News

Matt Geib: Reimagining the World of Birth Control
Women have historically carried the financial and health-related burdens of contraception. There are currently around 12 birth control methods marketed toward the demographic, with the... More

Jillian Rix Mulligan- GWISE Feature by the OSDO
For Women's History Month, The Office of the Senior Diversity Officer (OSDO) put out a feature on women at BU making an impact on our community. More

David Boas to Deliver Annual DeLisi Lecture
To recognize their contributions to engineering and society, Arthur G. B. Metcalf Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor David Boas (BME, ECE) is the recipient of... More

Cheng & Tian’s Newest Microscopy Advance Published by Nature Communications
Professor Ji-Xin Cheng’s research group has made notable strides in improved chemical imaging technologies, especially for medical purposes, over the last few years. More

Christine Ritzkowski Elected to Academic Resilience Consortium Steering Committee
Our own Divisions Graduate Programs Manager, Christine Ritzkowski has just been elected to the Academic Resilience Consortium (ARC) Steering Committee. ARC is "an association of faculty, More

Materials Grant Reimbursement Recipients
The Division of Materials Science and Engineering awarded Professors Soumendra Basu (ME), Xi Ling (Chemistry), Roberto Paiella (ECE), and Joerg Werner (ME) $10,000 each in... More

Pushing the Boundaries of Photonic Sensing
Professor Luca Dal Negro has received a $450K grant from the Army Research Office to pursue improvements in quantum photonic sensing and detection technology driven by the development of novel nonlinear nanostructures. More

MSE REU, Summer 2023
Undergraduate students from 2- and 4-year institutions are encouraged to apply to the MSE REU for the opportunity to participate in authentic cutting-edge research projects... More

Zhenan Bao, Stanford University Skin-Inspired Organic Electronics 12/2 @ 3:30PM. RSVP by 11/28.

What Happened to the Robots in BU’s COVID-19 Testing Lab? They’re Getting a New Mission
Its robots are still processing hundreds of tests, but with fewer of us swabbing our noses, the custom-built lab is opening up its facilities to researchers from across the University More

Seeing a Way to Combat Cancer
In the fight to treat ovarian cancer, innovative chemical imaging techniques developed by Professor Ji-Xin Cheng (ECE, BME, MSE) are fast becoming valuable tools, as reported in two high-impact journals in the space of two months. More

MADE with Machine Learning: Utilizing AI to Design the Next Generation of Semiconductor Devices
With the help of advanced, physics-informed machine learning (PIML) techniques, Professors Enrico Bellotti & Luca Dal Negro are setting out to transform the status quo of electronic device design, with the support of a $2.5M grant from the Army Research Office. More

Building a New Kind of Faculty
If you want to harness the power of having faculty from multiple disciplines address a societal challenge, you have to make it easy for them to do so. Cross-disciplinary collaboration has long been part of the college’s DNA, and that culture is now being formalized in way that is unlike any other engineering school. More

Building a Collaborative Culture
Building a collaborative culture involves retaining and recruiting faculty committed to, and excited by, the concept. That requires strong leadership that can guide and encourage faculty. The College of Engineering appointed long-time faculty member Elise Morgan to do just that as Associate Dean for Research & Faculty Development. More

Getting Tough Fast
Brown lab combines machine learning and mechanics to speed up discovery of impact-resistant materials More

Nia Earns NIH Award for Ground-Breaking Lung Research Technology
Assistant Professor Hadi Nia (BME, MSE) has earned the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award. Granting him nearly $2.5 million, the award... More

BU Materials Day
Materials Day 2022 | Simulation and Modeling of Extended Materials: Connecting Scales for Practical Applications Friday, October 14, 2022 8:30am – 4:30pm 100% Virtual Event Host: Professor Sahar Sharifzadeh

Communicating with Cells in Their Natural Language
A biomimetic method of talking to cells might lead to targeted drug delivery, improved prosthetics, and other applications. More

The Blurring Line Between Biology and Technology

The Quest for a Heart Attack Cure
A BU-led team is engineering small patches of cardiac muscle that could repair the heart, treat heart disease, and speed drug development By David Levin for... More

Hector Grande’s Immigrant Parents Helped Him Seize the Opportunity That Eluded Them
My First-Gen Story: In BU Todays' occasional series My First-Gen Story, students, faculty, staff, and alumni share, in their own words, what it’s like to be... More

Growing Tissue and Engineers
CELL-MET summer programs broaden the pipeline of research engineers By Patrick L. Kennedy “Graduate school was never a thought,” says Nicole Bacca. As a teenager applying to... More

New Miniature Heart Could Help Speed Heart Disease Cures
Boston University–led team has engineered a tiny living heart chamber replica to more accurately mimic the real organ and provide a sandbox for testing new... More

Sharon Garners $4.9 Million to Test Green Home Retrofits
The Department of Energy has awarded the Fraunhofer USA Center for Manufacturing Innovation, led by Professor Andre Sharon (MSE, ME), a grant of $4.9 million... More

Newly Named Allen Distinguished Investigators Aim to Recreate Lungs
The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation has awarded funding to a trio of BU faculty for a bold, early-stage project aimed at lab-grown lungs that... More

Cross-disciplinary research teams win Kilachand funding
Five Studies Pushing the Limits of Science: This year’s Kilachand fund awards will support pioneering research across engineering and life sciences More

It Looks Loopy, But It Works
Loops of string make rock piles stand tall in study by Holmes and Guerra By Patrick L. Kennedy Say a missile or an earthquake has just damaged... More
POV: Where Are the Tenured Black Female Professors?
What we need to do to support Black women in academia. Originally published in BU Today. By Professor Malika Jeffries-EL (CHEM, MSE). More

AHA Moment: Lejeune Awarded Funding for Heart Cell Data Work
By Patrick L. Kennedy With a promising technology aimed at combating heart disease, Assistant Professor Emma Lejeune (ME) has earned the American Heart Association (AHA) Career... More

These Soft Robotic Grippers Were Inspired by an Ancient Japanese Art Form
Douglas Holmes, BU PhD student Yi Yang and alum Katie Vella explain how they were inspired a traditional Japanese art of paper cutting (cousin of origami paper-folding art), to design soft robotic grippers. Their work was published in in Science Robotics. More

From the Dalkon Shield to Britney Spears’ IUD: Why Diverse Teams Need to Be Involved in Contraceptive Design
When the people who are the main users of a technology are not consulted in the design phase of that technology, the results for the end users are subpar and sometimes outright harmful. More

Photoacoustic Stimulation with Single-Neuron Precision Developed by a BU Team
An article by a BU team entitled “Non-genetic Photoacoustic Stimulation of Single Neurons” will appear in Light: Science & Applications. This research is led by Professors Chen Yang (ECE, Chem, MSE) and Ji-Xin Cheng (ECE, BME, MSE) in collaboration with Professor John White (BME) and Professor Heng-Ye Man (Biology). The graduate students and researchers who made key contributions to the work include Linli Shi (Chemistry), Ying Jiang (ECE), Fernando Fernandez (BME), Guo Chen (ECE), and Lu Lan (ECE). More

Xin Zhang on WSJ’s The Future of Everything Podcast
As a researcher on top sound reduction, BU Professor Xin Zhang explains practical applications and real-life solutions of her work. More

Three ENG Faculty Promoted
Three College of Engineering faculty have been promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure “Each year, these promotions and awards of tenure mark an... More

5 Projects That Push the Limits of Physics, Fabrication Techniques, Algorithm Design
Two engineering professors among the NSF CAREER award recipients: William Boley and Francesco Orabona. Each will receive funding to advance their areas of research for the next five years. More

3 BME Professors Elected to IAMBE
Congratulations to BU BME Professors Chris Chen, Joyce Wong and Mark Grinstaff on being elected 2021 Fellows of The International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering. More

Gerry Fine to Retire
Professor of the Practice Gerald J. Fine (ME, MSE) has announced that he will retire at the end of this year. Fine is the director... More

How to Create Safe, Energy-Efficient Buildings in a Post-Covid World
BU Innovators Address New Requirements of Commercial Real Estate by Maya Bhat & Maureen Stanton, CISE Staff Smart building technology has been a growing trend in the... More

Joyce Wong Named President-Elect of AIMBE
Professor Joyce Wong (BME, MSE), has been named president-elect of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), one of the foremost biomedical engineering... More
Spotting Osteoarthritis When It Starts
Albro and team develop Raman spectroscope to diagnose the degenerative disease By Patrick L. Kennedy With a potentially game-changing application of laser technology to a disease that... More

Sharon donates thousands of masks made at ENG
When last spring sprung a sudden need for face masks worldwide, suppliers were caught flat-footed. Professor Andre Sharon (MSE, ME) asked himself, “Who’s in the... More

Clearly Seeing a Green Future
Helping buildings reach net zero, a high-tech smart windows company led by Rao Mulpuri (’92, ’96) just went public By Patrick L. Kennedy We couldn’t live without... More

A Tool to Measure Cartilage Health
Professor Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME) has successfully developed technology that can assess cartilage health and detect early signs of degeneration: the Raman arthroscope. The tool uses light technology and is inserted into a patient’s joint with a hypodermic needle. It is a “game changer" for patients with osteoarthritis. More

Three ENG Faculty Named AIMBE Fellows
Three ENG faculty members have been elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE): Associate Professor Doug Densmore (ECE, BME), Associate Professor Mo Khalil (BME), and Professor Katherine Zhang (ME, BME, MSE). More

Can Droplets be Used to Stop, Instead of Spread, Disease?
ENG, CDC researchers quantify how droplet formation might damage microbes, reducing disease transmission By Patrick L. Kennedy It happens in a flash. As you cough up a... More

Khalil, Denmore and Zhang elected to AIMBE College of Fellows
The AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer, and includes the field’s outstanding leaders, engineers, entrepreneurs, and innovators. More

Assistant Professor Sahar Sharifzadeh awarded $720K to advance field of supramolecular materials
By Alex LaSalvia Assistant Professor Sahar Sharifzadeh (ECE, MSE) was awarded funding from the National Science Foundation to develop computational models of bio-inspired materials. The award of... More

Professor Cheng Awarded $2.4 Million Grant by NIH

Plastics: Durable, Diverse, and Indestructible
PBS broadcast NOVA invites Professor Malika Jeffries-EL (Chemistry, MSE) to explain plastics. Watch the full PBS segment here Brief episode abstract: Through a series of lab experiments, "Beyond... More

This 10-Foot-Long Machine Churns Out 2,000 Face Masks an Hour
BU engineers say the printing press–like machine could be installed at, and used by, hospitals, corporations, and universities By Rich Barlow, Video by Devin Hahn, Photography by Cydney... More