Meet Prince Matthew and Stephanie Wiltman—the graduate students speaking at Sunday’s celebration of the Class of 2020.

Researchers at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University are finding out how the brain learns new tasks, which could help people who have suffered injuries to the nervous system. Their latest findings were published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Posture Protect doesn’t just help users sit up straight—it could help people with Parkinson’s disease avoid falls. The student innovation effort that started in Joseph Samosky’s bioengineering course is nearing a pilot program in clinics.

Two Pitt projects will blast off to the International Space Station this spring to study microgravity’s effects on people and spacecrafts. The research brings together faculty, students and a tiny, see-through crustacean.

To address the critical need for long-lasting heart valve replacements, a team of Pitt researchers created a mesh that harnesses the body’s own healing power.

The question for regenerative medicine research is “‘What can we do in space that we can't do on Earth that makes a difference?’" said William Wagner, director of the McGowan Institute, which has joined with the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory to look for answers. "That's a pretty exciting question, because it's currently unanswered."

For stroke survivors whose ability to walk has been impaired by neurological damage, rehabilitation using robotics has proven to be an effective therapy to improve their gait. However, one of the major issues with this type of rehabilitation is that following training with a robotic device, motor improvements are not maintained in the patient’s daily life. Gelsy Torres-Oviedo, of Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering, is applying a novel approach to improve locomotor learning in stroke patients.

Students from Pittsburgh’s Hill District put their coding skills to the test to recreate the 1978 game Space Invaders, using a computer program provided by Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering and the School of Computing and Information. The coding exercise was part of a three-day STEM mini-camp hosted by Pitt’s Hill District Community Engagement Center.

Getting children to take their medicine in the right dose at the right time is tough. At a recent hackathon, three Pitt students came up with a prototype solution that won over kids themselves.

It seems like something from a sci-fi movie: humans wearing bionic technology to move more easily. But Pitt researchers are turning fiction into a reality, aiming to help people with paraplegia.