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 Florida International University (FIU), Bacca picked engineering for a major because she couldn’t imagine following four years of college with additional years of law or medical school. “I […]
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 heart disease treatments By Andrew Thurston There’s no safe way to get a close-up view of the human heart as it goes about its work: you can’t just pop it […]
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 mimic the real organ in all its fractal complexity. The proposal of Associate Professor Wilson Wong (BME), Professor Christopher Chen (BME, MSE), and School of Medicine Professor Darrell Kotton has […]
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
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 your apartment building. Stone rubble litters the street. Must you wait for the Army Corps of Engineers to arrive, clear away the rubble, and rebuild the blasted wall? […]
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 Development Award. Lejeune’s software and computational methods have the potential to empower future researchers to develop medicine and artificial tissue that will cure cases of cardiac disease—the leading cause […]
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.
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.
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).
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.