Research Focus
In recent years, our signature areas have helped foster interdisciplinary collaborations. We are teaming with industry and seeking solutions from virtually every corner of campus to solve whole problems—not just parts. From the atomic-scale breakthroughs in nanotechnology to system-changing solutions that ensure global sustainability, we are focused on day-to-day achievements and committed to tomorrow's success.
Research Spotlights
Arezoo Ardekani and colleagues have developed a new, relatively simple process making it possible to create biocompatible particles called shape-controllable microgels that could be custom-designed for specific roles such as drug delivery vehicles, tissue engineering building blocks and biomedical research.
Some bandages are embedded with medicine to treat wounds, but researchers at Purdue University, Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have something much more sophisticated in mind for the future of chronic wound care.
A team of Purdue University researchers has been awarded a $1 million W.M. Keck Foundation grant to develop a new type of imaging technology for cell and tissue analysis. Central to the concept is the invention of a new way to perform in-vivo spectroscopy, or using a pulsing laser light to determine the precise chemical content of tissues in living organisms.
ECE researchers have demonstrated a new way to enhance the emission of single photons by using "hyperbolic metamaterials," a step toward creating devices in work aimed at developing quantum computers and communications technologies.
January 15, 2015
Research done at Purdue University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests collisions of planetary embryos--the seeds to the planets in our solar system that existed 4 billion years ago--could be the origin of the material that formed asteroids. Dr. Jay Melosh and Dr. David Minton, School of Aeronautics and Astronautics professors by courtesy, say the next step in the research may be to explore how this chondrule formation mechanism fits into a new model for the early stages of planet formation.
January 12, 2015
The multistate Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation includes the Indiana-based Design, Modeling and Simulation Enabling Technology Center at Purdue University. Team leaders at Purdue includes School of Aeronautics and Astronautics professors Wenbin Yu, associate professor; R. Byron Pipes, engineering professor who is leading Purdue's research; Johnathan Goodsell, visiting assistant professor; and Ronald Steuterman, the center's managing director.
A new study suggests pharmaceuticals and chemicals from personal care products end up in swimming pools, possibly interacting with chlorine to produce disinfection byproducts with unknown properties and health effects.
A new method that creates large-area patterns of three-dimensional nanoshapes from metal sheets represents a potential manufacturing system to inexpensively mass produce innovations such as "plasmonic metamaterials" for advanced technologies.
A new electrode design for lithium-ion batteries has been shown to potentially reduce the charging time from hours to minutes by replacing the conventional graphite electrode with a network of tin-oxide nanoparticles.
December 3, 2014