About Pratt // Research
Departmental Research
Biomedical Engineering Department
Visit www.bme.duke.edu
- Biomechanics research in the department focuses upon mechanics at the cellular, tissue, and joint level under normal and pathological conditions. Research projects focus upon orthopaedics and musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems.
- Biomedical imaging research involves the development and application of novel systems in ultrasound, biophotonics, MRI, x-ray, and nuclear medicine.
- Biomolecular and tissue engineering focuses on elucidating and applying molecular and cellular information to develop novel therapeutics. Research areas include includes biomolecular engineering, drug and gene delivery, effect of physical force on cells and tissues, and musculoskeletal and cardiovascular tissue engineering.
- Electrobiology and neural engineering research at Duke focuses upon the electrical activity of the heart and nervous system as well as applications for the treatment of cardiac and neurological disorders.
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department
Visit www.cee.duke.edu
- Chemical and biological processes focuses on water quality issues, waste handling and treatment, and contaminant fate and transport
- Materials, structures and geo-systems focuses on engineering and environmental geophysics, theoretical and applied computational mechanics, theoretical soil and rock mechanics, seismic vibration suppression, failure analysis and design theory.
- Hydrology and fluid dynamics focuses on environmental fluid dynamics, land-atmosphere and air-sea interactions, weather and climate modeling, hydrology, deterministic and stochastic modeling of water flow and contaminant transport, and ecohydrology.
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Visit www.ece.duke.edu
- Sensing and waves includes short-pulse scattering, subsurface sensing and space physics, geophysics, wave-based signal processing, electromagnetic field and wave interactions and modeling, and metamaterials synthesis to achieve negative refractive index and subwavelength focusing.
- Signal processing and communications focuses on statistical signal processing for remote sensing including surveillance radars and microwave remote sensing, active and passive sonar, ocean acoustics and medical imaging; and auditory prostheses and pattern recognition.
- Photonics focuses broadly on reference structure tomography, multimodal and raman spectroscopy, interferometric imaging, biometric human tracking networks; liquid crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) microdisplays, tunable optical filters, spatial light modulators, color separators, pattern recognition systems and sensors, nano-photonic devices, quantum information science, advanced semiconductor photonic devices, micro and nano fabrication, micro-electromechanial systems (MEMS), integrated optical systems.
- Microsystems includes droplet-based microfluidics; semiconductor materials, devices, processing and modeling; heterojunction and surface engineering for device applications and defect control; nanoscale device physics, modeling, simulation, and technology; carrier tunneling in deep-submicron ultrathin-oxide MOSFETs; gate tunneling considerations in static and dynamic MOS integrated circuits; ultrathin gate dielectrics; mixed-signal circuit testing and computer-aided analog circuit design; RF testing; hybrid optoelectronic integration and packaging of compound semiconductor devices with optical and electronic host substrates.
- Computer engineering focuses on design and testing of integrated circuits and systems, high availability server design, memory system design, performance analysis, distributed sensor networks, fault-tolerant and real-time embedded systems, modeling, simulation and optimization of composite microsystems, self-assembling computer architecture and device fabrication, DNA-guided self-assembly, nanoscale system design and simulation, circuit design and visualization.
Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Visit www.mems.duke.edu
- Nonlinear dynamics/adaptive control focuses on structural acoustics; optical jitter; noise suppression; intelligent control systems; artificial neural networks; modeling, simulation, and control of dynamic systems and robotics; and failure analysis
- Fluid dynamics and aerodynamics focuses on aerodynamics; aeroelasticity; flutter in aeroelastic systems; fluid mechanics, convection and porous media, lubrication, and visualization of convective fluid patterns
- Thermal sciences focuses on heat transfer, constructal theory, thermodynamics, power generation, thermodynamics for materials property prediction, magnetic bearings and actuators
- Materials science focuses on nanoscience/nanoengineering; mechanical properties of single molecules and clusters of atoms; atomic force microscopy; structure-property-performance behavior of peptide polymers, synthetic polymers, and cross-linked hydrogels; materials science and processes related to electronic materials; x-ray reflection; carbon-ion transport; theoretical materials science; statistical mechanics; and coating and encapsulation of solid, liquid and gaseous particles in the colloidal size range