@AvilaROAD
Researchers from Rice and North Carolina State University have created a stretchable battery that operates by extracting moisture from the ambient environment, with applications from wearables to advanced surveillance monitors with built-in kill-switches.
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Happy to announce, after many dead-ends and nearly four years of effort, that we finally arrived at a convenient, medically accurate approach for real-time monitoring of milk consumed by an infant during breast feeding, as reported today in our paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering (link below). This previously unmet need was first brought to our attention by Drs. @CFGarfield, Jennifer Wicks and Daniel Robinson, all of @LurieChildrens, triggered by their awareness of our wireless vital signs sensors for premature babies, now through the company @Sibel_Health , and our work on flow sensors for hydrocephalus patients, now through the company @rhaeos. As they described to us, uncertainties in milk consumption can lead to stress for the new mother, and to health complications for the newborn. Existing approaches involve weighing the infant before and after breastfeeding – a difficult, cumbersome process that lacks sufficient accuracy. Our solution exploits measurements of electrical impedance, performed with electrodes placed on the breast at positions that do not interfere with the nursing process. The change in impedance can be calibrated to the volume of milk removed from the breast and, by extension, consumed by the infant. The result is a small, wireless wearable device that allows the mother to watch, through a graphical user interface on a smartphone, milk consumed as a function of time throughout the course of a breastfeeding session. By comparison to recent claims and sparse information associated with other monitoring schemes, our method is scientifically validated, founded on precision measurements, computational models and benchtop experiments. The optimized platform, co-developed with neonatologists, offers clinical-grade accuracy, as demonstrated in studies with new mothers across a wide range of sizes, body types, ages and ethnicities. Our on-going efforts aim to enhance the capabilities of this system to allow assessments of milk quality, as well as volume, and to enable monitoring of slow changes associated with refilling of the breast with milk after nursing – these and other topics, captured in patent applications. This project relied critically on interdisciplinary collaborations across clinical medicine, experimental science, computational electrodynamics and data analytics: big thanks to Drs. Garfield, Wicks and Robinson; to Prof. Jihye Kim (former postdoc, at Ajou Univ), Prof. Seyong Oh (former postdoc, at Hanyang Univ) and Dr. Matthew Banet (Haku Tech); to Prof. @AvilaROAD (former co-mentored PhD student, at Rice Univ); and to Prof. Jae-Young Yoo (former postdoc fellow, at SKKU) for their leadership in these respective areas. Thanks also to @amanda_mo and @KSamChi for the press release, link below.
nature.com/articles/s4155…
news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/0…View quoted post on X
Yesterday, we celebrated the achievements of outstanding faculty and staff at our annual Faculty and Staff Awards Ceremony. Congratulations and thank you for your hard work and dedication! #SolvingforGreaterGood Read more: engineering.rice.edu/news/rice-engi…View quoted post on X
Online now: An integrated microfluidic and fluorescence platform for probing in vivo neuropharmacology dlvr.it/TK4kNvView quoted post on X
