About Pratt // Research

Pratt News

  • April 24, 2008

    New 3-D Ultrasound Could Improve Stroke Diagnosis, Care

    DURHAM, N.C. – Using 3-D ultrasound technology they designed, Duke University bioengineers can compensate for the thickness and unevenness of the skull to see in real-time the arteries within the brain that most often clog up and cause strokes. The researchers believe that these advances will ultimately improve the treatment of stroke patients, whether by giving emergency medical technicians (EMT) the ability to quickly scan the heads of potential stroke victims while in the ambulance or ...
  • April 21, 2008

    Clare Boothe Luce Fellows Two Years Later

    Two years after receiving prestigious fellowships designed to support women scientists, three Pratt graduate students are well into their research with such diverse projects as brain-computer interfaces, nanoparticle exposures and a new method for breast cancer screening. In 2006, Katie Hedlund, Christine Robichaud and Christina Shafer were named Clare Boothe Luce Fellows. The fellowship program is the largest such private program for women studying science, mathematics or engineering. More than 1,500 women scientists have received support ...
  • April 17, 2008

    Joseph Izatt Elected SPIE Fellow

    SPIE, the international society for the science and application of light, has elected Duke biomedical engineering professor Joseph Izatt a fellow of the society. This year SPIE chose only 72 new fellows worldwide. Fellows are members of distinction who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. They are honored for their technical achievement, for their service to the general optics community, and to SPIE in particular. More than ...
  • April 15, 2008

    Novel Living System Recreates Predator-Prey Interaction

    DURHAM, N.C. – The hunter-versus-hunted phenomenon exemplified by a pack of lionesses chasing down a lonely gazelle has been recreated in a Petri dish with lowly bacteria.   Working with colleagues at Caltech, Stanford and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Duke University bioengineer has developed a living system using genetically altered bacteria that he believes can provide new insights into how the population levels of prey influence the levels of predators, and vice-versa. The Duke experiment is ...
  • April 7, 2008

    Meet the New Faculty: Matt Reynolds

    Making home technology to meet needs By Marla Vacek Broadfoot Durham, NC -- Talk to Matt Reynolds about his work and chances are he'll quote his favorite piece of trivia exemplifying the value of technology in our lives. Here it is: By the year 2005, more transistors -- tiny electrical gadgets found in everything from toasters to computers - had been created by human hands than grains of rice had been farmed. "Clearly, we already live among ...
  • March 25, 2008

    New Faculty Profile: Brian Mann

    Not long ago, while taking a walk and bemoaning the fact his cell phone kept dying, Brian Mann had an inspiration. “I know I walk enough to recharge my cell phone,” he thought. “Now I just need to find a way to turn that motion into energy.” The idea of exploring everyday activities or natural phenomena as novel sources of energy, known as energy harvesting, is the newest research interest for Mann, who joined the faculty ...
  • March 19, 2008

    Findings Could Improve Fuel Cell Efficiency

    DURHAM, N.C. -– A new type of membrane based on tiny iron particles appears to address one of the major limitations exhibited by current power-generating fuel cell technology. While there are many types of fuel cells, in general they generate electricity as the result of chemical reactions between an external fuel -- most commonly hydrogen -- and an agent that reacts with it. The membrane that separates the two parts of the cell and facilitates the ...
  • March 18, 2008

    Needham’s Liposomes Headed to Liver Cancer Trials Via Celsion Corporation

    A cancer treatment technology developed by Duke materials engineer David Needham and radiation oncologist Mark Dewhirst has started Phase III human clinical trials in both Hong Kong and the United States. The technology is a heat-sensitive engineered capsule called a liposome containing the frequently-used chemotherapy drug doxorubicin. The invention was prompted when Dewhirst asked Needham in the early 1990s for something that releases a drug when heated to just above body temperature. Having worked on ...
  • March 17, 2008

    Duke optical spinoff company wins Frost & Sullivan North America Award for Excellence in Research

    Bioptigen, a spinoff company co-founded by Duke biomedical engineer Joseph Izatt, has won the Frost & Sullivan 2007 North American Optical Coherence Tomography Excellence in Research Award. Bioptigen was singled out for its work in spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) for ophthalmology. "This recognition is validation of our vision for the current and future potential of SD-OCT,” said Izatt, professor of biomedical engineering and opthamology, and Chief Technology Officer at Bioptigen. “Our emphasis looking forward is ...
  • March 17, 2008

    Five Questions About Rainfall and Drought for Ana Barros

    by Ana P. Barros is a professor of environmental engineering in the Pratt School of Engineering who studies the water cycle and how land, air and water interact. It's complicated: Rainfall is affected by global patterns, and landforms. Does being east of the mountains make the drought worse in North Carolina? Would we get more rain if they weren’t in the way? Locations downslope and downwind of mountains with regard to regionally predominant storm tracks tend to ...
  • February 27, 2008

    Engineer Roy Choudhury wins NSF Early Career Award for “Spotlight” Wireless Network Development

    DURHAM, N.C. – Assistant Professor Romit Roy Choudhury has received a 5-year, $437,000 National Science Foundation Early CAREER award. The distinction recognizes and supports the early career development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become academic leaders, according to the NSF.   Roy Choudhury came to Duke in 2006 after completing a doctorate in computer science at the University of Illinois. While at Illinois, he was among the first researchers to investigate the tremendous ...
  • February 12, 2008

    Physics Theory Explains Why University Rankings Resist Change

    DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke University researcher says that his physics theory, which has been applied to everything from global climate to traffic patterns, can also explain another trend: why university rankings tend not to change very much from year to year. Like branching river channels across the earth's surface, universities are part of a relatively rigid network that is predictable based on "constructal theory," which describes the shapes of flows in nature, argues Adrian ...

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