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VINSE High School Field Trip program Fall 2013 & Spring 2014
May. 15, 2014—Small groups of students from across middle Tennessee high schools learned how to squeeze electricity from a blackberry. The students mashed blackberries, extracted their juice, soaked an electrode in the juice, coated another electrode with graphite and clipped them together to make a solar cell. After the solar cells were finished, the students got to measure...
David Wright named Stevenson Chair of Chemistry
May. 7, 2014—VINSE Faculty David Wright named Stevenson Chair of Chemistry. KEEP READING>
How to create nanowires only three atoms wide with an electron beam
Apr. 28, 2014—Junhao Lin, a Vanderbilt University Ph.D. student and visiting scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has found a way to use a finely focused beam of electrons to create some of the smallest wires ever made. The flexible metallic wires are only three atoms wide: One thousandth the width of the microscopic wires used...
Construction of new VINSE facilities in new Engineering and Science Building set to begin May 2014
Apr. 28, 2014—Vanderbilt’s Board of Trust has approved construction of a seven-story engineering and science building designed to foster project teamwork and offer programs, instrumentation areas and core research space that will promote interdisciplinary work. A clean room and advanced imaging facilities will provide capabilities to advance discoveries in areas such as nanocomposites, smart materials, advanced energy...
VINSE Director Sandra Rosenthal named winner of 2014 SEC faculty achievement award
Apr. 9, 2014—Sandra Rosenthal, Jack and Pamela Egan Professor of Chemistry at Vanderbilt, is a recipient of the 2014 SEC Faculty Achievement Award. These annual awards recognize a faculty member from every Southeastern Conference university who demonstrates outstanding records of teaching, research and scholarship. KEEP READING>
IMS graduate student Alice Leach travels to Jerusalem to visit the Banin laboratory
Mar. 26, 2014—Janet Macdonald wins the Bergmann Memorial Award for young scientists Assistant Professor Janet Macdonald recently travelled to the Israeli Embassy in Washington to accept the Bergmann Memorial Award from the United States-Israel Binational Foundation. The award adds $5,000 to a $75,000 research grant to conduct collaborative research on hybrid nanoparticles with Professor Uri Banin from...
Nanoscale optical switch breaks miniaturization barrier
Mar. 13, 2014—Graduate student Kent Hallman checking the sample alignment the vapor deposition machine located in Vanderbilt Institute for Nanoscale Science and Engineering’s clean room. (Joe Howell / Vanderbilt) An ultra-fast and ultra-small optical switch has been invented that could advance the day when photons replace electrons in the innards of consumer products ranging from cell phones...
Inaugural Student Selected VINSE Keynote Address, Dr. El-Sayed “Nano-technology Meets Biology in the Cancer Cell”
Mar. 11, 2014—Inaugural Student Selected VINSE Keynote Address Dr. Mostafa A. El-Sayed Julius Brown Chair and Regents Professor Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Director, Laser Dynamics Lab Georgia Institute of Technology “Nano-Technology Meets Biology in the Cancer Cell” Abstract: Using biochemical-targeting methods, one can conjugate the plasmonic nanoparticles to many parts of the cell, healthy or sick....
Jason Valentine receives NSF Early Career Award
Feb. 17, 2014—Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Jason Valentine has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development grant. The four-year, $400,000 grant – All-Dielectric Optical Metasurfaces For Controlling Wave Fronts – will allow Valentine to continue research that will lead to a new class of ultra-compact optical elements that can improve the performance and integration...
Making waves: In the hunt for invisibility
Dec. 25, 2013—A new way of assembling things, called metamaterials, may in the not too distant future help to protect a building from earthquakes by bending seismic waves around it, similar to the principle applied to light waves in invisibility cloaks. Jason Valentine, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has developed such an invisibility cloak and is quoted. KEEP...