The Lab Beat

Fierce Mantis Shrimp

The fists of mantis shrimp are faster than a speeding bullet. The architecture of that powerful punch has inspired materials for hockey sticks, airplanes, wind turbines and more. [Sound: Anaheim Ducks game broadcast] NATALIE TSO, HOST: Professional hockey and mantis shrimp — there's an important connection. David Kisailus, professor of materials science and engineering at UC Irvine, looks at how materials from creatures like mantis shrimp can help humanity. DAVID KISAILUS: So let's start with hockey. If you're the owner of the Anaheim Ducks, like the person who donated to this building is, you want them to win. [Sound: Anaheim Ducks game broadcast: Ducks beat the Sabres 6 to 5. And remember, quack kills!] We want them to win not only for their glory, but you also can then get advertisements, more advertisements, more sponsorships, more money. If a player who's playing on the ice hits a puck, but the stick breaks, all of a sudden, you go from five people on the ice on your team to four people for about 10 seconds until that player can go get another stick. That 10 seconds turns into what in hockey terms they call it a power play. The other team has a one person advantage and they could score a goal. And if you do that over the course of a season and you lose 3 or 4 games because of that, that could mean playoffs or no playoffs, sponsorships or no sponsorships. So what we realized was that there is a lot of potential for making robust, strong materials that could be used in many different parts of our life, not just hockey. Wind energy, electric vehicles... But we identified an organism called the mantis shrimp, specifically the peacock mantis shrimp. [Sound: aquariums at David Kisailus’s lab] TSO: At the lab, which has tanks full of interesting creatures, materials science and engineering graduate student Andrew Nguyen tells me more. ANDREW NGUYEN: Yeah, so I can tell you more about the mantis shrimp. So they are this crustacean organism that, you know, they really pack a punch. They're usually around four inches long, but they have these specialized kind of dactyl clubs, I should say, like hammer-like appendages that can smack their prey at the speed of a bullet underwater. Underwater. So, you know, there's a lot of friction to overcome and all that. But because of that, not only is there a huge impact, there's also kind of like a second pseudo impact because of how quick it's hitting. There's something called cavitation. And so it just ensures at the end of the day that the prey is not going to be very happy, right? TSO: Kisailus tells me more about the power of those fists. KISAILUS: And so they are the fastest smashing organism on the planet in water. The speed is in meters per second, 23 meters a second, but the acceleration is incredible. It's 100,000m/s². To give that context, that is faster than a 22-caliber bullet. TSO: How did they get so fast and tough? KISAILUS: Their ancient ancestor would hide in the sand and wait for a fish to swim by, and then it would spearfish the fish. What happened over time, over a few 50 to 100 million years, organisms started to develop armor. So clams and crabs would develop hard exoskeletons to prevent being preyed upon by organisms like the spearing mantis shrimp. So the mantis shrimp said, Okay, I have to be able to defeat that armor. How can I do that? It couldn't use its spear, so it would use its elbow segment of its same...it's called a thoracic appendage. Its arms, if you will. So it tried to use its elbow to smack open the clam or crab. And over time, the well-endowed elbowed mantis shrimp spun off into a different species, which is what we study. TSO: In the shrimp's clubs, they found the secret to strength. KISAILUS: The secret sauce is this architecture called the helicoid, which is essentially layers of fibers that are stacked on top of one another, but each layer is rotated at some small angle to give you this helix-like structure. And it's the materials and the architecture that actually provide this robust toughness. So we did the same thing, but we used carbon fiber and glue epoxy and made panels about the size of maybe about five millimeters thick and about, I don't know, maybe a foot by a foot long and wide. And then we essentially made panels of another architecture. That is what Boeing uses in its 787. It's called quasi isotropic. Instead of a helix-like or helicoid-like architecture, the fibers are stacked 0, 45 degrees, -45 degrees, 90. That's called quasi isotropic. So we made panels like that and then we smashed them with an incredible amount of energy — it's the amount of energy that Boeing uses to test its composites. And we found that the damage to the mantis shrimp panel was half of the Boeing panel for the same thickness, same weight, same cost, which means if the 787 is 50% carbon fiber composite, if you could make it half the weight for the same strength and toughness, half the weight means half the fuel, half the fuel means half the CO2 emissions. So it's quite impactful. Pun intended, I guess. So that was one application. And then hockey though, was so such an easy low hanging fruit, we said, let's make sticks. And sure enough, it showed that this architecture makes the sticks really strong and tough so that they don't break. [Sound: hockey goal] TSO: So professional hockey teams like the Anaheim Ducks are now using sticks inspired by the mantis shrimp. KISAILUS: I don't know how many players use the mantis sticks, but I can tell you that they definitely perform better than the current sticks. And then of course, this is just step one. Step two is what other markets could this architecture go to? So wind energy for example, if you ever watch you go to Palm Springs and you see the blades rotating, people think they're moving very slow. They're not. At the tip of a blade on a windy day, they could be traveling as fast as 280 miles an hour, 400 km an hour. And so if a hailstone or a bird hits it, those blades — each of which cost half a million dollars — could break and they want them to last 25 years. So now we're saying, could we use the helicoid architecture in wind energy blades? So this work was funded mostly by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and also in collaboration with some people from Air Force research labs. So lighter weight aircraft, drones, armor, you name it. In fact, we have a new project with the Army right now looking at what are called mortar base plates. In order to launch the mortar, they have to be on a stable platform. They use steel plates that weigh about 80 pounds. The soldiers have to carry an 80-pound plate into the field. What if you could make 10 or 20 pound plates that are made of carbon fiber composite, that could resist the shock and impact from the mortar launch? So there's a new project that my student that you met, Andrew, is actually making those panels for that application. TSO: Those are just some of the brilliant insights Kisailus is extracting from nature's creatures for the use of mankind in sports, energy, defense, and much more. The Lab Beat is brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering, and I'm Natalie Tso. If you liked our show, please like, comment or share and join us for some more cutting-edge science at the next lab. (Season 2, Episode 5)

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The Female Heart

The female heart has been vastly understudied. Naomi Chesler is a leader in researching the female heart and how sex hormones like estrogen affect the heart's function. Her research is helping prevent heart failure in women and men. Naomi Chesler is a UC Irvine professor of biomedical engineering and the director of UC Irvine's Edwards Life Sciences Foundation Cardiovascular Innovation and Research Center. Transcript: [Sound: Heartbeat of Emily Hope, Wikimedia Commons] NATALIE TSO, HOST: That is the heartbeat from a woman named Emily. [Sci fi music] Women's hearts have been historically understudied, and that is a loss not only for women, but men too as the female hormone estrogen could be useful in protecting the heart. Naomi Chesler is a leader in studying female hearts. She is a UC Irvine professor of biomedical engineering and the director of UC Irvine's Edwards Life Sciences Foundation Cardiovascular Innovation and Research Center. She discovered an important contributor to heart failure in women. What got her interested in biomedical engineering? NAOMI CHESLER: When I was a kid, I really enjoyed watching The Six Million Dollar Man, and that was very inspirational for me. I really loved the idea that we could rebuild people and make them stronger. I was also really good at math and science, and I was told when I was a kid that being an engineer was a way to be really creative, using math and science. So then engineering became really appealing to me. I got into the heart because I felt like, you know, we can argue with neuroscientists about this, but I thought it was the most important organ in the body that, you know, you can't really live without a functional heart. And it was a very exciting organ to me. It's got complex mechanical properties and electrical properties, and it drives blood flow that supplies nutrients and oxygen to every cell and tissue in your body. I think that's why I was so intrigued with it. TSO: So why have female hearts been largely understudied? CHESLER: Generations of scientists have been largely male, and those generations of scientists have considered the male the standard and just assume that women would be similar or just a smaller version, the way that folks often assume that children are a smaller version of adults, which is really a very bad assumption. They're very different physiologically, psychologically, you know, hormonal, like just almost in every way. They're not just small adults. And similarly, women are not just small men. TSO: She studies the aspects of the heart that most scientists don't. Right heart failure due to pulmonary hypertension, also known as high blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs. CHESLER: Actually, pulmonary arterial hypertension, which is sort of the analog to systemic hypertension, which is very common, affects four times more women than men and used to be deadly within two to three years and also affect women in their 30s. So here was this disease that affected young women in their reproductive period and was like very quickly deadly. And we knew very little about it. So I started looking at pulmonary hypertension. And as an engineer, I recognized that when arteries are subjected to high pressure for long periods of time, they typically stiffen. And we knew this to be true about the systemic circulation. And I asked the question whether that was true about the pulmonary circulation. And I proved that it was. And I got a lot of “So whats” like “So what if the pulmonary arteries stiffen? The big deal is that the resistance increases.” And it wasn't until a couple of years after I published my findings that a clinical team showed that pulmonary artery stiffness was a better predictor of mortality from pulmonary hypertension than resistance, that people started paying attention. TSO: Chesler’s contribution was key to understanding right heart failure. CHESLER : And now permanent artery stiffness is measured quite frequently in clinical communities, and it's more well recognized that it's a really important contributor to right heart failure. TSO: Roughly 400,000 deaths each year are caused by heart failure in the US, and 15 to 24% of those deaths are due to right heart failure. Now, what is different about the female heart? CHESLER: So the female heart is smaller for sure. Actually, our most recent study shows that in rats there are changes in contractility over the estrous cycle, which is the rat equivalent of a menstrual cycle. I guess that's another reason why females have been excluded from a lot of scientific studies is that any kind of variation in any kind of function over the normal hormonal cycling is considered a source of error or variation. [Sound: EKG] TSO: That's an echocardiogram or EKG. CHESLER: That is the sound of flow through the tricuspid valve in a mouse heart. That's the kind of signal that we analyze to see how the heart is functioning, to see whether the heart functions better or worse with the loss of estrogen. Biomedical engineering graduate student Pratima Prabala tells us what they found in animal models with less estrogen. PRATIMA PRABALA: We're seeing that when there's a depletion of estrogen in the rats that have been oophorectomized, so they have their ovaries removed, there's a more exacerbated phenotype of HFpEF which is what we would expect because estrogen is cardioprotective. [Sci fi music] TSO: HFpEF is heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, or when the heart squeezes normally but becomes too stiff to relax and fill with enough blood between beats. The team found that in rats, it's more pronounced when there's less estrogen. CHESLER: Estrogen is a very potent signal in the body in all sorts of ways, and it's involved in a number of different signaling mechanisms. Loss of estrogen or estrogen deficiency is certainly a very important physiological stimulus, let's say, for heart changes. So what do we want to do? We want to understand how is it that loss of estrogen predisposes to heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and if we can find a protective pathway through which estrogen acts, it could be available to both men and women. Now we are not going to go giving out estrogen — that has actually been tried or the estrogen mimics — that's not successful. So we have to find the mechanism and then go upstream of the estrogen pathway and go to the direct agent that is offering cardiovascular protection and provide a therapy based on that mechanism. [Sound: Heartbeat of Emily Hope Wikimedia Commons] TSO: Chesler’s groundbreaking work studying sex differences and the influence of sex hormones on heart functions could lead to better treatment and prevention of heart failure in both women and men. The Lab Beat is brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering, and I'm Natalie Tso. Thanks for joining me, and we'll see you at the next cutting-edge lab. (Season 2, Episode 4)

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Self-healing Cement

Mo Li is out to transform the cement industry which creates 8% of the world's carbon emissions. Li has created concrete that can heal itself and a process to produce cement with clean energy. Find out more about her concrete innovations in this episode. Mo Li is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Irvine. TRANSCRIPT: [sound of crane] NATALIE TSO, HOST: That's the sound of a crane in a three-story high lab where they test pillars of cement for earthquake resilience. Concrete is the second most used substance on Earth, after water. And the cement industry creates 8% of the world's carbon emissions. That's why it needs an overhaul. And Mo Li is leading the way. She's a professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Irvine. Li wants to make concrete greener and smarter. One of her innovations is making it more like the human body — to be self-healing. MO LI: So self-healing concrete is a concept that how about we transform concrete from a brittle material to a ductile material like metal? But the physics is concrete cannot just be stretched like metal. In order for concrete to be stretched without failure, we designed this very unique damage process into concrete, kind of like a seashell. It actually forms many, many small, tiny cracks hardly seen to human eye. TSO: She explains how she designed her concrete to sense damage and heal its own cracks. LI: To make self-healing happen, we also need to design the chemical composition in the concrete so that once you have a crack, the healing process got naturally actuated. The crack surface will have chemicals exposed to the air and water, and then chemical reaction started. It formed the new ingredients in the crack that fills the crack. TSO: Li is working with California's Department of Transportation. Her lab has already created a concrete bridge slab that has healed itself. LI: So we tested the full scale bridge slab 30 feet long, create the damage. We put it outside in the field conditions, and we proved the cracks are gone. TSO: This technology could have a major impact on the cement industry. LI: We don't need to keep, repair and maintain a concrete bridge deck or pavement. So overall, in terms of life cycle, it becomes more, more sustainable because we end up using less material. TSO: Li is a national leader in self-healing materials, but that's not the only innovation happening in her lab. She also wants to recycle concrete LI: To make concrete, we need to take everything from the earth. Cement you need to take limestone, clay from earth. To make concrete, we not only need cement, we also need sand and rocks. We take all of them from Earth as well. And then we use some water and we use small amount of chemicals. Because a huge volume is involved, there's limited resources on Earth. TSO: But recycling concrete is not easy. LI: It sounds fascinating, but the main challenge is like turning something old into the baby again. So it's against time, against nature Because when cement turns into concrete, there's chemical process there. How do we reverse it? So we can imagine we can crush concrete first, old concrete from demolition site, and then with the smaller pieces, we first ball it into particles. Then we analyze those particles and find out the status composition. [sound of ball mill machine] TSO: That's the sound of the planetary ball mill machine, which helps turn old concrete into powder. The ball mill enables them to control the size of the particles. Then the lab analyzes the powder for its properties and how to reuse it. LI: With that understanding, we can do our magic — the chemical process, electrochemical process. We extract the mineral we want from the old concrete like calcium. We can extract other things like silica. Once we have the process to extract those ingredients out of it, and then we can see how we can return it into a fresh cement. So that's really a cradle to cradle approach. TSO: Her lab has been working with companies like Mitsubishi who supply raw materials. LI: We want to turn it into higher performance materials. So that is the main philosophy we have that is different from the other type of recycling — smartly redesigned into something even better. TSO: Another breakthrough she's made is electrifying the production process of cement so it doesn't use fossil fuels. She and her partner, UCI Professor Iryna Zenyuk, created an electrochemical process powered by clean energy that greatly reduces carbon emissions. They're working with industry to bring their greener process to market. Li’s vision is to transform the cement industry. LI: My ultimate dream is to create a building, a built environment that is more durable, more sustainable and more beautiful. You know, harmony with the natural environment. I think that’s the biggest, most rewarding things civil engineers feel is you go out, you see things you create out there. It will stand there for many, many years. That's UC Irvine’s civil and environmental engineering Professor and Chair Mo Li forging changes in one of the world's biggest industries. Stay tuned to The Lab Beat as we continue to bring you to the cutting-edge labs at the UCI Samueli School of Engineering. I'm Natalie Tso. (Season 2, Episode 3)

Revolutionizing Gyroscopes

Andrei Shkel revolutionized the production of gyroscopes by miniaturizing them and using a glassblowing technology he observed from glass artists in Barcelona, Spain. Step into one of the most high precision gyroscope labs in the world and learn about how they're helping firefighters in this episode. Transcript: [sound of wire bonder] [sci fi music] ELENA WOLGAMOT: This is the wire bonder. This allows us to measure the signals that are coming from the gyroscope, so we can detect the rotation that the sensor is experiencing. NATALIE TSO, HOST: That's Ph.D. student Elena Wolgamot describing a machine in one of the world's most high precision gyroscope labs at UC Irvine. What's a gyroscope? They’re key devices that measure orientation and positioning. They're used in phones, ships, planes and spacecraft to help us stay on course. Most look like a spinning top, but the ones in Andrei Shkel's lab look like wine glasses. Andrei Shkel is a UCI Chancellor's professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. In 2009, he led a $200 million U.S. Department of Defense national program to miniaturize gyroscopes. He was inspired to make them smaller and more accessible after he saw $1 million gyroscope used in space satellites. ANDREI SHKEL: The highest performance gyroscope ever built. This device is made out of fused quartz, very special device, very expensive, used only on space satellites. In space, there is no GPS and you don't know where you are. So you need some reference. You can use stars, but sometimes stars are not visible. So gyroscopes and accelerometers are really the only sensors that can tell you where you are, your orientation, your position. TSO: It takes three months to make and manually assemble the 96 parts in that hemispheric resonance gyroscope. Shkel revolutionized the production of gyroscopes after an artist in Barcelona, Spain, inspired him. SHKEL: In Barcelona, there is a replica of Spanish Village and where they demonstrate different crafts and this is where I saw this glassblower creating these three dimensional shapes and vases and spheres. TSO: That gave him an idea. SHKEL: Maybe something like this can be done on a micro scale and on a very small scale. I went back and asked one of my students to try it out. Didn't work, didn't work. And then suddenly we were able to make these three dimensional structures, spheres. TSO: Like a glassblower, Shkel uses a furnace of 1,700 degrees Celsius to form glass into wine glass-shaped structures. Researchers line the inside of the structures with a thin layer of metal. Then they bond wire electrodes to the shell to make two millimeter-wide gyroscopes. WOLGAMOT: There's about 15 to 20 steps in the whole process from start to finish, and it's a lot of testing the device, doing another step, testing, seeing if it's better and we're constantly improving our process and seeing how our different steps and making the devices are affecting their performance. [sound of vacuum pump] This is a vacuum pump, so this pulls all of the air out of a chamber. So that way we can test the gyroscopes in a space that has no air. The gyroscopes need to be tested in a space that doesn't have air, because they move so fast and the air slows them down. So it would be like if we were trying to run through honey. These gyroscopes are moving and vibrating so fast it's causing that much resistance for them. So we use this vacuum pump to pull all of the air out of the chamber where we test so then it can move freely and fast and we can sense small rotations. TSO: Shkel’s mini-gyroscopes have been used for autonomous driving, drone navigation, phones and more. Another exciting project they're working on is called NeverLost. It’s for firefighters. SHKEL: When they are on a mission trying to fight fire, they're in a very extreme environment. Environment is so complicated. It's hard. It's almost zero visibility and they don't really have a way to know where people are while they're on a mission. And they said, well, one of the important problem is to develop ability to locate where each first responder is at any point in time. And of course, they’re operating in an environment where it is likely there is no GPS. So what we proposed is to use inertial sensors technology and integrate these inertial sensors in the sole of a shoe. TSO: Graduate student Eudald Rafart explains what they've achieved so far. EUDALD RAFART: We are able to track firefighters within one meter, walking around 20 minutes. Also, part of my research has been developing this Google Maps. It's not just knowing where you are, also it comes with the ability of say, I want to go here inside the building. TSO: Shkel’s NeverLost project won the Innovator Award last year at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. His ultimate dream is to help restore the vestibular system in the inner ear for the elderly, to help them prevent falls. Those are the innovations happening at Andrei Shkel’s Lab at UC Irvine. The Lab Beat is brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering and I’m Natalie Tso. (Season 2, Episode 2)

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Curing the Brain

Dion Khodagholy is trying to cure epilepsy by implanting a neural interface on the brain. Khodagholy is a UCI associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and has created the NeuroGrid which maps the brain's activity once it is placed on it. Listen to the sound of the brain and learn why the NeuroGrid is such an effective neural electronic for the brain in this episode. Transcript: [sound of brain waves] NATALIE TSO, HOST: That's the sound of the human brain. [sci fi music] Those are spiking neurons from a brain of a child with epilepsy. They were recorded by a NeuroGrid placed on the brain during surgery. What's a NeuroGrid? It's a conformable neural interface that one puts on the brain to help map it. It looks like a transparent film that's thinner than a human hair. On it are gold electronic patterns that carry the neural signals. It was created in Dion Khodagholy’s lab at UC Irvine. He's an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Why does he think it can help children with epilepsy? DION KHODAGHOLY: Epilepsy is one of the few neurological disorders that has an electrographic signature. You can track it and identify it. We believe that by being able to accurately pinpoint where it’s originating from during development, there's a high chance we can correct it. TSO: That was the first child to have a NeuroGrid placed on the brain. The NeuroGrid was first conceptualized in 2009 and implanted in a patient's brain in 2014. It's thinner, safer, and offers higher resolution readings than current electronics for the brain. Ten hospitals in the U.S. have used it. KHODAGHOLY:: One of the unique features of NeuroGrid is that it is able to record individual neurons firing from the surface of the brain without penetrating inside. This was something practically no other device could do. TSO: Khodagholy explains why his NeuroGrid is so effective. KHODAGHOLY:: They're very similar mechanically to the brain itself. It’s very soft and can follow the curvilinear surface of the brain. They're made out of conducting polymers. These are inherently closer to what body and neurons are and makes it a lot easier and more effective to transduce neural signals. [sound of metal evaporator in lab] [music fades] TSO: The NeuroGrid is made in clean rooms, but his lab has machines such as this metal evaporator that makes prototypes and deposits gold on the polymer. Why gold? KHODAGHOLY:: Gold is our interconnect. That's how the electrical signal from the brain gets carried to our amplifiers. It's a very good conductor. It's very inert. In the brain, we have lots of salt and water. It will cause oxidation. So we use inert material like gold, platinum to not have any chemical reactions. TSO: The NeuroGrid helps map brain regions and detect individual neural spiking. So far, the NeuroGrid can have 256 contacts with 128 surface contacts on the brain. Khodagholy's lab is now partnering with Children's Hospital of Orange County. Before that, the NeuroGrid was used in adult epilepsy patients. KHODAGHOLY:: Our goal with the grid is that because it has a higher resolution, we find out more effectively where these unwanted couplings are. And because of its scalability and the fact that it's made with the same technology as the rest of our electronics that can also stimulate or deliver electric charges for effective intervention, we convert this eventually to a fully conformable closed loop system, meaning it can record in real time process, identify where those unwanted activities are, and then deliver electrical stimulation to suppress it so closing the loop in real time. TSO: The lab has made progress in countering the effects of epilepsy, like loss of memory in rodents. KHODAGHOLY:: We've recently showed that indeed, if you're able to establish a device to detect this in real time and create electrical stimulation at the right time, you're able to significantly improve memory in rodents that had epilepsy. We’ve also shown signatures of this exist in the human brain, so it's not a complete disconnect. We have just a recording from the human brain that shows indeed the patterns we're seeing in rodents exist in humans as well. Our next logical step is to stimulate human brain. That is where things becomes a bit more challenging, both from a regulatory perspective as well as overall device safety concerns. What if that device breaks instead of delivering charge to the brain? What are the safety measures that controls the amount of charge you deliver? Right now from device perspective, we're heavily focused on meeting all the safety requirements for stimulation. Hopefully in a year or two, we'd be able to have this completed and go for human testing. TSO: Khodagholy’s time from lab to bedside is fairly short. KHODAGHOLY:: Maybe this is achieved because we are able to do most of these things at UCI. We don't need to subcontract or outsource it. This is very unique because UCI is one of the very few schools that School of Medicine, basic science, engineering is all in one campus. We're all faculty of the same place. It makes the collaboration very, very easy. TSO: He is also right there in the operating room when they place it on the brain. He told me what happens in brain surgery. [sci fi music] KHODAGHOLY: It's a huge endeavor. As you can imagine, there are many, many parties involved. Anesthesiology, the neurosurgery, neurologist. It's a very delicate system, but in short, yes, there's an incision on the essentially scalp. You're able to open part of the skull. The way to identify where it is is actually very interesting. The patient have their MRI images and then in the O.R., there's often a device with multiple cameras that is able to identify which area of the scalp is open based on a few markers, and then is able to display in real time for the surgeon. You know, if you point out with their wand where on the MRI and your pointing, and so you can very carefully identify where this cranial window needs to be open. They open very precisely, of course, with a lot of care. And then the dural mater is another layer of essentially collagen fibers around the brain. This is called blood brain barrier. It protects their cerebrospinal fluid going out or anything coming in and essentially you will end up having with the exposed brain. And they identified, you know, where the probe needs to be placed or where it needs to be resected. And then they go from there. TSO: Doctors eventually place the NeuroGrid on the brain to allow Khodagholy to hear brainwaves like this one. [brain wave sound] He hopes devices like NeuroGrid and responsive neuromodulation will lead to a cure for epilepsy. The Lab Beat is brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering, and I'm Natalie Tso. Thanks for joining us and see you at the next lab. (Season 2, Episode1)

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Methalox Rockets

The UCI Rocket Project Liquids team is one of the few undergraduate teams that launched a methalox rocket in 2023. Methalox is the leading-edge fuel companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are using to get to Mars. Join this visit to the rocket lab as they prepare to launch their second-generation methalox rocket. Transcript: [male voice: 3 2 1. Ignition. Female voice: Good light, good light.] [Sound of cold flow] [sci fi music] NATALIE TSO, HOST: That's the UCI Rocket Project Liquids Team doing a cold flow on campus. In 2023, the UCI team was one of the few undergraduate teams in America to launch a methalox rocket using the same cutting-edge fuel type the new space industry is using to reach Mars. Propulsion lead Uma Iyer told me why they chose this challenging leading-edge fuel. UMA IYER: So we chose methalox because as students, it's really important to work our way up to industry. And that's what all these big new space companies use, like SpaceX, Blue Origin, they’re using methalox. So by getting our hands on cryogenics, we're basically adapting ourselves like towards the jobs that we'll be working on in the future. ERIC TRAN: One of the big reasons we use methalox is to follow in the footsteps of giants like SpaceX and Blue Origin, and they use it because you can actually produce methalox on Mars, and that way you can actually go home from Mars. TSO: That's operations lead Eric Tran who tells us about the fuel’s challenges. TRAN: One of the big ones is the fact that methalox unlike other more traditional fuels is a cryogen so it has to be super cold in order to stay a liquid and that introduces a lot of issues of stuff freezing over when you don't want IT to freeze over, stuff leaking due to the fact that it needs to stay at a certain pressure to be able to continue staying in a liquid form and stuff like that are like some of the main issues compared to more traditional fields like kerosene, hydrolox, ethanol. TSO: Methalox is made from liquid oxygen and methane, which is a hydrocarbon that can be made on Mars. But methalox needs to be stored between -160 and -180 degrees Celsius or it starts to vaporize. Iyer explains how they deal with this challenge. IYER: You never know exactly how much propellant you have inside your tanks because it's going to keep vaporizing. So we chill our tanks to get it at a proper temperature and also to not induce like thermal shock to our system like we want our hardware to still be okay so we chill our tanks and then we fill them and try to get them as full as possible. And that’s why like time is of the essence and making sure that we're moving quickly at the Mojave Desert, like when we do our test fires so we chill, fill, pressurize our system and then immediately hot fire. [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE: 350 Closing….] TSO: I visited their lab on campus as they were getting ready for a test called a cold flow. TRAN: Out there they're working on the hardware. They’re I think right now doing instrumentation checks of just double checking if like all the valves and sensors are working properly and they're trying to communicate what they see out there to inside. [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE: Can you close vent?] [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE: Closing vent] TRAN: Yeah. So like, they're opening and closing vents and just checking before we get the ball rolling. TSO: Avionics engineer Alex Amaro told me how he coordinates with the engineers near the rocket. ALEX AMARO: I just relay whatever information they need. So we have pressure readings all across here and all these dials, temperature readings. [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE asking for reading] [AMARO: PT is reading 270 psi] [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE more dialogue on psi] [AMARO: Copy opening…] TSO: So what exactly is a cold flow? Tran explains. TRAN: To get up to launch, we need to test our engine, which is when we go out to the desert and hotfire the engine. So we light it with actual propellant in the system. But leading up into a hotfire, we validate the system even before then. What we do is we roll out our test stand and rocket here on campus where we conduct a cold flow, which is where instead of running actual liquid oxygen and liquid natural gas, which is methane through the system in actual fuel and lighting it, we run liquid nitrogen through the system. That way we can simulate those cryogenic conditions for the rocket and also the pressures needed for a hot fire. That way we can validate the system like check for leaks to see if it holds up under really cold temperatures and also if we get the flow that we want and the pressure data that we want. And with that cold flow is what gives us the confidence to go out to do a hot fire. TSO: The team's first methalox rocket Peter reached 9,300 feet in 2023. Now they aim to go higher with a second generation rocket Moch4. Iyer tells me what's new about this rocket. IYER: It's much slimmer in diameter and also conserving a lot of mass because obviously you don't want your rocket to be too heavy. So that's the huge change that we've made to our system. So Peter wasn't able to be recovered successfully, but our launch vehicle team is working really, really hard to improve our recovery system so we can hopefully get the rocket and have it be reusable. TSO: Iyer interned at Blue Origin last summer and shares why she wants to pursue a career in aerospace. IYER: I like the fact that space has so many opportunities. Okay when it comes to like astronomy and astrophysics, you're going on rabbit holes and rabbit holes of research. It's hard to come to a stopping point or conclusion like there's always something to learn. I think that in itself is like really liberating. Like you feel like when you're learning, you're never going to reach a stopping point. You're never gonna be stumped by Oh what's next because there's just an infinite amount of things to learn. TSO: Tran shares why he's loved space ever since he was a boy. TRAN: It's just something about it has....when I first looked at it for the first time when I was younger, just captured my curiosity and imagination. It's one of the few places with so many unknowns. It's one of the few places where you can still imagine, like, what's possible. And that's what keeps me going because like as you get older, the more you know, it's a lot harder to believe. And with that, space is still one of the few places where there's a bunch of unknowns that we can still dream about. [MALE VOICE: Ok, we are checking skies. Sky is clear. Okay, we are good to launch. We’re going at (buzzing sound)- and male voice: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Iginition] TSO: Last December, the U.S. Rocket Project liquids team went to the Mojave Desert to do a vertical test fire and this recovery testing you hear. [sound of rocket launch and cheers from team] [sci fi music] TSO: The test validated their recovery harness. They want to go higher and recover the whole rocket when they launch Moch4 this spring. I'm Natalie Tso for The Lab Beat, which is brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. If you like our podcast, share it with your friends and we'll see you at the next lab. (Season 1, Episode 10)

Becoming Invisible

Alon Gorodetsky is creating materials that mimic the camouflage capabilities of squids that can change color, transparency and temperature. Learn how he figured out the secret of their skin and how it can be used for medicine, the military, smart fabrics and more. Transcript: [sci fi music] NATALIE TSO, HOST: What if you could change the color, transparency and temperature of your skin at any time? Well, if you're an octopus, you can. And Alon Gorodetsky, UCI associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, with the help of this electron beam evaporation system, [SOUND OF ELECTRON BEAM EVAPORATION SYSTEM] is creating materials that imitate those camouflage capabilities so we can use them in smart fabrics. How did he get inspired by cephalopods? ALON GORODETSKY: Well, I actually did not know much about squid and cephalopods other than the fact that they're delicious. I went into a talk by a scientist named Roger Hanlon from the Marine Biological Laboratory, and there was a video he showed of an octopus basically popping out of an algae covered rock. And, you know, it was like something straight out of a science fiction movie. I basically said, okay, I'm going to drop half my research and start working on materials inspired by these animals. So this is much cooler than anything I was planning on doing. Literally, the science fiction aspect, it's like seeing a shapeshifter in real life. It's the equivalent of me backing up onto a file cabinet without really knowing what that is or having ever seen it, and then suddenly being indistinguishable from that file cabinet. That's how amazing their camouflage abilities are. TSO: Now his lab is known for figuring out exactly how a squid changes its color and transparency. They discover the structure in their skins that enabled them to change from transparent to colored states. Gorodetsky showed me squid inspirations in his lab from his collaborator Roger Hanlon at the Marine Biological Lab. GORODETSKY: So we actually keep little vials of squid skin in the lab for fun. What's amazing about this is, you know, you look at it and see that color almost completely disappears. The squid can control this neurophysiologically. TSO: Then he showed me the electron beam evaporation system. [SOUND OF ELECTRON BEAM EVAPORATION SYSTEM] GORODETSKY: This is where we do the depositions. So a deposition is when you take, let's say, a metal or an oxide, and then you heat it up until it turns into a vapor. And then that vapor will condense or deposit on some substrates or some flat surface and it’ll form a coating. So we were making the material with this machine. TSO: That's a key part of the process of making squid skin like material. It allows them to program the nanostructure and microstructure of the material so that it can change color and regulate the flow of heat. GORODETSKY: So we've been able to make materials that can change color and change transparency in a very similar way to squid skin. And we have been able to extend that to not work only in the visible, but to also work in the infrared. So you could change infrared transparency, let's say, and then change how infrared light or heat is transmitted or reflected. And that corresponds to a change in effective temperature. TSO: There are a lot of applications for material that can change temperature. GORODETSKY: Well, you can make warming devices, for example, for clinical applications. You can make clothes that adapt in response to changes in the environment to keep you comfortable. One thing that we played around with was making coffee cup covers, right? Or it's just kind of like a cup cozy that we put around paper cups. And for me, you know, I get up every morning, I have a nice hot cup of coffee, right? And it's always hard to get the temperature just right. So it's just something that will make my day a little bit brighter. TSO: A key discovery in making their squid skin like material was the discovery of the protein called reflectin in the squid cells. GORODETSKY: We found that these structures, these kind of plates, if you will, from this protein, were arranged in a specific way in the cells that could change color and transparency and had a particular refractive index gradient. And so the cells in the skin were using that idea of having very controlled changes in refractive index to enable their ability to go from transparent to colored. So we could take those refractive index distributions that you see in the cells and then translate them to material and actually get some of the same effects. And so we even have a video online where we have our material next to a squid underwater and you shine light on both and they're basically indistinguishable. TSO: Gorodetsky’s Lab has already been able to make prototypes of squid inspired materials that can change color, transparency and temperature. [sci fi music] GORODETSKY: We have made the materials washable and breathable. We've been integrating them withfabrics. We have been able to do some basic demos of kind of personal infrared camouflage. TSO: As they work to expand the size of their material, it can potentially be used for military camouflage, medical purposes, personal smart fabrics, and much more. But for now, he's enjoying coffee at just the right temperature. That's what's happening at Alon Gorodetsky's lab at UC Irvine. The lab is brought to you by the UCI Samueli School of Engineering. And I'm Natalie Tso. Thanks for joining me and see at the next lab. (Season 1, Episode 9)

Hydrogen Fueling the Future

Can hydrogen energy change the world? UCI Clean Energy Institute Director Jack Brouwer thinks so. His institute is creating sustainable hydrocarbon fuels for aviation and shipping. Listen as he shares his vision for how hydrogen energy can bring more equity and peace to the world. Transcript: [sci fi music] [Sound of electrolzyer spurting out oxygen] NATALIE TSO, HOST: That’s the electrolyzer at UC Irvine spurting out oxygen. The UCI Clean Energy Institute is using hydrogen to create sustainable aviation and shipping fuels. The Institute’s director Jack Brouwer explains why he believes hydrogen could change the world: JACK BROUWER: It's more equitably available. It's available everywhere around the world. You don't have to find only where oil is and you don't have to have the geopolitical challenges and everything else that comes with oil and the wars that we fight over energy. Why do we fight wars over energy? Because some people have it and some people don't. If we create a means by which energy conversion, energy storage and delivering energy to people can be made everywhere, we won't have as many wars. TSO: That vision is driving their hydrogen research. Brouwer is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. He explains why hydrogen is the ultimate solution for energy. BROUWER: It has the features that allow us to carry it around. It's lightweight. You can actually store it for a long time and use it later. You know you could use it in aircraft and engines and heavy duty things. And those kinds of things made me very interested in hydrogen as a solution to more and more renewable and sustainable energy use. You also can convert it, make it in the first place, and convert it back to electricity with zero emissions. TSO: Brouwer showed me the powerful electrolysis system that’s creating the sustainable aviation fuel. [Sound of electrolysis system] BROUWER This is taking in electricity and water, and it's converting the electricity and water to hydrogen and oxygen and then separating out the hydrogen into one stream that goes into this compressor. That's the main thing that you hear. It compresses hydrogen all the way up to 350 times atmospheric pressure, 350 bar. And then we store it in hydrogen tanks that are over here. So what this is doing is this is making renewable hydrogen in the same way. And we're using this in that co-electrolysis system for making the synthesis gas for synthetic aviation fuels. TSO: He explains the science behind this fuel and their partnership with industry. BROUWER: We're working with Chevron to actually use solid oxide electrolysis to actually co-electrolyze CO2 and water streams to make a synthesis gas, meaning a type of gas that has carbon monoxide and hydrogen in it that is the prerequisite for making a liquid fuel. You can make a synthetic liquid fuel from renewable hydrogen and CO2. The CO2 can come from bio sources or even captured from the air or come from another power plant or something like that. So you can take the CO2 and steam, make this synthesis gas, and then subsequently make the sustainable aviation fuel. And that's going to be the main way that we make air travel sustainable in the future TSO: UCI has always paved the way for sustainable fuels. UCI built America’s first hydrogen fueling station which enabled companies to test and deploy their hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. BROUWER: We were able to install a prototype fueling station before the Mirai was even invented to actually test prototype Toyota vehicles. We started with Toyota and the Highlander fuel cell electric vehicle. And then we also tested the General Motors vehicles and the Honda vehicles and Hyundai vehicles and we were able to actually deploy them here at UCI and all throughout Orange County because of our development of infrastructure to support them. We did the same thing with battery electric vehicles. It's one of the reasons why the state of California is really leading in deploying fuel cell and battery electric vehicles. We contributed to that introduction. TSO: Now Brouwer is working on the technology to enable hydrogen to power ships and airplanes We are working with the University of Naples, Parctenopei, as a collaborator to evaluate thermodynamically and dynamically how we might be able to make ship fuel for the future. And that includes not just hydrogen, which could be used directly as a liquid and we've evaluated that, but we're also looking at how to make synthetic ammonia or synthetic methanol as a ship fuel. And then we’re evaluating the characteristics of converting it onboard using a diesel cycle or using a fuel cell of various types. So we’re trying to figure out how you might be able to make shipping zero emissions with hydrogen and its deritative fuels methanol and ammonia. TSO: His vision is that the world’s major oil companies would convert their factories to produce renewable energy. BROUWER: The major oil companies, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, these companies can be those that eventually make sustainable aviation fuels. This is one of the reasons why I'm excited to work with Chevron on this, because I do think that they can eventually transform all of their fossil-based technology into a renewable, sustainable aviation fuel technology. TSO: That transformation from oil to renewable energy would change the world. Brouwer has a visionary zeal for his work that’s contagious, perhaps because he also moonlights as a Christian pastor and preacher. BROUWER: Many people say that faith and science are incompatible or that there are challenges between them. But I think that they are complementary. As a matter of fact, if you’re open to spiritual insights and scientific insights, I think you have a better perspective on all things that happen in life. If you think about it, meaning in life is something that is not easy to justify on a scientific basis. Our consciousness and our care and concern for the planet or other people, how does that actually manifest itself if we have only a naturalistic understanding of human life? TSO: How does his Christian faith inspire his work? BROUWER: We are actually asked by God to serve on His behalf to protect and to preserve and to be good stewards of the world. This is why I think you can have a very strong motivation to care for the environment, to care for other people, to care for animals, to care to preserve the world that God created. Now you have both a naturalistic reason and a spiritual reason to actually want to do something to be a good steward. [sci fi music] TSO: What is Brouwer’s ultimate aim in his clean energy research? BROUWER: Well my ultimate vision is that we humans would have more love for one another, that there would be much less division amongst us, that we would enable a sustainable future and that sustainable future, I can only contribute to the electrochemical energy conversion. That’s the only science I know. However I do think it’s one of the parts that can contribute to sustainability not only for energy but sustainability as nations and sutainability as competing nations, right and so that we eventually don’t have the geopolitical challenges, the wars. So my vision is to enable energy conversion to be something that brings us together rather than separates us and leads to war. TSO: That’s the vision driving Jack Brouwer, director of the UCI Clean Energy. Thanks for listening to The Lab Beat. I’m Natalie Tso. If you like our podcast, please share it with your friends. Thanks and see you at the next lab. (Season 1, Episode 8)

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Can a Robot Love?

Top roboticist Magnus Egerstedt explores whether robots can love in the UCI Robot Ecology Lab, where his altruistic robots take cues from animals. Egerstedt is the dean of the UCI Samueli School of Engineering and the creator of the SlothBot, RaccoonBot and the Robotarium, a swarm robot lab which has been used by over 7,000 researchers. Transcript: [People laughing] MAGNUS EGERSTEDT: Raccoonbot! [people clapping and having fun] NATALIE TSO, HOST: That’s the moment the Raccoonbot – a robot shaped like a raccoon - made its debut at Crystal Cove State Beach in Southern California. The cute robot is the brainchild of Magnus Egerstedt, the dean of UC Irvine’s engineering school who is a philosopher turned roboticist EGERSTEDT: So let's ask a question. Can I build a robot that feels love? TSO: Egerstedt is a top roboticist but he has a bachelor’s in philosophy and linguistics. EGERSTEDT: I got really fascinated by questions around consciousness and mind and what does it mean to feel and to think. And I thought this was super cool. I was probably a little pretentious as a 20-year-old, but after a while I started to get annoyed because all we did was sit around and talk. And I actually started doing robotics almost like applied philosophy. I thought, you know what, these questions can either be solved by us building robots or not. So I really thought of this as I wanted to get at deep questions about humanity by building machines. TSO: He leads the UCI Robot Ecology Lab that creates altruistic robots modeled after animals. So far, there’s the SlothBot and the RaccoonBot. Egerstedt shares how he got inspired by these animals: EGERSTEDT: I was on vacation in Costa Rica and I thought sloths were really cool. You know, they they live off the as if a human being would live off a fraction of one of these small potato chips bags a day. They are so energy efficient. And I decided to model behaviorally this robot that I wanted to put out in nature on sloths. And born was the Slothb=Bot. This is a robot under the the tree canopies hanging on a wire and every now and then it goes out from under the tree canopy to sunbathe and recharge the batteries and then it goes back in and measures stuff in the microclimate. [sfx: raccoonbot moving along a wire] TSO: This is the sound of its cousin the RaccoonBot moving along its wire. EGERSTEDT: And then I moved to Southern California and discover our beaches are gorgeous Southern California beaches. [sounds of music and people at Crystal Cove beach] And we wanted to put SlothBots on the beach, but they're not indigenous to Southern California. And I was actually down at one of our local beaches here and saw a raccoon digging through a trash can. So we decided, let's turn it into a raccoon instead. TSO: I asked children at the beach what they thought of the raccoonbot BOY1: It’s really cool! BOY2: It’s cute too. With a bow tie. TSO: It has a bow tie! BOY2: And it’s on the rope TSO: Did you know it’s a robot? Boy2: Well, you just told us, so yeah. (laugh) TEEN GIRL: I’m wondering what it does? TSO: It collects environmental data. TEEN GIRL: Oh, woah, that’s cool. TSO: What’s up next? An otterbot EGERSTEDT: We’ve teamed up with the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. So instead of being on a horizontal wire, there'll be a vertical of wire down in the water anchored by a buoy, and it's going to look at the water quality at different depths. [Sound of deep water] But it's basically going to climb up and down a wire underwater looking like an adorable otter. [Sounds of swarm robots at UCI Robot Ecology Lab] TSO: There’s more to his lab than cute robots. Back at the UCI Robot Ecology Lab, there are these swarm robots you hear that are about the size of your palm. He created the first remotely-accessible swarm robot lab that’s been used by over 7,000 researchers. EGERSTEDT: So in the lab, we have a setup that we call the robotarium, and it looks like a small ice hockey arena, a rink. And really what it is, it’s just a test bed for testing different kinds of primarily mobility strategies TSO: His students are working on algorithms to see if the robots can be organically kind and helpful to one another. Postdoctoral researcher Brooks Butler explains: BUTLER: The idea is that we’re looking at ecology for inspirations and putting together algorithms for robots to work together. It’s essentially the idea that I’m willing to take on a personal cost to help you based off of how related we are. In nature you’d see that as say a mother lioness taking care of her sister’s cub. For robots we think about instead of thinking of genetic relatedness we think about how do their tasks relate to each other and how can we strategically algorithmically have them sacrifice or perhaps take on additional cost in order to benefit another robot’s task. I think we're seeing some really interesting results. We're seeing some really organic behavior emerge just naturally without telling the robots explicitly what to do. They behave similar to like a human would. So if they're trying to get out of each other's way, instead of doing something to suboptimally move directly back, They'll kind of pause and have sometimes that like, Oh, I go this way, oh, you go that way and have a more organic-looking behavior TSO: Ph.D. student Diana Morales says her robots are sometimes willing to risk their lives for each other which in robotland means run out of batteries. MORALES: I've also been looking at how we can have robots with different capabilities help each other out to expand what they’re able to do. And sometimes that might mean that you have a robot that's willing to risk their life to see what's out there to give information to another robot and they have a better picture of the world which I think is pretty cool. They can go a lot further if they help each other out that way. TSO: If robots can act lovingly, can they feel love? EGERSTEDT: To me, it's. It's an empirical question. I don't think we can, but I think it's more a statement about people than about robots. To be honest, if we look at a robot and say, “Here's a robot that feels love,” then that robot feels love. TSO: Does Egerestedt think we’ll be cohabitating with robots soon? EGERSTEDT: In many ways, the robots are already here and there are robotic vacuum cleaners in a lot of houses. We have self-driving cars that are really robots. What I don't think is tomorrow we're going to have metal humanoids walking around in our houses. Instead, I think the line between an appliance and a robot is just going to get increasingly blurred where our toaster is all of a sudden able to do the dishes and ask us how our day was and all of a sudden that's how we're going to have more robots in our lives. TSO: What about the common fear that robots might do harm? EGERSTEDT: So I share some of those fears. I think technology can be amazing. It can unlock so much in us. We can be more creative, more productive, healthier, more equal, but it can also go in the direction where they cause major disruptions. This in part is why I took the environmental monitoring route with my robots. I wanted to make sure that I made robots that contribute to the good of the world in some small way. TSO: What is Egerstedt’s dream robot? EGERSTEDT: I ultimately want to understand the human mind, and I think robotics is a way of helping us do that. I don't know what the robot looks like, but my dream robot is one that unlocks the mystery of the human mind, which is such a remarkable organ. [Sounds of swarm robots at UCI Robot Ecology Lab] TSO: That’s what they’re doing at the UCI Robot Ecology Lab headed by Magnus Egerstedt, the dean of UCI’s engineering school. This is The Lab Beat brought to you by the UCI Samueli School of Engineering, I’m Natalie Tso. If you like our podcast, please share it with your friends and join us at the next lab. (Season 1, Episode 7)

The Power of Glowing Color

Stacy Copp's lab is using glowing light and color to see deep inside human tissues which could replace the need for X-rays. Listen to Copp, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, share her inspirations and ground breaking work at her UCI lab. Transcript: [Sci fi music] [Sound of lab machine automated spectrometer chirping] STACY COPP: This is an automated spectrometer. NATALIE TSO, HOST: Stacy Copp’s lab at UC Irvine’s engineering school is on the cutting edge of using the power of light and color to see deep inside human tissues - which could replace the need for X rays. She’s an associate professor of materials science and engineering. Her fascination with light began as a child. COPP: I found it really exciting to sit in the closet with a flashlight or to look at a rainbow being cast from a piece of glass. TSO: In college, she had a life changing look under a microscope of a sample of little beads loaded with fluorescent dye. COPP: I remember the moment that they came into focus and they were there twinkling and they were glowing yellow. And I remember thinking at that moment, this is my universe under this microscope. TSO: That lit her path as a scientist. Years later she discovered she has a heightened ability to see and distinguish color - which explains a lot. COPP: I just find the things that glow so fascinating. I think it's some kind of innate love that I have. That color is just really vivid to me. TSO: Now she leads a lab that is developing ways to use color for bioimaging. COPP: We make glowing nanoclusters that are wrapped up in DNA, and DNA molecule is the code for this cluster. It determines the color that it glows. So our goal is to figure out what DNA sequence do we need to get that color, whether it's this near-infrared color of glow that can be used for deep tissue, biomedical imaging, or whether it's a visible green blue red glow that can be used for different types of photonic applications. [Sound of lab machine automated spectrometer chirping] TSO: The lab uses this chirping automated spectrometer to measure wavelengths of light emitted by nanoscale materials which are about 10 million times smaller than a blueberry. COPP: Inside of this box is a well plate that has 384 different holes. Each hole contains a different sample of DNA stabilized silver clusters with its own unique color of glow. We collect large data libraries using this tool and then train machine learning models that guide the design of DNA molecules that are well-suited for fluorescent nanoclusters. TSO: Copp is designing silver nanoclusters which contain only 10 to 30 silver atoms. She wants to make them glow in the near infrared. COPP: This is really exciting for biomedical imaging because our bodies and tissues are far more transparent to near infrared light than to visible light. So if we had very brightly glowing near infrared dyes, those could be used as medical contrast agents for using non-hazardous near-infrared light for biological imaging instead of something like X-rays or an MRI machine. [sci fi music] TSO: Unlike X-rays which use ionizing radiation that can damage cells, her infrared nanoclusters could offer a safer way to do bioimaging and to track cancer COPP: These types of brightly emitting near infrared dyes can be used to study cellular processes that happen on micron scales but inherently happen deep inside of tissues. At the moment we don’t have good ways to visualize those like we do for single cells on a petri dish where they’re just laying there. But if we had near infrared dyes with which we could label and track their molecules and cells, then perhaps we could do that type of imaging inside tissues so we could better understand biological processes. It’s also possible that these near infrared emitters could be added as contrast agents in order to label and track things like tumors or other types of tissues that are relevant for human disease. TSO: Copp’s lab could enable major medical breakthroughs and it all started with her enchantment with the rainbow. COPP: I honestly believe that basically every child is born as a scientist. They’re all just so interested in how the world works. They’re always asking questions. They always want answers to those questions. TSO: Sometimes those little scientists grow up to create light we can’t even see – that could save countless lives. That’s what’s going on at Stacy Copp’s lab at UC Irvine. The Lab Beat is brought to you by the UCI Samueli school of engineering, and I’m Natalie Tso. If you like our podcast, please share and leave a review. Thanks and I’ll see you at the next lab. (Season 1, Episode 6)

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National Fuel Cell Center

National Fuel Cell Research Center Director Iryna Zenyuk is striving to enable clean hydrogen to power everything from Olympic buses, trucks, the cement industry and more. A former chess champion, Zenyuk is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Irvine. Transcript: [Sound of electrolyzer] [IRYNA ZENYUK: This is an electrolyzer, yeah] [sci fi music] NATALIE TSO, HOST: Today we’re at the National Fuel Cell Research Center at UC Irvine’s engineering school. The director Iryna Zenyuk is a UCI professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. Before getting into clean energy, she was a professional chess player, ranked in the top 5 in the US. ZENYUK: My grandfather played chess and he introduced me when I was maybe four or five and then I showed actually some talent. TSO: She was so talented, she went pro as an engineering student. She played in a life-changing tournament right after the Beijing Olympics in 2008. ZENYUK: It was just a week after Olympic Games and the factories were just restarting. After a week it was already we couldn't see a few feet away. I never seen anything like that. TSO: That’s when she decided clean energy was more important than chess. She left her chess career and is now a global leader in clean energy research. ZENYUK: Now we have Olympic Games in LA in 2028 and we just organized the workshop to get hydrogen buses into the program. So it kind of for me it feels like full circle. I get a chance to impact what technology going to being there so that is also exciting for me now. TSO: Zenyuk is working with colleagues from UC Irvine and UCLA to get hydrogen fuel cell buses to the 2028 Olympic Games. Her lab at UC Irvine focuses on making clean hydrogen using electrolysis - where electricity splits water H20 into hydrogen and oxygen. ZENYUK: This is electrolyzer yeah. It pumps water and it makes hydrogen. So this is the sound of pumping water that gets water to electrolyzer and then hydrogen comes out. So you can see some of this bubbles are hydrogen. [TSO: The bubbles are hydrogen. That’s really cool.] [Zenyuk laughs] TSO: The roller mixer you hear now is mixing the catalyst for the chemical reaction that produces clean hydrogen. ZENYUK: So this is a roll mill. We have bottles of ink, which is made of catalyst particles, ionomer, and water and solvent and they are rolled for 48 hours. The catalyst is made from iridium. So that's where all the reactions take place. That's where water splits to make hydrogen on the surface on this catalyst. TSO: Her lab is advancing hydrogen technology to power trucks, planes, ships, AI servers and the cement industry. She paired with UCI civil engineering professor Mo Li to create a way to decarbonize the production of cement. ZENYUK: Cement industry uses 1600 degrees Celsius process to convert calcium carbonate to calcium oxide. We do it close to room temperature. TSO: That eliminates the need for fossil fuels for that key process. Cement companies are taking notice. ZENYUK: We already have inquiries from industry, from construction companies. They, they are interested in finding a way to decarbonize their processes. They are very interested in new technologies. [sci fi music] TSO: She also believes electrolysis has the potential to process and separate mined critical minerals which the nation really needs. ZENYUK: We have to we have to sieve through a lot of water to extract those elements. And if you think of like they're typically in ionic. They are ions dispersed in solution and ions that charge species. So we can use electricity, electric potential. We can use different membranes, we can use different potential windows to separate certain metals and to leave all the other metals out. There is a lot of innovation currently happening in this field and I think here at UCI, we can position ourselves to be really leader in this field as well. TSO: Looks like Zenyuk’s mastermind is always thinking about the next move. You’ll want to keep an eye on her lab at UCI’s National Fuel Cell Research Center. Thanks for tuning into The Lab Beat, brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. I’m Natalie Tso. If you like our podcast, please share it with your friends. Thanks and see at the next lab. (Season 1, Episode 5)

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Upcycling EV batteries

Diran Apelian found a way to recycle EV batteries and co-founded the billion-dollar company Ascend Elements, one of TIME'S America's Top Ten Green Tech companies of 2024. Find out about the cutting-edge technology his lab uses to upcycle metal at UC Irvine's Samueli School of Engineering. Transcript: [sound of Tesla starting] [sci fi music] NATALIE TSO, HOST: What happens to EV batteries when we’re done with them? Diran Apelian invented a way to recycle them and co-founded a billion dollar company Time magazine named one of America’s Top Ten Green Tech Companies of 2024. Apelian is a distinguished professor of materials science and engineering at UC Irvine’s engineering school. What inspired him to get into metallurgy – the science of metals? DIRAN APELIAN: Even in my teenage years, I was very interested in rocks, minerals. I sort of had a connection with the Earth, you know. I found it to be beautiful, actually. Then I was exposed to a tour of a steel mill, United States Steel. And for the first time, I saw molten steel, but not in a few grams, but in tons of it being poured. I was completely taken back. I was fascinated. There was something magical about the smell, the visual Earth and the fire. And I got attracted to it. And the same time the Sputnik age was coming up, you know, where we were sending missiles up to the moon and trying to get to the moon and everything in the headlines was all the material problems. You know, the tiles protecting the vessel, they were falling off. I put two and two together and that's how I got interested in metallurgical engineering. TSO: And the world is better for it. He not only made aluminum foil stronger, he put aluminum in cars. APELIAN: Many years ago, most of the cars were mostly steel, and in the nineties or so we moved from steel to aluminum because aluminum is three times lighter. So we want to decrease the weight of the car so we don't use as much fuel. So we actually got involved in developing the alloys for the Audi, all aluminum. TSO: That was the Audi A8 — the first mass market car with an all aluminum body. He also tells us what led to the billion dollar company he co-founded, Ascend Elements, which is a major recycler of EV batteries. APELIAN: The battery comprises of anode and cathodes. The cathode has a lot of prescious metal in it – cobalt, nickel. So when these things are end of life, they need to be recovered, all these precious metals. So we developed the technologies to recover the cobalt, the nickel and lithium, all the important elements that are not critical, but near critical and reuse them into a new cathode. And ironically, the recycled material has better properties than the virgin material because we can manipulate the morphology of the powder sizes and all that to control the conductive electronic charges and all that. TSO: Apelian’s lab is a leader in upcycling end-of-life metal products. [sounds of ultrasound machine melting metal] [RAQUEL JAIME: It’s only going to be a small amount] TSO: That’s Ph.D. student Raquel Jaime. She’s melting scrap aluminum in their lab and it does look pretty cool. She’s giving them an ultrasonic treatment that can potentially remove impurities in the metal. She’s researching how the ultrasound – which is not yet used in industry - can make stronger metals for cars and jets. [JAIME: There we go cool, and then we’ll just remelt it in a little bit.] TSO: As for the molten metal that captivated her professor? She loves it too. JAIME: - That’s like my favorite thing that I get to do in here, that treating it with the ultrasound. It all sounds very crazy. It's not something I would have imagined myself doing as a kid. It sounds weird. I always say that it sounds like the two combination things that you need to get like a Marvel super villain. Ultrasound frequency and molten metal, it sounds like if I fell in, I would turn into some weird sort of character. I don’t know. [Jaime laughs] [sound of cold spray machine] TSO: Another cutting-edge technology in the lab is the cold spray machine which you hear in the background. Now cold is relative because here it means at least 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Graduate student Michael Ross explains what’s special about this million-dollar 3D printer: ROSS: So the big advantage of cold spray is that you don't need to actually melt the metal that you're processing so you can make solid metal parts without melting your material, which really opens up the possibilities of using more advanced materials that melt at higher temperatures. And that's important for applications in extreme environments like aerospace, where they need to withstand higher temperatures. TSO: That’s the cold. As for the spray, it runs at three times the speed of sound or Mach3. Ph.D. student Jack Webster explains what happens in cold spray: WEBSTER: We have a robotic arm that moves this substrate plate around while a nozzle flings powder at a super high velocity into the desired shape. So think of it as you have two spherical powders and they hit each other with so much force that they turn to like little pancakes. That's the best way to kinda describe cold spray. So definitely a really cool machine. [sci fi music] TSO: Apelian’s lab is using all this cutting-edge technology to work with 42 corporations around the world. APELIAN: Mostly with the automotive industry, aerospace industry…there’s a lot of scrap that’s being produced at the end of life. We’re developing new alloys, 100% recycled material. In other words, from scrap. We're making the sausage for metals. You think about that. What the hell is sausage? Sausage is leftover meat put in the intestines of the animal. It tastes pretty damn good, actually, right? Sometimes it tastes better than steak. So we're making a sausage for metal industry. We’re working with General Motors and some of the other companies where the materials that are being utilized in the car now is hundred percent scrap. TSO: Diran Apelian’s lab at UC Irvine is a global leader in making leaner, greener, and better metals. This is Natalie Tso for The Lab Beat, brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. If you like our podcast, please share it and leave a review. (Season 1, Episode 4)

The 100 Year Starship Project

Ronke Olabisi is healing wounds without scars and making bone grow from seashells as she works on the 100 Year Starship Project which aims to enable travel beyond our solar system. Learn how Olabisi, UCI associate professor of biomedical engineering, is helping humans stay healthier in space and on Earth. The 100 Year Starship Project was launched by the U.S. Department of Defense. Transcript: [sci fi music] [sounds of inverted microscope] NATALIE TSO, HOST: This is The Lab Beat where we take a look at cutting-edge labs at UC Irvine’s engineering school. I'm Natalie Tso. Ronke Olabisi is enabling wounds to heal without scars and making bone grow from seashells. She's an associate professor of biomedical engineering at UC Irvine, and her research is fueled by her desire to go to outer space. RONKE OLABISI: See, I've wanted to go since I was four years old. I want to be weightless. I've been weightless before. I've gone on a parabolic flight. But I want the whole package. I can't explain what that four year old was thinking because whatever she was thinking, she put this burning desire in me that I've never grown out of it. TSO: She's a part of NASA's 100 Year Starship Project, which aims to enable travel beyond our solar system within a hundred years. OLABISI: The 100 Year Starship is more of a thought experiment. If you look back at what they did in getting to the moon. They decided in 1961 we’re going to go to the moon, and in 1969 they landed on the moon. And the explosion of technology...they had to be able to communicate with the astronauts so they developed a communications satellite, and now we all have cell phones that rely on communication satellites. They needed the astronauts to be protected from the sun, so they invented UV protection and so we have sunglasses because of that. There is something in your life that we owe to going to the moon. TSO: Now, her lab is working on enabling humans to stay healthier in space and on Earth. OLABISI: One of the things I work on is bone. Astronauts lose tons of bone in space. TSO: Astronauts lose at least 1% of their bone density per month in space. This happens on Earth too. Women in midlife can lose over 1% of their bone density a year. But Olabisi has found promise in a solution using seashells that was inspired by an old Mayan jaw. OLABISI: It was found in the 1930s, and it hung out in a Harvard museum. Everybody saw that three of the teeth were from the shell. The inside of the shell is called nacre — that lustrous mother-of-pearl iridescent part — that's called nacre. TSO: When seashells make nacre, it's 3000 times stronger than its main ingredient aragonite. OLABISI: This dentist, who in 1972, he saw it and he was like — Can I X-ray that? And so he X-rayed it and he found bony integration into the shells. And so he knew it was tooth implants. If you think about that, I know a lot of people who have had dental implants that have failed. So this lasted thousands and thousands of years — after this person no longer existed, these teeth lasted. TSO: That sparked a lot of research into nacre. What's great about it is it doesn't get rejected by the human body. OLABISI: Because if I take a piece of bone from me and put it into you, you're going to reject it. What we're rejecting is that our bones have cells all through them, and the cells have a name tag that say that it’s Ronke’s cells and your cells have a name tag, and they're going to be like “Those aren't. Get out,” right? But with nacre, nacre is completely acellular, and so because of that, you can put it in anything. They put it in sheep, they put it in people and it's not rejected and it promotes integration into it. And it's 3,000 times harder. So it's like this really amazing implant material. TSO: Her lab has used nacre to direct bone growth, which can help people retain bone density. OLABISI: And what we're doing with bone is we're using seashell to try to micropattern bone so that it doesn't go where we don't want it to go when we use methods to cause bone growth. TSO: Her lab has successfully caused bone growth in petri dishes, which she views with this [sound of inverted microscope] inverted microscope. She's also made strides in wound healing, which is impaired in space. [sound of liquid nitrogen being pumped into tank] OLABISI: So that noise is the liquid nitrogen being pumped into this cryostorage tank. TSO: That's where all the cells are kept in suspended animation, which is like animal hibernation. The liquid nitrogen instantly freezes whatever it touches because it's -320 degrees Fahrenheit. Her lab took adult stem cells and insulinoma cells to make a major breakthrough in healing wounds. OLABISI: So we used two different types of cells that are both really powerful wound healing agents. We put them in a hydrogel and we put that on wounds. [sci fi music] TSO: The average healing rate is 40 days with scar. Their result was amazing. OLABISI: It healed in 14 days without scar. What we believe is that when we put the cells together, we primed these cells towards the wound healing, like the difference between Clark Kent's best friend and Superman. We think we really activated them to be super powerful cells. TSO: The wound healing without scar worked in mice. So the next step is larger animals and then people. Those are just some of the incredible breakthroughs Ronke Olabisi is making at her lab at UC Irvine. We might see her in outer space someday, but for now, she's engineering tissues to make life better for humans in space and on Earth. I'm Natalie Tso for The Lab Beat which is brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. (Season 1, Episode 3)

From Flush to Future

David Kisailus is turning urine into medical-grade material for bone and teeth implants and water purification. Learn how Kisailus is making bone implants more affordable through this new process of producing calcium phosphate from urea. Kisailus, a UCI professor of materials science and engineering, is the director of the well-known Biomimetrics and Nanostructured Materials Lab. Transcript: [sci fi music] NATALIE TSO, HOST: This is the Lab Beat, where we catch the pulse of cutting-edge labs at UC Irvine’s engineering school. I’m Natalie Tso. [sound of toilet flusing] Yes, that’s the sound of a toilet. We usually don’t want what’s flushed away, but UCI Professor of Materials Science and Engineering David Kisailus thought differently. His research team is turning urine into material that can be used for teeth and bone implants. DAVID KISAILUS: Where urine comes into play is that urine contains urea, and urea is a molecule that if you break it down using a catalyst, an enzyme called urease, urea will break into ammonia and CO2. TSO: Their team engineered a yeast that breaks the urea down and triggers the creation of calcium phosphate. That’s the same material that makes up our bones and teeth. Now will there be any urine in the implants? KISAILUS: First of all, when we did the experiment, the urine wasn’t made [chuckle], it was bought from a company. It was artificial urine. So it’s just an ammonia-based compound that we want. But at the end of the day, the urine doesn’t get into the material itself. The component urea from the urine goes into the cell, but what's pumped out is just pure calcium phosphate. TSO: Millions of Americans get bone grafts a year. They can cost thousands of dollars, so this new process will make those life-changing procedures more affordable. KISAILUS: As our population ages, more and more people, including myself, I played sports my whole life, so I definitely will need an implant somewhere at some time in my life. You know, cost of materials will always play a factor in whether people can afford to have implants so I think by having a process where you can make calcium phosphate implant based materials at low cost, I think it will enable a broader swath of folks to be able to get these procedures done. [sci fi music] TSO: He also explains another use for the calcium phosphate they make in their new process. KISAILUS: It also happens to be a good scavenger of metals and flourine. So one of the issues we have in our society today is a lack of clean drinking water so if you can actually make materials that may be able to scavenge heavy metals or flourines, things that would negatively affect our health in drinking water, that also provides value. TSO: UC Irvine Professor of Materials Science and Engineering David Kisailus is taking what’s flushed away [sound of toilet flush] to make more affordable bone implants and cleaner water. I’m Natalie Tso, for The Lab Beat which is brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. (Season 1, Episode 2)

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3D Stem Cell Engineering

Quinton Smith's 3D approach to stem cell engineering could revolutionize how we test drugs and do organ transplants. Learn about his innovative approach and why Popular Science named him a top 10 scientist on the cusp of changing the world in 2023. Smith is an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the director of The Smith Lab @ UCI. Transcript: [sci fi music] [sound of bioprinter] NATALIE TSO, HOST: This is the Lab Beat where we catch the pulse of cutting-edge labs at UC Irvine’s engineering school. I’m Natalie Tso. Imagine if someone who needs a new liver could just print one with this 3D bioprinter using a sample of their own cells. That’s the vision behind stem cell engineering. Popular Science named Quinton Smith a scientist on the cusp of changing the world in 2023 because of his 3D approach to stem cell engineering. Smith is an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Irvine. What inspired him to get into this field? SMITH: Science fiction. This idea that we can take any human cell in the body, reprogram it all the way to an embryonic state and create any cell type in the human body for regenerative medicine. I kind of envision like a world where maybe we don't need to take drugs, but maybe we can use the cell as the therapy. TSO: This is how it’d work with a liver problem: SMITH: Let's say my liver is failing, right. I take a biopsy of my own skin, reprogram those cells into an embryonic state, convert those cells to liver cells, mass produce those liver cells, use our 3D printer to organize those cells in the way our liver is structured. It has a beautiful hexagonal pattern and then retransplant that back into my body. I think you now it's a little bit science fiction. You can actually see different shows using 3D printing, like Westworld is one of my favorite shows. But I think that’s feasible. I think that’s possible. TSO: Ph.D. student Christopher Clark tells us more about that cool 3D bioprinter. CHRISTOPHER CLARK: This is a Cellink BioX bioprinter with three extrusion heads. If we want to mimic the architecture of some parts of the human body, such as the alveoli of the lungs or the shape of a liver cell environment, we can use a bioprinter to print cells in confined geometries and in relations to other cells that we used to. TSO: Smith’s team is using it to make mini livers and a key part of the body scientists have long struggled with – blood vessels. SMITH: We consider that to be the highway of life. Blood vessels are responsible for delivering nutrients, oxygen and removing waste. TSO: Smith creates mini blood vessels on a chip about the size of a quarter. These organs-on-a-chip are a much better way to test drugs. SMITH: Billions of dollars are spent towards drug development, and the traditional workhorse has been animal models. TSO: But 90% of drugs that worked in mice fail in human trials SMITH: I believe using these stem cells, these human cells, we can reduce the costs of drug testing and maybe come up with even more efficient drugs that actually have profound effects on humans. We're not mice. TSO: So when can we 3D print a human liver? His best guess is… SMITH: Let's say 15 years, maybe 15 years… TSO: But Smith is doing it on a small scale in his lab. SMITH: We work with, let's say, a million cells. Our liver has 200 billion cells. So that's quite a scale up process to achieve but we have to start somewhere. [sci fi music] TSO: And while we wait for that 3D-printed liver, scientists are now making insulin cells from stem cells to cure diabetes. SMITH: The most exciting success has been the recent development of stem cell treatments for people with type 1 diabetes, a horrible autoimmune disease that kills the insulin-producing beta cells in your body. Well there have been techniques using stem cell biology to create functional beta cells and you can actually implant them back into someone’s body and instead of taking insulin injections, those implanted cells can respond to the diet that you have to create the perfect amount of insulin. So there’s been very promising clinical trials that have actually proven that we can take stem cells and cure diseases like type 1 diabetes. TSO: That’s Quinton Smith, turning science fiction to reality at UC Irvine. I’m Natalie Tso for The Lab Beat which is brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. (Season 1, Episode 1)

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