Research Quick Takes

Professor Paul Meaney and  Research Associate Zamzam Kordiboroujeni are coauthors of "Real-Time Microwave Medical Scanning" published in IEEE Microwaves Magazine. "We have developed a new broadband microwave sensor for detecting and diagnosing subsurface medical conditions such as sarcopenia," states the article. "The device is an open-ended coaxial concept that has been fabricated using 3D metal printing technologies."

Professor Junbo Zhao was appointed editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems. "This is a prestigious journal with a long history in the power and energy field, and I am very honored to be appointed. This is great opportunity to make contributions to our community and increase Thayer's visibility to the world in the energy domain," said Zhao.

Professor Wei Ouyang was awarded a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), part of the National Institutes of Health. The award provides $2.2 million over five years to support Ouyang's research on implantable technologies for monitoring internal organ health. His work aims to advance understanding of the pathophysiology underlying post-operative complications and inform the development of safer, more effective interventions.

PhD student Aleyna La Croix received an honorable mention at this year's Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) International Section Fracture Repair (ISFR) 3-Minute Research Pitch Competition. Her pitch was titled, "Shocking Revelations in Cryogelation: Sparking musculoskeletal regeneration." Watch video

PhD students Huan Zhao, Xiangbei Liu, and Ya Tang, Andrew Kim '27, and Professor Yan Li co-authored "A novel compressible piezocomposite design for acceleration and dynamic force sensing" published in Materials & Design. The paper presents a design that integrates triaxial acceleration sensing and dynamic force sensing into a single, compact device—addressing the need for combined motion and force feedback in applications such as robotic surgery to enable smoother, more precise operations.

PhD students Sie Hendrata Dharmawan, Emma Graham, Mateusz Nowak, and Qintong Xie, as well as Roy Leibovitz '27, programmer Edward Koh, and postdoc Xavier Cadet—most in Professor Peter Chin's Learning, Intelligence + Singal Processing (LISP) lab—had four papers accepted into the Conference on Game Theory and AI for Security. "These papers are part of the four-year DARPA research project called CASTLE: Cyber Agents for Security Testing and Learning Environments which LISP lab has been working on to develop game-theoretic reinforcement learning agents that can outsmart potential cyber adversaries in an enterprise-level network," said Chin.

Research Associate Le Minh Nhut, Saifur Rahman Th'25, PhD students Simon Agnew '22 and Sam Ong, and Professor Will Scheideler coauthored a paper published in Advanced Functional Materials on flexible amorphous metal oxide transistors incorporating graded 2D homojunctions. These ultrathin materials could be used for high-performance wearable displays for virtual and augmented reality.

Professor Junbo Zhao received a 2025 IEEE PES Technical Committee Prize Paper Award for "State Estimation for Integrated Energy Systems: Motivations, Advances, and Future Work" published in IEEE Transactions on Power Systems.

PhD students Allaire Doussan and Sophie Lloyd, and Professors Ethan Murphy and Ryan Halter are coauthors of "Comparison of Complex Open Domain Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) Methods" published in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. The paper focuses on complex EIT methods and introduces a novel method for handling inversions in permittivity reconstructions.

Professor Katie Hixon received Geisel's Special Recognition in Foundational Science Award. Honorees were selected by the Research Excellence Awards Committee for their outstanding scholarly contributions. 

Professor Peter Chin received a three-year, $1M award from DoD to work on the DARPA INGOTS program. He plans to use AI to better understand the vulnerability of a complex modern digital system (e.g. mobile phones) and develop new theories and tools for vulnerability research on these systems. 

Professor Hélène Seroussi is senior author of "Increased sea-level contribution from northwestern Greenland for models that reproduce observations" published in PNAS. The study uses observational data and time-dependent physics to inform an ice flow model of northwestern Greenland glaciers. The model better matches historical observations and shows that future sea-level rise contribution from this region may be significantly larger than projected over the coming century. The paper also suggests a path forward for making the method scalable to the entire Greenland Ice Sheet.