Tag Archives: cockrell school

Engineers Build World’s Smallest, Fastest Nanomotor

AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have built the smallest, fastest and longest-running tiny synthetic motor to date. The team’s nanomotor is an important step toward developing miniature machines that could one day move through the body to administer insulin for diabetics when needed, or target and treat cancer cells without harming good cells. (more…)

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UT Austin Engineers Build First Nonreciprocal Acoustic Circulator: A One-Way Sound Device

AUSTIN, Texas — A team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering has built the first-ever circulator for sound. The team’s experiments successfully prove that the fundamental symmetry with which acoustic waves travel through air between two points in space (“if you can hear, you can also be heard”) can be broken by a compact and simple device.

“Using the proposed concept, we were able to create one-way communication for sound traveling through air,” said Andrea Alù, who led the project and is an associate professor and David & Doris Lybarger Endowed Faculty Fellow in the Cockrell School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Imagine being able to listen without having to worry about being heard in return.” (more…)

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Nano-Sized Protein Clusters Address Major Challenge of Drug Delivery

AUSTIN, TX — A new form of proteins discovered by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin could drastically improve treatments for cancer and other diseases, as well as overcome some of the largest challenges in therapeutics: delivering drugs to patients safely, easily and more effectively.

The protein formulation strategy, discovered by chemical engineering faculty members and students in the Cockrell School of Engineering, is unprecedented and offers a new and universal approach to drug delivery — one that could revolutionize treatment of cancer, arthritis and infectious disease. (more…)

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