CSE in the News — August 2026 archive

August 2026

Scientists hunt for dark matter deep underground
“Our detectors will explore, with unprecedented sensitivity, regions where the lightest-mass dark matter particles may be lurking,” said SuperCDMS spokesperson Priscilla Cushman, a professor in the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy. “This opens up new avenues in the search for dark matter.” Aug. 26: Stanford Report; Aug. 27: Phys.org; MSN; AZO Quantum; (4 as of Aug. 28 at 9:30 a.m.)

Houston lands $14M in latest CPRIT grants to advance cancer, lab-on-chip research
Tianhong Cui, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and an adjunct professor of physiology and biomedical engineering at the Mayo Clinic, specializes in microelectromechanical systems and advanced manufacturing at microscale and nanoscale levels. In addition to lab-on-a-chip systems, Cui focuses on biosensors and water sensors. Aug. 24: Innovation Map

My Son Graduated College Aged 11—These Are the Early Signs We Dismissed
Elliott Tanner was accepted to the University of Minnesota, where he completed a further four-year degree in physics with a math minor at age 13. Tanner applied to Ph.D. programs and was accepted to the University of Minnesota; he ended up getting his Master’s degree at 15, and upgraded from Ph.D. student to candidate. Aug. 22: Newsweek; Yahoo! Life; MSN (3 as of Aug. 24 at 9:05 a.m.)

University of Minnesota receives DOE Genesis Mission funding to advance AI breakthroughs
“The Genesis Mission brings together the scientific expertise, engineering capability and advanced computing needed to accelerate discovery,” said Andrew Alleyne, dean of the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering. Aug. 18: County News Review

Minnesota Iron Ore May Enable More Sustainable, Affordable Semiconductor Manufacturing
“We realized that pyrite’s really not like a typical semiconductor—it is surprisingly immune to impurities,” said Chris Leighton, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and senior author of the study. Aug. 14: Interesting Engineering; Mirage News; Aug. 15: Bioengineer; Phys.org; Scienmag; Soz Alti; XenoSpectrum; Free Independent News; Aug. 16: Knowridge Science Report; Manufacturing Today India; Aug. 17: Technology Networks; RD Gundem; (12 as of Aug. 25 at 10:10 a.m.)

Catalysis chemists are joining forces for reproducibility
“The dream is [my research] gets used someday for something useful, and so I definitely want things to be repeatable,” says Courtney Roberts, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Aug. 12: Chemical & Engineering News; Aug. 14: EurekAlert; Semiconductor; Newswise; Aug. 15: Phys.org; Scienmag; Bioengineer.org; Aug 16: Manufacturing Today; (8 as of Aug. 17 at 8:45 a.m.)

Need for speed? Driving above the speed limit costs you — and doesn't actually save much time
“University of Minnesota researchers analyzed 120 million vehicle trips across the United States from four Wednesdays in 2021 using driving data on national road networks, speed limits and U.S. Geological Survey elevation data. The analysis included roads with speed limits of 45 mph (72 kph) and higher. Aug. 12: The Arcadian; The Brighter Side; Aug. 14: Carrier Management; (3 as of Aug. 17 at 8:50 a.m.)

Bioxytran Reports Encouraging Clinical Observations In First Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP) Patient Treated With PLICID, A Novel Galectin Antagonist Designed With Artificial Intelligence
PLICID is a complex carbohydrate drug designed through Bioxytran's proprietary Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)-driven drug design platform, developed with researchers at the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry. Aug. 11: MENAFN

The infrastructure nobody wanted is the infrastructure everyone uses
The 100-day doubling claim wasn’t just optimistic. It was wrong by an order of magnitude, and the person who proved it was Andrew Odlyzko, a mathematician then at AT&T Labs and later the University of Minnesota. Odlyzko’s research on internet traffic growth found that actual demand was increasing 75% to 150% annually, not doubling every three months.  Aug. 7: Tech Finitive

Big boats create wake of problems
In 2020, researchers at the University of Minnesota’s St. Anthony Falls Laboratory began studying how the larger waves and turbulence produced during wake-surfing compare to those from traditional recreational boats. They found that wake-surfing waves contain three to nine times more energy than waves generated by conventional motorboats and can travel hundreds of feet before dissipating. Aug. 6: Forest Lake Times; Aug. 16: Stillwater Gazette (2 as of Aug. 17 at 8:40 a.m.)

University of Minnesota receives three DOE Genesis
The College of Science and Engineering secured all three awards, which feed into a broader campus push through the recently launched AI Hub. That initiative coordinates curriculum updates, workforce development and cross-departmental collaboration to standardize responsible AI practices across the research enterprise. Aug. 6: Complete AI Training

Quantum Geometry Drives Nonlinear Transport in Bloch Bands
Researchers have uncovered a “fully coherent, purely geometric sector” within the third-order response to electric fields, revealing how a material’s internal geometry influences electrical behavior. The work, authored by Sami Farrag of the University of Minnesota, Eugene Mele of the University of Pennsylvania, and Tony Low of the University of Minnesota, builds a “hierarchy” of geometric descriptors using a mathematical tool called the Bargmann trace. Aug. 3: Quantum Zeitgeist 

University of Minnesota Develops Underwater Robot Technology That Reads Diver Stress by Analyzing Bubbles
A research team at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities announced that they have developed a system to monitor a diver's condition by observing the bubbles in their breath using an AI robotic vision system. Aug. 2: iRobot News (Translated from Korean); Aug. 9: Earth.com; Aug. 15: Health Medicine Network; (3 as of Aug. 17 at 8:40 a.m.)