• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineering researchers have used an ultrasound technique they pioneered a decade ago--electromechanical wave imaging (EWI)--to accurately localize atrial and ventricular cardiac arrhythmias in adult patients in a double-blinded clinical study. They evaluated the accuracy of EWI for localization of various arrhythmias in all four chambers of the heart prior to catheter ablation: the results showed that EWI correctly predicted 96% of arrhythmia locations as compared with 71% for 12-lead ECGs.

• share
• favorite_border

A Columbia Engineering team, led by Professor Michal Lipson, has developed a low-power beam steering platform that is a non-mechanical, robust, and scalable approach to beam steering.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Columbia Engineering announced today that they have introduced a new type of robotic finger with a sense of touch. Their finger can localize touch with very high precision—<1mm—over a large, multicurved surface, much like its human counterpart.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia University researchers announced that they have discovered a new way to control the phase of light using 2D materials--atomically thin materials, ∼ 0.8 nanometer, or 1/100000 the size of a human hair--without changing its amplitude, at extremely low electrical power dissipation.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia researchers have invented a new method—using ultraflat gold films—to disassemble vdW single crystals layer by layer into monolayers with near-unity yield and with dimensions limited only by bulk crystal sizes. The monolayers have the same high quality as those created by conventional “Scotch tape” exfoliation, but are roughly a million times larger. They can be assembled into macroscopic artificial structures, with properties not easily created in conventionally grown bulk crystals.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineers have engineered probiotics to safely deliver immunotherapies within tumors, including nanobodies against two proven therapeutic targets—PD-L1 and CTLA-4. Continuously released by bacteria, the drugs continue to attack the tumor after just one dose, facilitating an immune response resulting in tumor regression. The versatile probiotic platform can also be used to deliver multiple immunotherapies simultaneously, enabling the release of effective therapeutic combinations within the tumor for more difficult-to-treat cancers like colorectal cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia engineers and Harvard biologists discover that butterflies have specialized behaviors and wing scales to protect the living parts of their wings. The nanostructures found in the wing scales could inspire the design of radiative-cooling materials to help manage excessive heat conditions; the sensory network in the wings could inspire the design of advanced flying machines.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Columbia Engineering and Columbia Law School have developed a joint fault-based liability rule that can be used to regulate both self-driving car manufacturers and human drivers. They propose a game-theoretic model that describes the strategic interactions among the law maker, the self-driving car manufacturer, the self-driving car, and human drivers, and examine how, as the market penetration of AVs increases, the liability rule should evolve.

• share
• favorite_border

A Columbia Engineering team has invented a robotic device—the Trunk-Support Trainer (TruST)—that can be used to assist and train people with spinal cord injuries (SCIs) to sit more stably by improving their trunk control, and thus gain an expanded active sitting workspace without falling over or using their hands to balance. The study is the first to measure and define the sitting workspace of patients with SCI based on their active trunk control.

• share
• favorite_border

A recent Columbia Engineering study demonstrates a new way to tune the properties of 2D materials simply by adjusting the twist angle between them. The researchers built devices consisting of monolayer graphene encapsulated between two crystals of boron nitride and, by adjusting the relative twist angle between the layers, they were able to create multiple moiré pattern—“the first time anyone has seen the full rotational dependence of coexisting moiré superlattices in one device.”

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia neuroengineers have found the first evidence that individual neurons in the human brain target specific memories during recall. They studied recordings in neurosurgical patients who had electrodes implanted in their brains and examined how the patients’ brain signals corresponded to their behavior while performing a virtual-reality object–location memory task. The researchers identified “memory-trace cells” whose activity was spatially tuned to the location where subjects remembered encountering specific objects.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have used the Drosophila embryo to model human disease mutations that affect myosin motor activity. Through in vivo imaging and biophysical analysis, they demonstrated that engineering human MYH9-related disease mutations into Drosophila myosin II produces motors with altered organization and dynamics that fail to drive rapid cell movements, resulting in defects in epithelial morphogenesis.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineers have developed dynamic porous polymer coatings that enable inexpensive and scalable ways to control light and heat in buildings. They took advantage of the optical switchability of PPCs in the solar wavelengths to regulate solar heating and daylighting, and extended the concept to thermal infrared wavelengths to modulate heat radiated by objects.

• share
• favorite_border

Current testing for Lyme disease, called the standard 2-tiered approach or the STT, involves running two complex assays (ELISA and western blot) to detect antibodies against the bacterium, and requires experienced personnel in a lab, and a few hours to carry out and interpret. Columbia biomedical engineers have developed a rapid microfluidic test that can detect Lyme disease with similar performance as the STT in a much shorter time—15 minutes.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

A new Columbia Engineering study indicates that the world will experience more frequent and more extreme drought and aridity than currently experienced in the coming century, exacerbated by both climate change and land-atmosphere processes.

• share
• favorite_border

A Columbia Engineering-designed robotic brace that supports the neck during its natural motion is the first device shown to dramatically assist ALS patients in holding their heads and actively supporting them during range of motion. The brace should improve patients’ quality of life, not only in improving eye contact during conversation

• share
• favorite_border

By adding electronics and computation technology to a simple cane that has been around since ancient times, Columbia Engineering researchers have transformed it into a 21st century robotic device that can provide light-touch assistance in walking to the aged and others with impaired mobility. The autonomous robot “walks” alongside a person to provide light-touch support, much as one might lightly touch a companion’s arm or sleeve to maintain balance while walking.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Columbia Engineering and Columbia University Irving Medical Center announced today that they have engineered a strain of non-pathogenic bacteria that can colonize solid tumors in mice and safely deliver potent immunotherapies, acting as a Trojan Horse that treats tumors from within. The therapy led not only to complete tumor regression in a mouse model of lymphoma, but also significant control of distant, uninjected tumor lesions.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from Brown and Columbia Universities have demonstrated previously unknown states of matter that arise in double-layer stacks of graphene, a two-dimensional nanomaterial. These new states, known as the fractional quantum Hall effect, arise from the complex interactions of electrons both within and across graphene layers. “The findings show that stacking 2D materials together in close proximity generates entirely new physics,” says Brown Professor Jia Li.

• share
• favorite_border

For decades, scientists studying a key climate phenomenon have been grappling with contradictory data that have threated to undermine confidence in the reliability of climate models overall. A new Columbia Engineering study settles that debate with regard to the Hadley cell, a tropical atmospheric circulation widely studied by climate scientists because it controls precipitation in the subtropics and also creates a region called the intertropical convergence zone, producing a band of major, highly precipitative storms.

• share
• favorite_border

Computer scientists at Columbia Engineering have developed a new computing system that enables current, unmodified mobile apps to combine and share multiple devices, including cameras, displays, speakers, microphones, sensors, and GPS, across multiple smartphones and tablets. Called M2, the new system operates across heterogeneous systems, including Android and iOS, combining the functionality of multiple mobile systems into a more powerful one that gives users a seamless experience across the various systems.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have developed a technique that could open up new ways to facilitate targeted drug delivery into the brain, enabling drugs to treat brain diseases more focally. They used transcranial, focused ultrasound and intravenously injected microbubbles into the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to make a localized, transient opening that allows drugs to cross through the BBB reversibly and non-invasively.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a new technique based on reinforcement learning that trains a neural network model to correctly select the “best” reaction at each step of the retrosynthetic process. This form of AI provides a framework for researchers to design chemical syntheses that optimize user specified objectives such synthesis cost, safety, and sustainability. The new approach is more successful (by ~60%) than existing strategies for solving this challenging search problem.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineering researchers report that they have demonstrated a nearly ideal transistor made from a 2D material stack—with only a two-atom-thick semiconducting layer—by developing a completely clean and damage-free fabrication process. Their method shows vastly improved performance compared to 2D semiconductors fabricated with a conventional process, and could provide a scalable platform for creating ultra-clean devices in the future.

• share
• favorite_border

To help non-professionals create visual blends for their news and PSAs, Columbia Engineering researchers have developed VisiBlends, a flexible, user-friendly platform that transforms the creative brainstorming activity into a search function, and enables a statistically higher output of visually blended images. The VisiBlends platform combines a series of human steps or “microtasks” with AI and computational techniques. Crowd-sourcing is a key component of the system enabling groups of people to collaborate, either together or off-site.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have—for the first time—demonstrated in a clinically relevant model that severely damaged lungs can be regenerated to meet transplantation criteria. Their new study describes the cross-circulation platform that maintained the donor lung’s viability and function and the recipient’s stability for 36-56 hours. Current methodologies of lung support are limited to only 6-8 hours, a time too short for therapeutic interventions that could regenerate the injured lung and improve its function.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineering researchers report that they have developed a radically different desalination approach—“temperature swing solvent extraction (TSSE)”—for hypersaline brines. Their study demonstrates that TSSE can desalinate very high-salinity brines, up to seven times the concentration of seawater. Says PI Ngai Yin Yip, “Our results show that TSSE could be a disruptive technology—it’s effective, efficient, scalable, and can be sustainably powered.”

• share
• favorite_border

A recent discovery by Columbia Engineering researchers explains a new family of gravitational instabilities in granular particles of different densities that are driven by a gas-channeling mechanism not seen in fluids. The team observed an unexpected Rayleigh-Taylor (R-T)-like instability in which lighter grains rise through heavier grains in the form of “fingers” and “granular bubbles, similar to the bubbles that form and rise in lava lamps.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineering researchers have developed a new method for safely prolonging battery life by inserting a nano-coating of boron nitride (BN) to stabilize solid electrolytes in lithium metal batteries. The team focused on solid, ceramic electrolytes, which show promise in improving safety and energy density, compared with conventional, flammable electrolytes in Li-ion batteries. Rechargeable solid-state lithium batteries they are promising candidates for next-generation energy storage.

• share
• favorite_border

Biomedical engineers have developed a system that can study 10s to 100s of programmed bacteria within mini-tissues in a dish, condensing study time from months to days. The speed and high throughput of their technology allows for stable growth of bacteria within tumor spheroids and can also be used for other bacteria species and cell types. The team says this study is the first to rapidly screen and characterize bacteria therapies in vitro.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineering researchers develop Easy Email Encryption, an app that encrypts all saved emails to prevent hacks and leaks, is easy to install and use, and works with popular email services such as Gmail, Yahoo, etc.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Columbia Engineering and MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), demonstrate for the first time a way to make a robot composed of many loosely coupled components, or “particles.” Unlike swarm or modular robots, each component is simple, and has no individual address or identity. In their system, which the researchers call a “particle robot,” each particle can perform only uniform volumetric oscillations (slightly expanding and contracting), but cannot move independently.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineering researchers have shown—for the first time—that they can use online neurofeedback to modify an individual's arousal state to improve performance in a demanding sensory motor task, such as flying a plane or driving in suboptimal conditions.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia researchers have developed the first biocompatible internal-ion-gated organic electrochemical transistor (IGT) that is fast enough to enable real-time signal sensing and stimulation of brain signals. The IGT provides a miniaturized, soft, conformable interface with human skin, using local amplification to record high quality neural signals, suitable for advanced data processing. This could lead to safer, smaller, and smarter bioelectronic devices that can be implanted in humans over long periods of time.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineers have created a robot that learns what it is, with zero prior knowledge of physics, geometry, or motor dynamics. Initially the robot has no clue what its shape is. After a brief period of “babbling,” and within about a day of intensive computing, the robot creates a self-simulation, which it can then use to contemplate and adapt to different situations, handling new tasks as well as detecting and repairing damage in its body.

• share
• favorite_border

A Columbia Engineering study confirms the urgency to tackle climate change. While it’s known that extreme weather events can affect the year-to-year variability in carbon uptake, and some researchers have suggested that there may be longer-term effects, this study is the first to actually quantify the effects through the 21st century and demonstrates that wetter-than-normal years do not compensate for losses in carbon uptake during dryer-than-normal years, caused by events such as droughts or heatwaves.

• share
• favorite_border

New study uses live imaging to understand a critical step in early embryonic development—how genes and molecules control forces to orchestrate the emergence of form in the developing embryo. The study findings could have important implications for how stem cells are used to create functional organs in the lab, and lead to a better understanding of the underlying causes of gastrointestinal birth defects.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study from biomedical engineer Qi Wang, who is developing innovative ways of selectively activating neural circuitry to enhance perception and cognition, demonstrates a major advance in understanding how the locus coeruleus (LC) modulates information processing in the thalamus. Wang found that activating the LC improves the transmission of information about different features of sensory stimuli from the thalamus to the cerebral cortex, and subsequently perceptual performance in perceptual tasks.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study from Columbia Engineering and Columbia University Irving Medical Center shows that avoidant grievers unconsciously monitor and block the contents of their mind-wandering, a discovery that could lead to more effective psychiatric treatment for bereaved people. The researchers, who studied 29 bereaved subjects, are the first to show how this unconscious thought suppression occurs.

• share
• favorite_border

Mining data to analyze tracking patterns, Civil Engineering Prof Sharon Di can infer the population travel demand level in a region from the trajectories of just a portion of travelers. She found three distinct groups whose demographics she could infer based on their travel patterns: seniors, who travel to a wider variety of places in a day; workers, who stay mostly at work or at home; parents, who visit more individual places in a day.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineers show for the first time that runoff extremes have dramatically increased in response to climate and human-induced changes. Their findings demonstrate a large increase in precipitation and runoff extremes driven by human activity and climate change.

• share
• favorite_border

Mechanical Engineering Prof. Karen Kasza has won a Packard Fellowship for her research on developing new ways to engineer tissue and treat disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have developed a new method—“Pixel Approximate Entropy”—that measures the complexity of a data visualization and can be used to develop easier to read visualizations. “In fast-paced settings, it is important to know if the visualization is going to be so complex that the signals may be obscured. The ability to quantify complexity is the first step towards automatically doing something about this.”

• share
• favorite_border

Optical frequency combs can enable ultrafast processes in physics, biology, and chemistry, as well as improve communication and navigation, medical testing, and security. Columbia Engineers have built a Kerr frequency comb generator that, for the first time, integrates the laser with the microresonator, significantly shrinking the system’s size and power requirements. They no longer need to connect separate devices using fiber--they can now integrate it all on compact and energy efficient photonic chips.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineers have created the first flat lens capable of correctly focusing a large range of colors of any polarization to the same focal spot without the need for any additional elements. Only a micron thick, their revolutionary "flat" lens is much thinner than a sheet of paper and offers performance comparable to top-of-the-line compound lens systems. UPenn nanophotonics expert Nader Engheta, who was not involved with this study, notes: "This…is an exciting development in the field of flat optics.”

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia Engineers have invented a high-performance exterior PDRC polymer coating with nano-to-microscale air voids that acts as a spontaneous air cooler and can be fabricated, dyed, and applied like paint on rooftops, buildings, water tanks, vehicles, even spacecraft--anything that can be painted. They used a solution-based phase-inversion technique that gives the polymer a porous foam-like structure.

• share
• favorite_border

Using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, Columbia Engineers are first to observe how CO2 is activated at the electrode-electrolyte interface; their finding shifts the catalyst design from trial-and-error paradigm to a rational approach and could lead to alternative, cheaper, and safer renewable energy storage.

• share
• favorite_border

Columbia University researchers report an advance that may revolutionize the field of 2D materials such as graphene: a “twistronic” device whose characteristics can be varied by simply varying the angle between two different 2D layers placed on top of one another. The device provides unprecedented control over the angular orientation in twisted-layer devices, and enables researchers to study the effects of twist angle on electronic, optical, and mechanical properties in a single device.

• share
• favorite_border

Increasing healthy brown fat might help weight management and reduce symptoms of diabetes. Columbia Engineers have developed a simple, innovative method to directly convert white fat to brown fat outside the body and then reimplant it in a patient. The technique uses fat-grafting procedures commonly performed by plastic surgeons, in which fat is harvested from under the skin and then retransplanted into the same patient for cosmetic or reconstructive purposes.