Podcast: Dragonfly Explores Titan, Curing Muscular Dystrophy, NeckFace

In this episode, we talk about why we are going back to the Saturn system with NASA’s Dragonfly mission, how an MIT PhD student’s AI Algorithm could expedite the drug that could cure duchenne muscular dystrophy, and a Cornell professors invention that can track your facial features throughout the day. As always, you can find these and other interesting & impactful engineering articles on Wevolver.com.

EPISODE NOTES

(1:55) - Dragonfly on Titan: 

Dragonfly is the sequel to the Cassini mission from 1997 whose goal was to study the moon of planet Saturn; Titan. Titan’s earth-like features - like it’s atmosphere - has piqued the interest of researchers for years. We hope to better understand the origins of our planet in addition to the formation of biological beings by studying this moon. 

(8:13) - Machine Learning Discovers New Sequence For Drug Delivery: 

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a disease that takes a severe toll on the patients that are impacted leading to an average life expectancy of ~26 years. So, when Spectra Therapeutics announced in 2019 that they had developed a drug capable of addressing the faulty proteins the world rejoiced; however, the proposed drug suffers from weak cell membrane penetration which is essential for this treatment technique and that is where this MIT research comes into play. This group has developed a model to analyze experimental data about cell penetrating peptides and formulate the best possible solutions for scientists to test with.

(16:30) - NeckFace: 

Non-verbal cues like our facial features can tell people a lot about how we feel but wouldn’t it be great if we could observe those subconscious cues as well? That is one of the primary goals of NeckFace which has been developed by researchers at Cornell University to continuously monitor and record our facial expressions using a neck brace or a necklace. The device can either be used to teleconference while in motion or record facial data to analyze mood changes throughout the day which can be valuable for gauging mental health.

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About the podcast:

Every day, some of the most innovative universities, companies, and individual technology developers share their knowledge on Wevolver. To ensure we can also provide this knowledge for the growing group of podcast listeners, we started a collaboration with two young engineers, Daniel Scott Mitchell & Farbod Moghaddam who discuss the most interesting content in this podcast series. 

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