April, 2012
EPA awards $90,000 to senior design team to further develop spinach powered solar cell
Apr. 24, 2012—Team also wins Marketplace Innovation Award and Student Choice Award Earth Day 2012 proved exceptionally green for a Vanderbilt University team of five engineering seniors who designed a biohybrid solar panel that substitutes a protein from spinach for expensive silicon wafers that are energy intensive to produce, and is capable of producing electricity. The team...
Gokhale to receive second Distinguished Professor award from Construction Industry Institute
Apr. 23, 2012—Sanjiv Gokhale, professor of civil engineering and director of graduate studies in construction management, has been selected again as a recipient of the Construction Industry Institute (CII) Distinguished Professor Award for 2012. Gokhale also received this award in 2009. The award honors faculty who incorporated published CII research findings in courses they taught during the...
Engineering, Peabody effort lands NASA STEM outreach award
Apr. 23, 2012—Rockets flew Sunday over Bragg Farms in Toney, Ala. during NASA’s annual University Student Launch Competition, and while the Aerospace Club won Best Payload Design Award for the third straight year, a first-time award has given Vanderbilt some additional bragging rights. A combined team from Vanderbilt Engineering’s Aerospace Club and Peabody’s Department of Teaching and...
Alum is 2012-2013 Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow
Apr. 23, 2012—The Materials Research Society (MRS) and The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) have selected Andrew Steigerwald as the 2012-2013 MRS/TMS Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow. Steigerwald earned a Ph.D. in 2010 in Interdisciplinary Materials Science and Engineering from Vanderbilt as an National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Fellow. Currently...
Engineering team demos spinach powered solar cell at EPA competition in D.C.
Apr. 20, 2012—Five Vanderbilt engineering seniors will be on the National Mall tomorrow through Monday demonstrating a solar panel that uses spinach to capture and convert the sun’s energy to electricity. The Vanderbilt team is one of 45 university and college teams from across the country competing in Phase II of the People, Prosperity and the Planet...
E-Council president receives Fulbright to teach in Brazil
Apr. 18, 2012—Senior engineering student Pauline Roteta has been selected for a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Brazil. Roteta will graduate in May with a major in civil engineering and a minor in Chinese. In August she will begin work at an asset management firm in New York. If she accepts the Fulbright assistantship, Roteta will teach...
Gardner receives service award from Duke’s Engineering Alumni Association
Apr. 17, 2012—Stacy Stansell Gardner, adjoint professor of the practice of biomedical engineering, has received the 2012 Distinguished Service Award from Duke University’s Engineering Alumni Association. She was honored April 14 at the Washington Duke Inn in Durham, N.C. Gardner is the the director of the Center for STEM Education for Girls at the Harpeth Hall School...
Emeritus professor Robert Weeks was a distinguished materials scientist
Apr. 16, 2012—Robert Andrew Weeks, research professor emeritus of materials science and mechanical engineering, died April 10, in Maryville, Tenn. He was 87. Weeks was a distinguished research scientist in the field of solid state physics as well as a notable glass scientist. At the end of a 33-year career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he joined...