Research Quick Takes

PhD students Samuel Ong, Simon Agnew, and Md Saifur Rahman, and Professor Will Scheideler co-authored "Sub-nm kinetically controlled liquid metal printing of ternary antimony indium oxide transistors" published in Matter. "Our study shows how to harness the kinetics of liquid metal oxidation to control the thickness at the single-nm scale for synthesizing 2D transparent semiconducting films with finely tuned electrostatics for thin film transistors. These ultrathin metal oxides could enable flexible electronics capable of withstanding extreme bending stress and deformation," said Scheideler.

PhD candidate Yanqiao Li, advised by Professor Jason Stauth, received the 2024–25 IEEE Solid State Circuits Society (SSCS) Predoctoral Achievement Award, their highest honor for PhD students, at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco. The award recognizes Li's research on "miniaturized low-power, high-voltage step-up ratio capacitive load drivers" which enable microrobots to be fully autonomous and energy-efficient for medical, consumer, and industrial automation, as well as for haptics, printing, and ultrasound applications.

Professor Will Scheideler is co-author of "Recent Advances in 3D Printed Electrodes – Bridging the Nano to Mesoscale" published in Advanced Science. The review covers applications in energy and sensing, including emerging fabrication methods. "We report on strategies for transforming polymers into 3D architected metals and ceramics, and how the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence is changing the design of 3D-printed materials," said Scheideler.

PhD candidate Varsha Shukla received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Gender and Technology for her research: "On Addressing Bias and Fairness in Large Language Models for Responsible Innovation in Gender Contexts." This recognition highlights her contributions toward advancing gender-sensitive AI research. "Technology shapes our society in incredible ways, and ensuring fairness and equity in AI systems is critical for fostering inclusivity," said Shukla.

Professor Yoshihiro Nakayama received the Cryosphere Early Career Award last month at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting, for his work on polar oceanography and Antarctic processes. "I am deeply honored to receive this award. My work integrating observations and modeling is made possible through the extensive support and collaboration of researchers worldwide. I'm grateful for their invaluable contributions."

Professor Hui Fang's research group was awarded $2.6M over five years from NIH to develop and optimize a new type of microelectrode array probe used for parallel neuromodulator sensing and electrophysiological recording. "Refining and validating this type of probe would directly enable numerous studies in both basic and translational neuroscience, would be applicable to many other devices, such as DBS and sEEG electrodes, and would also bring the technology a significant step closer to commercial manufacturing," said Fang.

Professor Will Scheideler authored "Nimble native oxides: Printing circuits from the skin of liquid metal," published in Matter, which focuses on new two-dimensional metal oxides that are thin, transparent, and flexible. "This preview highlights the opportunities for new applications of flexible and printed electronics and discusses a few of the most important challenges for this emerging research field," says Scheideler.

Research associates Yihuang Xiong and Jiongzhi Zheng, PhD student Shay McBride, and Professor Geoffroy Hautier are co-authors of "Computationally Driven Discovery of T Center-like Quantum Defects in Silicon" published in Journal of the American Chemical Society. "Finding new 'quantum defects' facilitates bringing quantum technologies to real world scalable technologies." says Hautier. Adds Xiong, "Our study identifies several silicon defects that were overlooked before the quantum defect era and proposes high-yield synthesis routes."

At the 2024 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MS student Anisia Tiplea '24 presented her senior honors thesis, and Hixon Lab gave an invited talk on their bone regeneration work supported by the Dartmouth Innovations Accelerator for Cancer.

Professor Wesley Marrero received the INFORMS MIF Best Paper Award as co-author of, "Interpretable Policies and the Price of Interpretability in Hypertension Treatment Planning" published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. The paper uses optimization to design clinically intuitive hypertension treatment protocols that greatly outperform clinical guidelines.

PhD student Prabhat Hegde received an Honorable Mention award at the inaugural INFORMS Minority Issues Forum (MIF) Summer Webinar Competition. Judges said Hegde's 5–10 minute research webinar, titled Rural school bus routing and scheduling with endogenous demand and traffic congestion, "demonstrated great skill and creativity." Hegde accepted the award at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle.

PhD students Huan Zhao and Xiangbei Liu, and Professor Yan Li co-authored "Architecture Design of High-Performance Piezoelectric Energy Harvester with 3D Metastructure Substrate" featured on the cover of Advanced Theory and Simulations. "We achieved a remarkable 13.26-fold improvement in PEH performance by replacing the traditional solid substrate with a 3D auxetic unit-cell metastructure," says Li.