Brown University Engineering

10/05/2026

Internal Combustion category 3rd place! 🥉🏎️

On a shortened day at the Toronto Shootout yesterday, the racing was close all morning, but the car was on the podium in the end.

This marks the retirement of the 2026 car, but the 2027 build season officially opens today.

10/02/2026

Brown’s Engineering Career and Internship Fair, coordinated by the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Career Exploration at Brown is underway in Hazeltine Commons this afternoon, bringing ~30 engineering and tech-centric companies onto campus. Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to attend!

09/23/2026

Cheers to Red Maple (from the lab of Anita Shukla) and TEEM Therapeutics (from the lab of Kareen Coulombe) on their $5k grab for 2nd and 3rd places at Brown Technology Innovations’ Brown Invents Startup Challenge. The pre-Innovation Showcase pitch competition during also included Nereus (from the lab of Monica Martinez Wilhelmus) as 3 of the 7 early-formed companies who presented to a panel of VCs tonight.

09/23/2026

Assistant Professor Mehdi Saligane has been awarded a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - DARPA Young Faculty Award to develop a new kind of computer memory that uses biological DNA to store information, and silicon chips to control how it is written and read -- bridging molecular digital storage and conventional electronics.
DARPA Young Faculty Awards are considered one of the most prestigious early-career research awards, intended to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who will focus a significant portion of their career on national security issues.

The prestigious award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency provides up to $719,358 in research funding for Assistant Professor Mehdi Saligane.

09/23/2026

Engineering celebrates with this Q&A from alumna Sabrina Tolppi '25. Tolppi co-founded Lilac Biosciences using resources from the Brown University ecosystem, taking it from the lab of Professor Tripathi and commercializing ModQuant™️, a reagent RNA kit.

09/18/2026

Voting is open until Sept. 24 for Brown Technology Innovation's Innovation of the Year. Two faculty from the School of Engineering are competing. https://bit.ly/26IOY
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The fourth annual Innovation@Brown Showcase is 10/15. Ten contenders for Innovation of the Year will be narrowed to the top three vote getters, who will pitch live during the event with an ultimate winner being decided by a live audience vote at the Showcase.

09/18/2026

“I chose Brown for its commitment to renewable energy, its proximity to the nation’s first offshore wind farm off Block Island, and research opportunities that undergraduates can access. Climate change is the ultimate threat to the world we know and love, and I want to be at the forefront of innovation. After traveling to 47 states, New England was one of the few regions I did not know well, and I wanted to experience the culture and the people here for myself.

The opportunities came fast. I earned a Spring UTRA my freshman year doing oceanography research with Professor Baylor Fox-Kemper, consolidating 20 years of data for the Ocean State Oceanographic Model, which helps forecast currents, temperature, and salinity in Narragansett Bay. The next summer I studied GPS and geodesy at Michigan State, and this past summer I did engineering work for a mining company that sharpened my skills and opened doors toward entrepreneurship.

As a mechanical engineering concentrator with 21-degree requirements, I use the Open Curriculum less traditionally, but its flexibility has let me move through my degree in my own order, and that freedom has helped me both academically and personally.

Being a veteran here has been an adjustment I did not expect. I am in my thirties, married, and a decade older than most of my classmates, and after ten years around people in uniform, my sense of humor was calibrated for a very different audience. But my classmates have been curious about my path rather than confused by it, and Brown has given me room to be a married veteran and a junior at the same time.

Outside class, my favorite thing is time with my wife and our dog. We love catching metal shows around Providence, the food scene punches far above its weight, and on fall Saturdays you can find me at Snookers watching college football.

My goal is to build my own business, and I am already developing a prototype with two partners. More than anything, Brown has given me confidence. Whatever job I take and wherever I live, I know the skills I built here will let me flourish.”

Zach P. ‘28
Mechanical Engineering
🐻

09/17/2026

Engineering was chillin' with the dean this afternoon at the annual Ice Cream Welcome Social. Engineering students at all levels were invited to grab a treat from the ice cream truck. 🍦

09/16/2026

Hibbitt Postdoctoral Fellow Jiwon Kim was selected as a ⭐2026 Rising Stars Women in Engineering⭐ by the Asian Deans’ Forum. This workshop was organized by leading engineering schools in the Asia Pacific Region, including the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The University of New South Wales, Seoul National University, National University of Singapore, National Taiwan University, The University of Tokyo, and Tsinghua University. First conceived in 2018, the workshop aims to bring together young women professionals in engineering disciplines from around the world. This includes scholars, researchers, and engineers who are exploring or advancing careers in academia. The workshop facilitates scientific and career-oriented discussions, with a focus on empowering the next generation of women academic leaders in Asia and beyond.

Kim is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Prof. Ian Wong's group in the School of Engineering at Brown University. Her scientific interests are directed at how cells sense and generate mechanical forces in the context of their physical microenvironment. In particular, she investigates how groups of cells coordinate their migration to orbit or invade in response to matrix architecture. Kim previously received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and was recently recognized as a 2025 MIT Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering.

09/10/2026

Dean Tejal Desai's lab granted funding from Breakthrough T1D to advance technology that aids in long-term survival and function of transplanted insulin-producing cells.

A grant from Breakthrough T1D, the leading global type 1 diabetes (T1D) research and advocacy organization, to Brown University's School of Engineering advances a technology developed in Dean Tejal Desai’s lab, designed to help transplanted insulin-producing cells survive and function over a long ...