Being part of such an esteemed community is both incredibly exciting and humbling. Myself, as well as my lab members, are thrilled and energized, ready to channel this recognition into pivotal discoveries in the fields of cancer and pulmonary diseases,” Nia says.
— JESSICA COLAROSSI
Hadi Nia (BME)
Developing a New Liquid Biopsy Tool to Track Tumors
ERICA PRATT NAMED A RITA ALLEN FOUNDATION SCHOLAR
With her potentially revolutionary proposal for a more effective, minimally invasive method of detecting tumor activity, Assistant Professor Erica Pratt (BME, MSE, CAMED) has been named a 2024 Rita Allen Foundation Scholar, joining a prestigious group of innovative researchers in cancer, immunology, and neuroscience
A liquid biopsy expert, Pratt is focusing her research on protein kinases. These are enzymes that regulate protein expression, and they’re found in trace amounts throughout the blood stream, within the cells that a tumor sheds.
“If we have the technology to isolate these circulating biomarkers, then every time a cancer patient comes into a clinic, we can draw blood and then obtain tumor-specific information,” says Pratt, who is the Moorman-Simon Interdisciplinary Career Development Professor at ENG. That data could indicate if a tumor is metastasizing and whether a particular treatment is working, or if an alternative should be tried.
“The caveat,” says Pratt, “is that these biomarkers are extremely rare. It’s a onein-a-million event, so it’s truly a needlein-a-haystack problem, and you need really innovative technology to be able to isolate these cells and analyze them in any meaningful way.”
That’s what Pratt aims to do with the Rita Allen Foundation funds—up to $110,000 per year for three years. She is developing what would be the first probe capable of detecting circulating tumor cell kinase activity, providing patients and clinicians with consistent, up-to-date insights as a tumor evolves and responds to treatment.
“If you look at kinases, you get a high-level overview of information flux throughout a cell,” Pratt says. “What is a cell committing a lot of resources to? What are the pathways it’s trying to activate and control? And that can inform what kind of therapies should be selected.”
Moreover, since the technology can be used to evaluate treatment efficacy, it should have drug development and clinical trial applications as well.
The students in Pratt’s lab hail from a variety of disciplines, including biomedical engineering, chemical biology, and cell and molecular biology. “The project is inherently multidisciplinary,” she says. “We’re working at the interface of physical sciences and oncology.”
“Obviously, the award is transformative,” says Pratt. “This research has a lot of moving parts, a lot of high-risk elements. The application is exciting, but there is a lot of work ahead of us to get there, so having the investment from the Rita Allen Foundation, where they see the potential and are willing to help nurture and grow it, is really crucial for the type of research that we do.”
Pratt also credits her Moorman-Simon Interdisciplinary Career Development
“Cancer is something that affects so many people every day, and as an engineer, I always wanted to do something that tied to a real-life impact.”
Professorship (CDP) for helping her research efforts. “The CDP has accelerated my research program and was integral to generating the foundational preliminary data used in my proposal,” she says.
Pratt hopes that eventually, the project will make a difference in the lives of cancer patients. “Cancer is something that affects so many people every day,” she says, “and as an engineer, I always wanted to do something that tied to a real-life impact.”
— PATRICK L. KENNEDY
Erica Pratt (right) leads a lab that combines expertise in engineering, chemical biology, and oncology.
Amino acid bottles loaded onto an automated peptide synthesizer.
Speeding the Healing of Wounds in Old Age
EYCKMANS EARNS A $2 MILLION GRANT FROM THE HEVOLUTION FOUNDATION
Most medical and surgical treatments for wound care—such as the removal of dead tissue, cleaning and sterilization, closure with stitches or staples, and dressing—serve merely to facilitate living tissue’s own regeneration capacity. Tissue regeneration, a complex and intricate process that is still only partially understood, tends to serve us well in our youth but declines as we approach old age, and this decline can impede the healing of wounds
With an eye toward developing more advanced treatments, many scientists are attempting to better understand the wound-healing process and what precisely underlies its decline in old age. With a $2 million grant from the Hevolution Foundation, which supports research and entrepreneurship in health span science, Research Assistant Professor Jeroen Eyckmans (BME) and his team will study impaired wound healing through a synthetic biology framework.
“When wounds don’t heal in a timely fashion,” says Eyckmans, “it can be very painful, hindering [patients’] ability to function at work or at home. There is also a high risk of infection, which can lead to life-threatening sepsis. The last resort is sometimes amputation.” Currently in the US, it is estimated that impaired wound healing degrades quality of life for nearly 2.5 percent of the population and is suffered by 10.5 million Medicare beneficiaries. In other words, as the elderly population continues expanding disproportionately, delayed wound healing represents an urgent clinical and societal challenge.
Eyckmans and his colleague Daniel Roh, an assistant professor of surgery at
the BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, will study the role of the extracellular matrix—if cells are the building blocks of life, the extracellular matrix is the scaffolding. In addition to providing structure and support to living tissues, the matrix helps facilitate cellular growth, movement, communication, and other functions.
One of those functions is wound healing. “After the clotting phase, cells like fibroblasts move in and build what we call a provisional matrix,” says Eyckmans. How this provisional matrix changes throughout aging is one of the team’s key research questions. Once they better understand these changes and their connection to delayed wound healing, they hope to engineer a matrix in aged tissue that more closely resembles the matrix in young tissue, then observe whether this upgraded matrix helps to accelerate the healing process.
Another key question is how the provisional matrix interacts with cellular senescence—the process by which aging
cells lose their ability to grow and divide. Eyckmans and Roh will use bioengineered model systems to better understand the extracellular matrix, senescent cells, and the “crosstalk” that occurs between them during the wound-healing process. Eyckmans says this knowledge will enable the development of more sophisticated treatments.
“Currently, most wound dressings and topical treatments attempt merely to reduce inflammation or speed collagen production,” Eyckmans says. “My hope is that our work will inform a new type of dressing that is focused on restoring the wound bed, making it function similarly to how it does in a young population.” He explains that this may mean, for instance, a dressing that releases a drug that removes senescent cells locally at a precise time in the healing process. “It may also mean engineering dressing material that more closely resembles the complexity of the wound bed itself, which contains over 300 extracellular proteins, each with a specific role,” Eyckmans says. — JIM COONEY
This image, captured with a confocal microscope, shows a sample of microtissue engineered by Jeroen Eyckmans’ team in which cells called fibroblasts are assembling a provisional matrix to close a wound.
Jeroen Eyckmans (BME) shows the laser ablation microscope he used to capture the image of an injured engineered microtissue displayed on the monitor.
research
Staying a Step Ahead of Viral Mutations
TEPLENSKY EARNS BECKMAN YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD FOR PROMISING VACCINE RESEARCH
It’s an annual hassle: scheduling the flu shot, getting to the clinic, waiting in line—then the unpleasant jab. But imagine if you could safely hit snooze on that task, getting away with one influenza vaccine every two or even three years
That’s just one potential benefit of a research project led by Boston University College of Engineering Assistant Professor Michelle Teplensky (BME, MSE), who is seeking to lengthen the lifetimes of single vaccines. And with the help of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, there’s a good chance she’ll succeed.
Teplensky was named one of the 2024 Beckman Young Investigators. She and her team will receive $600,000 over four years to engineer versatile vaccine responses through nanomaterial design, with implications for the treatment of not only the flu but also other infectious diseases, including the viruses that cause COVID-19, HIV, and more.
Vaccine design relies on the use of proteins—the important molecules that serve as a target for our immune system. Proteins teach our immune system what to go after when we’re exposed in the future to the pathogen. Using proteins in vaccine formulations has many advantages, but the way viruses keep mutating, it requires a scramble in protein design to keep up, necessitating those yearly shots. “People are doing research now for next year’s influenza,” says Teplensky, “trying to guess what the virus will mutate into, because they need to make a vaccine containing a mutated target protein that will cover that.”
“This is high-risk, highreward research, and they’re funding us when we’re at the really exciting initial stages, because they can see the potential for future impact.”
Teplensky proposes to redesign vaccines using porous nanosized scaffolds made of tunable chemical building blocks that will determine the rate at which the proteins are released and processed by immune cells. This will effectively change the propagated immune response and ultimately make the same vaccine more effective and longer-lasting.
Because this platform only changes the way the protein gets processed in the body, rather than requiring the protein itself to be modified in the lab, it means a protein can be taken “off the shelf,” Teplensky says, for speedier vaccine development when a new virus or viral mutation arises. “Also, when you put proteins into these nanomaterials we’re using, the vaccines are very stable—and they’re actually shelf-stable, so they don’t require cold
storage.” That means savings in transportation and energy costs as well.
The problem of persistent mutations has vexed virologists for years, and Teplensky and her student trainees—a majority of whom are women, and many of whom are either underrepresented minorities, first-generation students, or first-generation Americans—are combining “chemistry, immunology, engineering, and everything in between,” she says, to solve the challenge.
“I’m incredibly grateful to the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation for awarding this recognition and funding to me and my lab,” Teplensky says. “This is high-risk, high-reward research, and they’re funding us when we’re at the really exciting initial stages, because they can see the potential for future impact.”
Teplensky and the other nine 2024 Beckman Young Investigators exemplify the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation’s mission of supporting the most promising young faculty researchers in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences, says Anne Hultgren, executive director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. “We are excited to welcome each of these outstanding scientists into the Beckman family, to help launch these extremely creative projects and to see them reach their full potential.” —
PATRICK L. KENNEDY
Michelle Teplensky (BME, MSE) with doctoral student Ezra Cho.
dean’s leadership advisory board
Omar Ali ’96
Director of Operations, Petra Engineering
Industries Co.
Carla Boragno
Former SVP, Global Head of Engineering & Facilities, Pharma Technical Operations, Roche/Genentech
Tye Brady ’90
Chief Technologist, Amazon Robotics
Deborah Caplan ’90
Former Executive VP, Human Resources & Corporate Services, NextEra Energy
Vanessa Feliberti ’93
Corporate VP, M365 Services Platform Engineering, Microsoft
Mikhail Gurevich ’07, Questrom’12 Managing Partner, Dominion Capital
Anand Krishnamurthy ’92,’96
President and CEO, Affirmed Networks
Ezra Kucharz ’90
President, Tull Investments
Abhijit Kulkarni ’93,’97
COO, Cellino Biotech Inc.
Antoinette Leatherberry ’85
Principal (Retired), Deloitte Consulting Trustee, Boston University
Daniel Maneval ’82
Nonclinical Biopharma Consultant, January Therapeutics
Kathleen McLaughlin ’87
Chief Sustainability Officer, Walmart Inc. President, Walmart Foundation
Manuel Mendez ’91
CEO, Quotient Limited
Rao Mulpuri ’92,’96
Former CEO, View Inc.
Girish Navani ’91
Co-Founder and CEO, eClinicalWorks
Nirva Kapasi Patel ’00
Exec. Dir., Animal Law & Policy, Harvard Law School
Sharad Rastogi ’91
CEO, Work Dynamics Technology, JLL
Avanish Sahai ’89
Fellow, Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute
Binoy K. Singh, MD ’89
Exec VP & CMO, Gentiva Health Services
Francis Troise ’87
Pres., Trading & Connectivity Solutions; Vice Chair, Capital Markets Broadridge Financial Solutions
William Weiss ’83,’97
Vice President of Manufacturing and Logistics, General Dynamics Mission Systems
Emeritus members include John Abele; Roger Dorf ‘70; Joseph Healey ‘88; Venkatesh Narayanamurti; Richard Reidy, Questrom’82; and John Tegan ‘88
Boston University College of Engineering
Elise Morgan
dean ad interim
Solomon R. Eisenberg
senior associate dean for academic programs
Coralie Eggeling
assistant dean for development & alumni relations
John White
biomedical engineering chair
Michael Seele director of communications
Patrick L. Kennedy managing editor
Boston University College of Engineering
Siddharth Ramachandran
interim associate dean for research and faculty development
Tom Little
associate dean for educational initiatives
College of Engineering
Richard Lally senior associate dean for finance and administration
Pamela Audeh
assistant dean for outreach & diversity
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Students showed off their projects at the newly opened Robotics & Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center. See pp. 3–4 inside.
