Announcing a new publication from Opto-Electronic Technology; DOI 10.29026/oet.2026.250014.

Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) are the first to directly utilize orbital currents without the need for conversion of the orbital current into a spin current. “We have thus realized the first purely orbitronic device approach,” said Dr. Christin Schmitt, a scientist in the research group of Professor Mathias Kläui at the JGU Institute of Physics. Orbitronics is a promising technology for future memory devices, as it could enable the realization of large-scale storage media with extremely low energy consumption.

In a study published in Science, USC researchers paired a biological discovery with an engineering feat to create more faithful, reproducible lab-grown kidney structures grown from stem cells, known as organoids. By mapping the developing human kidney, they identified a previously unrecognized developmental axis that helps organize the kidney's filtering units, or nephrons. They then engineered “synthetic organizer” cells to recreate aspects of this developmental environment in organoids. This advance makes organoids more reliable models for studying disease and evaluating potential therapies, while supporting long-term efforts to generate transplantable kidney tissue.

Announcing a new publication from Opto-Electronic Technology; DOI 10.29026/oet.2026.260014.

Robert Wagner, associate laboratory director for the Energy Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been awarded the prestigious 2026 Henry Laurence Gantt Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). 

The University of Pittsburgh's dual DPT-PhD in Bioengineering program has received an NIH T32 training grant to support students pursuing both degrees, funding tuition, PhD stipends, and living costs over five years. Co-directed by Rakié Cham and Patrick Sparto, the program trains clinician-scientists who bridge physical therapy and engineering research, with alumni going on to successful careers and postdoctoral fellowships.

By combining simulations, flight data analysis and extensive experimental testing, researchers from Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University and Research (The Netherlands) were able to identify which combinations of damage, flight conditions and manoeuvres are most likely to result in loss of control. In addition, these indicators can be used not only to detect instability, but also to adapt system behaviour in real-time. For example, they could help determine strategies that maintain flight despite damage to an aircraft’s wing—much in the same way humans accommodate ankle injuries by limping in order to keep walking.