Laboratory Director: Dr. Fei Ren

Development and testing of advanced materials for energy applications, including solid state energy conversion, energy storage and delivery, as well as materials for energy infrastructure. Projects range from development of thermoelectric materials, design and testing of hydrogen storage vessels to graphene and graphene-like materials for energy applications. We hope to help building a greener and sustainable world by improving energy efficiency, utilizing renewable energy, and improving the reliability of energy systems. Visit the Advanced Materials Processing Laboratory website.

Director: Mohammad F. Kiani, Ph.D., F.A.H.A.

Developing fluidic models to realistically mimic the microvascular and tissue conditions and to better understand the inflammatory process in disease conditions. We are developing a series of novel technologies for targeting drugs to irradiated tumors and pro-angiogenic compounds to infracted cardiac tissue and a “microvascular network on a chip” for studying microvascular drug delivery. The research is highly interdisciplinary in nature and involves a number of important collaborative efforts with scientists and engineers in academia and in industry. Visit the Biofluidics Lab for more information about the work being done.

Director: Dr. Kurosh Darvish

At the Temple Biomechanics Lab (TBL), we primarily focus on the constitutive modeling of soft tissues and the biomechanics of thoracic and brain injuries. We employ state-of-the-art experimental and computational methods to investigate the viscoelasticity, nonlinearity, heterogeneity, anisotropy, and damage in biological and other materials relevant to safety and injury mitigation. Our research has received significant funding from organizations such as the NIH-NHLBI, American Heart Association, US Navy, US Army, PA Department of Health CURE, and DePuy Synthes. As an interdisciplinary effort, our work involves collaborative research projects with faculty members from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine and the Rothman Institute, among others.

Director: Dr. Parsaoran Hutapea

The Composites Lab works on research, analysis, work and testing of composite materials for the development and design of self-actuating smart needles would benefit many medical procedures by closing the control loop through quantitative sensory feedback and the ability to adjust the needle trajectory in real-time. Therefore, the topic of steering flexible needles through soft tissue has attracted considerable attention in the recent years. Other research includes improvements to hydrogen fuel cells and the development of a nano pipetting device specifically designed for a novel 2-D membrane electrophoresis that involves separation of proteins complexes directly on protein blotting membrane. Successful development of the pipetting device will aid biological researchers to study protein interactions for understanding function and regulation of proteins within cells. 

For more information visit the Composites Lab website.

Director: Dr. Damoon Saudiakhsh

In DSLab, we explore intricate intelligent systems demanding adeptness in adaptation, identification, and control. Our ongoing efforts encompass the safety of energy storage systems such as in electric vehicles, physics-inspired data-driven modeling and control of batteries, and co-design of Cyber-Physical Systems, spanning wide-area control of automotive to power systems.

Additionally, our research extends to the domain of transportation systems. We are developing highly efficient motion planning algorithms tailored for multi-vehicle scenarios. Our past initiatives include developing intelligent transportation and collision avoidance systems and maneuver optimization of an AC75 sailboat competing in America's Cup. Visit the lab site here: https://sites.temple.edu/dslab/

Director: Dr. Elham Sahraei

The EVSL lab focuses on improving safety of electric vehicles through the investigation of the mechanical characteristics of lithium-ion batteries. Experimental and computational methods are used to study the integrity of the batteries under various conditions. Learn more about the research being conducted at the lab website. 

Director: Dr. Haijun Liu

The lab aims to transform the science of sensor technology, with a particular focus on acoustics, to exceed the capability of sensor systems found in nature. The research tackles challenges from the “3M” aspects, i.e., mechanism, material, and mechanics. The lab explores new bio-inspired sensing mechanisms, and engineers advanced materials including nanomaterials and metamaterial, while developing a solid understanding of the underlying mechanics. Learn more about the research at the LISTEN lab website.

Director: Dr. Daniel Jacobs

The RISE (Robotics in Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering) Lab investigates the dynamics, biomechanics, and control of collaborative human-robot systems. We focus on wearable devices, such as exoskeletons and powered prosthetics, for gait rehabilitation and assistance. Our aim is to build light-weight, effective, and safe devices that translate to improvements in clinical care for individuals with gait disabilities. We strive to create devices that are responsive to the user's intent, provide real-world assessments to better inform both users and their physicians, and that respond in real-time to changes in patient health.

Director: Dr. Philip Dames

The lab seeks to enable teams of mobile robots to autonomously explore and gather information with limited a prior knowledge of the given situation, turning sensor data into actionable information. This work has immediate application to a broad range of scenarios, including infrastructure inspection, security and surveillance, mapping, environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, and search and rescue. In any of these scenarios there is uncertainty in the environment, the sensors, and the robots. Additionally, the number of objects of interest (e.g., injured persons in a first responder scenario) is often unknown, and there may be unpredictable physical phenomena. Mathematical tools and building systems can be used to direct robots to explicitly consider and reason all of these sources of uncertainty in real-world applications.