July 5-11, 2021

Dr. Payman Dehghanian (ECE) has received a three-year, $360,000 National Science Foundation grant for the project “Mobility-As-A-Service for Resilience Delivery in Power Grids: Stochastic Programming Advancements under Decision-Dependent Uncertainties.” As power grids are constantly subject to potential extreme emergencies that may leave communities without electricity and pose critical threats to health and public safety, this project aims to offer a new decision-making paradigm to deploy mobile power sources (e.g., mobile energy storage systems, mobile emergency generators, electric vehicles, and electric buses) to enhance the resilience of communities and critical infrastructures when facing extreme events. Dr. Dehghanian is the principal investigator (PI) on the grant and is working with the co-PI Dr. Miguel Lejeune (GWSB and courtesy appointment in ECE).

On June 15, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued Patent No. 11,035,792, “Nanohole Array Based Sensors With Various Coating and Temperature Control,” to Dr. Mona Zaghloul (ECE), Yangyang Zhao, Stephen Semancik, and Kurt Benkstein. This is the second patent issued to Dr. Zaghloul in less than a month.

Dr. Emilia Entcheva (BME) has published a new article on tissue engineering with her students and postdoc. Christianne Chua, who joined the lab as a freshman undergraduate and finished her master’s degree in May is the lead author; she was a Barry Goldwater Scholar and Clare Boothe Luce Fellow during her work on this project. The paper citation is: C. J. Chua, J. L. Han, W. Li, W. Liu, and E. Entcheva, “ Integration of Engineered ‘Spark-Cell’ Spheroids for Optical Pacing of Cardiac Tissue,” Frontiers in Bioengineering & Biotechnology, 9, 491, 2021.

The Associated Press quoted Dr. Joseph Barbera (EMSE) regarding the recent Florida condo collapse in the June 29 article “Crews spend 5th day atop shaky pile of collapsed concrete.’’ Dr. Barbera also spoke to Black News Channel about the collapse.

The Washington Post quoted Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE) in the July 2 article “15 million people in the U.S. have missed their second dose of the coronavirus vaccine, CDC says.’’

In its July 2 article “Scientists devise a battery-free pacemaker that can be absorbed by the body,’’ STAT quoted Dr. Igor Efimov (BME) about a study he co-authored with his colleagues to design a temporary, battery-free pacemaker that can be broken down by the patient’s body. The paper, “Fully implantable and bioresorbable cardiac pacemakers without leads or batteries,” was published last week in Nature Biotechnology. Articles about the study also appeared in  The Guardian, PhysicsWorld, and other media outlets.

On July 1, Mr. Scott Sklar (director of renewable energy, SEAS Environmental and Energy Management Institute) was featured in an Al Jazeera English television news program on global climate change. The program was sparked by the recent record-breaking heatwave in western Canada and the US, causing a spike in heat-related deaths, with officials warning that the weather is likely to remain at scorching levels. Among his comments, Mr. Sklar said the “Climate change has to stop being a Democratic thing and become an American thing.” The program also featured comments by President Biden and EPA Administrator Michael Regan. (Program clip)

The Washington Post quoted Dr. Suresh Subramaniam (ECE) in the June 29 article “Their grandparents’ landline from the collapsed condo kept calling. They still don’t have answers.’’ 

On June 15, Mr. Joe Cascio (co-director, SEAS Environmental and Energy Management Institute) gave a plenary session address at the U.S.-China Carbon Neutral Technology Innovation Summit, sponsored by the George W. Bush China Foundation, the National Center for Sustainable Development, and the Energy Investment Professional Committee of the China Investment Association. Also presenting at the summit were Neil Bush and other notable speakers. Mr. Cascio’s remarks were covered in the Beijing Review, China's only national news magazine in English, in the June 28 article “Tech-based innovations for carbon neutrality require cooperation between China and the U.S.”

Dr. Kausik Sarkar (MAE) presented the keynote speech “Contrast microbubbles for ultrasound imaging, therapeutics and tissue engineering: Interfacial rheology, jet and microstreaming flows” at the American Society of Thermal and Fluids Engineers’ 5th & 6th Thermal and Fluids Engineering Conference, held May 26-28.

On June 25, Dr. Jigar Shah (visiting scholar and advisory board member, SEAS Environmental and Energy Management Institute) was the keynote speaker at the webinar “How Green Is Your Business: Why You Need to Go Green and How to Do It,” hosted by the US Embassy in India. Praveena Sanjay, director of climate and sustainability at the World Institute of Sustainable Energy, moderated the webinar. The webinar helped participants understand the environmental and economic benefits of going green and covered a series of best practices in green business for small and medium enterprises.