Brenda Ellis

Biomedical engineering nets more than any BME department in the country with 10 Sixteen engineering graduate students have been awarded a highly competitive government-funded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Three engineering undergraduate students also received NSF fellowships. NSF Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 allowance for tuition and fees... Read More

Justus C. Ndukaife, assistant professor of electrical engineering, has received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for foundational research in cell-to-cell communication. His CAREER project, “Resonant Dielectric Optical Metasurfaces for Single-Cell Extracellular Vesicles Analysis,” will enable Ndukaife to associate the properties of extracellular vesicles directly to their cell sources—up to the resolution of single cells—a capability that... Read More

Ahmad F. Tata, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, has received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for fundamental research in new approaches to network sensors and controllers scheduling. His CAREER project, “Scheduling Driving Sensing and Control Nodes in Nonlinear Networks with Applications to Fuel-Free Energy Systems,” offers a novel framework for the exploration of... Read More

David Braun, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for foundational research in mechanically adaptive robotics. His CAREER project, “Mechanically Adaptive, Energetically Passive Robotics,” will enable the creation of new-generation industrial robots, transportation systems, and devices that can assist and augment humans. The five-year, $600,000 grant will support work on robot... Read More

By Marissa Shapiro THE IDEA The human brain is organized in functional networks—connected brain regions that communicate with each other through dedicated pathways. That is how we perceive our senses, how the body moves, how we are able to remember the past and plan for the future. The “default mode” network is the part of... Read More

By Marissa Shapiro THE IDEA The human brain is organized in functional networks—connected brain regions that communicate with each other through dedicated pathways. That is how we perceive our senses, how the body moves, how we are able to remember the past and plan for the future. The “default mode” network is the part of... Read More

Karl Zelik, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is one of three inaugural awardees for the February 2022 cycle of the Scaling Success Grant, which is the first cycle of this internal funding opportunity. Yuankai Huo, assistant professor of computer science and computer engineering, is co-PI on a SSG grant. Read More

Biomedical engineering prof says study raises the prospect of a new application of diagnostic optical biopsy by Paul Govern In a new study from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 10-second videos of white blood cell motion in the skin’s microvasculature greatly improved the prediction of which stem cell and bone marrow transplant patients would have a relapse... Read More

To shoot a basketball with precision requires countless hours of practice. Usually, this happens under the watchful eye of a coach, who can provide guidance on the right mechanics of each shot. Now, though, thanks to new research from Vanderbilt University, players may soon be able to use artificial intelligence technology to work on those... Read More

Mikail Rubinov, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, computer science, psychiatry and psychology, has been awarded a four-year, $1.1 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to better understand the development and organization of brain networks, as well as their change in development and aging. Rubinov and his collaborators will link aspects of gene expression and... Read More

John Wikswo, founder and director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education and Gordon A. Cain University Professor, is the principal investigator of a $1 million award from the National Science Foundation. The object is to build a pathbreaking “robot scientist”—a fully automated microfluidic system for parallel, independent, long-duration, machine-guided experiments. The... Read More

John Wikswo, founder and director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education and Gordon A. Cain University Professor, is the principal investigator of a $1 million award from the National Science Foundation. The object is to build a pathbreaking “robot scientist”—a fully automated microfluidic system for parallel, independent, long-duration, machine-guided experiments. The... Read More

Joshua Caldwell, Flowers Family Chancellor’s Faculty Fellow in Engineering and associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Joseph Matson, a graduate student in Caldwell’s lab, have contributed to an international study that has discovered a new type of light-matter coupling. The work has long-term implications for how optical components can be even further miniaturized, a discovery... Read More

Vanderbilt team to focus on engineering, testing the device by Matt Batcheldor Vanderbilt University Medical Center will share in an $8.7 million federal grant to create an artificial lung system that patients with incurable lung disease can use at home. The Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) grant will fund research to create... Read More

Vanderbilt researchers Sokrates Pantelides and Joshua Caldwell are part of an international collaboration that has demonstrated a new way to manipulate and measure subtle atomic vibrations in nanomaterials. This breakthrough could make it possible to develop customized functionalities to improve on and build new technologies. Sokrates Pantelides (Vanderbilt University) Joshua Caldwell (Vanderbilt University) Electron beams... Read More

by Paul Govern Information based biomedical discovery, in particular the push toward precision medicine, depends on open-ended analysis of de-identified data from patients and research participants on the largest possible scale. Sharing data while controlling the risk of data reidentification under privacy attack is vital to the enterprise. Zhiyu Wan Game theory indicates that only... Read More

Kolouri wins $1M DARPA grant to investigate AI cooperative lifelong learning A Vanderbilt engineering professor is leading part of an international initiative to create advanced artificial intelligence programs that will enable machines to learn progressively over a lifetime and share those experiences with each other. Researchers hope the technology will allow machines to reuse information,... Read More

A paper by Vanderbilt engineers that explores the scope to scale up the sizes of atomically thin membranes and their potential use in applications relating to energy, microscopy, and electronics is published in the journal Science. Authors Piran R. Kidambi, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, Pavan Chaturvedi, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of... Read More

A study led by researchers from Vanderbilt University’s Center for Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology reveals a breakthrough tool to assess the effect of exoskeletons on injury risk. The tool, called Exo-LiFFT, is an interactive calculator that will help companies looking for ways to overcome workforces struggling with musculoskeletal injuries, missed work, and accelerated retirement... Read More

Center aims to advance the understanding of physical mechanisms responsible for radiation-induced effects on emerging technologies The Institute for Space and Defense Electronics at Vanderbilt University has been selected as the Center of Excellence in Radiation Effects by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Air Force Research Lab. The $5 million, five-year program will be... Read More