Expanding what we can detect in the world

Advancing technology in sensors and instrumentation is work that keeps people safe and informed about the world around us. We rely on sensors to measure the health of physical materials, the status of environmental conditions, the composition of biological matter, or the density of traffic along a highway.

Otto Gregory developed a bomb-‘sniffing’ sensor capable of detecting explosives at airports or subways. He also leads a team designing sensors to measure the temperature, pressure, and strain inside jet engines. Work is underway at the University to design smart sensors that monitor fuel cells or detect chemical leaks or terrorist attacks. Civil engineers are spearheading sensors to better monitor traffic conditions and electrical engineers are finding ways to turn fiber optic cables into millions of tiny sensors.

As an engineer, you don’t want to work on something that is not going to benefit mankind.

Professor Otto Gregory

Research here will also keep us healthy. We are building tiny fluorescent spectrometry sensors to detect biomarkers in blood–the first step toward diagnosing disease. Researchers are developing sensors to detect electrical signals in the body to better understand conditions such as sleep apnea and cardiac disease. Kunal Mankodiya’s Wearable Biosensing Lab is creating wearable systems that can track important patient metrics such as heart rate vital signs, physical activity, falling, walking, or other movement difficulties in their daily life.

Never a Dull Day for College of Engineering’s Michael Platek - As an electrical materials research engineer, there’s no such thing as a typical day for Michael Platek. Among many other responsibilities, Platek makes sure some of the most sophisticated and expensive research equipment at URI works properly.
NSF Funds Student Research on Narragansett Bay - Mason Jacob ’24, an aspiring multidisciplinary engineer, did a fellowship in which he focused on the physical structure of buoy platforms that collect high-resolution data and send the data to the Narragansett Bay Campus for analysis.

PhD Student Presents Research at International Conference - URI electrical engineering PhD student Shehjar Sadhu presented her research at the IEEE/ACM international conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE) in Washington, D.C. Her research was published in the journal Smart Health.
Shimadzu Wins URI Distinguish Achievement Award - Shimadzu Scientific Instruments is this year’s winner of the URI corporate Distinguish Achievement Award. Shimadzu’s instruments are used by URI College of Engineering faculty, students, and industry partners, as well as other researchers at URI.