February, 2020
Two new endowed chair recipients in engineering honored at celebration
Feb. 28, 2020—Two engineering faculty members named to endowed chairs were honored for their academic achievements during a celebration Tuesday, Feb. 25, at the Student Life Center. They were among nine Vanderbilt faculty members who are recipients of chairs. The engineering professors are: Craig Duvall, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Engineering Nilanjan Sarkar, David K. Wilson Chair in...
Bangladesh collaboration includes VUSE faculty, looks at lessons for rapid environmental change
Feb. 25, 2020—With a population of roughly 150 million people, the delta country of Bangladesh holds about half the population of the entire United States in an area the size of Louisiana, and exists under a near-constant risk of sea level rise and other dynamic climate changes. Now, as the world faces a future chock-full of increasing...
Team demos breakthrough in analog image processing, Nature reports
Feb. 24, 2020—A research team of Vanderbilt engineers that includes a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has demonstrated a new ultrathin filter, based on metamaterials, that allows for analog optical image processing. Their work, Flat Optics for Image Differentiation, appears today in the scientific journal, Nature Photonics. While digital image processing has become the prevailing technique...
Caldwell is 2020 Materials Research Society Fellow
Feb. 21, 2020—Vanderbilt professor Joshua D. Caldwell has been selected as a 2020 Materials Research Society Fellow. The MRS Fellows will be recognized at the society’s spring meeting in Phoenix in April. The fellowship recognizes Caldwell for pioneering contributions to the understanding and utilization of polar semiconductors for power electronics and infrared nanophotonics, and for his volunteerism...
Rafat receives Young Investigator Grant from Breast Cancer Alliance
Feb. 19, 2020—Recent research links post-radiation inflammation to TNBC patient outcomes Marjan Rafat, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been awarded a Young Investigator Grant by the Breast Cancer Alliance. The two-year, $125,000 award will allow Rafat and her research group to investigate how radiation influences tumor and immune cell recruitment in triple negative breast...
Vanderbilt engineers mine EMRs and clinical journals for novel disease associations and new research paths
Feb. 18, 2020—The idea of simultaneously analyzing medical diagnosis codes with electronic medical records has been much like knowing valuable treasure is buried under miles of rock but lacking the tools to mine it. The payoff—connections that may detect disease earlier and identify new research paths—has tantalized engineers and clinicians alike, remaining largely out of reach. But...
Engineering professor wins Sloan Research Fellowship award
Feb. 17, 2020—Kelsey Hatzell, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship, an honor given annually to the brightest researchers early in their careers. She is among 126 recipients across the United States and Canada who were announced Feb. 12 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Winners receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship, which...
Federal support crucial to engineering research, Fauchet tells U.S. Congressional staffs
Feb. 14, 2020—United States competitiveness, workforce development and university partnerships were topics of interest for Philippe Fauchet, Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Dean of Engineering, and members and staff of the Tennessee congressional delegation earlier this month in Washington, D.C. Fauchet also emphasized the crucial need for continued across-the-board federal support for engineering education and research – in...