Scientists have gotten better at predicting where earthquakes will occur, but they’re still in the dark about when they will strike and how devastating they will be.

When John Crocker, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science was a graduate student, his advisor gathered together everyone in his lab to “throw down the gauntlet” on a new challenge in the field.

In order for cancer to spread, malignant cells must break away from a tumor and through the tough netting of extracellular matrix, or ECM, that surrounds it. To fit through the holes in this net, those cancerous cells must elongate into a torpedo-like shape.

A team is using commercially available nanotechnology to develop a low-cost, handheld diagnostic device that can monitor HIV. This device would increase access to high-quality treatment of HIV in developing countries and lower the cost of health care in the U.S.

Nanoscale structures have properties that can’t be achieved in any other way, stemming from precise control over the structure’s composition and geometry. Unfortunately, simultaneously achieving high levels of control of both characteristics can be challenging.

The round worm Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode, is a puzzling creature.

Interactions between an animal cell and its immediate environment, a fibrous network called the extracellular matrix, play a critical role in cell function, including growth and migration. But less understood is the mechanical force that governs those interactions.

Graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon in sheets just one atom in thick, has been the subject of widespread research, in large part because of its unique combination of strength, electrical conductivity and chemical stability.

The base pairs found in DNA are key to its ability to store protein-coding information, but they also give the molecule useful structural properties. Getting two complementary strands of DNA to zip up into a double helix can serve as the basis of intricate physical mechanisms that can push and pull molecular-scale devices.

Technology tends to move toward the bigger and better, cramming more and more features into a given product. But sometimes, less is more.