Engineering stories whose deep dive explains cells and the human body, ready to use as a starter, a reading task or a real-world example. Each one links to the GCSE and A level curriculum.
Health
For people with any of the roughly 736,900 cochlear implants registered worldwide by December 2019, all devices currently on the market share one obvious…
Deep dive: From Electricity to Light, the Next Frontier in Cochlear Stimulation
ChemicalsBreakthroughs
Scientists embedded engineered bacteria into plastic that fully self-destructs in 6 days, leaving no microplastics. Discover how this living material works.
Deep dive: how self-destructing living plastic actually works
HealthBreakthroughs
Oxford Nanopore wins the 2026 MacRobert Award for its portable DNA sequencing technology used on the ISS and in field disease outbreaks.
HealthBreakthroughs
MIT engineers have developed an ultrasound wearable pacemaker sticker that corrects heart arrhythmias without surgery, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Deep dive: Inside the Ultrasound Wearable Pacemaker
Electronics & CommunicationsBreakthroughs
Northwestern University engineers have created printed artificial neurons that generate realistic electrical signals capable of activating living brain cells.
Deep dive: How Printed Artificial Neurons Work
HealthBreakthroughs
Columbia University's NOVAKnee living knee implant, a 3D-printed biodegradable scaffold seeded with stem cells, has entered preclinical testing.
Deep dive: The science behind the living knee implant
Electronics & CommunicationsBreakthroughs
A robotic underwater diving exoskeleton from Shenzhen reduces diver oxygen consumption by 40%. Here's the engineering behind real-time adaptive assistance.
Deep dive: Adapting to a Moving Target in a Viscous Medium
HealthBreakthroughs
Organ chip space medicine technology flew on Artemis II, testing personalised bone marrow chips to study deep space radiation effects on astronaut health.
Deep dive: How an organ chip works
Space
A UK-led mission is launching fluorescent C. elegans worms to the ISS inside a shoebox-sized Petri Pod to study bone, muscle and radiation effects…
Deep dive: How to run a biology lab in orbit
HealthBreakthroughs
A clinical trial shows spinal cord stimulation can restore walking and sensory feedback in people with complete spinal injuries, a biomedical engineering first.
Deep dive: How spinal cord stimulation restores walking
Electronics & Communications
Engineers at the University of Queensland have developed a biorobotics system that transforms common darkling beetles into remotely controlled search and rescue agents. The…
Deep dive: Bioelectrical Stimulation and Micro-Scale Robotics