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
  • Hydrogen Fueling the Future

    Hydrogen Fueling the Future
    Dec 12 2025

    Can hydrogen energy change the world? UCI Clean Energy Institute Director Jack Brouwer thinks so. His institute is creating sustainable hydrocarbon fuels for aviation and shipping. Listen as he shares his vision for how hydrogen energy can bring more equity and peace to the world.

    (Season 1, Episode 8)
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    8 min
  • Can a Robot Love?

    Can a Robot Love?
    Nov 26 2025
    Top roboticist Magnus Egerstedt explores whether robots can love in the UCI Robot Ecology Lab, where his altruistic robots take cues from animals. Egerstedt is the dean of the UCI Samueli School of Engineering and the creator of the SlothBot, RaccoonBot and the Robotarium, a swarm robot lab which has been used by over 7,000 researchers. Transcript: [People laughing] MAGNUS EGERSTEDT: Raccoonbot! [people clapping and having fun] NATALIE TSO, HOST: That’s the moment the Raccoonbot – a robot shaped like a raccoon - made its debut at Crystal Cove State Beach in Southern California. The cute robot is the brainchild of Magnus Egerstedt, the dean of UC Irvine’s engineering school who is a philosopher turned roboticist EGERSTEDT: So let's ask a question. Can I build a robot that feels love? TSO: Egerstedt is a top roboticist but he has a bachelor’s in philosophy and linguistics. EGERSTEDT: I got really fascinated by questions around consciousness and mind and what does it mean to feel and to think. And I thought this was super cool. I was probably a little pretentious as a 20-year-old, but after a while I started to get annoyed because all we did was sit around and talk. And I actually started doing robotics almost like applied philosophy. I thought, you know what, these questions can either be solved by us building robots or not. So I really thought of this as I wanted to get at deep questions about humanity by building machines. TSO: He leads the UCI Robot Ecology Lab that creates altruistic robots modeled after animals. So far, there’s the SlothBot and the RaccoonBot. Egerstedt shares how he got inspired by these animals: EGERSTEDT: I was on vacation in Costa Rica and I thought sloths were really cool. You know, they they live off the as if a human being would live off a fraction of one of these small potato chips bags a day. They are so energy efficient. And I decided to model behaviorally this robot that I wanted to put out in nature on sloths. And born was the Slothb=Bot. This is a robot under the the tree canopies hanging on a wire and every now and then it goes out from under the tree canopy to sunbathe and recharge the batteries and then it goes back in and measures stuff in the microclimate. [sfx: raccoonbot moving along a wire] TSO: This is the sound of its cousin the RaccoonBot moving along its wire. EGERSTEDT: And then I moved to Southern California and discover our beaches are gorgeous Southern California beaches. [sounds of music and people at Crystal Cove beach] And we wanted to put SlothBots on the beach, but they're not indigenous to Southern California. And I was actually down at one of our local beaches here and saw a raccoon digging through a trash can. So we decided, let's turn it into a raccoon instead. TSO: I asked children at the beach what they thought of the raccoonbot BOY1: It’s really cool! BOY2: It’s cute too. With a bow tie. TSO: It has a bow tie! BOY2: And it’s on the rope TSO: Did you know it’s a robot? Boy2: Well, you just told us, so yeah. (laugh) TEEN GIRL: I’m wondering what it does? TSO: It collects environmental data. TEEN GIRL: Oh, woah, that’s cool. TSO: What’s up next? An otterbot EGERSTEDT: We’ve teamed up with the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. So instead of being on a horizontal wire, there'll be a vertical of wire down in the water anchored by a buoy, and it's going to look at the water quality at different depths. [Sound of deep water] But it's basically going to climb up and down a wire underwater looking like an adorable otter. [Sounds of swarm robots at UCI Robot Ecology Lab] TSO: There’s more to his lab than cute robots. Back at the UCI Robot Ecology Lab, there are these swarm robots you hear that are about the size of your palm. He created the first remotely-accessible swarm robot lab that’s been used by over 7,000 researchers. EGERSTEDT: So in the lab, we have a setup that we call the robotarium, and it looks like a small ice hockey arena, a rink. And really what it is, it’s just a test bed for testing different kinds of primarily mobility strategies TSO: His students are working on algorithms to see if the robots can be organically kind and helpful to one another. Postdoctoral researcher Brooks Butler explains: BUTLER: The idea is that we’re looking at ecology for inspirations and putting together algorithms for robots to work together. It’s essentially the idea that I’m willing to take on a personal cost to help you based off of how related we are. In nature you’d see that as say a mother lioness taking care of her sister’s cub. For robots we think about instead of thinking of genetic relatedness we think about how do their tasks relate to each other and how can we strategically algorithmically have them sacrifice or perhaps take on additional cost in order to benefit another robot’s task. I think we're seeing some really interesting results. We're seeing some really organic behavior emerge just naturally ...
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    7 min
  • The Power of Glowing Color

    The Power of Glowing Color
    Nov 12 2025

    Stacy Copp's lab is using glowing light and color to see deep inside human tissues which could replace the need for X-rays. Listen to Copp, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, share her inspirations and ground breaking work at her UCI lab.

    Transcript:

    [Sci fi music]

    [Sound of lab machine automated spectrometer chirping]

    STACY COPP: This is an automated spectrometer.

    NATALIE TSO, HOST: Stacy Copp’s lab at UC Irvine’s engineering school is on the cutting edge of using the power of light and color to see deep inside human tissues - which could replace the need for X rays. She’s an associate professor of materials science and engineering. Her fascination with light began as a child.

    COPP: I found it really exciting to sit in the closet with a flashlight or to look at a rainbow being cast from a piece of glass.

    TSO: In college, she had a life changing look under a microscope of a sample of little beads loaded with fluorescent dye.

    COPP: I remember the moment that they came into focus and they were there twinkling and they were glowing yellow. And I remember thinking at that moment, this is my universe under this microscope.

    TSO: That lit her path as a scientist. Years later she discovered she has a heightened ability to see and distinguish color - which explains a lot.

    COPP: I just find the things that glow so fascinating. I think it's some kind of innate love that I have. That color is just really vivid to me.

    TSO: Now she leads a lab that is developing ways to use color for bioimaging.

    COPP: We make glowing nanoclusters that are wrapped up in DNA, and DNA molecule is the code for this cluster. It determines the color that it glows. So our goal is to figure out what DNA sequence do we need to get that color, whether it's this near-infrared color of glow that can be used for deep tissue, biomedical imaging, or whether it's a visible green blue red glow that can be used for different types of photonic applications.

    [Sound of lab machine automated spectrometer chirping]

    TSO: The lab uses this chirping automated spectrometer to measure wavelengths of light emitted by nanoscale materials which are about 10 million times smaller than a blueberry.

    COPP: Inside of this box is a well plate that has 384 different holes. Each hole contains a different sample of DNA stabilized silver clusters with its own unique color of glow. We collect large data libraries using this tool and then train machine learning models that guide the design of DNA molecules that are well-suited for fluorescent nanoclusters.

    TSO: Copp is designing silver nanoclusters which contain only 10 to 30 silver atoms. She wants to make them glow in the near infrared.

    COPP: This is really exciting for biomedical imaging because our bodies and tissues are far more transparent to near infrared light than to visible light. So if we had very brightly glowing near infrared dyes, those could be used as medical contrast agents for using non-hazardous near-infrared light for biological imaging instead of something like X-rays or an MRI machine.

    [sci fi music]

    TSO: Unlike X-rays which use ionizing radiation that can damage cells, her infrared nanoclusters could offer a safer way to do bioimaging and to track cancer

    COPP: These types of brightly emitting near infrared dyes can be used to study cellular processes that happen on micron scales but inherently happen deep inside of tissues. At the moment we don’t have good ways to visualize those like we do for single cells on a petri dish where they’re just laying there. But if we had near infrared dyes with which we could label and track their molecules and cells, then perhaps we could do that type of imaging inside tissues so we could better understand biological processes. It’s also possible that these near infrared emitters could be added as contrast agents in order to label and track things like tumors or other types of tissues that are relevant for human disease.

    TSO: Copp’s lab could enable major medical breakthroughs and it all started with her enchantment with the rainbow.

    COPP: I honestly believe that basically every child is born as a scientist. They’re all just so interested in how the world works. They’re always asking questions. They always want answers to those questions.

    TSO: Sometimes those little scientists grow up to create light we can’t even see – that could save countless lives. That’s what’s going on at Stacy Copp’s lab at UC Irvine.

    The Lab Beat is brought to you by the UCI Samueli school of engineering, and I’m Natalie Tso. If you like our podcast, please share and leave a review. Thanks and I’ll see you at the next lab.

    (Season 1, Episode 6)
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    4 min
  • National Fuel Cell Center

    National Fuel Cell Center
    Oct 31 2025

    National Fuel Cell Research Center Director Iryna Zenyuk is striving to enable clean hydrogen to power everything from Olympic buses, trucks, the cement industry and more. A former chess champion, Zenyuk is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Irvine.

    Transcript:

    [Sound of electrolyzer]

    [IRYNA ZENYUK: This is an electrolyzer, yeah]

    [sci fi music]

    NATALIE TSO, HOST: Today we’re at the National Fuel Cell Research Center at UC Irvine’s engineering school. The director Iryna Zenyuk is a UCI professor of chemical and biomolecular enagineering. Before getting into clean energy, she was a professional chess player, ranked in the top 5 in the US.

    ZENYUK: My grandfather played chess and he introduced me when I was maybe four or five and then I showed actually some talent.

    TSO: She was so talented, she went pro as an engineering student. She played in a life-changing tournament right after the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

    ZENYUK: It was just a week after Olympic Games and the factories were just restarting. After a week it was already we couldn't see a few feet away. I never seen anything like that.

    TSO: That’s when she decided clean energy was more important than chess. She left her chess career and is now a global leader in clean energy research.

    ZENYUK: Now we have Olympic Games in LA in 2028 and we just organized the workshop to get hydrogen buses into the program. So it kind of for me it feels like full circle. I get a chance to impact what technology going to being there so that is also exciting for me now.

    TSO: Zenyuk is working with colleagues from UC Irvine and UCLA to get hydrogen fuel cell buses to the 2028 Olympic Games.

    Her lab at UC Irvine focuses on making clean hydrogen using electrolysis - where electricity splits water H20 into hydrogen and oxygen.

    ZENYUK: This is electrolyzer yeah. It pumps water and it makes hydrogen. So this is the sound of pumping water that gets water to electrolyzer and then hydrogen comes out. So you can see some of this bubbles are hydrogen.

    [TSO: The bubbles are hydrogen. That’s really cool.]

    [Zenyuk laughs]

    TSO: The roller mixer you hear now is mixing the catalyst for the chemical reaction that produces clean hydrogen.

    ZENYUK: So this is a roll mill. We have bottles of ink, which is made of catalyst particles, ionomer, and water and solvent and they are rolled for 48 hours.

    The catalyst is made from iridium. So that's where all the reactions take place. That's where water splits to make hydrogen on the surface on this catalyst.

    TSO: Her lab is advancing hydrogen technology to power trucks, planes, ships, AI servers and the cement industry. She paired with UCI civil engineering professor Mo Li to create a way to decarbonize the production of cement.

    ZENYUK: Cement industry uses 1600 degrees Celsius process to convert calcium carbonate to calcium oxide. We do it close to room temperature.

    TSO: That eliminates the need for fossil fuels for that key process. Cement companies are taking notice.

    ZENYUK: We already have inquiries from industry, from construction companies. They, they are interested in finding a way to decarbonize their processes. They are very interested in new technologies.

    [sci fi music]

    TSO: She also believes electrolysis has the potential to process and separate mined critical minerals which the nation really needs.

    ZENYUK: We have to we have to sieve through a lot of water to extract those elements. And if you think of like they're typically in ionic. They are ions dispersed in solution and ions that charge species. So we can use electricity, electric potential. We can use different membranes, we can use different potential windows to separate certain metals and to leave all the other metals out.

    There is a lot of innovation currently happening in this field and I think here at UCI, we can position ourselves to be really leader in this field as well.

    TSO: Looks like Zenyuk’s mastermind is always thinking about the next move. You’ll want to keep an eye on her lab at UCI’s National Fuel Cell Research Center.

    Thanks for tuning into The Lab Beat, brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. I’m Natalie Tso. If you like our podcast, please share it with your friends. Thanks and see at the next lab.

    (Season 1, Episode 5)
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    4 min
  • Upcycling EV batteries

    Upcycling EV batteries
    Oct 22 2025
    Diran Apelian found a way to recycle EV batteries and co-founded the billion-dollar company Ascend Elements, one of TIME'S America's Top Ten Green Tech companies of 2024. Find out about the cutting-edge technology his lab uses to upcycle metal at UC Irvine's Samueli School of Engineering. Transcript: [sound of Tesla starting] [sci fi music] NATALIE TSO, HOST: What happens to EV batteries when we’re done with them? Diran Apelian invented a way to recycle them and co-founded a billion dollar company Time magazine named one of America’s Top Ten Green Tech Companies of 2024. Apelian is a distinguished professor of materials science and engineering at UC Irvine’s engineering school. What inspired him to get into metallurgy – the science of metals? DIRAN APELIAN: Even in my teenage years, I was very interested in rocks, minerals. I sort of had a connection with the Earth, you know. I found it to be beautiful, actually. Then I was exposed to a tour of a steel mill, United States Steel. And for the first time, I saw molten steel, but not in a few grams, but in tons of it being poured. I was completely taken back. I was fascinated. There was something magical about the smell, the visual Earth and the fire. And I got attracted to it. And the same time the Sputnik age was coming up, you know, where we were sending missiles up to the moon and trying to get to the moon and everything in the headlines was all the material problems. You know, the tiles protecting the vessel, they were falling off. I put two and two together and that's how I got interested in metallurgical engineering. TSO: And the world is better for it. He not only made aluminum foil stronger, he put aluminum in cars. APELIAN: Many years ago, most of the cars were mostly steel, and in the nineties or so we moved from steel to aluminum because aluminum is three times lighter. So we want to decrease the weight of the car so we don't use as much fuel. So we actually got involved in developing the alloys for the Audi, all aluminum. TSO: That was the Audi A8 — the first mass market car with an all aluminum body. He also tells us what led to the billion dollar company he co-founded, Ascend Elements, which is a major recycler of EV batteries. APELIAN: The battery comprises of anode and cathodes. The cathode has a lot of prescious metal in it – cobalt, nickel. So when these things are end of life, they need to be recovered, all these precious metals. So we developed the technologies to recover the cobalt, the nickel and lithium, all the important elements that are not critical, but near critical and reuse them into a new cathode. And ironically, the recycled material has better properties than the virgin material because we can manipulate the morphology of the powder sizes and all that to control the conductive electronic charges and all that. TSO: Apelian’s lab is a leader in upcycling end-of-life metal products. [sounds of ultrasound machine melting metal] [RAQUEL JAIME: It’s only going to be a small amount] TSO: That’s Ph.D. student Raquel Jaime. She’s melting scrap aluminum in their lab and it does look pretty cool. She’s giving them an ultrasonic treatment that can potentially remove impurities in the metal. She’s researching how the ultrasound – which is not yet used in industry - can make stronger metals for cars and jets. [JAIME: There we go cool, and then we’ll just remelt it in a little bit.] TSO: As for the molten metal that captivated her professor? She loves it too. JAIME: - That’s like my favorite thing that I get to do in here, that treating it with the ultrasound. It all sounds very crazy. It's not something I would have imagined myself doing as a kid. It sounds weird. I always say that it sounds like the two combination things that you need to get like a Marvel super villain. Ultrasound frequency and molten metal, it sounds like if I fell in, I would turn into some weird sort of character. I don’t know. [Jaime laughs] [sound of cold spray machine] TSO: Another cutting-edge technology in the lab is the cold spray machine which you hear in the background. Now cold is relative because here it means at least 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Graduate student Michael Ross explains what’s special about this million-dollar 3D printer: ROSS: So the big advantage of cold spray is that you don't need to actually melt the metal that you're processing so you can make solid metal parts without melting your material, which really opens up the possibilities of using more advanced materials that melt at higher temperatures. And that's important for applications in extreme environments like aerospace, where they need to withstand higher temperatures. TSO: That’s the cold. As for the spray, it runs at three times the speed of sound or Mach3. Ph.D. student Jack Webster explains what happens in cold spray: WEBSTER: We have a robotic arm that moves this substrate plate around while a nozzle flings powder at a super high ...
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    6 min