Research Profiles

	Weather Patterns Can Be Used to Forecast Rotavirus Outbreaks By correlating weather factors like temperature, rain and snowfall, Elena Naumova, professor of civil and environmental engineering, is able to predict the timing and intensity of rotavirus, a disease that causes extreme diarrhea, dehydration and thousands of death annually, particularly among children. Her research focused on one of the hardest-hit regions of the world, South Asia.
	Nan Yi Wins Student Award from the Materials Research Society Nan Yi, a chemical and biological engineering graduate student in Professor Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos' Nano Catalysis & Energy Laboratory (NanoCel), received the Graduate Student Silver Award from the Materials Research Society (MRS). This award is "intended to honor and encourage graduate students whose academic achievements and current materials research display a high level of excellence and distinction." Nan is the first Tufts graduate student to win this award.
	Matt Panzer Wins Grant from Massachusetts Clean Energy Center The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) named Matt Panzer, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, as one of several researchers to receive a grant under the MassCEC Catalyst Program, which supports the commercialization of game-changing clean energy. Panzer will use the MassCEC funding to build an ionogel-based supercapacitor device prototype and to assess its energy storage and delivery capabilities.
	Fiorenzo Omenetto Named OSA Fellow Fiorenzo Omenetto, professor of biomedical engineering, was named a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) for contributions in ultrafast nonlinear optics, photonic crystal fibers and for pioneering the development of silk optical applications and silk-based photonic structures and devices.
	Reversing a Birth Defect The work of biomedical engineer Catherine K. Kuo could advance the treatment of orthopedic deformities before a baby is born. Clubfoot, one of the most common orthopedic birth defects in the United States, affects more than 4,000 newborns each year. Exactly what goes wrong in these tendons is still unclear, but Catherine K. Kuo is trying to figure that out by studying how they form in a developing embryo.
	Eric Miller Elevated to IEEE Fellow Professor Eric Miller has been named an IEEE Fellow for contributions to inverse problems and physics-based signal and image processing. In Miller's Lab for Imaging Science Research his research methods can be applied to a range of problems associated with environmental and medical sensing. In the environmental space, he is working closely with Professor Linda Abriola and Assistant Professor Andrew Ramsburg in the development of processing methods for the characterization of regions of subsurface contamination based on hydrological as well as geophysical data sets. In the biomedical imaging field, Miller has been looking at statistically driven geometric image segmentation methods to help doctors better understand MRI images.
	Deadly Predictions Researchers, including Research Associate Professor Robert Peattie in biomedical engineering and Associate Professor Luis Dorfmann in civil and environmental engineering are building flexible models to calculate the odds that potentially fatal abdominal aneurysms will rupture.
	Rubik's Cube's Math Secret Andrew Winslow, EG14, a doctoral student in theoretical computer science, and a group of Boston-area researchers decided to figure out how a computer might most efficiently solve the Rubik's cube—and not just the standard one with three squares per row, but ones with up to 17 squares per row. They came up with some surprising findings that relate to real-world problems.
	A Window on Research As part of the Leadership Alliance program, Tufts engineering faculty and grad students host Morehouse College undergrads who are tracking Twitter trends and using brain imaging technologies to explore human cognition.
	Moving Toward a Human-Robot Society Associate Professor of Computer Science Matthias Scheutz's research is focused on enabling robots to interact with people using natural language. "Conversations, sentence fragments, the kind of spontaneous speech we use: how do we incorporate this language processing into artificial intelligence? It's very easy for people, but hard for machines."
	Summer Scholar, Jordyn Wolfand As a Summer Scholar, Jordyn Wolfand explored possible links between PCB exposure and Parkinson’s disease. Her senior thesis focused on the way nanoparticles of a carbon configuration called C-60, increasingly used in industry, move through soil.
	Climate Change Researcher, Jeffrey Cegan Jeffrey Cegan, EG12, a Fellow in the Water: Systems, Science and Society (WSSS) program, researches efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of climate-induced surprises. From coastal flooding to natural disaster prevention to the spread of infectious disease, WSSS is tackling an endless spread of global complexities as students from designated schools are able to achieve a certificate and research experience in water-related issues.
	A Less Painful Colonoscopy Scientists and engineers are continually researching new methods of screening to reduce patient discomfort while also ensuring the accuracy of a colonoscopy exam. Researchers at the School of Engineering led by Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Caroline G.L. Cao, have developed a device that could potentially do both. Tufts endoscopic fiber optic shape tracker (EFOST) technology is a possible solution to the problem that occurs when the endoscope is inserted into the colon during routine screening.
	Flexible, Rolling Robot Copies Caterpillar's Escape Mechanism Tufts researchers designed a robot that mimics the behavior of caterpillars in order to better understand the mechanics of "ballistic rolling." In a report published in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, graduate student Huai-Ti Lin, Gary Leisk, senior lecturer and research assistant professor in mechanical engineering, and biology professor Barry Trimmer report that their GoQBot mimics two caterpillar modes of locomotion: inching along like a worm or ballistically rolling at comparatively high speeds.
	Vandervelde Earns Air Force Grant for Photodetection Research Tom Vandervelde, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received an Air Force Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) grant for his work on exploring and increasing the capabilities of photodetectors with applications for advances in biomedical diagnostics, health care, and sustainable energy.
	Hidden in Plain Sight Remco Chang uses visual analytics to puzzle out secrets from financial fraud to terrorism. In essence, Chang says, the emerging field of visual analysis is a way of sorting through a sea of data to find patterns and outliers that might otherwise have gone undetected.
	Chiesa Wins Early Career Award in Sustainable Energy With a Early Research Career Award from the Department of Energy, Luisa Chiesa will provide valuable insight into the materials used to design the highly efficient, superconducting magnets used for everything from medical use to high-energy physics applications, including fusion devices that could produce safe, abundant amounts of energy.
	Portsmore Designs Engineering Education Success Merredith Portsmore, a doctoral student at the Center for Engineering Educational Outreach, studies how young children instinctively create and learn to design solutions to problems.
	Don't Drink the Water: Shafiqul Islam studies Bangladesh's arsenic-contaminated water supply With an interdisciplinary research approach, Shafiq Islam addresses scarcity of and access to clean drinking water.
	"Is it Natural?" Computer Scientists Brodley, Slonim, and Cowen Study DNA Carla Brodley and Donna Slonim distinguish between types of DNA to help determine appropriate responses to infectious disease outbreaks.
	Baise "Shakes it up" in the classroom and wins NSF Career Award Laurie Gaskins Baise seeks to improve visualization and analysis tools to evaluate seismic hazards.
	Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos: Sopping up sulfur New technology removes hydrogen sulfide from hot fuel gases before the gas is used for power production in high-temperature fuel cells or gas turbines.
	David Kaplan: Weaving a Web to Regrow Bone To grow bone, David Kaplan combines silica with proteins produced by golden silk orb weaver spiders.
	Going Upstream to the Problem: Gute working to solve public health problems By blending epidemiology and engineering, David Gute is working to solve public health problems at home and around the world.