Electrical engineering doctoral students Charles Delahunt and Mayoore Jaiswal are applying their skills in computer vision and machine learning to the fight against malaria, a disease that affects over 200 million people each year and is one of the most severe public health problems globally. Working with a team at Intellectual Ventures (IV) Lab and with support from the Global Good Fund, they have developed Autoscope, a low-cost, portable and automated device for diagnosing malaria. For Jaiswal, who grew up in Sri Lanka where mosquito-transmitted diseases were and, in some cases, continue to be a serious threat, the project’s social impact is key.
Tag: College of Engineering
Alum leads smartwatch revolution from Beijing
As Chief Technology Officer of Mobvoi, UW Electrical Engineering (EE) alumnus, Mike Lei, leads a company focused on intuitive design, infallible functionality and brilliant human-machine interaction. The startup, which is shaking up the tech community, has already received multi-million dollar investments from search giant, Google.
Within ten minutes of opening their Kickstarter campaign for their newest invention – The Ticwatch 2, Mobvoi had already surpassed their $50,000 funding goal. Currently, The Ticwatch 2 had raised over $550,000, more than 11 times their original goal.
Although it appears born out of the talented stock of tech products in Silicon Valley, Ticwatch is different. The genesis of Ticwatch occurred nearly 6,000 miles from Silicon Valley in Beijing, China.
UW-led team awarded $1M bioelectronics innovation prize
An international team led by researchers at the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE) based at the University of Washington is one of three finalists in a race to produce an implantable wireless device that can assess, stimulate and block the activity of nerves that control organs.
For the GlaxoSmithKline Bioelectronics Innovation Challenge, the team is working on an implantable device that could help restore bladder function for people with spinal cord injuries or millions of others who suffer from incontinence.
New tool measures lung function over the phone, from anywhere in the world
University of Washington computer science and engineering and electrical engineering researchers have developed SpiroCall, a new health sensing tool that can accurately measure lung function over a simple phone call.
Scientists crack the code of butterflies’ international journey
Each fall, monarch butterflies across Canada and the United States turn their orange, black and white-mottled wings toward the Rio Grande and migrate over 2,000 miles to the relative warmth of central Mexico.
This journey, repeated instinctively by generations of monarchs, continues even as monarch numbers haveplummeted due to loss of their sole larval food source — milkweed. But amid this sad news, a research team believes they have cracked the secretof the internal, genetically encoded compass that the monarchs use to determine the direction — southwest — they should fly each fall.
UW trains Pakistan’s water managers to harness NASA data
NASA satellites are helping Pakistan’s water managers to more effectively monitor and manage scarce groundwater resources, thanks to a partnership with engineers and hydrologists at the University of Washington, supported in part by the Global Innovation Fund. After training at the UW, the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources began using satellite data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, mission to create monthly updates on groundwater storage changes in the Indus River basin. This will allow them to see where groundwater supplies are being depleted and where they are being adequately recharged, better supporting Pakistan’s agriculture-base economy.
UW-industry partnership manufactures clean, efficient cookstoves in Kenya
For much of the world’s population, gathering fuel to cook food is a dangerous proposition, and smoke from cookstoves poses a serious health threat. A more efficient and clean wood-burning cookstove — developed by the Vashon Island-based non-profit BURN Design Lab in close collaboration with University of Washington mechanical engineers — will reduce the amount of fuel families need to collect or buy by 55 percent. It will also reduce the exposure of these women and children to the harmful particulate pollution produced by traditional cooking flames.
The new wood-burning cookstove will be manufactured in BURN Manufacturing’s factory in Nairobi, Kenya beginning this summer — thanks to a recent $800,000 investment fromUnilever and Acumen — and sold across East Africa.
UW researchers use cell phone metadata to estimate poverty in developing countries
In developing or war-ravaged countries where government censuses are few and far between, gathering data for public services or policymaking can be difficult, dangerous or near-impossible. Now, researchers with the University of Washington Information School and Computer Science and Engineering Department have devised a way to estimate the distribution of wealth and poverty in an area by studying metadata from calls and texts made on cell phones.
Alum’s smartphone microscopes headed to schools, clinics worldwide
UW mechanical engineering alumnus Thomas Larson (’13) invented a microscope lens for smartphones while still an undergraduate. Since graduation, he has sold 5,000 of his product, the Micro Phone Lens. The smartphone microscopes are being used in classrooms and in the field around the world. His next step? Working with global health experts to test the Micro Phone Lens at a clinic in Kenya.