Health Care
SCH: INT: Distributed Analytics for Enhancing Fertility in Families
The demands of modern life, education and career choices, as well as the availability of assisted reproductive technologies, are leading many individuals and couples to delay childbearing. This has contributed to infertility and sub-fertility emerging as significant public health problems in the U.S., affecting about 15% of couples, involving both men and women, and resulting […]
Using Soft Robotics to Increase Safety and Success in Surgery
Lung cancer affects more than 230,000 Americans, and more than 120,000 will die from it every year. However, the efficiency and consistency of lung cancer biopsies are low, reaching nearly 81%, according to a recent study. Professor Sheila Russo, the founder and director of the Boston University Material Robotics Laboratory, works to combat untrustworthy cancer […]
Sabelhaus Research: Advancing the Safety of Soft Robots for Human Interactions
The emergence of soft robots will enable safe human interactions which will allow robots to assist in the industrial, medical, automotive and space industries. College of Engineering Professor Andrew Sabelhaus (ME, SE), has been working on making soft robots safer to improve these human interaction tasks, in areas such as medicine, as well as […]
GCR: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: MICRO-BIO-GENETICS FOR PROGRAMMABLE ORGANOID FORMATION
This project aims at defining a new area of dynamically-controlled, robot-assisted biological design. A convergent research team consisting of experts in microrobotics, machine learning, and synthetic biology will focus on developing a radically new approach towards analyzing and replicating intricate cellular patterning in mammalian tissues. Not only will this research result in new biological rules, […]
Faculty across five BU research centers will work together to prevent future pandemics
A multidisciplinary team of researchers at Boston University will work towards predicting and preventing future pandemics as part of a new $1 million project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Faculty members from the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, the Center for Information & Systems Engineering (CISE), the […]
PIPP Phase I: Predicting and Preventing Epidemic to Pandemic Transitions
The COVID-19 pandemic and its effects, both in terms of the millions of lives lost and the trillions in estimated costs, are a recent example of the devastation pandemics can cause. Any discernible progress in the prediction, early detection, and rapid response would have significant impacts on human welfare. The overarching goal of this project […]
Could a Computer Diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia?
It takes a lot of time—and money—to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. After running lengthy in-person neuropsychological exams, clinicians have to transcribe, review, and analyze every response in detail. But researchers at Boston University have developed a new tool that could automate the process and eventually allow it to move online. Their machine learning–powered computational model can […]
New Technology Could Predict When Someone’s Mobility is Declining
CISE Faculty Affiliate Roberto Tron uses Visual-Inertial Filtering for Clinically-Relevant Human Walking Quantification As we age, the likelihood of falling and getting injured increases. But what if we could prevent these accidents from happening? CISE faculty affiliate Roberto Tron is working on preventing injuries by monitoring mobility through cameras, sensors, machine learning, and estimation algorithms […]
Pregnancy Models Give Birth to New Health Insights
Having a baby is a life-changing decision that often requires a great deal of time and energy to ensure a positive outcome. But the cost of assisted reproductive technologies like artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and the emotional impacts of infertility can be a lot to bear. To try to improve the chances of […]
Privacy-Preserving Cloud Computing using Homomorphic Encryption
In today’s data-driven world, a large amount of data is collected by billions of devices (cell phones, autonomous cars, handheld game consoles, etc.), and this data is then processed in the cloud. A common approach to maintain data privacy in the cloud is to keep the data in encrypted form, and we decrypt the data […]