Research

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

Karl Zelik, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has received top awards from the International Society of Biomechanics and the American Society of Biomechanics for early career research. Both awards recognize Zelik’s body of work on improving and unifying the understanding of human locomotion, and translating this understanding to advances… Read More

The first drug to treat calcification of heart valves may be one originally designed for rheumatoid arthritis. Today in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, Vanderbilt University researchers published findings that the drug – a monoclonal antibody known as SYN0012 – shows promise in keeping heart valve leaflets… Read More

In a world with more frequent extreme weather events, basing new bridges on historical weather data and previous structure wear no longer works. Take South Carolina, said Hiba Baroud, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. Four tropical storms plus Hurricane Matthew pounded the coastal state in 2016 alone, the latter… Read More

WIPER will be the first use of ballistic shockwave detection in anti-poaching efforts. The sensors will be integrated into GPS-enabled collars, as shown on the large tusker above. (Photo by Save the Elephants) Anti-poaching authorities will soon have a powerful new weapon in their arsenal – high-tech ballistic shockwave sensors… Read More

Team led by Vanderbilt researchers develops new, quicker method to measure energy transfer between assistive devices and people wearing them That robotic exoskeletons can improve mobility of people with disabilities and enhance human performance is widely understood. The same has not yet been true for how to best measure and… Read More

A commonly used brain scanning technique can map electrical activity under the skull as precisely as more invasive methods that rely on probes or electrodes, according to a research team led by John Gore, director of the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science and professor of biomedical engineering. The study… Read More

Professor Akos Ledeczi and Ph.D. student Brian Broll work with their NetsBlox intuitive visual programming platform. (Vanderbilt University) Vanderbilt University Professor of Computer Engineering Akos Ledeczi doesn’t want everyone to become a programmer. But understanding how computers think, interact, and do what we want them to do – those are 21st century skills, he said. In NetsBlox, a visual programming environment, Ledeczi and an interdisciplinary team are developing a teaching tool that introduces the basics and a high-level view of distributed computing. The team has worked with students as young as middle schoolers and has several upcoming camps and workshops with young learners as well as high school students. NetsBlox is built on top of Snap!, an environment created at the University of California at Berkeley. Snap! is based on Scratch, the best-known programming tool for kids from the MIT Media Lab. Young students use Scratch to create basic Pong-like games, animations or virtual stories. Snap!, a visual drag-and-drop programming language, picks up where Scratch leaves off, making it an appropriate introduction to computer science for high school and college students. Public data sets expand possibilities NetsBlox adds message passing, a way computers communicate with each other; access to a set of online data sources in the public domain – maps, weather, movies, trivia, and earthquakes are a few; and introduces distributed programming. The goal is to make writing a distributed computer program much like solving a simple puzzle. With NetsBlox, for example, an average high school student can create a simple multiplayer game, run it on her phone and play against a friend over the internet after just a few weeks of instruction. The popularity of massively multiplayer online role-playing games made this approach a “no-brainer,” Ledeczi said. The jump to distributed programming and the computational thinking behind it is significant. A distributed program is actually multiple programs running on different computers communicating and synchronizing with each other. Think of the difference between going out to dinner alone or organizing a wedding reception, including picking the date and time, confirming the most important guests can make it, sending invitations, organizing transportation, reserving the place, ordering catering and booking a band. Distributed programming can be far more complex than simple two-person games, but a game introduces the concepts and forces students to program information to send somewhere else plus consider delays and response times. With the data sets, students can create movie quiz games and trivia contests to play with each other. Data on earthquakes, air pollution, astronomy, and weather can be the foundation for a school science project. Read More

Three of seven scholars in the first cohort of Vanderbilt’s Academic Pathways Fellows will be working with School of Engineering faculty members. The postdoctoral program addresses the acute need for greater diversity in the professoriate by offering a specialized experience for new Ph.Ds from underrepresented backgrounds. They will receive enhanced… Read More