Engineering Microenvironment-triggered Self-reporting Immunotherapy
Mentors Project Description Precision medicine has a transformative impact in managing heterogeneous disorders, including cancer, metabolic, and neurological diseases. At the living interface of precision engineering and health, the Hao laboratory develops molecular and cellular tools to precisely track and control disease biology in intact organisms. The specific research interests include (1) noninvasive disease detection […]
Thermocapillary Manipulation of Liquid Optical Waveguides
Mentors Project Description The overall goal of this project is to explore how light can be guided and manipulated inside a thin liquid film, turning it into an optical waveguide with real-time dynamic control over its functionality. If a liquid film is suspended within an immiscible liquid environment, it will maintain uniform and smooth surfaces, […]
Hardware Programming for Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems
Mentors Project Description The student will conduct background research on hardware programming and will build an all-electrical setup for precision measurement of an electro-mechanical resonator. The student will be provided with relevant hardware and software, including FPGA (field programmable gate arrays) boards, their corresponding IDEs (integrated development environment), and other pieces of electronics. The student […]
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 […]