Michael Barbella, Managing Editor03.15.18
It was love at first sight.
Or first spark, actually.
Though she was much too young to understand the complexity of juvenile love, Canan Dagdeviren sensed something magical taking place that long ago day in the forested hills of her native Turkey. And it was triggered by the simple act of enkindling—specifically, the ancient art of creating sparks from two rocks.
“I loved the idea that you deform this material and create sparks,” Dagdeviren, now 32, told Waukesha, Wis.-based Discover magazine last summer. “It was very exciting.”
And impactful. The fire-starting lesson, in fact, only confirmed Dagdeviren’s love for materials science, a subject area with which she first became acquainted through the biography of two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie, a pioneer in the study and understanding of radioactivity. A gift from her father, the biography proved inspirational for Dagdeviren, though her muse was actually Pierre (her “scientific love”) rather than Marie. The French physicist and his older brother Jacques introduced the world to piezoelectricity in 1880, naming their discovery after the Greek word “piezein” (to squeeze or press). A series of experiments the brothers conducted proved that certain crystalline materials generate an electrical charge proportional to mechanical stress—much like rubbing two stones together to create a spark.
Aiming to produce her own heat in the scientific community, Dagdeviren studied physics and materials in college, eventually obtaining a doctorate in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She’s worked in laboratories developing ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials for biocompatible electronic devices, and last year launched a new research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to explore materials, device designs, and fabrication strategies for micro- and nanoscale electromechanical systems.
Much like her girlhood infatuation, Dagdeviren is working to leave her own legacy in science through piezoelectric technology. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois, Dagdeviren developed a tiny device capable of being permanently implanted inside the body and harvesting energy from organ movement (e.g., the beating heart, rising diaphragm, expanding/deflating lung). Comprised of zirconate titanate, the animal-tested device generates a small electric charge as it continuously changes shape; although it is small, the steady current is strong enough to power implantables like pacemakers without the need for batteries.
“Every part of our body has a language,” Dagdeviren noted in a Motherboard interview last winter. “With our devices—conformable ones—we’re translating biological language into electric language.”
To read the full version of this article, access it in the Medtech Materials eBook where it appears in its entirety along with other fantastic and useful articles on related topics, available now. Click here to access the eBook.
Or first spark, actually.
Though she was much too young to understand the complexity of juvenile love, Canan Dagdeviren sensed something magical taking place that long ago day in the forested hills of her native Turkey. And it was triggered by the simple act of enkindling—specifically, the ancient art of creating sparks from two rocks.
“I loved the idea that you deform this material and create sparks,” Dagdeviren, now 32, told Waukesha, Wis.-based Discover magazine last summer. “It was very exciting.”
And impactful. The fire-starting lesson, in fact, only confirmed Dagdeviren’s love for materials science, a subject area with which she first became acquainted through the biography of two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie, a pioneer in the study and understanding of radioactivity. A gift from her father, the biography proved inspirational for Dagdeviren, though her muse was actually Pierre (her “scientific love”) rather than Marie. The French physicist and his older brother Jacques introduced the world to piezoelectricity in 1880, naming their discovery after the Greek word “piezein” (to squeeze or press). A series of experiments the brothers conducted proved that certain crystalline materials generate an electrical charge proportional to mechanical stress—much like rubbing two stones together to create a spark.
Aiming to produce her own heat in the scientific community, Dagdeviren studied physics and materials in college, eventually obtaining a doctorate in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She’s worked in laboratories developing ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials for biocompatible electronic devices, and last year launched a new research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to explore materials, device designs, and fabrication strategies for micro- and nanoscale electromechanical systems.
Much like her girlhood infatuation, Dagdeviren is working to leave her own legacy in science through piezoelectric technology. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois, Dagdeviren developed a tiny device capable of being permanently implanted inside the body and harvesting energy from organ movement (e.g., the beating heart, rising diaphragm, expanding/deflating lung). Comprised of zirconate titanate, the animal-tested device generates a small electric charge as it continuously changes shape; although it is small, the steady current is strong enough to power implantables like pacemakers without the need for batteries.
“Every part of our body has a language,” Dagdeviren noted in a Motherboard interview last winter. “With our devices—conformable ones—we’re translating biological language into electric language.”
To read the full version of this article, access it in the Medtech Materials eBook where it appears in its entirety along with other fantastic and useful articles on related topics, available now. Click here to access the eBook.
