Mechanical Engineering

The Office of the Provost has announced the inaugural round of grant recipients for the Seeding Success Grant program established in March. Three engineering faculty members are among 15 faculty members across four Vanderbilt schools and colleges who will receive support for their work. They are: David Braun, assistant professor of mechanical engineering; “Catapult Legs: Enhancing Human... Read More

The Office of the Provost has announced the inaugural round of grant recipients for the Seeding Success Grant program established in March. Three engineering faculty members are among 15 faculty members across four Vanderbilt schools and colleges who will receive support for their work. They are: David Braun, assistant professor of mechanical engineering; “Catapult Legs: Enhancing Human... Read More

The relentless increase in heat loads imposed on devices in modern technologies is driving renewed interest among engineers and materials scientists in the area of heat transfer. A key challenge is finding approaches to enhance the materials’ capability of conducting heat. A team of engineers led by Vanderbilt mechanical engineering Professor Deyu Li and his... Read More

The relentless increase in heat loads imposed on devices in modern technologies is driving renewed interest among engineers and materials scientists in the area of heat transfer. A key challenge is finding approaches to enhance the materials’ capability of conducting heat. A team of engineers led by Vanderbilt mechanical engineering Professor Deyu Li and his... Read More

The idea Karl Zelik (Vanderbilt University) Erik Lamers (Vanderbilt University) Karl E. Zelik, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and recent Ph.D. graduate Erik P. Lamers revealed a new exosuit designed to bring back relief to workers who have been under high strain throughout the pandemic, including last-mile delivery drivers and essential workers. The suit can... Read More

Research snapshot: Study shows promise to bring back strain-relieving wearable tech to last-mile delivery drivers, heavy-lifting jobs and other essential workers, including those strained during pandemic.  Est. reading time: 1.5 minutes Read More

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... Read More

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... Read More

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,... Read More

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... Read More

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... Read More

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... Read More

Nearly 40 School of Engineering faculty members have been named among the top 2 percent of 7 million working scientists in the world. More than 60 percent of the school’s full professors are in this elite group, based on a recent study by a Stanford University professor and his colleagues. The study combines several different... Read More

(Anne Rayner/Vanderbilt) Nashville Business Journal recently released its 2021 “40 under 40” list of honorees, featuring six Vanderbilt alumni and two faculty members: Maya Bugg, EdD’18, president and CEO, Tennessee Charter School Center Christiane Buggs, MEd’14, board chair, The Metropolitan Nashville Board of Public Education and founding board member… Read More

Discovery provides insight for developing next generation optoelectronic and infrared devices In groundbreaking new research, an international team that includes a Vanderbilt engineer has developed a unique process for producing a quantum state that is part light and part matter. Read More

A collaboration between international and Vanderbilt University researchers is helping to update a tried-and-true medical technology for the 21st century. The development of an intelligent and autonomous Magnetic Flexible Endoscope holds the promise of making colonoscopies safer, less painful, more widely available and less expensive. The article “Enabling the future of colonoscopy with intelligent and... Read More

A trans-institutional team of Vanderbilt engineering, data science and clinical researchers has developed a novel approach for monitoring bone stress in recreational and professional athletes, with the goal of anticipating and preventing injury. Using machine learning and biomechanical modeling techniques, the researchers built multisensory algorithms that combine data from lightweight, low-profile wearable sensors in shoes... Read More

An interdisciplinary team of researchers led by Karl Zelik explores how wearable sensor technology can monitor bone stress in runners, developing a new multi-sensor algorithm that could save runners from months of pain and recovery time. Read More

There is huge momentum toward adoption of battery electric vehicles primarily because performances are meeting or exceeding the properties of traditional automobiles. Consumers want electric vehicles that have similar driving range (energy density) and charging styles and times (power density) to gasoline powered vehicles. “One pathway to improving the energy density of the battery, or... Read More

A recent mechanical engineering doctoral graduate has created a material for welding in extreme conditions that could minimize equipment needed and operator hazards. Read More