Mechanical Engineering

Teams from Virginia, North Carolina and Winterthur, Switzerland, with roots in the world of auto racing have won the first Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, the $10 million competition aimed at advancing the technology for more fuel-efficient vehicles. One of the two Edison2 Very Light Car models, whose design took… Read More

The Vanderbilt University School of Engineering announces the appointment of four new faculty members to its full-time teaching staff. They are Melissa Skala, Jason Valentine, Nabil Simaan and Matthew Lang. Assistant professor of biomedical engineering Melissa Skala focuses her research on optical spectroscopy and nanotechnology for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Read More

Engineering faculty, students to benefit from solar research grant Five years from now, high school and college students throughout Tennessee should have more and better opportunities to learn about and pursue careers in alternative energy science and technology. That is one of the key objectives of a $20 million… Read More

Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering undergraduate program improved four positions to No. 36 in annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report. The 2011 annual rankings were released today. The School of Engineering tied with Lehigh University, University of California-Santa Barbara. MIT was ranked No. 1. “It is always gratifying to… Read More

Vanderbilt engineering alumnus Brad Jaeger, BE’07 is part of an elite group of nine vehicles from seven teams that will continue in their pursuit of a multimillion dollar prize for super fuel-efficient cars. Jaeger is the Director of Research and Development for the Virginia-based team called Edison2. The Progressive Insurance… Read More

Two Vanderbilt engineering assistant professors have received prestigious 2010 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awards. Jamey Young, chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Haoxiang Luo, mechanical engineering, each received awards totaling $400,000, issued for the next five years. Young’s grant – Metabolic Determinants of Programmed Cell Death… Read More

What do an astrophysicist studying how black holes merge, a chemist predicting the biological characteristics of novel proteins, a psychologist investigating decision-making and a mechanical engineer studying how nanotubes transport heat have in common? They all need tremendous amounts of computer power to conduct their research and they all will… Read More

John Leith Potter, internationally known as a pioneer in the aerodynamics of jet fighters, rockets and spacecraft, died July 20 in Homewood, Ala. He was 87. The chief designer of a unique, highly successful wind tunnel for studies of rarefied hypersonic flow, Potter was invited to give the review lecture… Read More

The Division of Sponsored Research received notification in June that the following grants in excess of $25,000 had been awarded to engineering faculty members: Theodore A. Bapty, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has received an award in the amount of $77,000 by the Department of Energy for “Lattice QCD SCIDAC: … Read More

Vanderbilt mechanical engineering students have designed a thermoelectric generator for aerospace applications that elicited strong accolades at the spring 2010 NASA-sponsored University Launch Initiative and won the Payload Design prize. It has no moving parts and can convert some of the waste exhaust heat into usable electrical power. Read More