Mechanical Engineering

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

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

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

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

Two mechanical engineering graduate students and their professor have received the Wyss Institute-IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Award for Translational Research for their work on a robotic leg prosthesis, selected from submissions by biomedical engineers and scientists from academic institutions worldwide. Read More

A collaborative wind-solar alternative energy project between Vanderbilt University’s mechanical engineering department and Nashville Metro Water Services has picked up speed with the installation of a modest 3kW wind turbine at the Love Circle site close to campus. Read More

Watch video of Robert J. Webster III’s talk which covers several examples of novel surgical robots, ranging from “tentacle-like” robots that are the diameter of needles for endonasal surgery, to swallowable endoscopic capsule robots that can accomplish surgery in the intestines and are thus making the Fantastic Voyage foreseen by… Read More

Senior engineering students are challenged to solve real-world design issues for university and corporate sponsors during a two-semester design course. Students will share results with their clients and the Vanderbilt community at Senior Design Day, April 19, from 3-5 p.m. in Featheringill Hall. Read More

Mechanical Engineering graduate students David Comber and Massimiliano Simi have won first and second place in the Three-in-Five competition at the Design of Medical Devices Conference. Read More

Anilkumar (Vanderbilt) Amrutur Anilkumar, professor of the practice of mechanical engineering, and Sankaran Mahadevan, the John R. Murray Sr. Professor of Engineering, have been elected associate fellows of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Peter Cummings, the John R. Hall Professor of Chemical Engineering, has been appointed to… Read More