Our group at Tufts University Department of Mechanical Engineering has been working with MIT Lincoln Laboratory for the past few years on a MEMS hydrophone based around commercial of the shelf MEMS microphones. We were inspired by the work of Robert Littrell and others who put Parylene coated Vesper MEMS microphones under water at shallow depths and recorded sounds. We spent some effort developing electronics and a more robust packaging technology, and recently tested to depths of 400 feet at NAVSEA Warfare Centers (NSWC/NUWC) sonar test range at Seneca Lake with good success. MIT Lincoln Laboratory just put out a release, https://lnkd.in/ehVq5_6v Happy to be working with a great team Daniel Freeman, SeaLandAire Technologies, Inc., Navmar Applied Sciences Corporation, and Tufts University team members Jim Vlahakis and Souleymane Cissokho.

PhD student Tim Cheng’s paper on high deflection MEMS springs has published. The poster was presented at Transducers ’25 in Orlando (one of the top international conferences on MEMS) and the conference paper is now out on the IEEE portal. Good job, Tim!

T. J. Cheng, R. D. White and K. Oleske, “Deflection Characteristics of a Circular Slit Diaphragm MEMS Device,” 2025 23rd International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems (Transducers), Orlando, FL, USA, 2025, pp. 1445-1448, http://doi.org/10.1109/Transducers61432.2025.11109375

Our paper on a Vibrotactile Display for the Visually Impaired published in the IEEE Transactions on Haptics! Good job to all the authors who all contributed substantially.

Maijie Xiang, Jonathan J. Bernstein, David B. Miller, and Robert D. White, “PCB-based Miniature Vibro-Tactile Display for the Visually Impaired” IEEE Transactions on Haptics, August 8, 2025.  http://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2025.3597265

PHD Student Tim Cheng presented his work at Transducers 2025 in Orlando! Great job Tim!

Tim J. Cheng, Kasia Oleske, and Robert D. White, “Deflection Characteristics of a Circular Slit Diaphragm MEMS Device” in the 23^rd International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems, TRANDUCERS 2025, Orlando, 29 June -3 July, 2025.

We have been building a Mach 0.5 recirculating wind tunnel for, believe it or not …
10 (!!) years … there were various challenges and setbacks, but lots of students contributed to this and the tunnel finally turned on today! See the turn on video at https://youtu.be/m5LAk-bmYgU

The sonic anemometer successfully flew from New Zealand to Argentina on a NASA/CSBF stratospheric balloon, and is back on the ground! System has been recovered successfully. Waiting for this to return to Tufts so we can pull all the data off!

The Tufts Sonic Anemometer launched from New Zealand on a NASA/CSBF heavy lift stratospheric balloon! It will travel across the Pacific gathering stratospheric wind data. You can see the flight data returned from our onboard system at https://ultrasonic-anemometer.onrender.com

The NASA/CSBF team has recovered the Antarctica balloon! We received the shipment back at Tufts June and are starting to look at the data. It looks like we successfully recorded about 9 to 10 days of wind data in the stratosphere over Antarctica!!

Very pleased to announce that Souleymane Cissokho is joining our research group for the Spring semester 2025! Souley joins after completing his undergraduate degree at Rose Hulman and with experience in acoustic signal processing from Idaho National Labs. Very glad to have him on board! He will be working on acoustic sensing technologies.

Tufts University School of Engineering is headed to the stratosphere once again on a high altitude balloon! A successful launch of the 2024 Salter Test Flight – Universities from McMurdoStation, Antarctica, occurred on Dec 21 2024. Many thanks to NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Balloon Programs Office and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, particular Christopher D. Yoder and Don Banfield, for the opportunity. The balloon carries, among other payloads, the SPARROW-6 experiment part of which is the Tufts Sonic Anemometer from my research group at Tufts University (Tufts University Department of Mechanical Engineering). The flight is expected to float in the stratosphere near 125,000 feet for 5 to 10 days. After recovery we will have a wealth of data on stratospheric winds! Sure hope my code is running correctly!!! Safe travels!

Video of the launch: https://lnkd.in/e_a664Z3
Live tracking site: https://lnkd.in/eGQWAu4B