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.

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Student Led Team Receives Artificial Intelligence Award - A URI graduate student’s paper was recently awarded “Best Student Paper Finalist” for the 2023 Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics conference. Emadodin Jandaghi and Xiaotian Chen’s work was overseen by Associate Professor and Advisor Chengzhi Yuan. As the name suggests, soft robotics involves using flexible materials in an increasingly wide variety of uses, from medical applications to […]

COE Welcomes New Faculty - Mehrshad Amini, Assistant Professor, CVE/OCE Dr. Mehrshad Amini will join the University of Rhode Island in Fall 2023 as an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Ocean Engineering. He completed his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Pennsylvania State University in 2021. […]
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