Earlier this year researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Boston University Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Services tested a soft, wearable robot to assist a person living with Parkinson’s walk without freezing.   

Because of their high precision and speed, Delta robots are deployed in many industrial processes, including pick-and-place assemblies, machining, welding and food packaging. Starting with the first version developed by Reymond Clavel for a chocolate factory to quickly place chocolate pralines in their packages, Delta robots use three individually controlled and lightweight arms that guide a platform to move fast and accurately in three direction...

  Testing new clinical drugs’ effect on heart tissue could become quicker and more straightforward, thanks to new research from Harvard University. The study, published in the journal Biofabrication, sets out a new, faster method for manufacturing a ‘heart-on-a-chip’, which can be used to test the reaction of heart tissue to external stimuli.

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a technique that can quickly change the opacity of a window, turning it cloudy, clear or somewhere in between with the flick of a switch. Tunable windows aren't new but most previous technologies have relied on electrochemical reactions achieved through expensive manufacturing.

Imagine a house that could fit in a backpack or a wall that could become a window with the flick of a switch. Harvard researchers have designed a new type of foldable material that is versatile, tunable and self actuated. It can change size, volume and shape; it can fold flat to withstand the weight of an elephant without breaking, and pop right back up to prepare for the next task.

With an eye toward improving cybersecurity, a Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences student developed a mobile app-based authentication system that enables users to log in to websites using a characteristic that is impossible to forget: their fingerprint. Nicholas Boucher, a computer science concentrator, and three teammates recently won the Cambridge University Hack-a-thon Cybersecurity Challenge for their app, Clear...

Synthetic biologists are learning to turn microbes and unicellular organisms into highly productive factories by re-engineering their metabolism to produce valued commodities such as fine chemicals, therapeutics and biofuels.

A team of scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has evolved their microscale 3-D printing technology to the fourth dimension, time. By Kat J. McAlpine, Wyss Institute Communications, Harvard Gazette. 

What if you could make any object out of a flat sheet of paper? That future is on the horizon thanks to new research by L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

In the U.S. alone, 1.25 million Americans suffer from type 1 diabetes, a potentially debilitating and life-changing condition. Every year, more and more people are diagnosed, and the only common treatment is regular insulin injections. A research team hoping to revolutionise diabetes treatment has developed an artificial pancreas that automatically detects changing blood sugar levels and administers insulin automatically, as announced by Harvard ...

Last year, a team of researchers led by George Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor, broke new engineering ground when they developed soft, silicone-based robots inspired by creatures like starfish and squid. Now, they’re working to give those robots the ability to disguise themselves.

A team of Harvard scientists and engineers has demonstrated a rechargeable battery that could make storing electricity from intermittently available energy sources (e.g., sun and wind) safe and cost-effective for both residential and commercial use. The research builds on earlier work by members of the same team that could enable cheaper and more reliable electricity storage at the grid level.

  Harvard scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind method of creating a class of nanowires that one day could have applications in areas ranging from consumer electronics to solar panels.

Having achieved promising results in proof-of-concept prototyping and experimental testing, a soft robotic glove under development by soft wearable robotics expert Conor Walsh, alongside a team of engineers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering could someday help people suffering from loss of hand motor control to regain some of...