Columbia engineers have invented a breakthrough optical phase modulator that controls visible light—without dimming it—with the smallest footprint and lowest power consumption. New device will improve LIDAR for remote sensing, AR/VR goggles, quantum information processing chips, implantable optogenetic probes, and more.
Researchers from Columbia Engineering, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), University of Sheffield, Mary Rose Trust, and University of Copenhagen used a new X-ray technique developed by Columbia and ESRF to discover that there are zinc-containing nanoparticles lodged within the wooden hull of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s favorite warship. These nanoparticles are leading to deterioration of the remains of the ship, which sank in battle in 1545 and was raised from the Solent in 1982.
Multidisciplinary team of materials physicists and geophysicists combine theoretical predictions, simulations, and seismic tomography to find spin transition in the Earth’s mantle. Their findings will improve understanding of the Earth’s interior, and help elucidate the impact of this phenomenon on tectonic events including volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
Imagine having your own digital personal chef; ready to cook whatever you want, tailoring the shape, texture, and flavor just for you--all at the push of a button. Columbia engineers have been working on doing just that, using lasers for cooking and 3D printing technology for assembling foods. In their new study they discovered that laser-cooked meat shrinks 50% less, retains double the moisture content, and shows similar flavor development to conventionally cooked meat.
A new way to control the motion of bubbles from researchers at Columbia Engineering might one day help separate useful metals from useless dirt using much less energy and water than is currently needed.
In the biomaterials industry, electrospinning is a ubiquitous fabrication method used to produce nano- to microscale fibrous meshes that closely resemble native tissue architecture. Alas, the process has traditionally used solvents that not only are environmentally hazardous but also a significant barrier to industrial scale-up, clinical translation, and widespread use. But now, Columbia Engineering researchers report that they have developed a "green electrospinning" process that addresses those challenges, from managing environmental risks of volatile solvent storage and disposal at large volumes to meeting health and safety standards during both fabrication and implementation.
A new robotic neck brace from researchers at Columbia Engineering and their colleagues at Columbia's Department of Otolaryngology may help doctors analyze the impact of cancer treatments on the neck mobility of patients and may help guide their recovery.
A previously unknown kind of human brain cell appears to help people center themselves in their personal maps of the world, according to a new study from neuroscientists at Columbia Engineering. This discovery shed light on the cellular mechanisms underlying navigation and memory in humans, as well as what parts of the brain might get disrupted during the kinds of memory impairments common in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
A new study from computer scientists at Columbia Engineering reveals what may be the first way to encrypt personal images on popular cloud photo services, such as those from Google, Apple, Flickr and others, all without requiring any changes to — or trust in — those services.
New Columbia Engineering study unveils a computer vision technique for giving machines a more intuitive sense for what will happen next by leveraging higher-level associations between people, animals, and objects.“Our algorithm is a step toward machines being able to make better predictions about human behavior, and thus better coordinate their actions with ours,” said Computer Science Professor Carl Vondrick. “Our results open a number of possibilities for human-robot collaboration, autonomous vehicles, and assistive technology.”
A challenging frontier in science and engineering is controlling matter outside of thermodynamic equilibrium to build material systems with capabilities that rival those of living organisms. Research on active colloids aims to create micro- and nanoscale “particles” that swim through viscous fluids like primitive microorganisms. When these self-propelled particles come together, they can organize and move like schools of fish to perform robotic functions, such as navigating complex environments and delivering “cargo” to targeted locations.
Columbia Engineering researchers who are leading experts in computer security recently presented two major papers on memory safety that make computer systems more secure at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture. This new research, which has zero to little effect on system performance, is already being used to create a processor for the Air Force Research Lab.
Long interested in interactions between robots and humans, Columbia Engineering researchers have created EVA, a new autonomous robot with a soft and expressive face that responds to match the expressions of nearby humans. “The idea for EVA took shape a few years ago, when my students and I began to notice that the robots in our lab were staring back at us through plastic, googly eyes,” said Prof Hod Lipson, who led the team.
Columbia Engineering researchers have developed SeKVM, the first system that guarantees--through a mathematical proof--the security of virtual machines in the cloud. “This is the first time that a real-world multiprocessor software system has been shown to be mathematically correct and secure,” said Computer Science Professor Jason Nieh. “This means that users’ data are correctly managed by software running in the cloud and are safe from security bugs and hackers.”
Researchers at Columbia Engineering report that they have built what they say is the world's smallest single-chip system, consuming a total volume of less than 0.1 mm3. The system is as small as a dust mite and visible only under a microscope. In order to achieve this, the team used ultrasound to both power and communicate with the device wirelessly
New study from Joshua Jacobs (Columbia Engineering) and Itzhak Fried (UCLA) demonstrates the existence of phase precession in the human brain for the first time, and shows that this neural code not only links sequential positions, as in animals, but also abstract progression towards specific goals. Says lead author Salman Qasim, “We were convinced that phase precession held a lot of promise as a widespread neural code that could be used for learning and cognition.”
Responsive neurostimulation is becoming increasingly effective at probing neural circuit function and treating neuropsychiatric disorders, such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. A new approach from Columbia Engineering researchers shows great promise in improving the limitations of current bulky devices. They have built a high-performance implantable system that enables reading and manipulation of brain circuits in real time.
The digital revolution is built on a foundation of invisible 1s and 0s called bits. As decades pass, and more and more of the world’s information and knowledge morph into streams of 1s and 0s, the notion that computers prefer to “speak” in binary numbers is rarely questioned.
Columbia Engineering researchers, working with Brookhaven National Laboratory, report today that they have built designed nanoparticle-based 3D materials that can withstand a vacuum, high temperatures, high pressure, and high radiation. This new fabrication process results in robust and fully engineered nanoscale frameworks that not only can accommodate a variety of functional nanoparticle types but also can be quickly processed with conventional nanofabrication methods.
Columbia Engineering researchers report that they developed a new, efficient way to modulate and enhance an important type of nonlinear optical process: optical second harmonic generation—where two input photons are combined in the material to produce one photon with twice the energy—from hexagonal boron nitride through micromechanical rotation and multilayer stacking. Their work is the first to exploit the dynamically tunable symmetry of 2D materials for nonlinear optical applications.
With COVID-19 vaccines in reach, city officials, business administrators, and high-rise building managers are planning how to safely open offices as people come back to work. Columbia engineers have been exploring solutions to this problem, with real-world data and context provided by the Office of the Mayor of New York City. They used mathematical modeling and epidemiological principles to design interventions for queuing safely in elevators during a pandemic, without having to program any elevators.
Columbia Engineering researchers report the first nanomaterial that demonstrates "photon avalanching,” a process that is unrivaled in its combination of extreme nonlinear optical behavior and efficiency. The realization of photon avalanching in nanoparticle form opens up a host of sought-after applications, from real-time super-resolution optical microscopy, precise temperature and environmental sensing, and infrared light detection, to optical analog-to-digital conversion and quantum sensing.
Like a longtime couple who can predict each other’s every move, a Columbia Engineering robot has learned to predict its partner robot’s future actions and goals based on just a few initial video frames. The study, conducted at Columbia Engineering’s Creative Machines Lab led by Mechanical Engineering Professor Hod Lipson, is part of a broader effort to endow robots with the ability to understand and anticipate the goals of other robots, purely from visual observations.
Columbia Engineering study is the first to show the importance of long-term soil moisture changes and associated soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in future predictions of water availability in drylands. The researchers identified a long-term soil moisture regulation of atmospheric circulation and moisture transport that largely ameliorates the potential decline of future water availability in drylands, beyond that expected in the absence of soil moisture feedbacks.
The use and spread of disinformation—false or misleading information intended to deceive people—is being amplified and accelerated at an alarming rate on the internet via social media. In a white paper for the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Computing Community Consortium (CCC), researchers from Columbia Engineering, the Santa Fe Institute, the University of Colorado, and Arizona State University outline steps to begin dealing with the disinformation problem.
Researchers, led by Columbia Engineering Prof Latha Venkataraman, report today that they have discovered a new chemical design principle for exploiting destructive quantum interference. They used their approach to create a six-nanometer single-molecule switch where the on-state current is more than 10,000 times greater than the off-state current—the largest change in current achieved for a single-molecule circuit to date.
Columbia University researchers report that they have achieved plasmonically active graphene with record-high charge density without an external gate. They accomplished this by exploiting novel interlayer charge transfer with a two-dimensional electron-acceptor known as -RuCl3. “This work allows us to use graphene as a plasmonic material without metal gates or voltage sources, making it possible to create stand-alone graphene plasmonic structures for the first time,” said Mechanical Engineering Prof. James Hone.
Is the Amazon rainforest as sensitive to water stress as what the current models have been showing? Columbia Engineering researchers found that the models have been largely over-estimating water stress in tropical forests. While models show that increases in air dryness greatly diminish photosynthesis rates in certain regions of the Amazon rainforest, observational data results show the opposite: in certain very wet regions, the forests instead even increase photosynthesis rates in response to drier air.
Computer scientists at Columbia Engineering have shown for the first time that it is possible to analyze how thousands of Android apps use cryptography without needing to have the apps’ actual codes. The team’s new tool, CRYLOGGER, can tell when an Android app uses cryptography incorrectly—it detects the so-called “cryptographic misuses” in Android apps. When given a list of rules that should be followed for secure cryptography, CRYLOGGER detects violations of these rules.
Columbia Engineering researchers have found that alkali metal additives, such as potassium ions, can prevent lithium microstructure proliferation during battery use. They used a combination of microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, and computational modeling to discover that adding small amounts of potassium salt to a conventional lithium battery electrolyte produces unique chemistry at the lithium/electrolyte interface, and modulates degradation during battery operation, preventing the growth of microstructures and leading to safer, longer lasting batteries.
Trump’s 2016 victory in the Electoral College without leading in the popular vote has led to wide speculation of a repeat in 2020. Columbia University researchers have been wondering the same thing. They examined how Electoral College outcomes are conditioned by how states voted in previous elections. Their simulations suggest that in 2020 the Electoral College bias is likely to again favor the Republicans, but to a lesser degree than in 2016.
Columbia Engineering researchers report their innovative robotic Trunk Support Trainer, when combined with active practice of postural movements, improves trunk and reaching control in CP children with impaired sitting control. TruST helps physical therapists to not only support the children in the region of the trunk where they suffer from weakness and incoordination but also challenge them to perform rehabilitation tasks outside their base of support to improve their movement and coordination.
A multidisciplinary team from Columbia Engineering, Columbia’s College of Dental Medicine and Department of Medicine, Louisiana State University, LaCell LLC, and Obatala Sciences has now bioengineered living cartilage-bone temporomandibular joint grafts, precisely matched to the recipient, both biologically and anatomically. Their new study, published today in Science Translational Medicine, builds upon a long series of their previous work on bioengineering functional cartilage and bone for regenerative medicine and tissue models of disease.
Columbia Engineering researchers report that Sofosbuvir-terminated RNA is more resistant to the proofreader of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, than Remdesivir-terminated RNA. The results of the new study, published today by the Nature Research journal Scientific Reports, support the use of the FDA-approved hepatitis C drug EPCLUSA—Sofosbuvir/Velpatasvir—in combination with other drugs in COVID-19 clinical trials.
A promising new COVID-19 rapid-testing technology platform developed by Rover Diagnostics and Columbia Engineering has been selected by the NIH to enter Phase 1 of the RADx initiative to support new COVID-19 testing technologies. The affordable, portable, and ultrafast point-of-care Rover platform provides reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction results in eight minutes, faster than any other test of its kind, with targeted accuracy to match laboratory-based tests.
Researchers from Columbia Engineering and the University of Pittsburgh have developed a sensitive and specific early warning system for predicting necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in premature infants before the life-threatening intestinal disease occurs. The prototype predicts NEC accurately and early, using stool microbiome features combined with clinical and demographic information. “The lessons we’ve learned from our new technique could well translate to other genetic or proteomic datasets and inspire new machine learning algorithms for healthcare datasets.”
Selective laser sintering is one of the most widely used processes in additive manufacturing, but it is limited to printing with a single material at a time. Columbia engineers have used their expertise in robotics to develop a new approach to overcome this limitation: By inverting the laser so that it points upwards, they’ve invented a way to enable SLS to use—at the same time—multiple materials.
Researchers at Columbia Engineering and Montana State University have found that placing sufficient strain in a 2D material creates localized states that can yield single-photon emitters. Using sophisticated optical microscopy techniques developed at Columbia over the past 3 years, the team was able to directly image these states for the first time, revealing that even at room temperature they are highly tunable and act as quantum dots, tightly confined pieces of semiconductors that emit light.
A multidisciplinary team from Columbia Engineering and Vanderbilt University has now demonstrated that severely injured donor lungs that have been declined for transplant can be recovered outside the body by a system that uses cross-circulation of whole blood between the donor lung and an animal host. For the first time, a severely injured human lung that failed to recover using the standard clinical EVLP was successfully recovered during 24 hours on the team’s cross-circulation platform.
Columbia University researchers report that they have observed a quantum fluid known as the fractional quantum Hall states (FQHS), one of the most delicate phases of matter, for the first time in a monolayer 2D semiconductor. Their findings demonstrate the excellent intrinsic quality of 2D semiconductors and establish them as a unique test platform for future applications in quantum computing.
A new Columbia Engineering study demonstrates that even when temperatures warm and cold stress is limited, light is still a major factor in limiting carbon uptake of northern high latitudes. The team analyzed satellite observations, field measurements, and model simulations and showed that there is a prevalent radiation limitation on carbon uptake in northern ecosystems, especially in autumn.
Researchers at Columbia Engineering and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have identified a library of molecules that shut down the SARS-CoV-2 polymerase reaction, a key step that establishes the potential of these molecules as lead compounds to be further modified for the development of COVID-19 therapeutics. Five of these molecules are already FDA-approved for use in the treatment of other viral infections including HIV/AIDS, cytomegalovirus, and hepatitis B.
Over the past year, Columbia Engineering researchers have been refining their unconventional desalination approach for hypersaline brines—temperature swing solvent extraction (TSSE)—that shows great promise for widespread use. The team now reports that their method has enabled them to attain energy-efficient zero-liquid discharge of ultrahigh salinity brines—the first demonstration of TSSE for ZLD desalination of hypersaline brines.
Researchers from Columbia Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Graz University of Technology propose a new computational system to expand the understanding of the brain at an intermediate level, between neurons and cognitive phenomena such as language. They have developed a brain architecture based on neuronal assemblies, and they demonstrate its use in the syntactic processing in the production of language; their model is consistent with recent experimental results.
Watching and measuring what happens in tissues inside the human embryo is currently not possible, and it’s difficult to do in mammalian models. Because humans and the fruit fly Drosophila share so many biological similarities, Columbia Engineering and Syracuse University researchers tackled this problem by focusing on fruit flies. The team reports today that they can predict when the tissue will begin to rapidly flow just by looking at cell shapes in the tissue.
Columbia engineers are the first to build a high-performance non-reciprocal device on a compact chip with a performance 25 times better than previous work. The new chip, which can handle several watts of power (enough for cellphone transmitters that put out a watt or so of power), was the leading performer in a DARPA SPAR program to miniaturize these devices and improve performance metrics.
Researchers at Columbia Engineering and the University of South Carolina have developed a method that combines big data and machine learning to selectively design gas-filtering polymer membranes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Their study, published today in Science Advances, is the first to apply an experimentally validated machine learning method to rapidly design and develop advanced gas separation membranes.
Most ammonia capture is done through the Haber-Bosch (HB) process, an energy-intensive technique used to produce fertilizer that accounts for 1-2% of the world’s annual energy consumption. Columbia engineers report they have recovered ammonia through a new method with a very low level of energy, approx 1/5 of the energy used by HB. And because the technique recycles ammonia in a closed loop, the ammonia can be recaptured for reuse in fertilizer, household cleaners, etc.
Led by Biomedical Engineering Prof Dion Khodagholy, researchers have designed biocompatible ion-driven soft transistors that can perform real-time neurologically relevant computation and a mixed-conducting particulate composite that allows creation of electronic components out of a single material. These have promise for bioelectronic devices that are fast, sensitive, biocompatible, soft, and flexible, with long-term stability in physiological environments such as the human body. In particular, they could facilitate diagnosis and monitoring of neurological disease.
A new Columbia Engineering study shows that increased water stress—higher frequency of drought due to higher temperatures, is going to constrain the phenological cycle: in effect, by shutting down photosynthesis, it will generate a lower carbon uptake at the end of the season, thus contributing to increased global warming.
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