With the exponential rise in drone activity, safely managing low-flying airspace has become challenging — especially in highly populated areas. Just last month an unauthorized drone collided with a ‘Super Scooper’ aircraft above the Los Angeles wildfires, grounding the aircraft for several days and hampering the firefighting efforts.

Traditional radar systems are powerful but cannot effectively detect low-flying aircraft below 400 feet. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has some regulations to manage small, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones, tracking and safety can be problematic – especially in congested or restricted airspaces. BYU researchers may have the solution.

Using a network of small, low-cost radars, engineering professor Cammy Peterson and her colleagues have built an air traffic control system for drones that can effectively and accurately track anything in an identified low-altitude airspace.

A new paper from UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Prof. Y. Shirley Meng’s Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion and industry partner Thermo Fisher Scientific demonstrated that improving the texture of the soft metal used in battery anodes greatly improved performance. The team added a thin layer of silicon between lithium metal and the current collector to create the ideal grain orientation. The work was published today in the journal Joule.

Michelle Hummel, an associate professor of civil engineering, received a Faculty Early Career Development Program award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance her research and education initiatives.

Joerg Niessing, an INSEAD marketing professor and digital strategy and transformation expert, has been named the winner of The Case Centre’s Outstanding Case Teacher Competition 2025. This global honour recognises his ability to bring business challenges to life using interactive technology and an innovative and creative teaching approach.