Aided by AI, New Catheter Design Prevents Bacterial Infections
01-05-24
An interdisciplinary project at Caltech has designed a new type of catheter tube that impedes the upstream mobility of bacteria, without the need for antibiotics or other chemical antimicrobial methods. With the new design, which was optimized by novel artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the number of bacteria that are able to swim upstream in laboratory experiments was reduced 100-fold.
A paper describing the study appears in the journal Science Advances on January 3. The work was a collaboration between the laboratories of Chiara Daraio, G. Bradford Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics and Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator; Paul Sternberg, Bren Professor of Biology; John Brady, Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering; and Anima Anandkumar, Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. [Caltech story]
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Animashree Anandkumar
Fred E. Culick, 1933–2023
12-13-23
Fred Ellsworth Clow Culick, the Richard L. and Dorothy M. Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Jet Propulsion, Emeritus, passed away on December 11. He was 90 years old.
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Julia Greer Named 2024 SES A.C. Eringen Medal Recipient
11-02-23
Julia Greer, Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering; Fletcher Jones Foundation Director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute, has been selected as the 2024 recipient of the Society of Engineering Science’s (SES) A.C. Eringen Medal. Greer was selected for her sustained outstanding contributions in the field of three-dimensional nano- and micro-architected materials as well as the development of innovative in-situ experimental methods and instruments used to study the mechanics of small-scale materials.
The SES A.C. Eringen Medal is awarded annually in recognition of sustained outstanding achievements in engineering science, and the award recipient is invited to speak at the SES annual meeting. The 2024 SES annual meeting will be hosted by Westlake University in China.
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Technique for 3-D Printing Metals at the Nanoscale Reveals Surprise Benefit
09-20-23
Late last year, Caltech researchers revealed that they had developed a new fabrication technique for printing microsized metal parts containing features about as thick as three or four sheets of paper. Now, the team has reinvented the technique to allow for printing objects a thousand times smaller: 150 nanometers, which is comparable to the size of a flu virus. In doing so, the team also discovered that the atomic arrangements within these objects are disordered, which would, at large scale, make these materials unusable because they would be considered weak and "low quality." In the case of nanosized metal objects, however, this atomic-level mess has the opposite effect: these parts can be three-to-five-times stronger than similarly sized structures with more orderly atomic arrangements.
The work was conducted in the lab of Julia R. Greer, the Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering; and Fletcher Jones Foundation Director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute. It is described in a paper appearing in the journal Nano Letters. [Caltech story]
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