‘VINSE Faculty News’
Three researchers receive EAGER awards
Aug. 22, 2014—Three Vanderbilt researchers have received an award designed to better understand how complex behaviors emerge from activity on brain circuitry as part of President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative. Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Donna Webb, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Deyu Li and Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering Yaqiong Xu received the award, which is for...
Professor touts faster, cheaper way to test for explosives
Jul. 28, 2014—A Vanderbilt University professor has come up with a faster and less expensive way to test for explosives residue on surfaces. Prof. Sharon Weiss has modified white gold leaf paper so that its surface provides signal amplification of 100 million times – so that a laser and detector to identify the chemical molecules of whatever...
Liberating devices from their power cords
May. 19, 2014—Imagine a future in which our electrical gadgets are no longer limited by plugs and external power sources. This intriguing prospect is one of the reasons for the current interest in building the capacity to store electrical energy directly into a wide range of products, such as a laptop whose casing serves as its battery,...
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...
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>
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...
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...
Biodegradable scaffold may spur wound healing
Dec. 19, 2013— From left, Scott Guelcher, Ph.D., Jeffrey Davidson, Ph.D., Christopher Nelson and Craig Duvall, Ph.D., showed that an enzyme-blocking molecule released by a biodegradable scaffold can enhance wound healing in a mouse model. (photo by Susan Urmy) Biomedical and chemical engineers at Vanderbilt University, working with a pathologist, have constructed a sponge-like, biodegradable tissue “scaffold”...