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College of Engineering news

PhD student Youyi Zhou and Assistant Professor Yunus Alapan
November 12, 2025

Magnetic soft robots could deliver cargo inside your body

The magnetic soft robots in Yunus Alapan’s lab on the third floor of the Mechanical Engineering Building on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus don’t look like complex miniature droids or anything you’d find in a…

Stock image of a clinic
October 16, 2025

Mathematical models offer data-driven solutions to opioid crisis, engineering research shows

More than 81,806 Americans died from opioid-related overdoses in 2022, overwhelming hospitals and trapping thousands in cycles of addiction. But a new data-driven approach from engineering researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Florida A&M…

Professor Krishanu Saha works in his lab
October 9, 2025

CRISPR with a ‘dimmer’ could elevate precision gene editing

In an ideal world, after the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool enters a cell’s nucleus and cuts its targeted slice of DNA, it would disappear. “You don’t want the Cas9 protein to stick around too long,” says…

Stock image for digital technology
October 8, 2025

New tool interrogates machine learning models to uncover disease-leading biomarker interactions

Yang Lu likes to say that searching the human genotype for a biomarker of a given disease is akin to trying to find a needle in a haystack. Or, more accurately, needles—the set of biomarker…

Dan Pham
October 1, 2025

Researchers look to advanced metabolic imaging to improve cancer immunotherapy

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is transforming cancer care for patients with cancers of the blood, but has proven especially challenging to develop against solid tumors. Researchers at the Morgridge Institute and UW–Madison…

Recent graduate Samir Rosas (PhDBME ’25) and PhD student Shovasis Kumar Biswas
September 25, 2025

Sensor shines light on potential biomarkers for ovarian cancer

When doctors diagnose ovarian cancer at an early stage, patients have a five-year survival rate of better than 90%, according to the American Cancer Society. That rate plummets as the disease progresses to further stages….

Jackie Cha
September 15, 2025

Focus on new faculty: Jackie Cha helps humans, robots work together smoothly in surgery

A surgeon sits in front of a console, head tucked into a cavity that shows an enhanced view of the operating field, controlling a multipronged robot that’s actually performing—mechanically, at least—the procedure. Studies have shown…

Dylan Barber
September 3, 2025

Focus on new faculty: Dylan Barber is polarizing polymers for batteries and soft robots

From electric cars and smart watches to portable hedge trimmers and pacemakers, lithium-ion batteries power the modern world, literally. But these ubiquitous rechargeable batteries have a major drawback: Volatile liquid electrolytes inside them can explode…

Yang Lu
September 2, 2025

Focus on new faculty: Yang Lu brings AI to biology

To determine which genes are responsible for—or act as biomarkers of—a given disease, researchers must work their way through thousands upon thousands of genes, using previous scientific studies as their guide. After identifying a candidate…

Dhananjay Bhaskar
September 2, 2025

Focus on new faculty: Dhananjay Bhaskar plays with the ‘shape’ of data

Dhananjay Bhaskar can’t hide his enthusiasm on the other end of the video call as he carries his laptop down the hallways of Yale University’s new Wu Tsai Institute building. He stops in front of…