Robert Webster

Vanderbilt University’s Office of the Provost has recognized three engineering faculty proposals with Discovery Grants, one of Vanderbilt’s primary means of investing in advancing the discovery of knowledge in its core disciplines and strengthening the university’s scholarly profile. A total of 13 faculty proposals have… Read More

Imagine plopping six cups of coffee grounds on the heads of patients just before they are wheeled into the operating room to have nose or throat surgery? In essence, that is what a team of Vanderbilt University engineers are proposing in an effort to improve the reliability of… Read More

A surgical robot with a tiny mechanical wrist developed by team of engineers and doctors at Vanderbilt University’s Medical Engineering and Discovery Laboratory was named in June by the Wall Street Journal as one of six new medical technologies worth watching. Read More

Three engineering professors have been named to the 2016 class of Chancellor Faculty Fellows. The class comprises 14 highly accomplished, recently tenured faculty from the humanities, social sciences, life and physical sciences, and clinical sciences, as well as business, education and engineering. “This class of fellows represents… Read More

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… Read More

A Vanderbilt engineering professor is a lead or co-inventor of six of the 10 “cool inventions” in 2014 highlighted by the university’s Center for Technology Transfer and Commercialization in this video. The CTTC selected 10 from last year’s 200 inventions… Read More

Top, L-R: Koutsoukos, LeBoeuf Bottom, L-R: Luo, Webster The School of Engineering recognized faculty and staff members for their exemplary research, teaching, and professional service during the 2013-2014 academic year. At the final faculty meeting of the year Dean Philippe Fauchet announced faculty promotions, recognized emeritus professors, and… Read More

By David F. Salisbury In the foreseeable future, robots will stick steerable needles in your brain to remove blood clots, and capsule robots will crawl up your colon to reduce the pain of colonoscopies. “Bionic” prosthetic devices will help amputees regain lost mobility, and humanoid robots will help therapists give… Read More

Professor Robert Webster and his team have developed a new image-guided surgical system that uses steerable needles to essentially suck out clots. Watch a video demo of the system in action and read the full story. Read More

Four Vanderbilt School of Engineering faculty members have been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create new tools, including a web-based modeling and simulation infrastructure, intended to help speed up the development of miniature medical capsule robots. The four-year project – Cyber-Physical Systems: Integrated Modeling,… Read More