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November, 2012

Engineer uses Vanderbilt bionic leg to climb Chicago skyscraper

Nov. 7, 2012—A 31-year old software engineer climbed 103 flights of stairs to the top of Chicago’s Willis Tower Sunday, Nov. 4, wearing a prosthetic leg designed by Vanderbilt University engineering professor Michael Goldfarb and adapted by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago to become the world’s first neural-controlled bionic leg. The climb – SkyRise Chicago – is...

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Professor Douglas Fisher: Warming up to MOOCs

Nov. 6, 2012—[This guest post by Douglas H. Fisher, an associate professor of computer science and of computer engineering, also appeared today in The Chronicle of Higher Education] In Fall 2011, Stanford announced three, free massively open online courses, or MOOCs. Two of these courses, database and machine learning, corresponded to spring 2012 courses that I would...

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Task force aims to better integrate engineering school into local entrepreneurial community

Nov. 6, 2012—A newly formed Technology Entrepreneurship Task Force in the Vanderbilt School of Engineering aims to connect tech-savvy undergraduates who have entrepreneurial ambitions to local companies and business leaders to better integrate the school into the Nashville community and to help stimulate private-sector innovation and growth in the Middle Tennessee region. Created by Dean Philippe Fauchet...

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Students to present engineering management project at U.K. global health care conference

Nov. 5, 2012—Two chemical and biomolecular engineering seniors, Doug Woodcock and Brett Taylor, are flying to England this month to attend an international health care conference and present the results of an engineering management project they completed last spring. Their project was to analyze the positive impact of a new method for screening for drug resistant staph...

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Giorgio named distinguished alumnus by Rice University bioengineering department

Nov. 2, 2012—Todd D. Giorgio has been named a 2012 Distinguished Bioengineering Alumnus by the department of bioengineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Giorgio earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from Rice in 1986. The department’s alumni awards honor excellence in research, teaching, service or significant contributions to academia, society or the bioengineering industry. Giorgio was...

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