Multimaterial 3D Printing of Multifunctional Materials
Mentors Project Description The Additive Assembly Laboratory (AAL) at BU has a variety of active projects that focus on multimaterial 3D printing of multifunctional materials, ranging from 4D printing (3D printing materials that change shape over time in response to a stimulus – time being the fourth axis), 3D printed optics, robots, soft electronics, and […]
Vanessa Moran
Vanessa attends the University of Massachusetts Amherst, majoring in Microbiology with a minor in Spanish. Her time as an REU at Boston University was her first research experience beyond the classroom, and wants to pursue a graduate degree following undergrad. Engineering microenvironment-triggered self-reporting immunotherapy: Vanessa’s project, working alongside Liang Hao in the Hao lab, was […]
Enhancing Cardiac Microbundle Stability for Improved In-Vitro Force Measurement
Mentors Project Description Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, yet breakthroughs in cardiac research remain challenging. Animal models fail to fully replicate human heart physiology, while studying live human hearts is ethically restrictive. Cardiac Microbundles (CMBs), composed of human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) and cardiac fibroblasts (CFs), offer a promising in-vitro […]
Motion Tracking for Soft Robotic Arms
Mentors Project Description The Soft Robotics Control Lab at Boston University is developing large, pneumatic soft robot arms for interaction with humans. In order to test our autonomous control systems for these robots, we need to sense the position of the parts of the robot in 3D space. This REU project seeks to integrate our […]
Machine Learning Optimization of OAM-Mediated Nonlinear Fiber Optics
Mentors Project Description Structured light – i.e. light with spatially-tailored intensity, phase, or polarization properties – has become a ubiquitous tool across myriad applications in optics; including biological imaging, quantum optics, telecommunications, and more. In particular, it has been shown that light beams which carry orbital angular momentum (OAM) can propagate for kilometer-scale distances in […]
Studying Thermal Properties of Direct Air Capture Adsorbents with Hot Disk Instruments
Mentors Project Description Climate change is among the most critical challenges facing humanity today. Society’s infrastructure, agriculture, and health are threatened by global warming, which leads to floods, unprecedented weather patterns, and damaging natural disasters. No amount of emissions reductions alone will be able to reduce emissions enough to stop irreparable global warming. Thus, Direct […]
User Interface for Electronic Control of a Biospired Soft Robot
Mentors Project Description The project will involve developing a graphical user interface for controlling electro-permanent magnets (EPMs)- based valves. To select the fluid lines that will activate the channel of our soft actuators, we configure electro-permanent magnets as electronically activated pinch valves. These are used to control an octopus-inspired soft robot for underwater exploration. The […]
Population Responses of Living Neural Networks to Periodic Drive
Mentors Project Description The hippocampal formation (HF) in mammals is responsible for collecting information about the sensory world and, if appropriate, storing that information as memories, to be offloaded to other brain structures later. The HF has a number of notable response properties, including nested, quasi-periodic activity. In this project, the student will work with […]
An In Vitro Model of the Infarct Border Zone
Mentors Project Description The severity of a heart attack is determined by the area of heart muscle affected by the occluded vessel, but also by a‘border zone’ (BZ) that separates the infarct region from the unaffected heart muscle. The BZ has been implicated in adverse remodeling that occurs after a heart attack, but because the […]
Tingting Fang
Tingting Fang is from Melrose, MA, and teaches developmental and higher-level mathematics courses at North Shore Community College. These courses include Algebra, Statistics, Calculus I, II, III, and differential equations. Becoming a teacher was Tingting’s childhood dream. After getting her Ph.D., she decided to teach college level courses. Her favorite part about teaching is the opportunity […]