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The Lab Beat

The Lab Beat

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The Lab Beat is an inside look at cutting-edge science and engineering labs at UC Irvine. Award-winning journalist Natalie Tso visits the labs, interviews professors and presents their innovations and inspirations in cool short features. From biomedical engineering, mechanical and aerospace engineering, materials science and engineering, civil and environmental engineering, electrical engineering to computer science, The Lab Beat gives a fascinating look into the newest research at the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering.

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Episodi
  • Curing the Brain

    Curing the Brain
    Mar 12 2026
    Dion Khodagholy is trying to cure epilepsy by implanting a neural interface on the brain. Khodagholy is a UCI associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and has created the NeuroGrid which maps the brain's activity once it is placed on it. Listen to the sound of the brain and learn why the NeuroGrid is such an effective neural electronic for the brain in this episode. Transcript: [sound of brain waves] NATALIE TSO, HOST: That's the sound of the human brain. [sci fi music] Those are spiking neurons from a brain of a child with epilepsy. They were recorded by a NeuroGrid placed on the brain during surgery. What's a NeuroGrid? It's a conformable neural interface that one puts on the brain to help map it. It looks like a transparent film that's thinner than a human hair. On it are gold electronic patterns that carry the neural signals. It was created in Dion Khodagholy’s lab at UC Irvine. He's an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Why does he think it can help children with epilepsy? DION KHODAGHOLY: Epilepsy is one of the few neurological disorders that has an electrographic signature. You can track it and identify it. We believe that by being able to accurately pinpoint where it’s originating from during development, there's a high chance we can correct it. TSO: That was the first child to have a NeuroGrid placed on the brain. The NeuroGrid was first conceptualized in 2009 and implanted in a patient's brain in 2014. It's thinner, safer, and offers higher resolution readings than current electronics for the brain. Ten hospitals in the U.S. have used it. KHODAGHOLY:: One of the unique features of NeuroGrid is that it is able to record individual neurons firing from the surface of the brain without penetrating inside. This was something practically no other device could do. TSO: Khodagholy explains why his NeuroGrid is so effective. KHODAGHOLY:: They're very similar mechanically to the brain itself. It’s very soft and can follow the curvilinear surface of the brain. They're made out of conducting polymers. These are inherently closer to what body and neurons are and makes it a lot easier and more effective to transduce neural signals. [sound of metal evaporator in lab] [music fades] TSO: The NeuroGrid is made in clean rooms, but his lab has machines such as this metal evaporator that makes prototypes and deposits gold on the polymer. Why gold? KHODAGHOLY:: Gold is our interconnect. That's how the electrical signal from the brain gets carried to our amplifiers. It's a very good conductor. It's very inert. In the brain, we have lots of salt and water. It will cause oxidation. So we use inert material like gold, platinum to not have any chemical reactions. TSO: The NeuroGrid helps map brain regions and detect individual neural spiking. So far, the NeuroGrid can have 256 contacts with 128 surface contacts on the brain. Khodagholy's lab is now partnering with Children's Hospital of Orange County. Before that, the NeuroGrid was used in adult epilepsy patients. KHODAGHOLY:: Our goal with the grid is that because it has a higher resolution, we find out more effectively where these unwanted couplings are. And because of its scalability and the fact that it's made with the same technology as the rest of our electronics that can also stimulate or deliver electric charges for effective intervention, we convert this eventually to a fully conformable closed loop system, meaning it can record in real time process, identify where those unwanted activities are, and then deliver electrical stimulation to suppress it so closing the loop in real time. TSO: The lab has made progress in countering the effects of epilepsy, like loss of memory in rodents. KHODAGHOLY:: We've recently showed that indeed, if you're able to establish a device to detect this in real time and create electrical stimulation at the right time, you're able to significantly improve memory in rodents that had epilepsy. We’ve also shown signatures of this exist in the human brain, so it's not a complete disconnect. We have just a recording from the human brain that shows indeed the patterns we're seeing in rodents exist in humans as well. Our next logical step is to stimulate human brain. That is where things becomes a bit more challenging, both from a regulatory perspective as well as overall device safety concerns. What if that device breaks instead of delivering charge to the brain? What are the safety measures that controls the amount of charge you deliver? Right now from device perspective, we're heavily focused on meeting all the safety requirements for stimulation. Hopefully in a year or two, we'd be able to have this completed and go for human testing. TSO: Khodagholy’s time from lab to bedside is fairly short. KHODAGHOLY:: Maybe this is achieved because we are able to do most of these things at UCI. We don't need to subcontract or outsource it. This is very unique because UCI is one ...
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    7 min
  • Methalox Rockets

    Methalox Rockets
    Jan 15 2026
    The UCI Rocket Project Liquids team is one of the few undergraduate teams that launched a methalox rocket in 2023. Methalox is the leading-edge fuel companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are using to get to Mars. Join this visit to the rocket lab as they prepare to launch their second-generation methalox rocket. Transcript: [male voice: 3 2 1. Ignition. Female voice: Good light, good light.] [Sound of cold flow] [sci fi music] NATALIE TSO, HOST: That's the UCI Rocket Project Liquids Team doing a cold flow on campus. In 2023, the UCI team was one of the few undergraduate teams in America to launch a methalox rocket using the same cutting-edge fuel type the new space industry is using to reach Mars. Propulsion lead Uma Iyer told me why they chose this challenging leading-edge fuel. UMA IYER: So we chose methalox because as students, it's really important to work our way up to industry. And that's what all these big new space companies use, like SpaceX, Blue Origin, they’re using methalox. So by getting our hands on cryogenics, we're basically adapting ourselves like towards the jobs that we'll be working on in the future. ERIC TRAN: One of the big reasons we use methalox is to follow in the footsteps of giants like SpaceX and Blue Origin, and they use it because you can actually produce methalox on Mars, and that way you can actually go home from Mars. TSO: That's operations lead Eric Tran who tells us about the fuel’s challenges. TRAN: One of the big ones is the fact that methalox unlike other more traditional fuels is a cryogen so it has to be super cold in order to stay a liquid and that introduces a lot of issues of stuff freezing over when you don't want IT to freeze over, stuff leaking due to the fact that it needs to stay at a certain pressure to be able to continue staying in a liquid form and stuff like that are like some of the main issues compared to more traditional fields like kerosene, hydrolox, ethanol. TSO: Methalox is made from liquid oxygen and methane, which is a hydrocarbon that can be made on Mars. But methalox needs to be stored between -160 and -180 degrees Celsius or it starts to vaporize. Iyer explains how they deal with this challenge. IYER: You never know exactly how much propellant you have inside your tanks because it's going to keep vaporizing. So we chill our tanks to get it at a proper temperature and also to not induce like thermal shock to our system like we want our hardware to still be okay so we chill our tanks and then we fill them and try to get them as full as possible. And that’s why like time is of the essence and making sure that we're moving quickly at the Mojave Desert, like when we do our test fires so we chill, fill, pressurize our system and then immediately hot fire. [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE: 350 Closing….] TSO: I visited their lab on campus as they were getting ready for a test called a cold flow. TRAN: Out there they're working on the hardware. They’re I think right now doing instrumentation checks of just double checking if like all the valves and sensors are working properly and they're trying to communicate what they see out there to inside. [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE: Can you close vent?] [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE: Closing vent] TRAN: Yeah. So like, they're opening and closing vents and just checking before we get the ball rolling. TSO: Avionics engineer Alex Amaro told me how he coordinates with the engineers near the rocket. ALEX AMARO: I just relay whatever information they need. So we have pressure readings all across here and all these dials, temperature readings. [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE asking for reading] [AMARO: PT is reading 270 psi] [MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE more dialogue on psi] [AMARO: Copy opening…] TSO: So what exactly is a cold flow? Tran explains. TRAN: To get up to launch, we need to test our engine, which is when we go out to the desert and hotfire the engine. So we light it with actual propellant in the system. But leading up into a hotfire, we validate the system even before then. What we do is we roll out our test stand and rocket here on campus where we conduct a cold flow, which is where instead of running actual liquid oxygen and liquid natural gas, which is methane through the system in actual fuel and lighting it, we run liquid nitrogen through the system. That way we can simulate those cryogenic conditions for the rocket and also the pressures needed for a hot fire. That way we can validate the system like check for leaks to see if it holds up under really cold temperatures and also if we get the flow that we want and the pressure data that we want. And with that cold flow is what gives us the confidence to go out to do a hot fire. TSO: The team's first methalox rocket Peter reached 9,300 feet in 2023. Now they aim to go higher with a second generation rocket Moch4. Iyer tells me what's new about this rocket. IYER: It's much slimmer in diameter and also conserving a lot of mass because ...
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    6 min
  • Becoming Invisible

    Becoming Invisible
    Dec 20 2025
    Alon Gorodetsky is creating materials that mimic the camouflage capabilities of squids that can change color, transparency and temperature. Learn how he figured out the secret of their skin and how it can be used for medicine, the military, smart fabrics and more. Transcript: [sci fi music] NATALIE TSO, HOST: What if you could change the color, transparency and temperature of your skin at any time? Well, if you're an octopus, you can. And Alon Gorodetsky, UCI associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, with the help of this electron beam evaporation system, [SOUND OF ELECTRON BEAM EVAPORATION SYSTEM] is creating materials that imitate those camouflage capabilities so we can use them in smart fabrics. How did he get inspired by cephalopods? ALON GORODETSKY: Well, I actually did not know much about squid and cephalopods other than the fact that they're delicious. I went into a talk by a scientist named Roger Hanlon from the Marine Biological Laboratory, and there was a video he showed of an octopus basically popping out of an algae covered rock. And, you know, it was like something straight out of a science fiction movie. I basically said, okay, I'm going to drop half my research and start working on materials inspired by these animals. So this is much cooler than anything I was planning on doing. Literally, the science fiction aspect, it's like seeing a shapeshifter in real life. It's the equivalent of me backing up onto a file cabinet without really knowing what that is or having ever seen it, and then suddenly being indistinguishable from that file cabinet. That's how amazing their camouflage abilities are. TSO: Now his lab is known for figuring out exactly how a squid changes its color and transparency. They discover the structure in their skins that enabled them to change from transparent to colored states. Gorodetsky showed me squid inspirations in his lab from his collaborator Roger Hanlon at the Marine Biological Lab. GORODETSKY: So we actually keep little vials of squid skin in the lab for fun. What's amazing about this is, you know, you look at it and see that color almost completely disappears. The squid can control this neurophysiologically. TSO: Then he showed me the electron beam evaporation system. [SOUND OF ELECTRON BEAM EVAPORATION SYSTEM] GORODETSKY: This is where we do the depositions. So a deposition is when you take, let's say, a metal or an oxide, and then you heat it up until it turns into a vapor. And then that vapor will condense or deposit on some substrates or some flat surface and it’ll form a coating. So we were making the material with this machine. TSO: That's a key part of the process of making squid skin like material. It allows them to program the nanostructure and microstructure of the material so that it can change color and regulate the flow of heat. GORODETSKY: So we've been able to make materials that can change color and change transparency in a very similar way to squid skin. And we have been able to extend that to not work only in the visible, but to also work in the infrared. So you could change infrared transparency, let's say, and then change how infrared light or heat is transmitted or reflected. And that corresponds to a change in effective temperature. TSO: There are a lot of applications for material that can change temperature. GORODETSKY: Well, you can make warming devices, for example, for clinical applications. You can make clothes that adapt in response to changes in the environment to keep you comfortable. One thing that we played around with was making coffee cup covers, right? Or it's just kind of like a cup cozy that we put around paper cups. And for me, you know, I get up every morning, I have a nice hot cup of coffee, right? And it's always hard to get the temperature just right. So it's just something that will make my day a little bit brighter. TSO: A key discovery in making their squid skin like material was the discovery of the protein called reflectin in the squid cells. GORODETSKY: We found that these structures, these kind of plates, if you will, from this protein, were arranged in a specific way in the cells that could change color and transparency and had a particular refractive index gradient. And so the cells in the skin were using that idea of having very controlled changes in refractive index to enable their ability to go from transparent to colored. So we could take those refractive index distributions that you see in the cells and then translate them to material and actually get some of the same effects. And so we even have a video online where we have our material next to a squid underwater and you shine light on both and they're basically indistinguishable. TSO: Gorodetsky’s Lab has already been able to make prototypes of squid inspired materials that can change color, transparency and temperature. [sci fi music] GORODETSKY: We have made the materials washable and breathable. We've been integrating them ...
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    6 min
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