Driven by a passion for discovery, these Lehigh Engineering faculty members are pushing the frontiers of gene editing, robotics, AI-driven design, and medical diagnostics. Their work has earned national recognition through two prestigious honors: the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) award, which recognizes junior faculty who excel as teacher-scholars, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest U.S. government honor for early-career researchers in science and engineering. These accolades affirm not only their individual achievements but also the strength of Lehigh’s research ecosystem—one that nurtures big ideas and empowers faculty to make a lasting impact.
Ebru Demir: Teaming up tiny robot swimmers
Smart artificial microswimmers—small robots that resemble microorganisms like bacteria or human sperm—could potentially be used for targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and even in fertility treatments.
These types of complicated tasks won’t be accomplished by a single microswimmer. Multiple swimmers will be necessary; however, it’s unclear how such groups will move within the chemically and mechanically complex environment of the body’s fluids.
“We know that whenever a swimmer has a neighbor, it swims differently,” says Ebru Demir, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics. “Birds fly in a V formation because it’s more efficient and it saves them energy. But for a group of microswimmers, we don’t know what the best formation looks like.”
Demir recently received an NSF CAREER award for her research combining artificial microswimmers with machine learning to build Smart Artificial Microswimmers (SAMs). By embedding AI into centimeter-scale robotic swimmers and comparing their behavior with predictions from simulations, her project aims to uncover the underlying physics that govern their movement in complex fluid environments.
To study how the swimmers move in both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids, Demir will insert microcontrollers that run reinforcement learning algorithms into 3-D printed autonomous robots that are 10-20 centimeters, or about 4-8 inches, in size. Fluids in the human body, such as blood, have non-Newtonian properties, meaning their viscosity, or resistance to flow, changes depending on the stress applied by the swimming body. She will make and use fluids with similar properties in experiments to verify the results of her simulations.
“These swimmers will each contain an AI brain that will give them decision-making capabilities, so they can determine for themselves how to swim better alone, and how to swim better with three or five or 10 companions. It will also be interesting to see if their behavior changes if they are allowed to cooperate and share information.”
For example, she says, a swimmer may move closer to its companion. As it does, it may determine that it’s moving faster. So it moves ever closer. But suddenly, it slows down. It then decides to retreat back to the previous distance where it maintained optimal speed.
“As the SAMs swim, they are constantly interacting with the environment, running that algorithm, and recalculating where they are in that formation and how fast or how efficiently they are moving. The goal is to find the best strategy for the cluster to swim together in a manner that’s both fast and efficient.”
Ultimately, the long-term aim is to insert micron-size (or centimeter-size if they’re being inserted in larger vessels like those in the gastrointestinal tract) artificial swimmers into the body where they could travel through the veins to deliver, for example, targeted chemotherapy drugs, or break up a blood clot without the need to thin a patient’s blood. They could also assist otherwise normal, high-quality human sperm in fertility treatments.
“In those cases, the sperm has good genetics, but maybe its tail is compromised, and so the swimmers could push the sperm toward the egg,” she says. “And that has been demonstrated by other researchers to work in a lab environment.”
Demir says it’s been gratifying to receive the CAREER award and learn that her work has earned approval from her peers. But what really drives her is the sense that her time in the lab has the potential to solve life-changing problems.
“As cliche as it sounds,” she says, “I want to use engineering to help humanity.”
Hannah Dailey: Advancing orthopaedic diagnostics
PECASE recipient Hannah Dailey ’02 ’06G ’09 PhD, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics, is among nearly 400 scientists and engineers selected by the Biden administration for this top-level honor. Recipients are employed or funded by one of 14 participating government agencies.
Established in 1996, the PECASE acknowledges the contributions scientists and engineers have made to the advancement of science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM) education and to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, and community outreach. In 2024, NSF nominated 111 awardees, including 31 from the Engineering Directorate.
Dailey was nominated for her work developing a virtual mechanical test that can identify nonunions—a failure of broken bones to properly heal—early in the healing process. Nonunions occur in about 10 percent of shinbone fractures, and patients with such a diagnosis face higher rates of depression, opioid use, and addiction. Earlier detection would allow for timelier surgical intervention. Dailey received the NSF CAREER award in 2020.
“Professor Dailey’s groundbreaking contributions at the intersection of mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, computational science, and human health are an inspiration to students and faculty,” says Stephen P. DeWeerth, professor and dean of the Rossin College. “The PECASE award underscores the exceptional caliber of her work and the interdisciplinary research and innovation taking place at Lehigh.”
For Dailey, the PECASE award is a highlight of a journey in engineering that began before her time as a Lehigh undergrad, continued with a postdoc in Ireland, and brought her back to the Rossin College, where she now leads the Dailey Ortho Lab.
Her research group focuses on imaging-driven engineering approaches to clinical problems in orthopaedics and currently collaborates with surgeon-investigators in hospitals worldwide. Dailey has publications in Journal of Biomechanics, Clinical Biomechanics, Journal of Orthopaedic Research, Injury, and JBJS. She also serves as co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of OrthoXel, DAC, an orthopaedic device company that grew out of technology developed while she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Cork Institute of Technology from 2009 to 2012. Dailey earned her PhD, MS, and BS in mechanical engineering from Lehigh.
“I’m very grateful to NSF for having supported my research, and to Lehigh for enabling me to pursue this vision,” she says. “The faith and support of my department and the college of engineering make this work possible. It’s an honor to receive this award and know that my research is considered impactful and a valuable contribution to the community.”
Tomas Gonzalez-Fernandez: Enhancing gene-editing technology
CRISPR is a powerful gene-editing tool that holds enormous potential for treating genetic diseases by allowing scientists to cut, replace, or delete mutations in DNA. It can also modify gene expression, temporarily amplifying or diminishing its effects. Yet, despite its promise, applying CRISPR (which is a reagent, or a substance that facilitates a reaction) in patients presents significant challenges.
“CRISPR is difficult to control when you want to do gene editing in vivo, or directly in the patient,” says Tomas Gonzalez-Fernandez, an assistant professor of bioengineering. “In this case, it’s typically administered as a systemic injection, meaning it circulates throughout the entire body and can have adverse effects on areas other than the target tissue. It’s important to control where CRISPR goes, and when the CRISPR action takes place, so it doesn’t cause problems elsewhere in the body.”
Gonzalez-Fernandez received an NSF CAREER award for his research that will explore how combining CRISPR with biomaterials can make the technology both safer and more effective for therapeutic use.
Through laboratory experiments, Gonzalez-Fernandez and his team will investigate using hydrogels to help guide the technology to the appropriate target and dictate the timing of the CRISPR action—in other words, controlling where and when the therapy takes place. They’ll first study what happens when the biomaterial and CRISPR first come in contact.
“We want to better understand that interplay, and how we can optimize biomaterial properties, such as charge and porosity, to better control CRISPR delivery,” he says.
After that, they’ll examine how these encapsulated or functionalized materials interact with human cells.
“That’s the higher level of complexity we need to understand,” he says. “How does the interaction between these materials and cells influence the gene editing efficiency of CRISPR?”
To date, says Gonzalez-Fernandez, there has been very little research into how biomaterials could enhance CRISPR delivery. As such, this will be one of the first studies to study how both biomaterial design parameters and cell interactions affect CRISPR efficiency.
The ultimate goal is to design safer, more efficient therapeutics that could someday treat genetic diseases, including cancer, sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s, Duchnene muscular dystrophy (DMD), and other chronic musculoskeletal disorders.
The FDA recently approved CRISPR to treat sickle cell disease, an inherited disorder that causes red blood cells to deform and block blood flow and can cause severe pain. The therapy was done ex vivo, or outside the body, and the modified cells were then implanted back into the patient.
“This was the first approved CRISPR therapy, and it was a huge success for sickle cell anemia,” says Gonzalez-Fernandez. “But it was all done in the lab, which requires highly specialized facilities.”
He notes, too, that a recent clinical trial where CRISPR was injected virally directly into a patient with DMD caused a fatal immunological response.
“The challenge is how can we make this therapeutic safer?” he says. “My answer for that is to use biomaterials. They can help pave the way for more localized therapies.”
The CAREER award is validation of that belief.
“It feels good to know that the scientific community appreciates the direction my lab is going in, and the type of science I want to do,” he says.
Beyond the lab, he’s also designing an outreach initiative to engage high school students through what he calls “CRISPR in a Box.” With support from the CAREER award, he will design simple, hands-on experiments to demonstrate how CRISPR can edit genes in bacteria— demystifying the technology and sparking curiosity in the process.
Gonzalez-Fernandez, also runs a YouTube channel, and as part of the grant will leverage the channel to further explain engineering concepts of human physiology to increase public understanding of gene editing technologies.
“Research has shown that people are against CRISPR, not because they’re inherently afraid of it, but because they don’t understand it. If we can better inform the public about what it is, and how we can make it safer and more efficient, we can ultimately increase acceptance of the technology.”
