research

Chirag Kharangate, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was awarded the 2024 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Electronic & Photonic Packaging Division (EPPD) Early Career Engineer Award at this year’s ASME InterPACK Conference.

With a new $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, researchers at Case Western Reserve University will lead a project to improve the lifecycle of photovoltaic solar energy systems—from fabrication and electricity production through their end of service. The Case Western Reserve-led project is headed by Roger French, the Kyocera Professor in Materials Science at Case School of Engineering and director of the university’s Solar Durability and Lifetime Extension Research Center.

In basketball, to shoot the perfect free throw, train your eye on the rim. In baseball, for the perfect pitch, look at the catcher’s mitt. So says the “quiet eye” technique, which calls on a period of extended visual attention to improve coordination and performance. A research-backed approach for moments of high stress that require precise motor skills, the technique has been studied not just in athletics, but in operating rooms—places where a surgeon’s “quiet eye” can aid in robot-assisted, minimally invasive surgery.

With a new five-year, $2.78 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute, researchers at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals will use artificial intelligence (AI) to better treat rectal cancer patients. By using AI, the researchers intend to gain specific metrics on magnetic resonance imaging scans to better understand how rectal tumors are responding to therapy.

Svetlana Morozova, assistant professor in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, has been selected as a 2024 American Chemical Society (ACS), Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) Early Investigator.

In March, the Department of Defense announced $221 million in awards for basic defense-related research projects as part of the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program. This year, two Case School of Engineering researchers will participate on two separate projects. 

Hatsuo Ishida has spent nearly 50 years as a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University. In that time, he’s built a reputation as a global leader in the field of polymer science, having pioneered two groundbreaking discoveries that made monumental impacts on the study of polymer-based materials.

Earlier this year, the Veale Center swimming pool was a testing site for Kathryn ‘Kati’ Daltorio’s Crab Lab thanks to a collaboration with the Motley Scuba Diving Club. Supported by the Department of Defense, researchers in the Crab Lab, including PhD students Mingyu Pan and Yifeng Gong, are creating a waterproof crab robot that is capable of searching for and removing underwater unexploded ordnance (UXO) in shallow water.