TIPs

Army Futures Command backs development of soft exoskeleton for soldiers Army Futures Command recently awarded Vanderbilt University its inaugural Pathfinder Project, a one-year, $1.2 million investment from the Army Research Laboratory and the Civil-Military Innovation Institute Inc. to support collaborations between researchers and creative soldiers to rapidly innovate high-impact,… Read More

By Jenna Somers During battle, many soldiers who become wounded find themselves at the mercy of another soldier’s medical training, hoping beyond hope that the soldier administering aid will remember their training well enough to save the wounded soldier’s life. Under such duress, recalling the details of medical training… Read More

Sanchez, Valentine awarded VU Discovery Grants A new innovation incubator will amplify existing collaborations among researchers and soldiers, building on Vanderbilt’s partnership agreement with Army Futures Command. The project, Soldier-Inspired Innovation Incubator for Discovering Research-Based Solutions, is one of six cross-disciplinary programs to be funded by Vanderbilt’s Trans-Institutional Programs (TIPs)… Read More

A group of interdisciplinary researchers from across Vanderbilt University are leading a new effort to recast computers as integral knowledge partners across a range of subject areas, not simply as monolithic tools reserved for high-level programmers. Corey Brady (John Russell/Vanderbilt) The Computational Thinking and Learning Initiative, one of five new… Read More

A new working group will evaluate Vanderbilt’s digital project resources and services and make recommendations aimed at supporting the university’s current and future needs, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Susan R. Wente announced Aug. 5. Digital services and project support enable the creation of a range of tools… Read More

Engineering faculty members will play key roles in two new university-wide interdisciplinary initiatives as well as help develop a Vanderbilt University institute of data science. The efforts are among the newest round of grants made through the $50 million Trans-Institutional Programs initiative, now in its fourth year. In all,… Read More

Written by Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Caglar Oskay & Post-Doctoral Research Scholar Alessandro Fascetti. This article was originally posted on the VUBreakThru blog. A 2016 Trans-Institutional Program (TIPs) award, the Vanderbilt Initiative for Intelligent Resilient Infrastructure Systems (IRIS) continues to make progress. The development of the… Read More

A new Vanderbilt center that includes the dean of the School of Engineering aims to create a model pipeline to assist adults on the autism spectrum find meaningful and gainful employment while enhancing local business innovation. The Center for Autism & Innovation (VCAI) brings together academic researchers,… Read More

Build and use microscope systems that do not exist commercially to unlock deeper insights in biomedicine. Design and develop a space-based platform to study Earth’s evolving ecology from an elevated vantage point. Create a research hub for development and testing of durable, sustainable infrastructure materials. All big ideas with widespread… Read More

Professor Akos Ledeczi and Ph.D. student Brian Broll work with their NetsBlox intuitive visual programming platform. (Vanderbilt University) Vanderbilt University Professor of Computer Engineering Akos Ledeczi doesn’t want everyone to become a programmer. But understanding how computers think, interact, and do what we want them to do – those are 21st century skills, he said. In NetsBlox, a visual programming environment, Ledeczi and an interdisciplinary team are developing a teaching tool that introduces the basics and a high-level view of distributed computing. The team has worked with students as young as middle schoolers and has several upcoming camps and workshops with young learners as well as high school students. NetsBlox is built on top of Snap!, an environment created at the University of California at Berkeley. Snap! is based on Scratch, the best-known programming tool for kids from the MIT Media Lab. Young students use Scratch to create basic Pong-like games, animations or virtual stories. Snap!, a visual drag-and-drop programming language, picks up where Scratch leaves off, making it an appropriate introduction to computer science for high school and college students. Public data sets expand possibilities NetsBlox adds message passing, a way computers communicate with each other; access to a set of online data sources in the public domain – maps, weather, movies, trivia, and earthquakes are a few; and introduces distributed programming. The goal is to make writing a distributed computer program much like solving a simple puzzle. With NetsBlox, for example, an average high school student can create a simple multiplayer game, run it on her phone and play against a friend over the internet after just a few weeks of instruction. The popularity of massively multiplayer online role-playing games made this approach a “no-brainer,” Ledeczi said. The jump to distributed programming and the computational thinking behind it is significant. A distributed program is actually multiple programs running on different computers communicating and synchronizing with each other. Think of the difference between going out to dinner alone or organizing a wedding reception, including picking the date and time, confirming the most important guests can make it, sending invitations, organizing transportation, reserving the place, ordering catering and booking a band. Distributed programming can be far more complex than simple two-person games, but a game introduces the concepts and forces students to program information to send somewhere else plus consider delays and response times. With the data sets, students can create movie quiz games and trivia contests to play with each other. Data on earthquakes, air pollution, astronomy, and weather can be the foundation for a school science project. Read More