Medical engineering for Space and Earth
Dates of the course: 23-27 September 2024 to 24-28 March 2025
Teaching language(s): English
Credits: 3 ECTS
Contact: universeh.contact@univ-tlse3.fr
Universities involved: Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III (UT3) – University of Toulouse / Luleå University of Technology
Profile and prerequisites: Master’s level / Students with scientific and engineering profiles / The candidates need to have 180 ECTS, English level B2.
Teaching modalities: Combined (on-campus + online) with regularly scheduled times
Student mobility: It is not mandatory but ideal students can come to Toulouse the last two weeks of March for the test and launch.
Assessment modalities:
- 50% Intermediate report, oral presentation and joint review meeting (January 2024)
- 50% Launch reports per balloon – a brief one after the launch day and a complete one for end of April 2024
The course is open to students from these universities: Open to all
How to apply: Send your CV and a letter of motivation to contact info. An interview may be requested if deemed necessary.
Lecturer:
- Victoria Barabash
- Rene Laufer
- Hassan Sabbah
Objectives: Understand the impacts of spaceflight on human body and associated challenges for medical care
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Understand and apply different transdisciplinary approaches for medical technology design for space applications
- Recognizes the different sensors and medical technologies for human health monitoring (stress monitoring cases)
- Understand space-related environmental factors affecting medical devices in space
- Forms a constructive approach to the health-related issues and risks occuring in a given manned space mission (use cases presented in the courses)
- Understands the limitations of cyber-human interfaces, data collection caveats and methodology, data processing for AI powered applications
- Integrate the transdisciplinary knowledge (basics of physiology and psychology, technical knowledge of sensing technologies and data processing) to form a general design of personalized health system for manned space missions
- Prototype the ideas in the area of personalized space medicine for data collection and use in AI based applications - Prototyping, IP protection, GDPR.
Description:
Mechatronic space structures require particular solutions in terms of their efficiency, robustness and precision for equipment which is required to operate for several decades without maintenance. In this context, the piezoelectric technology associated with particular material properties can bring multidomain solutions for actuation, mechanical insulation, or energy harvesting. New opportunities in terms of dynamical mechanical response are brought by elastic metamaterials.
Metamaterials are a new class of materials that exhibit extraordinary properties. In the context of dynamics, they can display negative effective mass and/or stiffness, extending the classical design space of engineering materials. Therefore, they can be very attractive for designing high-performance multipurpose devices.
In this course, students will learn about applications of elastic metamaterials for various mechatronic space devices, in particular energy harvesters, actuators, sensors and electro-mechanical transformers; and how metamaterials can be designed and used for substantially improving dynamic properties of these systems. Students will have an opportunity to design a device – from theoretical principles to simulations – prototyping it and performing its physical electro-mechanical testing.
The course is composed of 8 classes in which we present the necessary theoretical and practical background, followed by a 4-class students’ project oriented on designing, assembling and testing a prototypical device. Finally, students are involved in an industry-level project supported and supervised by top-class experts from the space sector.