The Vanderbilt University School of Engineering announces the appointment of three new faculty members to its full-time teaching staff. They are William Grissom, Matthew Walker and Pietro Valdastri.
Assistant professor of biomedical engineering William Grissom’s research interests include applications of signal processing and numerical optimization in magnetic resonance imaging, with a particular focus on interventional and high field MRI. Grissom joins Vanderbilt from General Electric Global Research in Munich, Germany, where he was a research engineer in the Imaging Technologies group. He completed a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering in 2008 at the University of Michigan.
Assistant professor of mechanical engineering Pietro Valdastri specializes in surgical robotics research, particularly in developing wireless capsule robots for gastrointestinal endoscopy, single-incision robotic surgery technology and magnetically linked surgical robots. Valdastri joins Vanderbilt from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy, where he was an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. He received a Ph.D. from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in 2006.
Associate professor of the practice of biomedical engineering Matthew Walker III joins Vanderbilt from Merck. His research focuses on photo-acoustic and nanoparticle delivery. Currently, he is developing an innovative BME design curriculum which leverages connections between Vanderbilt BME, the medical school and the biotechnology community. He received a Ph.D. in molecular physiology and biophysics in 1999 from Tulane University, and served as a post doctoral fellow in biomedical engineering in 2003 at Harvard-MIT.