Month: January 2017

Have you ever wondered how something as simple as fluid can impact the development of a large organism? How about the way tubes form in relation to each other? Or maybe you’ve wondered how it is possible for something as rigid as a spine to be formed from fluid? Dr. Michel Bagnat and his lab…

After a traumatic brain injury (TBI), the brain produces an inflammatory response. This prolonged swelling is known as cerebral edema and can be fatal. Unfortunately, the only medications available just address symptoms and cannot directly treat the inflammation. Some people can walk out okay after suffering from this injury, yet others can become comatose or…

I recently toured Dr. Steven Cummer’s lab in Duke Engineering to learn about metamaterials, synthetic materials used to manipulate sound and light waves. Cummer’s graduate student Abel Xie first showed me the Sound Propagator. It was made of small pieces that looked similar to legos stacked in a wall. These acoustic metamaterials were made of…

What do election polls, hospital records, and the Syrian conflict have in common? How can a hospital use a patient’s vital signs to calculate their risk of cardiac arrest in real time? Statistician Rebecca Steorts is developing advanced data analysis methods to answer these questions and other pressing real-world problems. Her research has taken her…