Each year, nearly 350,000 Americans die of some form of lung disease, with another 150,000 patients needing short- and long-term care. Unfortunately, current breathing-support technologies are cumbersome, often requiring patients to be bedridden and sedated. Now, with the support of a $3.4 million National Institutes of Health grant, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh will develop an artificial lung to serve as a bridge to transplan...

Research at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering focused on developing a new catalyst that would lead to large-scale implementation of capture and conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) was recently published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Catalysis Science & Technology. Principal investigator is Karl Johnson, the William Kepler Whiteford Professor in the Swanson School's Department of Chemical & P...

Imagine being in an accident that leaves you unable to feel any sensation in your arms and fingers. Now imagine regaining that sensation, a decade later, through a mind-controlled robotic arm that is directly connected to your brain. That is what 28-year-old Nathan Copeland experienced after he came out of brain surgery and was connected to the Brain Computer Interface (BCI), developed by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC.

The potential to develop "materials that compute" has taken another leap at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering, where researchers for the first time have demonstrated that the material can be designed to recognise simple patterns. This responsive, hybrid material, powered by its own chemical reactions, could one day be integrated into clothing and used to monitor the human body, or developed as a skin for "squishy" robot...

Rehabilitation scientist Dan Ding, University of Pittsburgh’s Human Engineering Research Lab, is building algorithms that track activity and calorie expenditure for the mobility-impaired and wheelchair-bound. That means equipping wheelchair-bound study subjects with armbands or wrist watches that use accelerometers to record upper body and arm movements as well with "portable metabolic carts" that use a specialised mask that fits over the n...

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering, along with collaborators at Penn State University's Chemistry Department, have discovered a novel way of utilising the chemical reactions of certain enzymes to trigger self-powered mechanical movement. Their research, "Convective flow reversal in self-powered enzyme micropumps," was published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Scien...