Research

A surgical robot capable of performing an entire surgery without human intervention: That’s the goal of a landmark, multi-institution project being led by a Vanderbilt engineer that recently received an award up to $12 million in funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Robert Webster and his… Read More

Vanderbilt University was awarded $890,000 from the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development’s inaugural Transportation Network Growth Opportunity Mobility and Automotive Discovery Grants. The TNGO initiative connects statewide research assets, communities and talent designed to make Tennessee the top destination in the Southeast for automotive and mobility research and… Read More

The Vanderbilt Lab for Immersive AI Translation (VALIANT) is collaborating on research that is using machine learning and artificial intelligence to more accurately determine if a person has a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), or concussion. The research is being funded by a $1.4 million U.S. Department of Defense… Read More

When kidney stone surgery is performed using an endoscope, about a fourth of those patients will require a repeat surgery within 20 months due to residual stone fragments being left behind. These remaining pieces can lead to obstruction, pain, kidney injury and recurrent infections. Jie Ying Wu Gaining and assessing… Read More

  Xiaoguang Dong Xiaoguang Dong, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been awarded an R21 Trailblazer Award by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pursue a project about “Wirelessly Actuated Ciliary Stent for Minimally Invasive Treatment… Read More

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health has renewed a five-year grant through the NIH’s flagship T32 institutional training grant program. T32 grants provide funding to support students and postdoctoral trainees working in focused areas of research that advance the NIH… Read More

By Jill Clendening Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Irving Zamora, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Pediatric Surgery, and Aimal Khan, MD, assistant professor of Surgery, have received a grant to support the development and validation of an objective robotic skills assessment tool for surgical trainees. Zamora and Khan will… Read More

When civil engineering students met to choose their senior capstone design projects, they all wanted to work with The Village at Glencliff (TVG), a respite community of 12 tiny homes for some of Nashville’s most medically vulnerable homeless citizens that provides a safe place to recover after a hospitalization. Read More

A team of Vanderbilt researchers has developed a wirelessly activated device that mimics the wavelike muscular function in the esophagus and small intestine responsible for transporting food and viscous fluids for digestion. The soft-robotic prototype, which is driven by strong magnets controlled by a wearable external actuator,… Read More

Pamela Wisniewski, a Flowers Family Fellow in Engineering and associate professor of computer science has been appointed to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group beginning in August 2024. Pamela Wisniewski The group brings 40 of the brightest scientists and engineers together… Read More