Driven by the growing commitment to environmental stewardship and climate action, the aviation sector is adopting more creative technologies to move towards cleaner and more eco-friendly propulsion systems. The substantial CO2 emissions from current jet engines make creative solutions for environmentally friendly air travel a necessity, such as electrifying said engines. However, there are several obstacles that prevent current electric motors from being used in aircraft. Overheating is a serious problem that jeopardizes dependability, efficiency, and safety. Because of these drawbacks, existing electric motor technologies are not a viable substitute for many aircraft propulsion systems. To overcome these obstacles, this study optimizes electric motor designs using cutting-edge temperature control and energy-saving techniques. The suggested method makes use of thermoelectric modules (TEM) and high-temperature superconductors (HTS) to efficiently control thermal energy, lessen overheating, and improve motor performance. By integrating these innovative materials, this work aims to create reliable, efficient, and scalable electric propulsion systems that meet the rigorous demands of the aviation industry.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, claiming over 1.25 million lives annually—surpassing malaria and HIV in mortality. TB’s causative pathogen, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), continues to spread rapidly due to inadequate access to accurate molecular diagnostic tests. The most commonly used tests include sputum-based and tuberculin skin tests, which require follow-up visits and have suboptimal sensitivity, particularly within certain patient populations. Moreover, these assays cannot identify emerging drug-resistant strains (DR-TB) that have reduced susceptibility to first-line antibiotics. Our aim is to design a diagnostic tool to detect cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in urine and identify the infecting strain to ensure patients receive appropriate antibiotics. To achieve this, we are developing a probe-ligation assay with single-nucleotide specificity. Current implementations are limited by the low specificity of ligase, leading to false positives and an inability to differentiate between mutated MTB strains. We hypothesized that Flap Endonuclease-1 (FEN1) could confer a specificity advantage by integrating a second enzymatic “check” into the process. The protocol involves a ligation reaction with MTB genome-derived targets and two probes, each containing a DNA flap with additional nucleotides. To detect the ligated product, FEN1 must cleave these flaps before the ligase catalyzes the repair of the nick between probes. To experimentally observe this, we carried out several ligation reactions containing FEN1 and ligase with wild-type and mutant targets, followed by PCR or gel electrophoresis to measure ligated product formation. We evaluated the efficiency and precision by analyzing the amplification profiles of WT targets and mutants containing SNPs neighboring the ligation site. Our data about whether FEN1 confers a significant specificity advantage remains inconclusive, but the double enzyme reaction is functional and could be further exploited in future experiments with additional optimization or modifications to enzymes or DNA probes.

Soldering is a common activity in lab environments that can negatively impact indoor air quality (IAQ) due to the release of airborne particulate matter (PM) and hazardous fumes from solder wire and rosin-based flux. The use of solder wire has been found to increase PM2.5 levels, as well as airborne tin and lead concentrations. Exposure to rosin-based solder flux has been linked to asthma, chronic coughing, and wheezing. For those who spend extended periods of time in laboratories, exposure to air pollutants may lead to an increased risk of respiratory issues and reduced cognitive capabilities. In order to mitigate these risks many laboratories employ air purifiers, however, there exists a lack of recent research on the effectiveness of these air purifiers. This study proposes the use of AeroSpec, an indoor air-quality monitoring system that measures pollutants such as PM1.0, PM2.5, and PM10, to assess the performance of various air purifiers. The AeroSpec system will be used to monitor airborne particulate matter concentrations while a researcher solders under different conditions, testing both with and without various air purifiers in different configurations. Data from the AeroSpec sensors will be used to quantify the effectiveness of different purifiers and examine how the location of the soldering iron relative to a purifier affects its performance. Our project aims to provide both independent verification of the effectiveness of commercially available air purifiers as well as to give guidance on best practices to maximize the effectiveness of air purifiers and to improve IAQ in laboratory settings, therefore reducing associated risks.

Cancer immunotherapy, specifically Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT), has revolutionized treatment approaches using genetically modified T cells to recognize and eliminate cancer cells. However, tumors combat this by creating an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) blocking effective antitumor immune responses.  Dendritic cells (DCs) are innate immune cells that act as messengers between the innate and adaptive systems.   In the Oda lab we have designed Dual Costimulatory Receptor (DCRs) that combine a FLT3L or CD40L ectodomain with different costimulatory endodomains (e.g. CD40, 4-1BB, OX40), to provide both T cell-extrinsic and -intrinsic costimulatory signals.  These DCRs are expressed on the surface of antigen specific T cells, and the combination of these signals allows for enhanced tumor antigen presentation and dendritic cell activation, leading to an increase of the immune response to target and destroy cancer tumors. I will investigate how incorporating DCRs on T cells will enhance ACT effectiveness. I hypothesize these DCR signals on T cells will enhance dendritic cell function in the TME, allowing for increased T cell activation and antitumor immune responses. To test this, I will conduct in vitro coculture experiments to determine how DCR-T cells, dendritic cells, and pancreatic cancer cells interact together. I will study the interactions of these immune cells using live cell imaging technology such as the Incucyte. Additionally, I will analyze the phenotypes of our distinct cell populations via flow cytometry.  This research aims to enhance the development of immunotherapy for Pancreatic and all solid cancers by improving the recognition of cancer cells from the immune system. These results could help pave the way for improving solid tumor cancer treatment.

It began with a personal experience involving my cat and a mouse. This seemingly trivial yet traumatic event prompted me to reflect on historical parallels, especially the 1960s Korean dictatorship, when young people were forced into mouse-killing competitions as a form of control and to promote national development through exploitative labor. I questioned my fear of mice and why they felt so unfamiliar. I realized that my fear was rooted in stories my parents shared about their experiences during the dictatorship, including their involvement in the New Village Movement as students. By drawing from both personal experience and Korean history, I created narratives that bridge two different eras, sharing these stories to evoke empathy. The installation invited the audience to engage with these narratives on a meaningful level, utilizing innovative technology such as autonomous robotic mice to create a dynamic interaction.

While flocculation is a desirable trait for brewing yeast because it eases the removal of cells from beer after fermentation, other modes of cell-to-cell adhesion can be detrimental to the brewing process. Mother-daughter separation defects cause cells to form large aggregated clusters which use more oxygen, produce a lower fermentative yield, and require more head space during fermentation. These defects can be caused by mutations to a number of genes, which makes a targeted genetic approach challenging. In this work, we used experimental evolution to eliminate mother-daughter separation defects present in a widely used brewing strain. Cells with this defect are less buoyant and settle faster than non-adhering cells. We used this property to select against cells with this defect by letting the cultures settle and propagating only cells present in the top layer of the media. We propagated top-layer cells for approximately 300 generations (about two months), collected daily optical density measurements, and conducted settling assays. Over time, we found that large, branched cell clusters decreased in frequency in our top-layer samples while the amount of single cells increased, which we confirmed through microscopy and optical density measurements. We characterized the mutations that drive this strain’s separation defect using whole genome sequencing of the evolved and ancestral populations. This project demonstrates how experimental evolution can be used to select against less desirable traits in commercially important yeast strains. Future research could implement similar or reciprocal methods to evolve for decreased or increased flocculation respectively.

The project aims to design a multi-modal sensor network with VLF antennas will be implemented to model the ionospheric D-region in real-time. In consideration of not having ground truth data, such a network will address the ill-posed problem of inverting with robust regularization techniques. High-data-rate acquisition, high-data-rate processing, and dynamically adaptable auto-tuning will be included in our design. Drawing on experience with the NeSSI, modularity and a digital bus for centrally processed, real-time processing will be part of a standardized, modular sensor network that will be designed. The D-region, an upper atmospheric dusty plasma, controls radio wave propagation via fluctuations in charge. Numerical simulations in our work simulate such occurrences as HF to UHF range radar echoes, validated through experiments in radar labs. Ionospheric instabilities in occurrences such as SAPS events generated through space weather result in GPS and Starlink communications outages. 3D electrostatic fluid and gyrokinetic equations are included in our model, which is significant for describing such instabilities. Real-time observation, predictive maintenance, and reliability in communications networks are enhanced through such studies.