SwRI tackles pre-ignition challenges in

hydrogen-fueled engines

Ongoing stochastic pre-ignition research at SwRI leads to the development of a testing methodology for hydrogen-fueled ICEs

Southwest Research Institute

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Dr. Vickey Kalaskar and the SwRI team have pioneered a groundbreaking testing methodology to tackle stochastic pre-ignition (SPI) in heavy-duty hydrogen-fueled engines (H2-ICEs).

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Credit: Southwest Research Institute

SAN ANTONIO — November 26, 2025 — Engineers at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) have developed a reliable testing methodology to study stochastic pre-ignition (SPI) in hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines (H2-ICEs), offering the automotive industry tools to address challenges associated with hydrogen fuel and advance cleaner engine technologies.

Pre-ignition, where unintentional combustion occurs before spark timing, is disruptive and sometimes detrimental to engine performance and durability. While hydrogen's low ignition threshold is a suspected SPI factor, SwRI explored whether lubricant autoignition contributes to SPI in H2-ICEs.

“H2-ICEs experience pre-ignition at higher frequencies than spark-ignited gasoline engines, although the events are milder compared to the intense SPI events observed in SI gasoline ICEs, which can cause severe mechanical damage,” said Dr. Vickey Kalaskar, lead engineer with SwRI’s Powertrain Systems Engineering Department. “The research conducted demonstrates that while additive chemistry appears to be the dominant driver for gasoline engine SPI, lubricant oil volatility and compression ratio are driving influences for hydrogen-fueled pre-ignition events.”

Through the course of this research, SwRI engineers developed a new testing methodology, which provides insight into lubricant-initiated SPI in H2-ICEs and supports further work, such as refining SPI quantification methods, exploring mitigation strategies and evaluating commercial lubricants.

The research underlines SwRI’s leadership in hydrogen engine innovation, building upon initiatives like the Clean Highly Efficient Decarbonized Engines (CHEDE-9) program and the successful development of a fully functional H2-ICE Class-8 truck. These efforts demonstrated advancements in H₂-ICE systems research with innovations such as SwRI’s fully functional H2-ICE Class-8 truck. SwRI is also partnering with the University of Texas at San Antonio to integrate machine learning and AI for real-time pre-ignition detection in H2-ICEs.

Kalaskar and his team will present their findings at the 2025 IAV Symposium on Pre-ignition, Auto-ignition, Reactivity and Knock (SPARK) on Dec. 2, 2025, in Detroit. This project was funded through the SwRI Internal Research and Development Program. In 2024, SwRI invested more than $11 million in tomorrow’s technology to broaden its knowledge base, expand its reputation as a leader in science and technology, and encourage its staff’s professional development. For more information, visit Southwest Research Institute Internal R&D.

For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/markets/automotive-transportation/automotive/hydrogen-powered-vehicles/hydrogen-internal-combustion-engine-2-h2-ice2-consortium.

SUN-DT moves towards the full digitalization of tower CSP plants to improve efficiency and reduce operational costs

The project, in which IMDEA Networks participates, strengthens Europe’s technological leadership in renewable energy

IMDEA Networks Institute

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The European project SUN-DT, in which IMDEA Networks participates and which is funded by Horizon Europe, officially launched its activities in October 2025. Formed by a consortium of nine international organizations and coordinated by CENER, the initiative aims to drive the digital transition of tower concentrated solar power (CSP) plants.

These facilities use thousands of mirrors (heliostats) that track the sun and concentrate its light onto a receiver placed at the top of a tower. There, the captured solar energy is converted into high-temperature heat, which is later transformed into electricity. Although tower CSP is becoming the dominant technology worldwide, plant performance still depends on extremely complex field operations, with thousands of heliostats, high-temperature receivers and storage systems that must work in perfect synchrony. This is why digitalization is essential to maximize efficiency, cut costs and accelerate deployment.

“With the rapid growth of new tower plants worldwide, Europe must close this digitalization gap now to maintain its leadership and bring costs below the targets set out in the EU’s Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan,” says Joerg Widmer, principal investigator of the project and Research Director at IMDEA Networks.

Widmer adds: “SUN-DT pushes tower concentrated solar power (CSP) technology into a fully digital era. By combining AI-based calibration, predictive maintenance and real-time optimization, we enable plants to operate more efficiently and reliably than ever before. This project strengthens Europe’s technological leadership in renewable energy.”

IMDEA Networks’ role

IMDEA Networks leads the development of the 5G wireless communication layer that will enable the characterization and calibration of heliostats. Its contribution is key to making this tool viable at scale: it provides reliable, high-capacity links across the entire solar field, ensures robust data collection and enables real-time feedback loops.

“We bring deep expertise in wireless sensing and network architecture, as well as testbed-grade infrastructure —such as the NEXTONIC laboratory— which allows us to prototype and validate communication components under realistic conditions,” Widmer explains.

Digital tools

The project will develop four interoperable digital tools —HELIOSTATACC, SUN-DTWIN, D-OPT and PREDOM— that will measurably improve the performance of tower CSP plants. These technologies automate solar-field calibration, generate a digital twin for real-time decision-making, optimize energy dispatch (i.e., how energy is delivered to the grid at any given moment), and enable predictive maintenance.

The objective is to demonstrate:

• Higher solar-field efficiency and reduced optical losses.
• Lower operational and maintenance costs and reduced downtime through predictive maintenance.
• Improved energy dispatch optimization, enabling CSP to participate in grid ancillary services.
• More competitive renewable generation costs, aligned with the targets of the European SET Plan.

All these tools will be integrated into a unified SUN-DT platform, which will be tested and validated in two experimental facilities and two commercial CSP tower plants: Khi Solar One in South Africa and Cerro Dominador in Chile. These plants are operated by two consortium partners and global leaders in solar energy, COX and ACCIONA respectively, and represent different CSP tower configurations.

“For example, a heliostat calibration and characterization system will automatically detect any misalignment in real time and recommend corrective actions. Instead of scheduling full maintenance rounds, operators will adjust only the mirrors that truly require intervention. This directly improves optical efficiency and saves numerous hours of field work,” Widmer concludes.

 

New U,S, federal loan caps could disrupt the medical field, study finds

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute

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Boston, MA — Researchers from the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute have produced the first national estimate of how many medical students would be affected by new federal loan restrictions imposed by the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Their findings suggest the reforms are likely to place substantial financial barriers on aspiring physicians, potentially reducing workforce diversity and worsening existing physician shortages.

The study, “Federal Loans Among US Medical Students, 2008-2020,” was published on November 26 in JAMA.

With the U.S. leading the world in medical school costs, students increasingly depend on federal loans to finance their education. This new study cautions that the combination of rising tuition and OBBBA loan restrictions may force medical students toward private lenders with higher interest rates, discourage them from choosing lower-paid but essential specialties such as primary care, or deter them from entering medicine altogether, disproportionately impacting underrepresented students.

“The average cost of attending medical school has greatly increased in just over a decade,” said Tarun Ramesh, research fellow at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and lead author of the study. “Federal loan restrictions could leave many medical students, especially those from low-income backgrounds, without affordable options to complete their training.” 

Using national data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, the researchers analyzed federal loan usage, annual borrowing, and total debt among medical student—examining differences by characteristics such as age, sex, income, state of residence, and awareness of loan forgiveness programs. Key findings include:

• A 38% increase in the average annual cost of medical school attendance between 2008 and 2020.
• A sharp rise in the use of Graduate PLUS Loans—which allowed medical students to borrow up to their total cost of attendance but will be eliminated under the OBBBA—from 13% in 2008 to 47% in 2020.
• In 2020, 40% of medical students borrowed more than $50,000 in a single year, and 14% had lifetime federal debt exceeding $200,000—both thresholds that would be capped by the OBBBA.

Low-income and out-of-state students were most likely to exceed both annual and lifetime loan caps. “Graduate PLUS Loans have been a financial lifeline for nearly half of all medical students,” said Hao Yu, Harvard Medical School associate professor of population medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, and senior author of the study. “Eliminating this program will create substantial financial barriers for students and most likely reduce diversity in the physician workforce.”

The research team hopes that highlighting the likely real-world impact of the OBBBA’s restrictions on lower-interest federal student loans will prompt policymakers and medical schools to consider the new law’s implications for medical education and physician workforce diversity. They urge exploration of targeted solutions such as loan forgiveness or tuition reduction programs to offset the barriers the new federal restrictions may create.

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About the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute’s Department of Population Medicine
The Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute's Department of Population Medicine is a unique collaboration between Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Harvard Medical School. Created in 1992, it is the first appointing medical school department in the United States based in a health plan. The Institute focuses on improving health care delivery and population health through innovative research and education, in partnership with health plans, delivery systems, and public health agencies. Follow us on Bluesky, X, and LinkedIn.

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Journal

JAMA

Article Title

Federal Loans Among US Medical Students, 2008-2020

Article Publication Date

26-Nov-2025

Disrupted federal funding for extramural

 cancer research

JAMA Oncology

About The Study: The monetary consequences of National Cancer Institute recissions is substantial despite the limited relevance of cancer research to ideological controversies. Disrupted grants affected most states and many public and private institutions. Many grant terminations affected research trainees and junior faculty, suggesting that these terminations not only interrupted the continuity of research studies, but also jeopardized career trajectories of early-stage investigators, with potential downstream consequences on the research workforce and innovation pipeline. 

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, David Hsiehchen, MD, email david.hsieh@utsouthwestern.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2025.4985)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/10.1001/jamaoncol.2025.4985?guestAccessKey=8e0ca9d5-0f67-4a24-9a97-c26dd8757378&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112625

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Journal

JAMA Oncology

Strategies to keep drug discovery research alive in the US despite funding cuts from biomedical researchers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Cell Press

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Overcoming the political constraints on academic and biopharma drug discovery needs.

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Credit: Ekins & Slusher, Current Biology

In the face of US federal funding cuts, biomedical researchers propose strategies for continued progress in drug discovery. Publishing November 26 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, their recommendations include harnessing AI and computational analyses in early-stage research, diversifying funding sources, pursuing earlier licensing and commercialization, and fostering international collaborations. 

“Scientific innovation in the US is in jeopardy,” says author Barbara Slusher of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Drug Discovery. “These are some steps we could take to ensure continued scientific progress despite this challenging climate.” 

It takes twelve years on average for a new drug to go from discovery to commercialization. In the US, the early stages of this process are usually carried out by small biotechnology companies and academic research labs that are largely funded by government agencies such as the NIH and NSF. If these small research groups are unable to continue to conduct research, large pharmaceutical companies—which typically only become involved once products have passed a certain stage of testing—will have to look elsewhere to fill their pipelines. 

“The concern is that if pharma is not finding innovative, license-ready programs emerging from US small companies and academic labs, they may increasingly look to other countries—such as China—where substantial investment in science and technology is generating a growing pipeline of assets,” says Slusher. 

To allow small US companies and academic labs to remain competitive in healthcare innovation, the authors say that researchers should embrace approaches such as AI and computational analyses to cut down on laboratory costs.  

“When traditional funding is scarce, computational approaches and AI offer a cost-effective way to accelerate discovery and reduce experimental overhead before expensive laboratory work is undertaken,” says author Sean Ekins, CEO and cofounder of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals. 

The authors also say that small companies and academic labs will need to find ways to diversify their funding sources by pursuing grants from philanthropic foundations, pharmaceutical companies, global charities, and even crowdfunding. Labs that produce their own software or specialized technologies could also sell these products to help fund their ongoing research, they say. 

“What I’ve learned over the last nine months is that we shouldn’t be reliant on a sole source for our research income,” says Slusher. “I think it’s an important lesson for all scientists to think about diversifying the way they are bringing in resources to fund their laboratories.” 

The funding cuts might also mean that small research groups will need to license and commercialize products sooner than they otherwise would, the authors say. They noted that earlier licensing could mean that these small companies make less profit in the long term. 

Another strategy to keep small companies resilient is to engage in large collaborations, including international and public-private partnerships, the authors say. They point to the fact that these types of collaborations are the norm in Europe, where they allow small research groups to expand their capabilities by sharing infrastructure and access to data and patient groups.  

“This also ties into our diversification of funding. Having collaborations means that I don’t have to bring in 100% of the funding to move a project forward,” says Slusher.  

Finding a way to keep healthcare innovation alive in the US is essential for the country’s public health, the researchers say. It’s also essential for the researchers themselves.  

“We worry about the impact of these cuts on the next generation of scientists,” says Ekins. “Careers are made or broken with funding, and if the funding isn’t here, scientific talent is going to go elsewhere.” 

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Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Ekins & Slusher, “Resilient pathways for drug discovery in challenging times” https://www.cell.com/trends/pharmacological-sciences/fulltext/S0165-6147(25)00230-5 

Trends in Pharmacological Sciences (@TrendsinPharma), published by Cell Press, is a monthly review journal that contains succinct articles on the most exciting recent developments in pharmacology and toxicology research. Topics covered in the journal range from molecular to behavioral pharmacology, and from current techniques to theoretical pharmacology. Visit: http://www.cell.com/trends/pharmacological-sciences. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com. 

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Journal

Trends in Pharmacological Sciences

DOI

10.1016/j.tips.2025.10.006 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Resilient pathways for drug discovery in challenging times

Article Publication Date

26-Nov-2025