Advancing coastal research with AI-guided, 3-D-printed, biodegradable sensors

A NASA-funded effort that combines advanced 3-D printing, biodegradable materials and artificial intelligence to protect vulnerable coastal environments will be strengthened by the research of Dr. Chukwuzubelu Ufodike in Texas A&M University’s Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution.

As part of a multi-institution team, Ufodike is a co-investigator on the three-year, $1.2 million project “VITAL: Virtual Institute for Temporal and Additive Learning.” 

VITAL will develop AI-driven, biodegradable sensor networks to monitor vulnerable coastal and deltaic ecosystems that are increasingly at risk from extreme weather and biodiversity loss. The sensors will measure temperature, humidity, precipitation and presence or absence of water, salinity, pH and nutrient levels. They will provide high-resolution environmental data that can feed into predictive models of ecosystem health and resilience. 

Unlike traditional monitoring hardware made of plastics and metals, VITAL’s sensors will use biodegradable materials to minimize long-term environmental footprints while improving the density and persistence of measurements in fragile habitats. 

The project is led by The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in collaboration with Texas A&M, Prairie View A&M University, The University of Texas at Austin and the Museum of South Texas History. Within this partnership, each institution contributes a different piece of the overall system, from ecological and biological expertise to AI modeling, data infrastructure, informal education and public engagement. 

At Texas A&M, Ufodike’s research group will lead the additive manufacturing and materials design component of VITAL. Ufodike is an assistant professor in the department and director of the Digital Manufacturing and Distribution Lab (DMD-Lab). 

Working through the DMD-Lab, Ufodike’s team will design sensor housings and structural components using advanced 3D printing and design-for-additive-manufacturing principles as well as develop and evaluate biodegradable polymer blends and composites suitable for harsh coastal conditions.

The group will carry out laboratory-based performance validation that includes mechanical resilience testing, biodegradation rate assessment and signal integrity and data fidelity studies. Insights from these tests will guide refinement of the sensor designs to ensure the final prototypes are both environmentally responsible and technically robust. 

Validated sensor systems emerging from Texas A&M and the broader VITAL collaboration will be integrated into an AI-enabled monitoring framework, where data streams are combined with Earth observation products and predictive models.  

The long-term vision is to build an intelligent, scalable monitoring system that fuses AI with biodegradable sensor networks to forecast coastal change and help communities and decision makers anticipate, adapt and respond to environmental stressors.

“VITAL gives us a rare opportunity to connect what we do in the lab directly to real communities,” Ufodike said. “The biodegradable sensor networks will quietly collect critical environmental data and then safely return it to the Earth.” 

VITAL places a strong emphasis on education and NASA-aligned workforce development. For engineering technology and industrial distribution students, this project is a powerful new platform for experiential learning. 

Ufodike will directly integrate VITAL activities into his cross-listed summer certificate training course, Mastering Advanced 3D Printing, which enrolls both undergraduate and graduate students. Through this course and associated research experiences, students will design and fabricate the biodegradable sensor components in the DMD-Lab, learn how to optimize parts for additive manufacturing under realistic environmental constraints and engage with data workflows that connect physical prototypes to AI based analysis and modeling. 

“VITAL is exactly the kind of project that fits the spirit of our department,” Ufodike said. “We are bringing students into every stage of the work, from design and fabrication to data analysis. They will gain hands-on experience with state-of-the-art 3D printing and biodegradable materials and see how their work plugs into a larger NASA mission.” 

Through VITAL, Texas A&M students and researchers will help shape how materials, intelligent systems and data-driven design are used to understand and protect coastal environments. The project will also further strengthen the university’s role in NASA-relevant research and preparation of the next generation’s STEM workforce. 

 By Jennifer Nichols, Texas A&M University College of Engineering

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