Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Megan Valentine is featured in the November issue of the Biophysical Society Newsletter with an exciting article about her professional trajectory and the broad set of interdisciplinary projects in which she is involved. To read the original feature please visit the Biophysical Society Newsletter.

Professor Megan Valentine is featured in the website of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) with the article "Microhammer Aids Understanding of Brain Trauma".

Ink dye, soap, milk and fluid mechanics make for a fascinating, and award-winning, work of art.

Ever wondered how groups of cells managed to build your tissues and organs while you were just an embryo?

Using state-of-the-art techniques he developed, UC Santa Barbara researcher Otger Campàs and his group have cracked this longstanding mystery, revealing the astonishing inner workings of how embryos are physically constructed. Not only does it bring a century-old hypothesis into the modern age, the study and its techniques provide the researchers a foundation to study other questions key to human health, such as how cancers form and spread or how to engineer organs.

The 5th annual Southern California Micro and Nanofluidics Symposium was held on Friday, August 24th, 2018 at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. This year’s symposium, generously sponsored by Amgen and UCLA California NanoSystems Institute, brought together students and faculty from UC campuses to share research ideas and progress, seek opportunities for collaboration, and learn more about recent developments in the field of micro- and nano-fluidics.

You’ve probably seen them, perhaps on long roadtrips: wind turbines with enormous, hypnotic rolling blades, harnessing the clean power of wind for conversion into electric energy. What you may not know is that for the explosion in the number of wind turbines in use as we embrace cleaner sources of energy, these wind farms are quite possibly not as productive as they could be.

It is likely that in the not-distant future wounds will heal faster with the help of an electrical pulse that promotes rapid cell growth. The same type of pulse may be used for more efficient and effective delivery of drugs to fight disease. Such treatments rely on a process known as “electroporation,” in which an electrical field is applied to cells to increase the permeability of the cell membrane. Already electroporation is being used experimentally to deliver chemotherapy into cancerous cells, but such treatments are in their infancy and involve a great deal of trial and error.

Emergency intubation in the field is a challenge for everyone involved, most especially the patient. Paramedics and EMTs have to contend with less than ideal circumstances while they attempt to insert a stiff laryngoscope down the throat and into the lungs of a nonresponsive patient.

We are delighted to announce that Professor Megan Valentine has agreed to serve as Co-Director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). Previously, Professor Valentine was Associate Director of CNSI at UC Santa Barbara.