Medical and materials innovations of two women engineers recognized by Sony and Nature

 

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Two of the three recipients of the second-ever Sony Women in Technology Award with Nature are from University of Michigan Engineering. The award "celebrates remarkable women working in science and technology" by providing a $250,000 prize to support their research endeavors.

 

Xiwen Gong, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, develops optoelectronics, or electronics that create or react to light, as well as electrically conductive materials for wearable sensors and medical devices. Zhen Xu, the Li Ka Shing Professor of Biomedical Engineering, is an inventor of histotripsy, a cancer treatment that destroys tumors using sound waves. 

 

"I hope to expand histotripsy to more patients and more types of disease, and this kind of recognition from an industry giant and the top scientific journal will help me reach more clinicians and patients," Xu said. "It's the kind of boost that can increase the impact of the work by women scientists."

 

Histotripsy kills tumor cells with sound. When the pulsing sound waves converge on nanometer-scale gas pockets inside the tumor, microbubbles form and collapse, breaking up the tumor cells. Histotripsy also appears to trigger the body's immune system to remove remaining tumor cells.

 

The new treatment can spare cancer patients from the side effects of chemo and radiation therapy. Xu's team is working on expanding histotripsy for treating other types of cancer and blood clots that often lead to cardiovascular disease and hemorrhagic stroke. She is adapting the technology with collaborators across campus and with Histosonics, the company she co-founded to commercialize histotripsy.

 

Xu stumbled upon the beginnings of what would become histotripsy as a PhD student. She was originally looking for treatments for congenital heart disease. During her experiments with pig hearts back in 2002, her labmates complained that her ultrasound experiments were too loud. 

 

To cut the noise—and the ire from her co-workers—she created pulses of sound that repeated at a frequency of 20 kilohertz, a frequency too high for most people to hear. The powerful, microsecond-long bursts blasted holes in the pig heart, and she devoted her career to discovering how it worked ever since.

 

"I only tried it because I tried all the other possibilities, and they failed, and it was almost 10 years before we got any recognition because people in the field said the histotripsy treatment was impossible to implement," Xu said. "It can be hard to persist on things that are deemed impossible by your scientific peers, but my advice to other women who want to be scientists is to be persistent and open-minded. Don't be afraid of what other people might think."

 

Xu was also recently named one of Time's 100 most influential health leaders.

 

Gong is recognized for methods that extend the lifespan of perovskite semiconductors, which help make cheaper alternatives to silicon solar cells commercially viable. She has also built flexible LEDs using semiconductor nanocrystals, or quantum dots. Her LEDs could be used in wearable and implantable biosensors, such as pulse oximeter patches.

 

Her award will help her develop a conductive material to improve treatments that noninvasively send current to the brain, potentially enabling at-home treatments for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Research suggests these treatments could alleviate symptoms by stimulating underactive parts of the brain or suppressing hyperactive areas. Patch-like electrodes used in electrocardiograms don't work well on hairy skin, so for neurostimulation treatments, physicians use a liquid conductor, similar to the gel used during an ultrasound. 

 

The liquid is injected into a holder on a headset to ensure the current is applied only to specific parts of the brain. The setup process is not conducive to home treatment. Most patients would be frustrated by the cumbersome assembly, and mistakes could cause the headset to leak, reducing the current and the effectiveness of the treatment. The liquid gel also leaves behind a residue that needs to be cleaned.

 

"Doing these treatments at home could make them more affordable and convenient for patients, but it's pretty much impossible to administer the treatment yourself with the currently available materials," Gong said. "Our end goal is to produce a standalone, portable device that's cheap and easy to use at home."

 

Gong's solution is a solid gel that is sticky like a patch electrode, but soft enough to squeeze between hairs and adhere to a patient's scalp. Her research team has already shown that it can be used to detect a patient's heartbeat, and they plan to test the gel's ability to treat Alzheimer's patients in collaboration with Benjamin Hampstead, the Philip B. and Myrna R. Fischer Research Professor of Neurology at U-M's Medical School.

 

"Growing up, I occasionally heard that technical fields were more suited to boys, but I proved that I can do it," Gong said. "I strive to advance my field not only through research, but by ensuring that all young students—regardless of gender—feel supported in pursuing careers in STEM."

 

Gong was also recently named a 2026 Gilbreth Lecturer, one of the National Academy of Engineering's highest honors for early-career scientists.

 

Xu is also a professor of radiology and neurosurgery at Michigan Medicine. Gong is also a professor of materials science and engineering, electrical and computer engineering, macromolecular science and engineering, and applied physics.

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