Research Quick Takes | Dartmouth Engineering

Oct 15, 2026

Better Modeling of Sea-Level Rise

Professor Hélène Seroussi is a co-author of "Sea-level contribution from Thwaites Glacier doubles in an observation-constrained ice-sheet model" published in Nature Communications. "Until now, models have treated the grounding zone, where a glacier detaches from the underlying bedrock and begins to float, as a discrete line, because observations in such regions were scarce. Adding seawater intrusions and melting in this zone to simulations of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica allows the model to better reproduce three decades of observed retreat, and roughly doubles its projected contribution to sea-level rise by 2100," said Seroussi.

Professor Geoff Parker at the podium in Manchester, NH.

Oct 15, 2026

Kicking Off a Grant to Expand Electric Grid Capacity

Professor Geoffrey Parker joined Eversource and US Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary Katie Jereza in Manchester, NH to officially mark the selection of Thayer and Eversource for a DOE award of $47M to expand electric grid capacity. "Junbo [Zhao] has worked with Eversource for years, and that relationship is the foundation this project is built on," Parker said. "That is exactly the role we want to play: helping our faculty turn deep expertise and long-standing partnerships into large-scale work with real impact."

Professor Vaze presenting at the AI EDGE Symposium.

Oct 08, 2026

Humans, AI & Optimization

Professor Vikrant Vaze was invited to speak at the GE Vernova AI EDGE Symposium in New York. His talk, titled "Multi-Objective Stochastic Optimization of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems in Fragile States," was based on his work done with PhD students Lilly Yang and Siqi Ke and MS student Ryan Proulx '25 as co-authors. "The biggest takeaways from the symposium were about the future of work itself, about the industry-wide opportunities and challenges associated with the rapidly evolving business practices to accommodate AI-human teams—learning what to delegate to AI and what must be human-controlled," said Vaze.

Sep 24, 2026

Optimizing Complex Delivery Systems

PhD candidate Yineng "Phoebe" Sun Th'17 Th'26 is first author, with Lecturer Armin Fügenschuh and Professor Vikrant Vaze as co-authors, of "Physics-aware truck and drone delivery planning using optimization & machine learning" published in Computers & Operations Research. The presented framework has been shown to reduce delivery time and energy use compared with simplified planning approaches. "This work matters because it brings realistic physical modeling into operations research, showing how optimization and data-driven methods can work together to make complex delivery systems both more efficient and more practical," said Sun.

Sie Hendrata Dharmawan presents at the conference in Italy.

Sep 24, 2026

Revealing Structure in Complex Data

Industry PhD student Sie Hendrata Dharmawan presented four papers from Professor Peter Chin's LISP Lab at the 35th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks in Padua, Italy. "I am grateful to Professor Chin, the LISP Lab, and my collaborators for making this possible, and to Muhammad Farrukh and colleagues for trusting me to present their work on topological anomaly detection. What ties these papers together is a question I care about deeply: how do we capture the structure hidden in complex data? Whether it's adding loop structure to graph neural networks, measuring a node's sphere of influence with game theory, or detecting communities across multiple networks, the conference gave us great feedback and follow-up work, and I'm looking forward to diving into it," said Dharmawan.

Sep 17, 2026

Detecting Life in Icy, Extreme Environments

This past summer, PhD student Paulina Umansky, who works with Professor Ian Baker on Antarctic ice microstructure and Professor Jacob Buffo on life detection in planetary ices, lived on the Taku Glacier in Alaska for three weeks as a participant in the Juneau Icefield Research Program. "The Juneau Icefield serves as an analog for environments across the solar system such as Mars and Europa. I conducted a pilot study on 'Life Detection Across Taku Glacier,' collecting subglacial and supraglacial samples. In the field, I learned several assays and applied them to analyze these samples, quantifying biosignatures present across the icefield," says Umansky.

Sep 17, 2026

Early Career Program Award

Professor Colin Meyer received an Early Career Program (ECP) Award from the DEVCOM Army Research Lab. ECP awards support creative basic research in science and engineering; enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators; and increase opportunities for young investigators to pursue research in areas relevant to the US Army. "As climate change drives sea‑level rise and amplifies hazards in mountain regions, I’m excited to launch a multidisciplinary effort that links the physics of frozen soils with societal needs. Our work will focus on frost heave, permafrost‑related hazards, and the dynamics of subglacial environments. By integrating laboratory experiments, mathematical models, and thermosyphons technology, we aim to develop actionable solutions for infrastructure resilience through adaptation," says Meyer.

Sep 10, 2026

Expanding Cardiovascular Disease Screening

PhD student Spencer Bertsch Th'19 and Professor Vikrant Vaze are co-authors of "FIND Lp(a) Machine Learning Model: Targeted Screening Enrichment of Elevated Lipoprotein(a) in Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease" published in JACC: Advances. The study used data from deidentified medical records to "Flag, Identify, Network, and Deliver (FIND)" adults with likely elevated Lipoprotein(a). "By combining state-of-the-art machine learning with relevant clinical information from electronic health records, we demonstrated that the effectiveness of Lipoprotein(a) screening can be more than doubled," said Bertsch.

Aug 27, 2026

Papers Accepted to IECON 2026

Wai Yan Win Aung '28 (pictured) and Maanat Bhadani '29, advised by Professor Junbo Zhao and postdoc Alaa Selim, had their papers accepted to the flagship annual conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society: IECON 2026 in Qatar. Win Aung's paper is: "Physics-Constrained Human-in-the-Loop LLM Framework for Voltage-Violation Mitigation in Distribution Feeders," and Bhadani's paper is: "CommunityGuard-AI: Agentic AI for Cyber-Physical Defense of Energy Communities"

PhD student Lucas Song presenting his poster in Cambridge.

Aug 13, 2026

Power Electronics Poster Award

PhD students Lukas Song and Kishalay Datta, postdoc Yanqiao Li, and Professor Jason Stauth received a Best Poster Award at this year's IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics at the University of Cambridge. The award was for the paper "Analysis and Design of a Piezoelectric Resonator Based 2:1 Hybrid DC-DC Converter," which proposed introducing added inductors and capacitors back into the piezoelectric power converter.

Aug 13, 2026

Advancing HDR Brachytherapy

PhD student Kevin Willy, and Thayer co-authors Megan Clark Th'25 and professors Petr Brůža and David Gladstone, were Science Council Session Winners at the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Annual Meeting in Vancouver. Their paper, "Advancing HDR Brachytherapy: Real-time optical in vivo dosimetry with source tracking," focuses on measuring treatment and dose parameters for high-dose-rate brachytherapy. The topic was identified by AAPM as being "at the frontier of medical physics."

Aug 13, 2026

IEEE PES Prize Paper Award

Professor Junbo Zhao won the IEEE Power & Energy Society Technical Committee Prize Paper Award for "A topology-based edge computing framework for digital power system small-signal stability analysis," published in IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. The proposed framework leverages the computation and communication capabilities of Intelligent Electronic Devices to reduce the burden on the control center and facilitate the digital transition.