Awards from BU Technology Development provide a boost to innovations out of ENG
Three BU College of Engineering (ENG) projects won 2026 Ignition Awards from Boston University’s Technology Development office, each garnering $75,000 as well as recognition that these innovative ideas are ready to make the leap from the lab to the real world. In addition, three early-stage ENG projects earned smaller prizes.
The Ignition Award winners from ENG are:
A Less Invasive, Drug-Free Knee Pain Solution
The team’s technology is a tiny, injectable implant that could wirelessly dial down the volume of signals from selected nerves, reducing knee pain. The device, which is made of a biodegradable, conductive polymer, looks like a small piece of pencil lead. It’s inert, but the magic happens when microwaves—high frequency electromagnetic waves rather than ovens—are directed at it. “The implant just acts as a focusing mechanism for the microwaves, enhancing them at the target spot, so only that nerve gets affected,” says project lead Carolyn Marar (ENG’23,’25).
Optical Technology to Reduce Military Drone Threats
New technology is being developed “to reduce cost and improve performance of deformable mirror systems,” which the team says, “would improve civilian and military safety by enabling affordable, scalable directed-energy [high beams of energy] defenses against low-cost drone threats.” Project leads: Thomas Bifano, BU Photonics Center director and a College of Engineering professor of mechanical engineering, and David Bishop, an ENG professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Silent Underwater Propulsion Technology
BU engineers are developing a bioinspired jet propulsion technology that could power underwater robots and vehicles. (It may also have applications in fluid pumps.) The team says it could be particularly beneficial on acoustic-sensitive missions, from defense to aquaculture, making “underwater operations quieter, longer-endurance, and lower-maintenance.” Project lead: Tommaso Ranzani, an ENG assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
The early-stage winners from ENG are projects exploring tissue evaluation (Michael Albro, an ENG associate professor of mechanical engineering), autonomous science instruments (Keith Brown, an ENG professor of mechanical engineering), and in-soil sensors (Miguel Jimenez, an ENG assistant professor of biomedical engineering.
All told, ten research projects across the University earned awards from BU Technology Development this year, ranging from a synthetic enamel for sensitive teeth to a novel chemotherapeutic that might extend life for people with aggressive pancreatic cancer.