News

Michael Miga (John Russell / Vanderbilt) The liver is a particularly squishy, slippery organ, prone to shifting both deadly tumors and life-preserving blood vessels by inches between the time they’re discovered on a CT scan and when the patient is lying on an operating room table. Surgeons can swab the exposed liver lightly… Read More

When Nick Belsten first eyed the pile of scrap metal tubing, he saw wind chimes. Castoffs from fences installations, the galvanized pipe pieces held too much potential to be ignored. Belsten packed as much as he could around furniture and other household goods headed to his family’s home in Florida. Read More

When the Nashville Public Art Program commissioned a series of artistic bicycle racks, city officials did not expect vandals to remove one and stick it up in a tree. Outright theft was another problem. Maintenance presented still others. When a rack needs attention, workers have had to break up concrete… Read More

A grant from cancer research nonprofit Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation is allowing a Vanderbilt chemical engineering doctoral student to advance his research on a potential vaccine against pediatric neuroblastoma. Kyle Garland is spending his summer on a project titled Immunotherapeutic Targeting of the STING Pathway to Combat Neuroblastoma. He’s working… Read More

The ICU is no place to get good rest, as anyone who has worked, visited or stayed in one knows. Alarms designed to alert clinicians disrupt patient sleep, adding to their stress and disorientation. The alarms are shrill, frequent and often false. What if an in-ear device could block a… Read More

William Frances Flanagan, who taught at Vanderbilt University for more than 30 years and was renowned for his research on the causes of stress corrosion cracking in alloys and metals, died June 15 in Maryland. He was 90. Bill Flanagan (Walden S. Fabry/1975) “Bill” Flanagan was recruited from General… Read More

Johnny Hall Dunlap, a Vanderbilt University alumnus and professor emeritus of mechanical engineering known for his devotion to students, died June 17 in Nashville. He was 85. Dunlap earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Vanderbilt in 1953, graduating magna cum laude. He was offered a teaching position in 1955… Read More

Building transient electronics is usually about doing something to make them stop working: blast them with light, soak them with acid, dunk them in water. Professor Leon Bellan’s idea is to dissolve them with neglect: Stop applying heat, and they come apart. Using silver nanowires embedded in a polymer that… Read More

Vanderbilt University’s Office of the Provost has recognized three engineering faculty proposals with Discovery Grants, one of Vanderbilt’s primary means of investing in advancing the discovery of knowledge in its core disciplines and strengthening the university’s scholarly profile. A total of 13 faculty proposals have… Read More

Imagine plopping six cups of coffee grounds on the heads of patients just before they are wheeled into the operating room to have nose or throat surgery? In essence, that is what a team of Vanderbilt University engineers are proposing in an effort to improve the reliability of… Read More