Research Quick Takes

PhD students Yitong Liu (pictured), and Shengqi Yuan each received best paper awards for the 2026 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting in Montréal. Yuan's paper, co-authored with Professor Junbo Zhao and members of Sandia National Labs, is titled "Integrated Wildfire Impact Modeling on Urban-Suburban Distribution System Resilience"; and Liu's, also co-authored with Zhao as well as ISO New England, is "Truncated Copula-based Scenario Generation to Model Spatiotemporal Correlations of Wind and Solar Power Plants in Large-Scale Systems."

Professor Don Perovich is a co-author of "The influence of ocean waves on Antarctic sea-ice albedo and seasonal melting, and potential coupled physical and biological feedbacks" published in The Cryosphere. "We found that waves washing the snow-covered sea ice darkened the surface, leading to more sunlight being absorbed and enhancing the speed of summer melting," said Perovich.

PhD candidates Adelaide Cagle, Afton Limberg, Amritha Anup Th'23, and Aleyna La Croix, and Professor Katie Hixon co-authored "Advancing the 3Rs in bone tissue engineering: emerging in vitro, in silico, and refined in vivo strategies," an invited review published in Frontiers in Physiology. The article was for a special issue addressing the 3Rs approach—replace, reduce and refine animal models—to improve preclinical research. "This review summarizes recent progress in advanced in vitro platforms, including organoids, bioprinting, and organ-on-a-chip systems, as well as in silico modeling approaches designed to decrease reliance on animal experimentation," said Anup.

An undergraduate capstone project team—Will Clendenning Th'24, Chad Klaas '24 Th'25, Samantha Melgar '24, and Ismael Rosales-Albarran '24—along with co-author and CEDC Director Emily Monroe, published their project results titled, "Using Life Cycle Assessments to Measure the Environmental Impact of Alternative Care Models in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit" in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The team compared traditional hospital NICUs against "Hope Grows at Home," a home-care model for premature infants. Although other evidence shows no difference in health outcomes, their assessment showed significant reductions in both carbon emissions and solid waste by shifting to the home-care model.

The Liu Research Group presented at the 2026 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, showcasing their latest research on next-generation semiconductor materials and processes for more sustainable microchip technologies. Presentations included: Professor Jifeng Liu on atomic ordering in semiconductor alloys as a new degree of freedom for performance-sustainability synergy; PhD student Shangda Li on defect mitigation in low-temperature Ge and GeSn heteroepitaxy on silicon using self-assembled nanoscale oxide templates; and PhD student Yicheng Wang on identifying atomic short-range order in SiGeSn alloys using atom probe tomography toward sustainable infrared semiconductors.

Professor Colin Meyer and Research Scientist Aleah Sommers are co-authors of "A model of water extraction from the subglacial hydrologic system under idealized conditions" published in The Cryosphere. The study investigates how removing water from under the ice can moderately slow glaciers by lowering subglacial water pressure. "Our work improves understanding of glacier dynamics and suggests that studying water removal could enhance knowledge of subglacial systems and potentially slow glacier flow," said Meyer.

PhD student Dongyeol "Shin" Jang, PhD Innovation Fellow Bella Schaub, Research Scientist Wendy Qi, and Professor Hui Fang received a $3M grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to translate their sensor technology for real-time monitoring of neurotransmitters into a human medical device. The funding will enable the Fang Research Group to develop a preclinical proof-of-concept for integrating their novel carbon coating technology into neurotransmitter sensors for humans. "This grant is a tribute to years of extraordinary work by our team—Wendy, Shin, and Bella's contributions in particular have been indispensable," said Fang. "By translating our neurotransmitter sensor technology into a human medical device, we stand to transform neurological care, enabling more precisely targeted therapies and accelerating the development of next-generation drugs for brain disorders."

PhD candidate Afton Limberg (pictured) is first-author with Lily Giurleo '28, Victoria Ruiz '26, PhD candidate Amritha Anup Th'23, and professors Jay Buckey, Doug Van Citters and Katie Hixon as co-authors on "In Vitro Modulation of Murine Tenocyte Behavior by Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy" published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research. The study—a collaboration between Hixon Lab and DBEC—aimed to improve understanding of the effects of oxygen therapy on tendon cells and healing. "I consider tendons one of the most under-studied musculoskeletal tissues," said Limberg. "Hyberbaric oxygen presents a novel non-invasive therapy that could actually promote tendon healing, and we showed that it does have an effect on tendon cells. Next steps are to conduct both ex vivo and in vivo studies that include the full system of biomechanics."

Professor Wesley Marrero was selected for an Operations Research & Data Science Faculty Fellowship at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT). His appointment will focus on fundamental research in sequential decision-making with applications at the DoD. The overall goal is to develop decision-support techniques that account for noncompliance with AI-driven recommendations. "By recognizing that optimal solutions may not always be adopted in practice, this work will help establish a basis for operationally-acceptable automated decision-support throughout the Air Force and Department of Defense," said Marrero.

Yehalah Fernando '26 won 1st place at the EE Just Program Research Science Fair for her poster presentation about her work in Yan Li's lab in collaboration with PhD students Ya Tang and Mingzhao Li. "My honors thesis research is on 3D printing thermoelectric materials using the direct ink writing method, which would significantly change the manufacturing process when optimized," said Fernando.

PhD candidate Afton Limberg attended this year's Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) Annual Meeting in Charlotte, NC, where she was chosen as a finalist in the Tendon Section Elevator Pitch Competition. Her pitch was titled, "Can Oxygen Heal Tendons? Investigating Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Tendon Repair." Limberg also presented her poster, "Hyperoxia-Driven Modulation of Tendon Healing: Insights from In Vitro and In Vivo Models," based on her PhD research thesis.

Professor Jifeng Liu authored "Atomic Ordering as a New Degree of Freedom for Semiconductor Device Engineering" published in Computer. The paper makes the case for engineering the atomic neighborhood in semiconductor alloys as a way to "leap beyond CMOS" for a new generation of computing hardware. "It is my great honor to introduce our latest research on harnessing atomic ordering in semiconductors to the computer science community. As Jensen Huang pointed out, 'the next wave of AI is physical AI,' and hardware revolutions will play a critical role there," said Liu.