Spotlight Stories

After taking a leave of absence from her studies to kickstart a keyboard business, chemical engineering Ph.D. candidate Ana Oliveira Kannan has returned to complete her dissertation.

Associate Professor of the Practice Louise Manfredi brings industrial experience, capacity-building mindset to the popular makerspace in Prince Lab.

As one of the few Brown University faculty with a Ph.D. focused on the design of complex systems, the newest professor of the practice in the School of Engineering is uniquely qualified to launch a new course in the undergraduate curriculum.

Hornbuckle, a rising junior, draws on her rural roots as she explores urban environmental studies.

The accomplished technology innovator will steer the program’s curriculum and faculty to prepare professionals with the skills necessary to lead in today's complex technological landscape.

From atoms to devices, Assistant Professor Lucas Caretta aims to synthesize and discover new materials to push research and technology further.

Associate Professor Miguel Bessa focuses on the data-driven design and analysis of materials and structures.

Jonghwan Lee is Assistant Professor of School of Engineering and Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown University. He leads a research group (leelab.ai) at the intersection of medical photonics, neural engineering, and artificial intelligence. The Carney Institute recently sat down with Professor Lee for a Q&A.

From Vermont farm boy to retired naval officer and engineer, Richard Edgar reflects on the role Brown has played in his life — and how he pays it forward.

With a dual appointment in engineering and computer science, Associate Professor Nora Ayanian looks at solutions for end-to-end multi-robot coordination – that is, making a team of robots work without roboticists on hand to monitor their progress.

Building and executing an experiment to test a novel idea for improving wind turbine efficiency was the senior capstone project of Alex Koh-Bell ’22, funded in part by a spring semester Halpin Prize.

A senior capstone and Halpin Prize winning project of Ilan Upfal ’22.5 focused on optimization strategies for tidal energy capture, an experimental system approached from a signal processing viewpoint.

Corporate Advisory Board member Dan Leibholz credits Brown experiences, in and out of the classroom, for his semiconductor industry success.

Supportive parents and a balanced life are keys to success, according to this product engineer and entrepreneur.

As the Fluids faculty at Brown continues to expand, Assistant Professor Monica Martinez Wilhelmus tackles tangible contributions to climate science.

Assistant Professor Mauro Rodriguez brings to Brown Engineering his own realization, reaffirmation, and reclamation as mentor and educator.

Inspired by the small-scale self-assembly of objects due to the interaction of gravity and surface tension in liquid, mechanical engineer Maya Lewis ’23 used a DiMase Family Summer Internship to apply new methods and materials to explore the interaction of larger sets of objects at a fluid interface.

Funded in part by a Nielsen summer fellowship, U.S. Marine Corps veteran and mechanical engineer Joseph Massi ’22.5 spent the summer researching the mechanics of electrode and electrolyte materials for multifunctional structural batteries and supercapacitors.

A 2021 summer Mitchell Award enabled biomedical engineer Phillip Schmitt ’22 to advance a novel tissue scaffold design for the heart inspired by the Coulombe Lab, using a biodegradable polymer to repair damaged tissue.

Using his own steady hands and funds from a DiMase Family Summer Internship, Manuel Alejandro Lopez ’22 is exploring ways to expand the use of rGO (reduced graphene oxide) films to identify the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of top indoor air pollutants.

Biomedical engineer Eliza Sternlicht ’22 and applied math and economics concentrator Jack Schaeffer ’22 took top honors at the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship’s Brown Venture Prize competition with their redistribution model for unused pharmaceuticals.

Halpin Prize enables Lizzie Kimmel ’21 to engage in interplanetary space mission

Biomedical engineering alumnus Josh Cohen ’14 partnered with Justin Klee ’13 eight years ago to build a company dedicated to the development of therapeutics for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders.

Linda Abriola is ready to reclaim her faculty identity. The computational modeler, National Academy of Engineering member, National Academy of Arts and Sciences member, U.S. State Department Science Envoy, and former dean at Tufts has arrived on College Hill for an opportunity to strike out again as an educator, teacher and researcher — something she hasn’t been able to singularly focus on since early in her career.

If the name seems familiar, it’s likely because Dr. Selim Suner has been frequently sought by newspapers and television stations in Rhode Island for his expertise on how local hospitals are handling the COVID-19 crisis.

As an employee of General Motors, Yue Qi was involved early with the Collaborative Research Laboratory partnership established between GM and Brown University. Continuing these collaborations with Brown colleagues as her career progressed from industry to academia, Qi’s return to campus in July as the newest engineering faculty member was eased by the familial feelings she already had for Brown Engineering.

As researchers explore faster data transfer rates in the terahertz range, new strategies for thwarting eavesdropping attempts by utilizing atmospheric effects were investigated by Malachi Hornbuckle ‘22, funded in part by a Nielsen summer fellowship.

Energy storage technology interests led mechanical engineer Elizabeth Healy ’21 to the Sheldon Lab. A DiMase Family Internship allowed her to develop those interests in an academic research setting, pushing the boundaries on next generation lithium-ion batteries.

Jayakumar Fellowship allows Andrew Duncombe ’21 to design computer architectures that make the implementation of complex computing processes, like neural networks, feasible for real-world applications. 

Halpin prize funds enable undergraduate engineer to iterate bio-inspired wings, test designs in wind tunnel

Ph.D. candidate Yuan Liu will graduate this May with his doctoral degree in chemistry, after utilizing the Open Graduate Education program to earn his engineering master's degree in May 2018.  In July, he will begin a postdoctoral associate position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Center for Ultracold Atoms.

Halpin prize helps launch online training and certification program during pandemic

A team of engineering faculty, students, alumni and other collaborators are designing and creating prototypes for low-cost ventilators with a device constructed of 3D printed and off-the-shelf components specifically designed for the COVID-19 crisis.

DiMase Family Summer Internship recipient Eric DuBois ’20 is passionate about the intersection of design and research, and where the two may lead.

Assistant Professor Jesse Ault looks to predict fundamental behaviors in complex fluids, an essential step to solving big picture challenges.