https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science In tropical cities, afternoon thunderstorms can plunge entire neighborhoods into brief moments of darkness. When civil engineer Markus Schläpfer moved to Singapore a decade ago, he recognized these thunderstorms as an emerging engineering challenge. For cities that hope to run on solar energy, these short periods without strong sunlight could destabilize urban power grids and undermine reliability. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-electric-cars-tropical-cities-solar.html Energy & Green Tech Tue, 07 Apr 2026 05:00:05 EDT news694686121 Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a new gel electrolyte that both improves the lifetime and safety of anode-free lithium batteries, an emerging battery architecture that could dramatically boost energy density while simplifying manufacturing. Although such a design promises higher energy density and lower cost, the approach has long been plagued by short battery life and safety concerns caused by unstable lithium plating and parasitic reactions at the electrode-electrolyte interface. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-gel-electrolyte-stronger-safer-anode.html Engineering Thu, 19 Feb 2026 11:00:04 EST news690635482 Can you design a mechanism that will trace out the shape of a heart? How about the shape of a moon, or a star? Mechanism design—the art of assembling linkages and joints to create machines with prescribed motion—is one of the quintessential activities of mechanical engineers, but has resisted automation for almost two centuries. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-ai-machine-heart-automated-mechanism.html Engineering Tue, 17 Feb 2026 15:37:28 EST news690565022 Demand for lithium is skyrocketing as factories across the world churn out electric vehicles and the massive batteries that make wind turbines and solar panels reliable sources of energy. Unfortunately, current methods for producing lithium are slow and require high-quality feedstocks that are found in relatively few locations on the planet. Ironically, the environmental costs are also significant: refining the mineral behind clean energy requires large amounts of land and pollutes water supplies that local communities depend on. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-vast-lithium-faster-cleaner-method.html Engineering Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:11:55 EST news688237861 Almost half of our attention during face-to-face conversation focuses on lip motion. Yet, robots still struggle to move their lips correctly. Even the most advanced humanoids make little more than muppet mouth gestures—if they have a face at all. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-robot-lip-sync-youtube.html Robotics Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:56:41 EST news687632161 Immune checkpoint molecules play a crucial role in keeping the immune system in balance and preventing an attack on the body's own cells. Cancer cells can use these checkpoints to hide from the immune system, making them a key focus for treatments that boost the immune response against cancer. Immune checkpoint inhibitors are proteins that release this brake on the immune system and unleash our immune cells to attack tumors. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-inhalable-nanotherapy-advanced-melanoma-aims.html Bio & Medicine Mon, 05 Jan 2026 10:53:16 EST news686832771 A new brain implant stands to transform human-computer interaction and expand treatment possibilities for neurological conditions such as epilepsy, spinal cord injury, ALS, stroke, and blindness—helping to manage seizures and restore motor, speech, and visual function. This is done by providing a minimally invasive, high-throughput information link directly to and from the brain. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-silicon-chips-brain-generation-interface.html Electronics & Semiconductors Mon, 08 Dec 2025 10:33:37 EST news684412336 In January, a team led by Jim Schuck, professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia Engineering, developed a method for creating entangled photon pairs, a critical component of emerging quantum technologies, using a crystalline device just 3.4 micrometers thick. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-metasurfaces-etched-2d-crystals-boost.html Optics & Photonics Sat, 22 Nov 2025 05:50:01 EST news683012764 Integrated photonics has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, but it is feeling the heat—literally. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-thin-resistor-routinely-photonic-devices.html Engineering Thu, 06 Nov 2025 10:27:05 EST news681647221 Hydrogen is already an important source of energy. The $250 billion industry supports fertilizer production, steel manufacturing, oil refining, and dozens of other vital activities. While nearly all hydrogen produced today is created using carbon-intensive methods, researchers are racing to develop cheaper ways of producing hydrogen with a lower carbon footprint. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-pfas-free-membrane-nanoscopic-enables.html Energy & Green Tech Mon, 03 Nov 2025 08:00:01 EST news681119969 A few years ago, researchers in Michal Lipson's lab noticed something remarkable. They were working on a project to improve LiDAR, a technology that uses lightwaves to measure distance. The lab was designing high-power chips that could produce brighter beams of light. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-powerful-precise-multi-lasers-chip.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:22:04 EDT news679047721 The complex 3D shapes of brains, lungs, eyes, hands, and other vital bodily structures emerge from the way in which flat 2D sheets of cells fold during embryonic development. Now, researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a novel way to use light to influence an animal's own proteins in order to control folding in live embryos. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-tissue-origami.html Biotechnology Thu, 21 Aug 2025 09:02:08 EDT news674985716 Researchers at Columbia Engineering have built a cancer therapy that makes bacteria and viruses work as a team. In a study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the Synthetic Biological Systems Lab shows how their system hides a virus inside a tumor-seeking bacterium, smuggles it past the immune system, and unleashes it inside cancerous tumors. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-bioengineered-platform-bacteria-viruses-tumors.html Oncology & Cancer Fri, 15 Aug 2025 11:49:05 EDT news674477342 Crystals and glasses have opposite heat-conduction properties, which play a pivotal role in a variety of technologies. These range from the miniaturization and efficiency of electronic devices to waste-heat recovery systems, as well as the lifespan of thermal shields for aerospace applications. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-hybrid-crystal-glass-materials-meteorites.html General Physics Mon, 28 Jul 2025 15:59:02 EDT news672937136 The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is tough on electronics. Situated inside a 17-mile-long tunnel that runs in a circle under the border between Switzerland and France, this massive scientific instrument accelerates particles close to the speed of light before smashing them together. The collisions yield tiny maelstroms of particles and energy that hint at answers to fundamental questions about the building blocks of matter. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-custom-silicon-chips.html General Physics Fri, 25 Jul 2025 11:05:59 EDT news672660354 Researchers from Columbia Engineering have established a framework for the design of bioactive injectable hydrogels formulated with extracellular vesicles (EVs) for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-07-scientists-tissue-gel-derived-extracellular.html Immunology Fri, 25 Jul 2025 11:00:02 EDT news672556894 Today's robots are stuck—their bodies are usually closed systems that can neither grow nor self-repair, nor adapt to their environment. Now, scientists at Columbia University have developed robots that can physically "grow," "heal," and improve themselves by integrating material from their environment or from other robots. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-07-robots-consuming-machines.html Robotics Wed, 16 Jul 2025 14:00:12 EDT news671868809 Quantum computers have operated under a significant limitation: They can run only one program at a time. These million-dollar machines demand exclusive use even for the smallest tasks, leaving much of their expensive and fast-running hardware idle and forcing researchers to endure long lines. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-07-quantum-bottlenecks-breakthroughs.html Computer Sciences Tue, 08 Jul 2025 16:20:04 EDT news671210401 One longstanding problem has sidelined life-saving drugs, stalled next-generation batteries, and kept archaeologists from identifying the origins of ancient artifacts. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-ai-smallest-crystals.html Nanophysics Mon, 28 Apr 2025 11:35:03 EDT news665058898 When you see a bag of carrots at the grocery store, does your mind go to potatoes and parsnips or buffalo wings and celery? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-04-purpose-visual-cortex-tunes-perception.html Neuroscience Sat, 19 Apr 2025 05:29:51 EDT news664259382 The world is littered with trillions of micro- and nanoscopic pieces of plastic. These can be smaller than a virus—just the right size to disrupt cells and even alter DNA. Researchers find them almost everywhere they've looked, from Antarctic snow to human blood. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-qa-scientists-uncover-plastic-dangerous.html Polymers Mon, 07 Apr 2025 16:50:03 EDT news663263401 Researchers at Columbia Engineering have for the first time used DNA to help create 3D electronically operational devices with nanometer-size features. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-03-dna-scaffolds-enable-3d-electronic.html Electronics & Semiconductors Sat, 29 Mar 2025 07:09:19 EDT news662450952 Artificial intelligence (AI) systems promise transformative advancements, yet their growth has been limited by energy inefficiencies and bottlenecks in data transfer. Researchers at Columbia Engineering have unveiled a groundbreaking solution: a 3D photonic-electronic platform that achieves unprecedented energy efficiency and bandwidth density, paving the way for next-generation AI hardware. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-generation-ai-hardware-3d-photonic.html Optics & Photonics Sun, 23 Mar 2025 10:50:01 EDT news661772486 By watching their own motions with a camera, robots can teach themselves about the structure of their own bodies and how they move, a new study by researchers at Columbia Engineering now reveals. Equipped with this knowledge, the robots could not only plan their own actions, but also overcome damage to their bodies. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-02-robots.html Robotics Tue, 25 Feb 2025 10:28:52 EST news659701725 Physicists have spent more than a century measuring and making sense of the strange ways that photons, electrons, and other subatomic particles interact at extremely small scales. Engineers have spent decades figuring out how to take advantage of these phenomena to create new technologies. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-quantum-entanglement-nanoscale.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 14 Jan 2025 10:01:08 EST news656071265 Mechanical force is an essential feature for many physical and biological processes. Remote measurement of mechanical signals with high sensitivity and spatial resolution is needed for a wide range of applications, from robotics to cellular biophysics and medicine and even to space travel. Nanoscale luminescent force sensors excel at measuring piconewton forces, while larger sensors have proven powerful in probing micronewton forces. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-optical-nanoscale-sensors-access-previously.html Nanophysics Wed, 01 Jan 2025 11:00:02 EST news654765564 Imagine taking the radio frequency properties of the dish antennas you see on rooftops and knitting them into a wearable garment—a sweater or a blanket that is ultralight, portable, easy to fold up and stow away. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-11-blanket-sophisticated-radio-frequency-antennas.html Telecom Wed, 27 Nov 2024 09:48:09 EST news651923283 Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are critical to sustaining our planet, but they come with a big challenge: They don't always generate power when it's needed. To make the most of them, we need efficient and affordable ways to store the energy they produce, so we have power even when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-newly-electrolyte-boost-renewable-energy.html Energy & Green Tech Mon, 16 Sep 2024 15:09:44 EDT news645718160 Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients suffering from lupus, an autoimmune disease in which our immune system attacks our own tissues and organs, the heart, blood, lung, joints, brain, and skin. Lupus myocarditis—inflammation of the heart muscle—can be very serious because the inflammation alters the regularity of the rhythm and strength of the heartbeat. However, the mechanisms underlying this complex disease are poorly understood and difficult to study. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-08-tiny-killers-autoantibodies-heart-lupus.html Cardiology Tue, 20 Aug 2024 17:37:05 EDT news643394222 Most people, when they think about pythons, visualize the huge snake constricting and swallowing victims whole. But did you know that pythons initially hold onto their prey with their sharp, backward-curving teeth? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-06-device-python-teeth-rotator-cuff.html Sports medicine & Kinesiology Fri, 28 Jun 2024 14:00:01 EDT news638772421