School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
November/December 2016

Professor leads NSF research team

Hong Tang, the Llewellyn West Jones Jr. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics, has been named by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as the leader of a team of researchers for an initiative to advance technology needed for secure communication over long distances, the first engineering-led research cohort of its kind. One of the team’s long-term goals is to develop technology that will enable secure quantum communications on a global scale. Tang’s lab will collaborate with Professor Liang Jiang in the applied physics department. The team also includes researchers from Princeton University and BBN Technologies. NSF officials said the cohort was organized “as the demand for cybersecurity increases.”

Unlocking clues to cell behavior

Michael Murrell, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and member of the Yale Systems Biology Institute, led an effort that gives researchers a clearer picture of how cells generate the mechanical forces critical to muscle contraction and cell division. The results of the study, which potentially provides clues to how cancer cells behave, was published in Nature Communications. To study the behavior of actin and myosin—two of the primary proteins that generate the mechanical forces in animal cells—Murrell’s research group purified these proteins and reconstructed them into an artificial cellular environment. To control the proteins’ activity, the researchers used blebbistatin, a photosensitive drug that inhibits myosin.

Professor attends national symposium

Amin Karbasi, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, was selected by the National Academy of Engineering to participate in this year’s US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. Karbasi, whose research focuses on learning theory, large-scale networks, optimum information processing, high-dimensional statistics, information theory, and graphical models, was one of 83 engineers between the ages of 30 and 45 to take part in the symposium in September in Irvine, California. The event featured participants from industry, academia, and government and covered cutting-edge developments in four areas: technologies for understanding and treating cancer, pixels at scale, water desalination and purification, and extreme engineering.