July, 2015
Marty Nord, former professor and faculty adviser, dies
Jul. 30, 2015—Marty Nord Martha Andrews “Marty” Nord, a longtime communications professor at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management and former director of the Vanderbilt Women in Engineering Program, died July 28 in Nashville. She was 73. Nord joined the management school’s faculty in 1978 after receiving her Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt. At Owen, she taught...
Valdastri and team want to put tiny robots into science classrooms
Jul. 27, 2015— Pietro Valdastri’s STORM lab is a cacophony of whirring motors and adolescent chatter, packed with Adventure Science Center summer campers and Vanderbilt University researchers. In a corner is a pair of high school math and science teachers learning how to make discoveries by the engineers understandable to the kids. “In engineering, you come up...
Experts address promises and problems of 3D printing large structures
Jul. 24, 2015—(iStock) Every month or so an article comes out reporting that some new object has been made using 3D printing: Everything from jewelry to prosthetic devices to electronic circuit boards to assault rifles to automobiles has now been created in this fashion. The prospect that this revolutionary manufacturing method will have a major impact on...
Tiny mechanical wrist gives new dexterity to needlescopic surgery
Jul. 23, 2015—With the flick of a tiny mechanical wrist, a team of engineers and doctors at Vanderbilt University’s Medical Engineering and Discovery Laboratory hope to give needlescopic surgery a whole new degree of dexterity. Needlescopic surgery, which uses surgical instruments shrunk to the diameter of a sewing needle, is the ultimate form of minimally invasive surgery....
Electric Power Research Institute wraps up fourth annual workshop at Vanderbilt
Jul. 22, 2015—Thirty government, academic and industry experts in nuclear fuel cycle technology just wrapped up the fourth annual EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) Nuclear Fuel Cycle Assessment Workshop, held Tuesday and Wednesday at Vanderbilt University. The event focused on decision-making about nuclear reactors based on design, cost and other factors. School of Engineering faculty, staff and...
The end for Moore’s Law? Not really, electrical engineering prof says
Jul. 20, 2015—Recent headlines trumpeted the end of Moore’s Law, a 50-year-old prediction that transistors per square inch on integrated circuits would double every two years into the foreseeable future. And yes, that pattern of exponentially growing computer power has lagged a bit – noticeably, with Intel’s six-month delay last year in releasing 14-nanometer Broadwell chips. Now, the...
9 engineering student-athletes on Spring SEC Academic Honor Roll
Jul. 16, 2015—Nine engineering student-athletes were named to the 2015 Spring SEC Academic Honor Roll. A total of 89 Commodores were named to the list. The 2015 Spring SEC Academic Honor Roll is based on grades from the 2014 summer, 2014 fall and 2015 spring terms. Any student-athlete who participates in a Southeastern Conference championship sport or...
Zelik, team discover hip, foot muscles more important to walking than previously thought
Jul. 9, 2015—In his effort to develop better prosthetic limbs, Karl Zelik had to start with deciphering more clearly how muscles function in walking. His path not only led to a better way of quantifying human locomotion, but also to the discovery that muscles around the hip and in the foot are more important to walking than...