Anuruddha’s paper on Soft Robots was accepted for publication in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics! An early version of the accepted paper is available online here.

Congratulations to Suraj and Hossein, who both successfully defended their PhD dissertations in Spring 2022! Suraj walked at the 2022 Commencement, but Hossein was already in Michigan for his new job at Iris Technology.

Congrats to Josh Fernquist from Dr. Steven Naleway’s group on his publication on controlling freeze cast structures using oscillating magnetic fields! [J. R. Fernquist, H. C. Fu, S. E. Naleway. “Improved structural and mechanical performance of iron oxide scaffolds freeze cast under oscillating magnetic fields.” Ceramics International, 48, 15034-15042 (2022). pdf ]

In collaboration with Xinhui Shen, Xin Yao, and Marcos at Nanyang Technological University, we have published a new paper on whether copepods can use their feeding currents to help them detect prey, by sensing when passive particles disturb the feeding current. [X. Shen, X. Yao, Marcos, H. C. Fu.  “Can the mechanoreceptional setae of a […]

In collaboration with Louis Rogowski and MinJun Kim’s group at Southern Methodist University, and Jim Wilking at Montana State University, we have published a paper on the “Symmetry Breaking Propulsion of Magnetic Microspheres in Nonlinearly Viscoelastic Fluids” in Nature Communications. This paper was featured as a Nature Communications Editors’ Highlight .   [L. W. Rogowski, […]

We received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project “Collaborative Research: Elucidating the Diversity of Bacterial Flagellation and Motility Through Mechanics.” This project hopes to understand whether flagellar dynamics during swimming can explain why there are so many different types of flagellar arrangements in bacteria. It is a collaborative project with Prof. Jeff […]

A belated welcome to Ludi, who joined our research group as a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering in Fall 2019!  Ludi will be be working on zooplankton hydrodynamics, especially their interactions with other particles, prey, and predators.

Mehdi has published a paper detailing a new, efficient method to calculate the deformations of inextensible filaments in viscous flows. [M. Jabbarzadeh, H. C. Fu, “A numerical method for inextensible elastic filaments in viscous fluids.” Journal of Computational Physics, 418, 109643 (2020). pdf]

Kiarash and coauthors have published a paper showing how magnetic properties of real materials lead to a new physical limit on the propulsion of rotated microrobots.  The results are especially relevant to soft magnetic microrobots.  This paper was selected as an Editors’ Suggestion in Physical Review Fluids. [K. Samsami, S. A. Mirbagheri, F. Meshkati, H. […]

BhanuKiran and co-authors in the Abbott group have published a paper on swarm control using population-based metrics.  This paper will be presented at ICRA 2020. [BhanuKiran Chaluvadi, Kristen M. Stewart, Adam J. Sperry, Henry C. Fu, and Jake J. Abbott, “Kinematic model of a magnetic-microrobot swarm in a rotating magnetic dipole field.” IEEE Robotics and […]

Kiarash and collaborators published a paper on soft magnetic microrobots in a special issue of Fluids, “Advances in Biological Flows and Biomimetics.” [K. Samsami, S. A. Mirbagheri, F. Meshkati, H. C. Fu., “Stability of soft magnetic helical microrobots.” Fluids, 5, 19 (2020). pdf ]

Xinhui, Marcos, and Henry published a paper on how the physics of bending seta influence the ability of copepods to sense different hydrodynamic signals. [X. Shen, Marcos, H. C. Fu, “How the bending mechanics of setae modulate hydrodynamic sensing in copepods.” Limnology and Oceanography, 65, 749 (2020). pdf]

Mehdi and collaborators have published an article on the interesting ways in which Helicobacter suis, which has two tufts of flagella, one at each pole, can swim.  The tufts form flagellar bundles which can be either extended from the body or wrapped around the body, leading to combinations of both wrapped, both extended, and one […]

Mehdi was awarded Graduate Student Researcher of the Year from the Thermal Fluids and Energy Systems group here at Utah Mechanical Engineering.  Congratulations Mehdi!       The award recognizes his work during the 2017-2018 academic year, including mentorship of other group members and publications J. Ali, U. K. Cheang, J. D. Martindale, M. Jabbarzadeh, […]

As part of a group of investigators, we have received an award to develop mathematical models of the gastric mucus layer and use them to understand bacterial infection in the stomach as well as gastric organoids, spherical reconstructions of gastric tissue that can be used to study gastric function and disease.  Besides our group, the […]

Mehdi has published a paper investigating how viscous constraints influence the ability of swimmers using different swimming strategies to closely approach other suspended particles, for example to feed, mate, or find new habitats. [M. Jabbarzadeh and H. C. Fu, “Viscous constraints on microorganism approach and interaction,” J. Fluid Mechanics, 851, 715-738 (2018). pdf]

We received a second NSF award to study how the physical constraints posed by viscous hydrodynamics influences the form and swimming strategies of microorganisms.  This award is in collaboration with Rob Stoll, also in our department at the University of Utah. [CBET-1805847, Viscous Constraints on Zooplankton Approach and Interaction]    

In collaboration with MinJun Kim at Southern Methodist University, we have received a new NSF award to study how contact interactions between microorganisms and the microstructure of complex media affect swimming.  We will combine experiments using artificial bacteria and synthetic mucus with theory and modeling.   [CMMI-1760642, Collaborative Research: Controlled Investigation of Micro- and Nanoscale […]

Mehdi has published an article describing how the dynamical buckling of bacterial hook and flagella combine to trigger flick motility in monotrichous bacteria.  His model is the first to quantitatively predicts the onset of flicks seen in experiments. [M. Jabbarzadeh and H. C. Fu, “Dynamic instability in the hook/flagellum system that triggers bacterial flicks,” Phys. […]

JD and Mehdi, in collaboration with Jamel Ali and MinJun Kim’s group at Southern Methodist University, have published a new paper describing artificial bacteria-inspired nanorobots.  The nanorobots consist of a magnetic nanobead to which is attached one or two reconstituted bacterial flagella.  The swimming speeds of the robots can be altered by triggering polymorphic transformations […]

New PhD students Suraj Kamarapu and Hossein Moghimifam joined the lab in Fall 2017!  We are happy to have them with us!

JD has published a paper on using the polymorphic transformations of bacterial flagella to create a flagellar forest which can change pumping directions autonomously in response to environmental cues.  This work was inspired by our collaboration with MinJun Kim’s group at Southern Methodist University. [J. D. Martindale and H. C. Fu, , “Autonomously responsive pumping […]

Xinhui Shen, Marcos, and Fu have published a paper on using boundary tractions to undersetand the effects of boundaries on microswimmers. Xinhui is a PhD student at Nanyang Technological University advised by Marcos. [X. Shen, Marcos, and H. C. Fu. “Traction reveals mechanisms of wall effects for microswimmers near boundaries.” Phys. Rev. E 95033105 (2017).pdf]

University of Utah mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Mehdi Jabbarzadeh’s paper “Helical and rod-shaped bacteria swim in helical trajectories with little additional propulsion from helical shape” has been published in Science Advances!  The paper was published in collaboration with Rama Bansil’s group at Boston University.  [M. A. Constantino, M. Jabbarzadeh, H. C. Fu, and R. Bansil, […]

Our recent paper on Modular Microrobotics in Scientific Reports was written up by the American Physical Society Physics Central website (http://physicscentral.org/explore/plus/microswimmers.cfm).

The LiveScience website published an article on our recent Scientific Reports paper on Modular Microrobotics: http://www.livescience.com/55610-magnetic-microbead-chain-robots.html. Thanks to Greg Uyeno for writing the piece!

University of Nevada, Reno mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Farshad Meshkati paper “Versatile microrobotics using simple modular subunits” has been published in Nature Scientific Reports!  The paper was published in collaboration with MinJun Kim’s group at Drexel/SMU.  [U. K. Cheang, F. Meshkati, H. Kim, K. Lee, H. C. Fu and M. J. Kim, “Versatile microrobotics using […]

Before joining the University of Utah, Fu was an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno. While there, he was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2013, was appointed Ralph E. Hoeper Professor of Engineering in 2015, and received the Regent’s Rising Researcher Award in 2016. […]

University of Nevada, Reno mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Seyed Amir Mirbagheri’s paper “Helicobacter pylori couples motility and diffusion to actively create a heterogeneous complex medium in gastric mucus” has been published in Physical Review Letters!  [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 198101 (2016)] pdf.

Postdoctoral research associate James D (JD) Martindale, will be presenting his talk on “Autonomously Responsive Pumping by a Bacterial Flagellar Forest: A Mean Field Approach” at the 2016 SIAM Life Sciences Meeting in Boston, MA, 7/11/2016 — 7/15/2016.

Dr. Henry Fu was awarded the 2016 University of Nevada, Reno Regent’s Rising Researcher Award. Fu obtained a B.A. (summa cum laude) in Chemistry and Physics with Mathematics minor from Harvard University in 2000, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics from Cambridge University (UK) in 2001, and his PhD in Physics from University of […]