Smart windows, breast cancer and better asphalt



Smart windows that, with the flick of a switch, transform themselves from transparent to opaque to alternately take advantage of or block sunlight to help heat or cool rooms. A better way to determine when, and if, breast cancer will metastasize elsewhere in the body. More durable and less expensive asphalt paving.

These are just some of the fields of research being conducted by younger, newer faculty members at the Temple University College of Engineering.

Window blinds could become a thing of the past. Jie Yin, assistant professor of mechanical engineering since 2013, focuses on mechanics and multi-functionality of soft materials. In collaboration with a research group at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Yie has been designing a new class of optical switchable materials. In a paper featured on the inside cover of the June 3 issue of the Advanced Materials journal, they document how harnessing the extreme crumpling of graphene oxide-thin film on soft silicon rubber creates smart windows.

"Currently electrochromic smart windows are commercially available, but their response time is two to 15 minutes," says Yin, who came to Temple in 2013 after serving as a post-doctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "But with our technology, the response time to go from transparent to opaque is instantaneous."

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Nearly all breast cancer patients who die succumb not to breast cancer but to cancers that develop elsewhere after their breast cancer cells metastasize. Bojana Gligorijevic, an assistant professor of bioengineering since March, is pursuing research with two goals: to develop next-generation diagnostic tests capable of identifying which patients are most at risk for their cancers to spread and to develop therapeutic targets that prevent the cancers from spreading.

Gligorijevic is building upon postdoctoral research she conducted at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City since 2007. "We are developing new imaging technologies for florescent microscopy," she says. "These technologies will allow us to visualize every step in the process that results in breast cancer cells undergoing changes that lead to their entering the bloodstream, including understanding which host cells and conditions in the microenvironment surrounding the cancer cells are essential for the cancer cells to enter blood vessels.

"By better understanding this mechanism, drug developers could target not the cancer cells themselves but the host environment that those cells depend upon to metastasize."

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Ahmed F. Faheem, an assistant professor of civil engineering who came to the college a year ago in August, focuses his research on asphalt paving. Faheem, earned his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and managed the research department of a Madison-based civil engineering and construction company, and continues to collaborate with his University of Wisconsin colleagues.

Their research includes investigating the benefits of incorporating fly ash—a byproduct of coal combustion at coal-fired electric power plants that currently ends up in landfills—into asphalt paving mix. In both lab tests and on a test road that was built four years ago at the entry to a Wisconsin power plant, the asphalt mix that includes fly ash has proven to be stronger than the standard mix.

"It reduces the amount of asphalt oil needed for the mix, which is the most expensive component, and it reduces the burden on landfills, so it's a win-win situation," says Faheem.

Story by Bruce Beans