Research Quick Takes

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.

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 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.

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."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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." 

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.

Research Scientist and Lecturer Aleah Sommers co-organized and taught at the Greenland Ice Sheet Ocean (GRISO) Science Summer School, held in Nuuk, Greenland. The two-week intensive course brought together PhD students and postdocs from around the world to connect with and learn from Greenland-based scientists and local Greenlandic organizations. "After teaching at the GRISO Summer School, I feel inspired about connecting glacier hydrology to the downstream impacts on lakes, fjords, ecology, and communities, and exploring how to connect physical process modeling with community interests and local research priorities," said Sommers.

Research Scientist Tae-Geun Yu is co-first  author, and Professor Jiwon Lee is co-corresponding author of "mRNA-based influenza vaccine expands the B cell response breadth in humans" published in Nature Immunology. A collaboration with WashU Medicine, the study found that Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine—currently under review by FDA—triggers an immune response against a wide array of flu strains, potentially offering stronger and longer-lasting protection.