Mechanical Engineering Category
MacArthur Fellow, Berkeley engineer to deliver March 17 Hall Lecture on robot learning and safety in avionics
Mar. 4, 2021—Claire Tomlin is a pioneer in hybrid control systems research, particularly aeronautical applications to address problems in aircraft flight control and collision avoidance. She has developed algorithms to help determine when unsafe conditions may arise as variables and interactions become increasingly complex. Her work includes issues of autonomous control of a team of unmanned aerial...
Photonics discovery portends dramatic efficiencies in silicon chips
Mar. 1, 2021—A team led by Vanderbilt engineers has achieved the ability to transmit two different types of optical signals across a single chip at the same time. The breakthrough heralds a potentially dramatic increase in the volume of data a silicon chip can transmit over any period of time. With this project, the research team moved...
Five engineering faculty recognized with innovative teaching awards
Feb. 26, 2021—The extraordinary, creative efforts of five engineering faculty members to adapt to their new teaching environments in Fall 2020 were recognized recently with a Teaching Innovation Award from Philippe Fauchet, Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Dean of Engineering. The honorees quickly converted their in-person classes to online formats due to the COVID-19 pandemic and made innovative,...
Collaboration propels advancements in personalized cochlear implant procedures
Feb. 26, 2021—Vanderbilt University Medical Center is the busiest cochlear implant center in the U.S., performing more than 300 implant surgeries each year. A key driver is close collaboration among engineers, surgeons, audiologists, speech scientists and other experts. This interdisciplinary, trans-institutional work has enabled a truly customized approach for each patient. Research teams have developed image-guided surgery for...
New $2 million NIH grant advances less invasive procedure for TLE
Feb. 16, 2021—A Vanderbilt research team has received a $2 million National Institutes of Health grant to further develop a needle-size robotic surgery system with real-time MRI guidance for drug resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Such a procedure has the potential to reduce or eliminate seizures using a minimally invasive approach over the current standard of care,...
Vanderbilt researchers’ surgical robots could make radical prostatectomy safer, less invasive
Feb. 10, 2021—Researchers at the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering have developed a minuscule robot that could revolutionize surgical procedures for treating prostate cancer, which affects one in nine men in the United States. Using a lifelike model, the team demonstrated that the surgical robot could not only remove the prostate gland and tissues through the...
Three teams with engineering faculty, students accepted to 2021 NSF I-Corps cohort
Feb. 5, 2021—Three Ideator teams with an engineering faculty member, an alumna and an undergraduate have been accepted to the Spring 2021 I-Corps cohort. The National Science Foundation Innovation Corps program supports deep technologies and fundamental discoveries in science and engineering that have high potential to impact society. Vanderbilt’s Ideator program, run through the Wondr’y, works with burgeoning inventors among faculty, students and staff from universities...
Trans-institutional collaboration receives $2 million BRAIN Initiative grant, developing brain organoids to map neurological development
Feb. 3, 2021—Vivian Gama, assistant professor of cell and developmental biology, and Leon Bellan, associate professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, have won a $2.3 million, three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative. Vivian Gama Leon Bellan (Vanderbilt University) The researchers will be developing three-dimensional brain organoids and...