Mechanical Engineering

Byron Smith was eager to increase the number of people who get screened for colorectal cancer each year. His dedication has led to a new venture – EndoInSight – and a National Science Foundation Innovation Corps Program grant to commercialize a tool for an almost painless colonoscopy. Read More

In the foreseeable future, robots will be sticking steerable needles in your brain to remove blood clots; capsule robots will be crawling up your colon as a painless replacement for the colonoscopy; and ultra-miniaturized snake robots will remove tumors from your bladder and other body cavities. Read More

Meghan Bowler, Erica Curtis, Melanie Gault, Samantha Saratt and Chelsea Stowell, biomedical engineering; Kirsten Heikkinen and Richard Hendrick, mechanical engineering; and Thushara Gunda, civil and environmental engineering, have received graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation. Read More

The Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research was presented to John Gore by Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos during the Fall Faculty Assembly Sept. 22. Deyu Li, associate professor of mechanical engineering, was one of five faculty members receiving a Chancellor’s Award for Research, which also recognizes excellence in research, scholarship, or creative expression. Read More

Seven current engineering graduate students have received graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers reprogrammed a humanoid robot and an XBox Kinect to help autistic children improve their abilities to engage in social interactions. Nilanjan Sarkar, professor of mechanical and computer engineering, is quoted. Read More

More efficient catalytic converters on autos, improved batteries and more sensitive gas sensors are some of the potential benefits of a new system that can directly measure the manner in which nanocrystals adsorb and release hydrogen and other gases. Read More

These stories from the past year show how Vanderbilt is making an impact, on campus and in the world. Read More

For the fourth year in a row, the Best Payload Design award went to the Vanderbilt Aerospace Club in the 12th annual NASA University Student Launch Initiative Sunday, April 21, in a field at Bragg Farms in Toney, Ala. This is the sixth year the club has entered the national rocketry competition. Read More

Within the next one to three years, "bionic" prosthetic devices will become available for the people whose limbs were amputated in the Boston Marathon bombing that are substantially smarter, more capable, more active and more interactive than those currently on the market. Read More

A novel redesign of industrial exhaust stacks that could result in 12% energy savings has earned a Vanderbilt student design team a second-place win in the team division at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Region II conference last week. Read More

A Vanderbilt engineering graduate student has created a small-scale, efficient way to produce high-energy density plasma--the state of matter found in the center of stars and gas giants like Jupiter--with a tabletop device. Read More

Theodore Malik Russell has received early acceptance notice to take part in the 2013 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md. Read More

Cary Pint’s lab – Nanomaterials and Energy Devices Laboratory in Olin Hall – is close to completion and it brings to Vanderbilt its first two atomic layer deposition (ALD) systems, relatively small tools that deposit atomically thin layers of material on virtually any surface. Read More

An interdisciplinary collaboration of engineers and doctors at Vanderbilt and Columbia Universities has designed a robotic microsurgery system specifically designed to treat bladder cancer, the sixth most common form of cancer in the U.S. and the most expensive to treat. Read More

An interdisciplinary team of mechanical engineers and autism experts at Vanderbilt University have developed an adaptive robotic system and used it to demonstrate that humanoid robots can be powerful tools for enhancing the basic social learning skills of children with autism. Read More

Read about faculty, staff and student awards, appointments and achievements. Read More

Students from the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt trekked about three miles from campus to the School of Engineering’s wind-solar alternative energy site to see a wind turbine in action atop Love Circle hill in Nashville. Read More

An amputee using a prosthetic leg designed at Vanderbilt made history by climbing 103 flights of stairs to the top of a Chicago skyscraper. Read More

  Amazing Vanderbilt research has designed a “wearable robot” that can be used by paraplegics to walk again. Vanderbilt’s Barb Cramer takes us on one man’s emotional journey to use the device, designed by Vanderbilt mechanical engineers, to take his first steps since a tragic accident. Read more here… Read More