Engineers can precisely control thread length and add segments with positive and negative electrical charges. This arrangement determines how the material interacts with living cells. In cell culture studies, the dynamic structures enhanced the growth and maturation of neurons, increased synapse formation and dramatically boosted neuronal activity.

What if the energy powering your home or office could be generated, stored, and used all in the same place? This is the hope for the next generation of buildings, powered by renewable sources storing the energy nearby — possibly even within the concrete used to construct the building itself. Reporting in ACS Nano, researchers have developed an efficient, energy-storing cement supercapacitor that holds up as well as commercial concrete in tests.

Associate Professor Like Li of the UCF Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering will develop novel experiments to characterize TCES particle mechanical and flow properties at temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees Celsius for the first time.

Physicist Yongtao Cui at the University of California, Riverside, joins a distinguished group of 21 mid-career researchers from around the country named Experimental Physics Investigators this year by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Each investigator receives a $1.35 million, five-year grant to advance the frontiers of fundamental research in experimental physics.

Manufacturing modern medicines is a multi-stage process, and each step introduces the opportunity for contamination, which can be both deadly and expensive. Penn State chemical engineering doctoral candidate Shreya Kapila is working to improve the sterilization process by surface-modifying the membranes used to sterile filter pharmaceutical products and remove bioburden. She conducts research in the laboratory of Andrew Zydney, Bayard D. Kunkle Chair and professor of chemical engineering at Penn State.

One of 21 researchers selected nationwide for the 2026 cohort, Fullerton will receive $1.35 million over five years with additional funding available for specialized equipment. 

XPANCEO, a deep-tech company building smart contact lenses as the next interface for the AI era, has partnered with Contamac, a specialist manufacturer of ophthalmic materials, to advance AR contact lenses and their manufacturing process. This collaboration focuses on making lenses suitable for longer, more comfortable wear while preserving optical quality and enabling scalable manufacturing. 

Mississippi State Professor Benjamin Crider has been selected as a 2026 Experimental Physics Investigator by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Researchers at University College London have developed a new computational model of human color vision that accounts for individual physiological differences, explaining why wide-gamut modern displays often appear inconsistent to different viewers. Published in Optics Express, the study demonstrates how adjusting a display's red, green, and blue primary light spectra can help manufacturers build screens that deliver more consistent, accurate colors across a broader audience.