Research Quick Takes | Dartmouth Engineering

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.

Aug 13, 2026

AFOSR Young Investigator Award

Professor Wesley Marrero received a Young Investigator Program Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). The award provides $450,000 over three years to advance the scientific foundations of interpretable artificial intelligence for time-varying decision environments. Marrero will develop methods for learning optimal decision strategies with tree-like structures or under user-defined interpretability rules. The project is motivated by challenges that deployed medics face when making rapid triage and evacuation decisions in austere environments. "For AI tools to be effective and trusted by military leadership, they must adapt to fast-changing scenarios and deliver logical recommendations that can be easily understood," he said.

Jul 30, 2026

Reshaping Sea-Level Forecasts

Research Associate Justine Caillet and Professor Hélène Seroussi are co-authors of "Uncertain ground: impact of bed topography on Antarctic Ice Sheet projections" published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. The study is featured in a Sciencenews.dk article where Seroussi is quoted extensively about her research: "We have spent decades improving climate models, but if we do not know exactly what the ice is resting on, it is like trying to predict a car's route without knowing the road."

Paula Olson, Emily Monroe, and Solomon Diamond
pose with the 2026 Constellation Prize for Peace Engineering.

Jul 30, 2026

NSF FINDERS Foundry Award

Professor Sol Diamond (co-PI), Lecturer and CEDC Director Emily Monroe, and Design Research Project Manager Paula Olson are part of a team collaborating with Makerspace Central on a project that received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fostering Interdisciplinary Network Driven Educationally Responsive Solutions (FINDERS) Foundry Award. The project, titled "Shaping Career Pathways with AI-Enabled Design and Making," aims to design an AI-coach-plus-educator tool for K–12 classrooms. The coach would empower students to design with AI tools while the human educator guides ethical, responsible use.

Jul 30, 2026

Mobility-Ductility Tradeoff

PhD student Sam Ong won runner-up for the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Flexible Printable Sensors and Systems in Atlanta. Ong's paper, co-authored with Professor Will Scheideler and former postdoc Minh Nhut Le, was titled "Breaking the Mobility-Ductility Tradeoff in Liquid-Metal-Printed ITO Flexible TFTs." Said Ong, "I was very excited to present my work at IEEE FLEPS and showcase our research to the flexible device community. I believe that there is a lot of potential collaboration within this space, and highlighting the compatibility of our high-performance materials in flexible electronics garnered a lot of interest and excitement."

Jul 16, 2026

Glaciological Collaboration

Research Scientist and Lecturer Aleah Sommers and PhD candidate Anna Valentine, along with Derek Pickell and Mathieu Morlighem from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, traveled to Ladakh, India, to study thickness and dynamics of Himalayan glaciers with researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. They also participated in the Indian Glaciological Summer School, a two-week intensive course in Leh, Ladakh, with students from all over India. "Building any international collaboration takes time and trust. The friendships, the challenges, and the science that will come out of combining our areas of expertise are remarkably worthwhile," said Sommers.