School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
March/April 2022

A drug that does double duty in treating diabetes

Yale researchers developed an oral medication to treat Type-1 diabetes that both controls insulin levels and reverses the disease’s inflammatory effects. The research team, led by Tarek Fahmy, associate professor of biomedical engineering and of immunobiology, created a drug with two critical advantages over standard diabetes treatments. It’s taken orally, so it’s much simpler for patients to stay compliant with their treatment. It also addresses three major issues with diabetes at the same time: it controls immediate blood glucose levels, restores pancreatic function, and re-establishes normal immunity in the pancreatic environment. The results were recently published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Professor named NAE Gilbreth Lecturer

Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, the John J. Lee Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, has been selected as one of the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) Gilbreth Lecturers. She will present her talk, “Shape-shifting Soft Robots that Adapt to Changing Tasks and Environments” at the NAE’s national meeting in February. Kramer-Bottiglio leads the Faboratory, which focuses on developing “soft robots” that can adapt their properties, morphology, and behavior for different tasks or environments. Her lab is also creating soft, responsive sensors and actuators, and developing new multi-functional materials designed to reduce the complexity of responsive systems.

Professor honored for brain mapping technology

Amin Karbasi, associate professor of electrical engineering, and Mehraveh Salehi ’19PhD (electrical engineering) won second place at Nokia’s Bell Labs Prize ceremony for their work on understanding how information flows in the human brain, based on different cognitive tasks. The team says their innovation makes a concrete connection between artificial intelligence and natural intelligence. The results, they say, could predict the sex, fluid intelligence, and cognitive tasks performed by individuals based on their “brain fingerprints.” The Bell Labs Prize recognizes disruptive innovations that solve the key challenges facing humanity.