Spotlight Publications Category
“Sensing Mucus Physiological Property In Situ by Wireless Millimeter-Scale Soft Robots” published in Advanced Functional Materials, selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
Dec. 5, 2023—About the authors: The first author is Boyang Xiao, a second-year Ph.D. student under the supervision of Prof. Xiaoguang Dong in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The co-authors also include a group of Mechanical Engineering undergraduate students. In their recent work published in Advanced Functional Materials, the team proposes a method to sense mucus viscosity...
“Clostridioides difficile ferrosome organelles combat nutritional immunity” published in Nature, selected as Spotlight Publication
Nov. 17, 2023—Congratulations to Eric Skaar’s group for their Nature publication. The keys towards understanding the role of nutrients in guest-hosts interactions inherently reside at the nanoscale. The work by Pi et al. from the Skaar laboratory utilized the advanced electron microscopy capabilities in VINSE to reveal how C. difficile bacteria use iron storage organelles to manage large...
“Remarkable heat conduction mediated by non-equilibrium phonon polaritons” published in Nature, selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
Oct. 31, 2023—Zhiliang Pan is a 2023 Ph.D graduate from the Department of Mechanical Engineering under the direction of Dr. Deyu Li. He stays in the same lab as a postdoctoral scholar after graduation to further expand his Ph.D research on energy transport mediated by phonon polaritons in polar nanostructures. In this recent publication co-authored with fellow...
“Utilizing Toray Paper as a Metal-Free, High Surface Area Electrode for Photosystem I-Driven Mediated Electron Transfer” published in Energy Technology, selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
May. 2, 2023—Christopher Stachurski is a 2021 PhD graduate from the Department of Chemistry under the direction of Drs. David Cliffel and Kane Jennings. He is current an Assistant Research Professor at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD working with Drs. Paul Trulove and David Durkin on using ionic liquids to modify biopolymers such as...
“Photooxidative Polymerization of Pyrrole from Photosystem I Proteins” published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials, selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
Apr. 10, 2023—Joshua Passantino is a 2022 PhD graduate from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering under the direction of Drs. Kane Jennings and David Cliffel. He is currently the Lead Electrochemist at Nth Cycle, an electrochemically focused green metals processing technology company based in Boston, Ma. His research at Vanderbilt was focused on exploring the...
“Compound Meta-Optics for Complete and Loss-Less Field Control” published in ACS Nano, selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
Mar. 22, 2023—Hanyu Zheng is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in Dr. Jason Valentine’s group majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research focuses on metasurface-based devices with applications in spatial light modulation and imaging processing. Hanyu’s recent publication in ACS Nano introduced a novel method based on compound meta-optics for complete and lossless spatial light modulation. Metasurface...
“Engineering Electromagnetic Field Distribution and Resonance Quality Factor Using Slotted Quasi-BIC Metasurfaces” published in Nano Letters, selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
Mar. 9, 2023—Sen Yang is a fifth-year graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Materials Science under the direction of Dr. Justus Ndukaife. Ndukaife’s group focuses on multidisciplinary research including plasmonic and resonant dielectric nanostructures for efficient nano-optical trapping, manipulation, enhanced spectroscopy, and sensing of nanoscale objects. Sen’s recent publication in Nano Letters demonstrates an approach to...
“Piezo1 Mechano-Activation Is Augmented by Resveratrol and Differs between Colorectal Cancer Cells of Primary and Metastatic Origin” published in Molecules, selected as VINSE spotlight publication
Feb. 21, 2023—Josh Greenlee is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Michael King Laboratory where he has spent the last five-and-a-half years working toward his PhD. Josh’s research is focused on understanding mechanisms of metastasis and chemoresistance in colorectal cancer in order to identify weaknesses that can be exploited with targeted therapies. Josh’s recent publication in...
“Ultrafast X-ray imaging of the light-induced phase transition in VO2” published in Nature Physics, selected as Spotlight Publication
Jan. 30, 2023—Congratulations to Richard Haglund and Kent Hallman for their Nature Physics publication. This paper is the latest from a multi-year, multi-national (United States, Germany, Denmark, South Korea, France, United Kingdom) collaboration in which Vanderbilt’s part was the preparation and characterization (in conjunction with the Technical University-Berlin) of a challenging ultrathin holographic gold-vanadium dioxide “sandwich” on...
“Diabetic hyperglycemia promotes primary tumor progression through glycation-induced tumor extracellular matrix stiffening” published in Science Advances selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
Jan. 20, 2023—About the authors: Co-first author, Wenjun Wang is an NIH NCI F99/K00 Predoctoral Fellow in Biomedical Engineering advised by Prof. Cynthia Reinhart-King. Wenjun’s research focuses on the mechanism of tumor progression at the RNA, cell, and tissue levels via alteration of tissue mechanical properties. Co-first author, Dr. Lauren Hapach earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering...