May 2008
Tim Fofonoff sucessfully defended his Ph.D. thesis Friday, May 23rd, 2008.
Nate Wiedenman sucessfully defended his Ph.D. thesis Monday, May 19th, 2008.
May 9 2008 Prof. Ian Hunter gives a MIT Mechanical Engineering Departmental seminar entiled "MICA: Measurement, Instrumentation, Control and Analysis".
May 4 2008 Prof. Ian Hunter gave a talk in Washington entitled "Semi-Sentient Nano-Robots" to the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP).
May 3 to May 22 Dr. Andrew Taberner visited the BioInstrumentation Lab from the Auckland University BioEngineering Institute in New Zealand. While in the Lab Dr. Taberner worked on the Nano-Calorimeter Project.
February 2008
Feb 5 to May 15 2008 Prof. Hunter, Bryan Ruddy, Dr. Cathy Hogan and Dr. Serge Lafontaine run the MIT Graduate 2.131 Advanced Instrumentation and Measurement Course. This is the first time in 5 years that the course has been offered.
October 2007
Prof. Peter Hunter, Head of the BioEngineering Institute, Auckland University, visited the lab to discuss new collaborative research directions.
Dr Andrew Taberner attended the fall meeting of the American Society of Precision Engineering (Oct 15-19) in Dallas Texas, where he presented the Needle-Free Injection team's recent work in an address titled:
"Squirt-guns, syringes and science: Precise jet injection using servo-controlled Lorentz-Force actuators."
Craig Forest presented "Microlens characterization using contact profilometry and point-spread function measurement" at the fall meeting of the American Society of Precision Engineering (Oct 15-19) in Dallas Texas.
Dr. Lynette Jones presented at a Symposium at The Montreal Neurological Institute on Tactile and Thermal Displays (Oct 28).
September 2007
The BioInstrumentation Lab hosted the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Annual Review Meeting (Sept. 20th).
Biorobotic fins and conducting polymer actuators: Prof. Ian Hunter, MIT
a. Biorobotic fin prototypes: Dr. James Tangorra
b. Conducting polymer actuators: Maj. Nate Wiedenman, Mr. Priam Pillai, Mr. Tim Fofonoff, Dr. Patrick Anquetil
Professor Poul Nielsen (University of Auckland) visited the BioInstrumentation Lab from August 29-Sept 3 to continue collaborative work on instrumentation projects. Professor Nielsen leads a bioengineering and bioinstrumenation research program at the Auckland BioEngineering Institute in Auckland, New Zealand.
Dr. Cathy Hogan presented her research on "Delivery of Immunoreactive Antigen Using a Lorentz-Force Actuated Jet Injector" at the Association De Pharmacie Galenique Industrielle conference on "Innovation in Drug Delivery: From Biomaterials to Devices", (Sep 30th - Oct 3rd) in Naples, Italy.
Professor Poul Nielsen (University of Auckland) visited the BioInstrumentation Lab from August 29-Sept 3 to continue collaborative work on instrumentation projects. Professor Nielsen leads a bioengineering and bioinstrumenation research program at the Auckland BioEngineering Institute in Auckland, New Zealand.
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
Prof. Ian Hunter travelled to Williamsburg, Virginia, to present at the Community Academic Summit on our Stealth Nanowire Antenna Project. The meeting was sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (June 11). The next day he drove to
McLean, Virginia to present to the Intelligence Science Board (ISB) on Advances in Bio-Instrumentation (June 12).
Popular Mechanics online described Craig Forest's invention in "Retractable Bike Storage Claw" by N. Mokey.
May 2007
Prof. Hunter has been awarded the 2007 Den Hartog Distinguished Educator Award by the ME faculty "for excellence in teaching Mechanical Engineering which has served as an inspiration for students and has fostered the development of physical insight and engineering judgment".
Miguel A. Saez gave an oral presentation titled "Microforging technique for fabrication of low roughness mold masters for injection molded lens arrays" at SPIE Optifab 2007 in Rochester, NY. The presentation was based on work done by Craig Forest and myself.
Brian Hemond has passed the Mechanical Engineering doctoral qualifying exam and will begin his thesis project on miniaturization and optimization of portable mass spectrometers.
Craig Forest sucessfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "An Ultra-high Throughput Mutational Spectrometer for Human Genetic".
Rachel Pytel successfully completed her Ph.D. and submitted her Ph.D. thesis entitled "Artificial Muscle Morphology: Structure/Property relationships in Polypyrrole
Actuators.".
April 2007
Graduate student Nathan Ball will be participating on a panel at the Museum of Science on May 3 as part of EurekaFest, presented by the Lemelson-MIT Program.
This panel (at 3 p.m.) is open to the public, and moreover; admission is free for students with their MIT IDs, and we will have free shuttle service to help transport guests.
For more information visit the
Lemelson-MIT EurekaFest invitation web page.
February 2007
The BioInstrumentation Lab organized an international conference on BioInstrumentation for the Disruptive Technology Office (DTO) in Washington DC. Invited speakers included Patrick Anquetil of MIT, Nathan Ball of MIT, George Church of Harvard University, David Cory of MIT, Ian Hunter of MIT, Peter Hunter of the University of Auckland/Oxford University, Nicola Marzari of MIT, Herschel Rabitz of Princeton University, Bryan Ruddy of MIT, Timothy Swager of MIT, and William Thilly of MIT.
Nathan Ball was awarded the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT prize for his battery-powered rope ascender. The Atlas Powered Rope Ascender can lift
a 100kg load at up to 200m at a speed exceeding 3m/s. More information can be found at the
Lemelson-MIT News Press Release web page.
Our work developing instrumentation for high throughput measurement of the mechanical properties of cardiac myocytes
was accepted for publication in the American Journal of Physiology:
Garcia-Webb, M. G., Taberner, A. J., Hogan, N. C., and Hunter, I. W. A modular instrument for exploring
the mechanics of cardiac myocytes. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol. 2007 Feb 16.
January 2007
The New Scientist reported Dr. Jones research on the tactile vest in their January 3d "Breaking News" section. Please look at the full article on the
NewScientist.com
web site.
Nathan Ball will be co-hosting an engineering reality TV show to be aired weekly on PBS starting in February 2007.
The description of the television series, "Design Squad", can be found on the
IEEE Institute web site in their feature story of January 5th, 2007.
Prof. Ian W. Hunter spent two weeks in doing collaborative research at the BioEngineering Institute at the University of Auckland, New Zeland. He also presented a seminar on the MICA project.
The PBS documentary featuring our nanowire work that was filmed a few months ago and aired on Wednesday January 17th is now available on the
PBS "22nd Century" web page.
December 2006
Prof. Ian W. Hunter presented "MICA: Measurement, Instrumentation, control and Analysis" with the participation of Dr. Serge Lafontaine and Brian Hemond at the iCampus Symposium "Celebrating the MIT-Microsoft iCampus Alliance".
November 2006
Dr. Per O. Ekstrom from the Norwegian Radium Hospital visited the BioInstrumentation Laboratory as part of an ongoing collaboration on DNA mutation detection experiments in 10,000 persons simultaneously.
Prof. John Madden from UBC visited the BioInstrumentation Laboratory as part of an ongoing collaboration on conducting polymers and nano-technology.
Rachel Pytel presented her research, "Structure/Property Relationships in
Conducting Polymer Actuators" at the Materials Research Society 2006 fall
meeting at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.
October 2006
Tim Fofonoff was awarded the $50k Hatsopoulos Prize for the development of a 4kW battery powered rope ascender. For more details look at the announcement on the Web Site of the Department of Mechanical Engineering:
http://www.me.mit.edu/NewsandCalendar/Honors/0610030612314606.htm
September 2006
The BioInstrumentation Lab has signed a contract with pharmaceutical company Pfizer
(www.pfizer.com) to develop a nano-calorimeter capable of performing hundreds of measurements in parallel.
Nathan Vandesteeg successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Synthesis and Characterization of Conducting Polymer Actuators".
Scott McEuen joins the BioInstrumentation Laboratory in pursuit of a MS degree after completing a BS in mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University. Currently, he is developing a micro calorimeter device for the pharmaceutical industry.
Tim Fofonoff and Craig Forest are featured in the Sept/Oct 2006 issue of EDM Today Magazine in an article entitled “Brain Electrodes & DNA Mutation Discovery” written in conjunction with Harry Moser, president of AgieCharmilles USA. The article highlights their cutting edge work with EDM at the MIT BioInstrumentation Laboratory. The article can be found at
http://www.edmtodaymagazine.com.
Prof. Pierre Dillenbourg and Patrick Jermann from EPFL visited the BioInstrumentation Laboratory on Wednesday Sept 20th for a presentation on the iDAT project.
August 2006
Mike Garcia-Web successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "An apparatus for high throughput muscle cell experimentation".
July 2006
The MIT journal Technology Review describes the joint research between Prof. Ian Hunter and
Prof. Rodolfo Llinas from NYU to develop 600 nanometers conducting polymer electrodes. The web page can be found at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17071&ch=nanotech
One of our collaborators Professor Peter Hunter (Auckland Univ. and Oxford
Univ.) visited the BioInstrumentation Lab for a few days on his way to London to be inducted in to the 400-year old Royal Society. Other former and current Royal Society members include such scientific giants such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking. Congratulations Peter!
The BioInstrumentation Lab has signed a research agreement with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to produce a highly sensitive, massively parallel microcalorimeter for use in very high throughput drug discovery.
June 2006
Robert David successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "A Liquid-in-Glass Thermometer with Sub-MicroKelvin Resolution, and its Application for Calorimetry".
Japanese researcher Mahoro Anabuki from Canon's MR Systems Laboratory visited the lab.
Congratulations to Angela Chen, Mike Del Zio, Brian Hemond, Ariel Hermann, Nasko Pavlov, Bryan Ruddy, and Dawn Wendell for receiving their Master's degrees. Congratulations also go out to Amy Lam, Ethan Post, and Chris Rivest for completing their undergraduate degrees.
"A Biorobotic Pectoral Fin for Autonomous Undersea Vehicles"
accepted for the Engineering in Biology and Medicine Conference, Oct. 2006.
James Tangorra completed development and testing of biorobotic fin that replicates the cupping and sweep motion of the sunfish pectoral fin. First time demonstration of the ability to create positive thrust with a robotic fin during both the out-stroke and in-stroke of the fin beat.
The MURI biorobotic fin was outfitted with 2 axis thrust measurement as well as 5 linear Lorentz force actuators, and began testing in the flow tank at the Lauder Lab at Harvard.
Nate Ball was awarded All-America honors for pole vaulting at the NCAA outdoor championships, earning 4th place in the US with a jump of 5.1 m.
Rachel Pytel presented recent progress in the understanding of polypyrrole microstructure at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology). Hosted by Professor Yachin Cohen's research group, which specializes in high-performance and novel polymer microstructure and processing, Rachel gains valuable ideas for techniques to further elucidate the microstructure of polypyrrole.
May 2006
The MIT journal Technology Review describes the joint research between Prof. Ian Hunter and
Prof. Rodolfo Llinas from NYU to develop 600 nanometers conducting polymer electrodes and potentially be used as brain-machine interfaces or cochlear implants. The web page can be found at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16755&ch=nanotech
Dawn Wendell was awarded the MIT Departmental Service Award in Mechanical Engineering, along with Sungyon Lee and Rosiland Takata, for their work in developing a Mechanical Engineering MIT summer program for high school girls. More details on this program can be found at:
http://web.mit.edu/wtp-me/.
Ms. Angela Chen is awarded the degree of Master of Science for her work on fast contracting bending actuators.
Mr. Michael Del Zio is awarded the degree of Master of Science for his work on characterizing and modeling the active thermal properties of conducting polymer actuators.
Dr. Anquetil is invited by the IEEE to deliver the IEEE-Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society's Distinguished Lecture Series' entitled "Biomedical Applications of Conducting Polymer Materials and Systems".
An article by Kevin Bullis in the MIT Technology Review entitled "Tiny Electrodes for the Brain" features our work on conducting polymer nanowire brain probes:
http://www.techreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16755&ch=nanotech
Rachel Pytel uses Energy Electron Loss Spectroscopy to observe counterion content in polypyrrole thin films. This technique will allow the doping level of polypyrrole thin films to be measured as part of Transmission Electron Microscopy and electron diffraction experiments
April 2006
Human Hand
Function by Lynette Jones and Susan Lederman has been published by
Oxford University Press. It is a multidisciplinary book that reviews the sensory
and motor aspects of normal hand function from both neurophysiological and behavioral
perspectives.
Our work on measuring the rapid contraction of carbon nanotube actuators is published in Advanced Materials: Madden J.D., Barisci J.N., Anquetil P.A., Spinks G.M., Wallace G.G., Baughman R.H., Hunter I.W., "Fast Carbon Nanotube Charging and Actuation", Advanced Materials 18, 870-873, 2006.
Craig Forest and Nathan Ball were featured in “The Tech,” MIT Newpaper, discussing ultra-high throughput capillary array electrophoresis. Vol. 126(19) pp 17. April 21, 2006.
Michael Garcia-Webb implemented a cantilever position H-infinity digital controller and used it to measure quasi isometric twitches produced by a cardiac muscle cell at varied sarcomere lengths between 1.8 ìm and 2.05 ìm.
James Tangorra delivered the Controls, Instrumentation, and Robotics Seminar at MIT, Apr 2006.
Nate Ball successfully auditioned to become the co-host of WGBH's new television show, Design Squad. The show will begin airing on PBS in February 2007, and will include 13 episodes where the high-school aged cast constructs different engineering projects each week. Design Squad aims to inform younger students (ages 9-13) about the engineering design process, as well as show how math and science are exciting and useful in every-day problem solving.
March 2006
Nate Wiedenman has created a working prototype of a fabric keyboard using conductive polymers. This device has potential for use both as a commercial product (for integrated control of personal electronic devices) and in military applications (interface device embedded in a soldier's uniform).
Dr Iain Anderson , Bioengineering Insititute, University of Auckland, New Zealand
visited the Bioinstrumentation Laboratory. Dr Anderson is initiating a research project at the University of Auckland to develop dielectric elastomer- and conducting polymer-based actators.
Nate Ball has built a very compact Lorentz force actuator which generates a maximum force of over 200 N. the actuator is strong enough to fire the newest generation of needle-free injection devices being developed by the BioInstrumentation Lab, and the exceptionally high force constant for the actuator's size (11 N/A) exceeds that of commercially available Lorentz force actuators of the same size. The devices are lightweight, compact, and include control electronics, making them useful as linear servos with 30 mm of travel.
Rachel Pytel presents a comparison of actuation of uniaxially and biaxially rolled polypyrrole at the 2006 meeting of the American Physical Society, in Baltimore, MD.
February 2006
Nate Wiedenman served as a military advisor to several teams in the annual Soldier Design Competition. The SDC is administered by MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, and pits MIT student teams against each other and against teams from the United States Military Academy at West Point. The teams work to devise new and innovative solutions to problems faced by soldiers in the field.
Dr. Anquetil is invited by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) at the first
Indo-US nanotech conclave in New Delhi, India to present the BioInstrumentation
Laboratory's vision of nanotechnology.
Michael Garcia-Webb presented the myocyte attachment strategy and the first measurement of the passive dynamic stiffness of an intact mammalian cardiac myocyte at the 2006 Biophysical Society annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Graduate student Nate Vandeesteeg completed development of an electrochemical dynamic analyzer building on the work of Bryan Schmid and Patrick Anquetil, and Peter Madden. This combined electrochemical and mechanical instrument is used to stimulate and measure the response of conducting polymer artificial muscles and is the 7th fully computer controlled instrument of its kind developed in the lab.
Nate Ball made an appearance with Prof. David Wallace and other members of the MIT Mechanical Engineering program on the Discovery Channel show Mythbusters (Season 3 Episode 9), attempting to verify the myth that Archimedes constructed a giant solar "death ray" using a large array of mirrors.
January 2006
Bryan Ruddy and Dawn Wendell have passed the Mechanical Enginnering doctoral qualifying exams with flying colors. Congratulations!
Craig Forest received the Young Scientist Award sponsored by Waters Corporation for his oral presentation entitled "Accurate, repeatable, and replaceable constraint of capillary arrays using a micro-fabricated device", at the Twentieth International Symposium on MicroScale Bioseparations (MSB) held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from January 22-26, 2006. The paper was co-authored by Bryan Woodruff and Ian W. Hunter.
Craig Forest presented two papers at the Twentieth International Symposium on MicroScale Bioseparations (MSB), in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from January 22-26, 2006. The papers were "Accurate, repeatable, and replaceable constraint of capillary arrays using a micro-fabricated device," by C.R.
Forest, B. Woodruff, I.W. Hunter, and "Mass assembly technology for large arrays of capillaries," by C.R. Forest, D. Buckley, I. Collier, I.W. Hunter.
The first example of anisotropic actuation in oriented polypyrrole is published by Rachel Pytel, Edwin Thomas and Ian Hunter in chemistry of materials. The full text article can be found at
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/article.cgi/cmatex/2006/18/i04/pdf/cm052511w.pdf.
December 2005
Michael Garcia-Webb successfully designed and implemented a novel attachment methodology to bind muscle cells to a force sensor and actuator. The technique was very repeatable and provided rapid, strong attachment. Cells could be stretched to sarcomere lengths in excess of 2.4 ìm.
James Tangorra completed fabrication and testing of first biorobotic fin based on the pectoral fin of the bluegill sunfish.
Demonstrated the ability to create the four component motions used by the sunfish for maneuver and propulsion.
Nate Vandesteeg gave a presentation entitled “Intrinsically Conducting Polymers as Matrix Material for Molecular Actuators” at the Materials Research Society annual fall meeting in Boston, MA.
November 2005
Rachel Pytel has successfully cold-rolled polypyrrole. This will lead to the production of biaxially oriented polypyrrole for use in electroactive devices and actuation mechanism experiments.
October 2005
Craig Forest presented a paper entititled "Micro-well Array Interface for Capillary Array Electrophoresis" at the proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Miniaturized Chemical and Biochemical Analysis Systems (TAS), Boston, MA, October 9-13, 2005. The paper was co-authored by Bryan Crane and Ian Hunter.
The BioInstrumentation Lab is invited to present an overview of its research activities
at the CMC Microsystems Annual Symposium held in Ottawa, Canada. The presentation
was given by Dr. Anquetil.
Dr. Anquetil is invited at the Microsoft e-science conference in Seattle, WA to
present the BioInstrumentation Lab's work on wireless sensors (iDat) and electronic
laboratory notebooks (iLabNotebook) to streamline scientific research.
A paper entitled "Characterization of a flow-through microcalorimeter for measuring the heat production of cardiac trabeculae"
(co-authored by Dr Taberner and Professor Hunter) was published in Review of Scientific Instruments (76, 104902 (2005)). This paper details the performance of a flow-through calorimeter, constructed in the Bioinstrumentation Laboratory, for measuring the ~10 uW heat output of small samples of living heart muscle.
September 2005
Bryan Ruddy has produced insulated conducting polymer wires 1.5 micrometers in diameter using an electrospinning technique. These wires have a wide range of potential applications, ranging from minimally-invasive biological sensors to covert military communications.
Priam Pillai joins the conducting polymer sub-group at the BioInstrumentation
Laboratory to pursue a Master's Degree. Priam is originally from Mumbai, India and
has previously completed a Bachelor of Science Degree at the University of California,
Berkeley.
Priam Pillai has joined BioInstrumentation Lab as a new Masters student. Priam completed his bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. His current research will focus on the development of conducting polymer devices.
Major Nate Wiedenman of the United States Army joins the Bioinstrumentation Lab
to pursue a Ph.D. developing conducting polymer devices and controllable materials.
Naomi Davidson graduated with a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering.
Nate Ball started his master's work on the MURI biorobotic fin. Nathan has created an impressive new linear Lorentz force actuator that has multiple uses through the lab's different projects.
August 2005
James Tangorra presented "Design and Performance of a Fish-Like Propulsor for AUVs", at the 14th International UUST Symposium, Durham, NH.
July 2005
The National Science Foundation web site published a news release describing the development of conducting polymer nano-wires and actively guiding them to make direct connections to brain cells:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=104288
The conducting polymer group presents a poster at the First ACS/MRS/IEEE CPMT Organic Microelectronics Workshop in new Newport, RI:
Llinas R.R., Walton, K. D., Nakao M., Hunter I.W., Anquetil P.A., "Neuro-vascular central nervous recording/stimulating system: using nanotechnology probes", Journal of Nanoparticle Research 7 2-3, 111-127, 2005.
The conducting polymer group presents a poster at the First ACS/MRS/IEEE CPMT Organic Microelectronics Workshop in new Newport, RI:
Anquetil P.A., Madden P.G. Swager T.M., and Hunter I.W.; "Conducting Polymers as Building Blocks for Biomimetic Systems".
June 2005
Our work on conducting polymer nanowire brain probes is published in a seminal article in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research:
Llinas R.R., Walton, K. D., Nakao M., Hunter I.W., Anquetil P.A., "Neuro-vascular central nervous recording/stimulating system: using nanotechnology probes", Journal of Nanoparticle Research 7 2-3, 111-127, 2005.
Craig Forest visited research sponsor Sandia National Laboratories and colleague Prof. Richard Mathies at UC Berkeley to present an update on the Ultra-high Throughput Mutational Spectrometer project. (June 14, 2005, June 17, 2005).
Norwood Abbey press release indicating that the BIoInstrumentation Laboratory at MIT had produced a working prototype of a needle-free drug delivery device that will have applicability to both human and veterinary markets. In recent trials at MIT, the prototype device was shown to deliver the protein into sheep skin with efficacy, based on the trial parameters, comparable to that of protein delivered using a conventional syringe.
Graduate students Mike Del Zio and Nate Vandesteeg made the first measurement of polypyrrole actuation at elevated temperatures to study the effects of temperature on actuation rate.
Nate completed his undergraduate thesis titled "Design and Characterization of a Gel Loading Mechanism for an Ultra-High Throughput Mutational Spectrometer". This hardware has had great success loading high-viscosity polymer gel into parallel capillary arrays for the Ultra-high Throughput Mutational Spectrometer (UTMS) project.
May 2005
A paper authored by graduate student Robert David and Prof. Ian Hunter was published in Sensors and Actuators A, entitled "A liquid-in-glass thermometer read by an interferometer". The resolution achieved by the thermometer was the lowest known for any thermometer above cryogenic temperatures.
Bryan Ruddy was awarded the prestigious National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, sponsored by the Naval Research Office.
Naomi Davidson is awarded the degree of Master of Science for her work on development
of conducting polymer based biomimetic muscles and fabrication techniques for an
artificial pectoral fish fin.
Mr. Bryan Schmid is awarded the degree of Master of Science for his work on characterization
of macro-length conducting polymers and the development of a conducting polymer
rotary Motors.
Graduate students Michael Garcia-Webb, Ariel Hermann, and Changsik Song, postdoctoral associates Brad Holliday and Damian Scherlis and research scientist Andrew Taberner were prize winners in the Institute for Soldier Nanoscience poster presentation competition.
Graduate Students Nate Vandesteeg, Rachel Pytel, postdoctoral associates Jocelyn Nadeau, Ivory Hills, and Brian Pate were first prize winners in the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies poster presentation competition.
March 2005
Three BioInstrumentation Lab researchers, Tim Fofonoff, Nathan Ball, and Bryan Schmid, along with a fourth MIT mechanical engineer, Daniel Walker, are awarded the SAIC award in the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies Soldier Design Competition for creating the ATLAS Powered Rope Ascender. They have since founded Atlas Devices LLC and filed two patents on their technology. More information can be found at:
http://atlasdevices.com
Dr Taberner was appointed to the position of Research Scientist in the BioInstrumentation Laboratory.
The MIT TechTalk reports Rachel Pytel's visit to dozens of
high schools and middle schools as part of a program that sends women engineers
to schools to spark the interest of women in engineering. Please read the full
article in the
TechTalk, page 6.
February 2005
Craig Forest attended a conference, the 19th International Symposium on MicroScale Bioseparations, with the aid of a travel grant award, to present a paper entitled "Two-Dimensional Capillary Array Electrophoresis End-Column Fluorescence Detection," in New Orleans, LA, February 12-17, 2005. The paper was co-authored by Nathan Ball, Timothy Fofonoff, and Ian Hunter.
Michael Garcia-Webb presented the latest developments in the modular myocyte testing instrument including a novel actuator and force sensor design at the
2005 Biophysical Society annual meeting in Long Beach, California.
January 2005
An effort let by Masters student Bryan Ruddy has produced free-standing conducting polymer wires 10 micrometers in diameter. In collaboration with Prof. Rodolfo Llinas at NYU, these wires will be used to record neural signals from the capillary network within rodent brains.
November 2004
Publication of "System Identification of the human vestibulo-ocular reflex during head free tracking", Journal of Vestibular Research, vol. 14.
September 2004
Michael Garcia-Webb presented the first iteration of the modular myocyte testing instrument at 2004 IEEE Annual Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society conference in San Francisco.
James Tangorra presented "A Stochastic Method for Generating Signals with Jointly Specified Probability Mass, Spectral, and Correlation Properties for the Identification of Physiological Systems", Proceedings of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, San Francisco, 2004.
July 2004
“Artificial Muscle Technology: Physical Principles and Naval Prospects” is published in the IEEE Journal of Ocena Engineering, Vol 29, No 3, pp. 706-728. The work presents a review of current artificial muscle technologies and compares them in the application of a variable camber propeller.
June 2004
Dawn Wendell was awarded the MIT John C. Chato Award in Bioengineering for her Bachelors thesis entitled "Conditioning planaria: device design based on an autonomous, large-scale parallel approach".
“Microelectrode Array Fabrication by Electrical Discharge Machining and Chemical Etching” is published in the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 51, pp. 890-895, 2004. This work, appearing in a special issue on brain-machine interfaces, forms the core of Tim Fofonoff’s master’s thesis.
May 2004
Michael Garcia-Webb spent two weeks studying under Professor Peter Kohl at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom learning how to isolate primary, viable cardiac myocytes from Guinea pigs.
March 2004
Nate Vandesteeg presented a paper entitled “Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) actuators, the role of cation and anion choice” at the International Society for Optical Engineering conference on Smart Structures and Materials in San Diego, CA.
2003
James Tangorra graduated with Ph. D. in Mechanical Engineering.
Craig Forest was awarded a graduate research fellowship from Sandia National Laboratories through the MIT-Sandia National Laboratories Microsystems Research Program to cover full tuition and stipend for 2.5 years. (2003-2006)
Tim Fofonoff is awarded the 2003 BMES Johnson&Johnson Excellence in Biomedical Engineering Prize for New Methods for Fabricating Brain-Machine Interfaces.
Peter Madden graduated with a Ph. D. in Mechanical Engineering and took a postdoctoral position with one of our research collaborators Prof George Lauder at Harvard University.
Nate Vandesteeg gave a presentation entitled “Synthesis and characterization of cross-linked electroactive polymer actuators” at the Materials Research Society annual fall meeting in Boston, MA.
Nate Vandesteeg presented a paper entitled “Synthesis and characterization of EDOT-based conducting polymer actuators” at the International Society for Optical Engineering conference on Smart Structures and Materials in San Diego, CA. This work demonstrated the first known characterization of linear actuation in polyEDOT.