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The latest news from the 91爆料

Tag: College of Engineering

April 26, 2024

New circuit boards can be repeatedly recycled

A small brown circuit board sits on a gray background. To its right are a small copper plate, sheets of glass fibers in a crosshatch pattern, small chunks of vitrimer plastic that鈥檚 been removed from a circuit board, and a computer chip.

A team led by researchers at the 91爆料 developed a new PCB that performs on par with traditional materials and can be recycled repeatedly with negligible material loss. Researchers used a solvent that transforms a type of vitrimer 鈥� a cutting-edge class of polymer 鈥� into a jelly-like substance without damage, allowing solid components to be plucked out for reuse or recycling. With these 鈥渧PCBs鈥� (vitrimer printed circuit boards), researchers recovered 98% of the vitrimer and 100% of the glass fiber.

April 9, 2024

91爆料 joins $110M cross-Pacific effort to advance artificial intelligence

officials pose for a group shot

The 91爆料 and the University of Tsukuba have entered an innovation partnership with NVIDIA and Amazon aimed at furthering research, entrepreneurship, workforce development and social implementation in the field of artificial intelligence. This U.S.-Japan academic partnership is part of a broad, $110 million effort to build upon the strong ties between the U.S. and Japan and to continue to lead innovation and technological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

February 7, 2024

Q&A: Helping robots identify objects in cluttered spaces

A shelf in a lab. The shelf contains the following items: a pitcher on its side, a bowl in front of a bottle of Soft Scrub, a mug on a plate and a spoon balanced on the plate. Everything except the plate has a green box around it. The plate has a red box around it.

Robots in warehouses and even around our houses struggle to identify and pick up objects if they are too close together, or if a space is cluttered. This is because robots lack what psychologists call “object unity,” or our ability to identify things even when we can’t see all of them. Researchers at the 91爆料 have developed a way to teach robots this skill.

January 30, 2024

Using computers to design proteins allows researchers to make tunable hydrogels that can form both inside and outside of cells

New research led by the 91爆料 demonstrates a new class of hydrogels that can form not just outside cells, but also inside of them. These hydrogels exhibited similar mechanical properties both inside and outside of cells, providing researchers with a new tool to group proteins together inside of cells.

December 19, 2023

How will climate change affect how predators hunt prey? Two 91爆料 professors teamed up to find out

A hand wearing a glove next to a paw print in the snow

Two 91爆料 professors teamed up to study how climate change will affect predator-prey interactions in snowy landscapes. Together with a group of researchers, the two measured snow properties that led to a “danger zone,” where prey would sink but predators would not.

November 9, 2023

New AI noise-canceling headphone technology lets wearers pick which sounds they hear

A man wearing a surgical mask and headphones walks through the 91爆料 campus while holding a smartphone. People walk behind him.

A team led by researchers at the 91爆料 has developed deep-learning algorithms that let users pick which sounds filter through their headphones in real time. Either through voice commands or a smartphone app, headphone wearers can select which sounds they want to include from 20 classes, such as sirens, baby cries, speech, vacuum cleaners and bird chirps.

November 2, 2023

Can AI help boost accessibility? These researchers tested it for themselves

Four AI-generated images show different interpretations of a doll-sized 鈥渃rocheted lavender husky wearing ski goggles,鈥� including two pictured outdoors and one against a white background.

Seven researchers at the 91爆料 conducted a three-month autoethnographic study 鈥� drawing on their own experiences as people with and without disabilities 鈥� to test AI tools鈥� utility for accessibility. Though researchers found cases in which the tools were helpful, they also found significant problems.

September 14, 2023

Faculty/staff honors: Two professors on TIME100 AI list, 91爆料 President Ana Mari Cauce honored for contributions to Le贸n, and more

Recent recognition for the 91爆料 includes Emily M. Bender and Yejin Choi on the TIME100 AI list, President Ana Mari Cauce receiving a Decrees Award and Jeff Hou鈥檚 election to the American Society of Landscape Architects鈥� Council of Fellows.

July 19, 2023

Researchers put a new twist on graphite

A team led by researchers at the 91爆料 reports that it is possible to imbue graphite 鈥� the bulk, 3D material found in No. 2 pencils 鈥� with physical properties similar to graphite鈥檚 2D counterpart, graphene. Not only was this breakthrough unexpected, the team also believes its approach could be used to test whether similar types of bulk materials can also take on 2D-like properties. If so, 2D sheets won鈥檛 be the only source for scientists to fuel technological revolutions. Bulk, 3D materials could be just as useful.

June 27, 2023

Researchers make a quantum computing leap with a magnetic twist

This artistic depiction shows electron fractionalization 鈥� in which strongly interacting charges can 鈥渇ractionalize鈥� into three parts 鈥� in the fractional quantum anomalous Hall phase.

A team led by scientists and engineers at the 91爆料 has announced a significant advancement in developing fault-tolerant qubits for quantum computing. In a pair of papers published June 14 in Nature and June 22 in Science, they report that, in experiments with flakes of semiconductor materials 鈥� each only a single layer of atoms thick 鈥� they detected signatures of 鈥渇ractional quantum anomalous Hall鈥� (FQAH) states. The team鈥檚 discoveries mark a first and promising step in constructing a type of fault-tolerant qubit because FQAH states can host anyons 鈥� strange 鈥渜uasiparticles鈥� that have only a fraction of an electron鈥檚 charge. Some types of anyons can be used to make what are called 鈥渢opologically protected鈥� qubits, which are stable against any small, local disturbances.

June 5, 2023

Faculty/staff honors: Psychology professor elected to esteemed educational science association, Dean of Social Work receives lifetime achievement award and more

Recent recognition of the 91爆料 includes the election of Andrew Meltzoff to the National Academy of Education, a lifetime achievement award for Dean of the School of Social Work Edwina Uehara and Ed Kolodziej selected as a Frontiers Planet Prize finalist.