David Baker, Dayong Gao, Herbert Sauro named fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering

UW professors , and have been named fellows of the .

The three faculty members are among the institute’s , numbering 157 in all, chosen for their “distinguished and continuing achievements” in medical and biological engineering.

Called the AIMBE for short, the institute is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization. Its 2,000-member College of Fellows includes outstanding engineers, entrepreneurs and innovators in medical and biological engineering.

The organization advocates for the value of medical bioengineering in society. Its mission, which also drives advocacy initiatives, is to “recognize excellence, advance the public understanding and accelerate medical and biological innovation,” according to its website.

Baker is a professor of biochemistry and directs the . Gao is a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the . Sauro is a professor of bioengineering and director of the . All three have affiliate appointments in other departments as well.

Election to the institute’s College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer; fellows include three Nobel Prize laureates and 18 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Science or National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The institute’s annual meeting, scheduled for March, was cancelled due to health concerns and the fellows were inducted remotely.

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Essay fondly remembers Ellis Goldberg, professor of political science

A researcher with the nonprofit has penned a remembrance and appreciation of , UW professor of political science, who September 20, 2019, at the age of 72.

Goldberg, a political economist and scholar of Middle East politics, was a longtime UW faculty member and former director of the Middle East Center in the Jackson School of International Studies. He also wrote a blog called “” that commented on Middle Eastern and U.S. politics.

He is remembered fondly on the Middle East research project’s website by , clinical assistant professor in Liberal Studies at New York University, in an essay titled “Ellis Goldberg, Egypt and a Reverence for Life.”

El-Ghobashy writes that Goldberg “loved Egypt and knew more about its history and political economy than anyone I know. 鈥� At a time when lives in Egypt are imperiled by deprivation, dictatorship and disease, as are so many lives across the globe, an intellectual sensibility grounded in a reverence for life is a gift and an exigency.”

With Goldberg’s death, El-Ghobashy writes, “we lost one of the most erudite, generous and original scholars of the modern Middle East and North Africa, a truly reflective mind 鈥�”聽 .

There were remembrances of Goldberg from the and the as well.

UW Notebook is a section of the UW News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 天美影视传媒. Read all posts here.

天美影视传媒 engineers have turned tissue paper 鈥� similar to toilet tissue 鈥� into a new kind of wearable sensor that can detect a pulse, a blink of an eye and other human movement. The sensor is light, flexible and inexpensive, with potential applications in health care, entertainment and robotics.

The technology, described in a published in January in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies, shows that by tearing tissue paper that鈥檚 loaded with nanocomposites and breaking the paper鈥檚 fibers, the paper acts as a sensor. It can detect a heartbeat, finger force, finger movement, eyeball movement and more, said a UW associate professor of mechanical engineering and senior author of the research.

鈥淭he major innovation is a disposable wearable sensor made with cheap tissue paper,鈥� said Chung. 鈥淲hen we break the specimen, it will work as a sensor.鈥�

These small, Band Aid-sized sensors could have a variety of applications in various fields. For example, monitoring a person’s gait or the movement of their eyes can be used to inspect brain function or a game player鈥檚 actions. The sensor could track how a special-needs child walks in a home test, sparing the child the need for hospital visits. Or the sensors could be used in occupational therapy for seniors.

鈥淭hey can use these sensors and after one-time use, they can be thrown away,鈥� said Chung.

In their research, the scientists used paper similar to toilet tissue. The paper – nothing more than conventional paper towels聽– is then doused with carbon nanotube-laced water. Carbon nanotubes are tiny materials that create electrical conductivity. Each piece of tissue paper has both horizontal and vertical fibers, so when the paper is torn, the direction of the tear informs the sensor of what鈥檚 happened. To trace eye movement, they鈥檙e attached to a person’s reading glasses.

For now, the work has been contained to a laboratory, and researchers are hoping to find a suitable commercial use. A provisional patent was filed in December 2017.

The paper鈥檚 lead author is UW College of Engineering graduate student Jinyuan Zhang. Other co-authors include undergraduate student Cerwyn Chiew; mechanical engineering professors and ; aeronautics and astronautics professor and postdoctoral scholar , all of the UW; and graduate student Fabrice Fondjo and professor of Washington State University Vancouver.

The study was funded partially by Samsung Research America through the Think Tank Team Award.

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For more information, contact Chung at 206-543-4355 or jae71@uw.edu.