Soft robots are made of pliant, supple materials, such as silicone. Some can squeeze through tiny spaces or travel over broken ground — tasks that stymie rigid robots. The field of soft robotics is still in the early stages of development, but it offers remarkable potential. One day soon, soft robots may be used in applications as diverse as searching collapsed buildings or as exosuits that facilitate recovery from injuries or strokes.
Debbie Chou, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering at Oregon State University, is a researcher at heart. This is how she knew that Oregon State’s College of Engineering, where she also earned her master’s degree, was her ideal graduate milieu.
At Intel Labs in Hillsboro, research scientist Soumya Bose, Ph.D. electrical and computer engineering ’19, develops circuits to speed up optical data communications while reducing the amount of power they need.
After obtaining his Ph.D. from Oregon State University’s College of Engineering in 2021, Kingsley Chukwu has transitioned to a successful career as an electronic design automation tools software engineer at Intel. However, Chukwu is not your typical software engineer; while he has a minor in computer science, his degree is in chemical engineering with a focus on computational chemistry.
“I use computer quantum software to understand how atoms and molecules will behave on catalyst surfaces,” Chukwu said.
Oregon State researchers, led by Yelda Turkan, assistant professor of civil and construction engineering, are using deep learning algorithms to discover better, faster way for architects and engineers to design, construct and manage buildings.
Computer science and ecology may seem like an unlikely combination at first, but it’s exactly the niche Oregon State University assistant professor, Rebecca Hutchinson, envisioned. Her research uses machine learning and statistical modeling to help scientists answer questions like: What will happen to monarch butterflies under climate change? What are the habitat requirements of olive-sided flycatchers?
In a dramatic breakthrough for robotics, researchers in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University used a reinforcement learning algorithm operating in a simulated environment to train a bipedal robot to walk, run, hop, skip, and climb stairs in the real world.
The “sim-to-real” learning process represents a transformation in robotics control, according to Jonathan Hurst, professor of mechanical engineering and robotics.
The College of Engineering launched a unique program for graduate study in artificial intelligence in fall 2021, with an initial cohort of about 40 students. Oregon State’s program is the first in the United States to offer both master’s and doctoral degrees in artificial intelligence as an interdisciplinary field of study.
When researchers at Oregon State University created new tools to evaluate the decision-making algorithms of an advanced artificial intelligence system, study participants assigned to use them did, indeed, find flaws in the AI’s reasoning. But once investigators instructed participants to use the tools in a more structured and rigorous way, the number of bugs they discovered increased markedly.
Machine learning is making inroads into chemical engineering, where it’s helping researchers develop new nanoporous materials for a variety of applications.
