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.

Offshore wind turbines not cause of whale strandings, deaths, says URI ocean engineering professor - James Miller, University of Rhode Island professor of ocean engineering and department chair, answered several questions recently about whether wind turbines have an effect on whale safety and health.
URI Blue MBA Student Christine De Silva and Assistant Professor Brennan Philips Build Startup - De Silva is chief executive officer of a small oceanography technology company in Rhode Island, a student at the University of Rhode Island’s Blue MBA program, and began filming deep sea sharks on Monday in South Africa for the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week.”

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.