News

  • Steigerwald headed to Capitol Hill as congressional fellow

    Steigerwald headed to Capitol Hill as congressional fellow

    Andrew Steigerwald is trading a Vanderbilt physics laboratory for the halls of Congress. The post-doctoral researcher has been selected by the Materials Research Society (MRS) and the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) as their 2012-2013 Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow. Starting in September he will… Read More

    May. 18, 2012

  • ‘Extractionator’ could bring cheap and effective malaria diagnostics to millions

    ‘Extractionator’ could bring cheap and effective malaria diagnostics to millions

    Last December a trio of Vanderbilt researchers — Rick Haselton, professor of biomedical engineering, David Wright, associate professor of chemistry, and Ray Mernaugh, associate professor of biochemistry — snagged a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a “low tech, high… Read More

    May. 9, 2012

  • Quantum dots brighten the future of lighting

    Quantum dots brighten the future of lighting

    With the age of the incandescent light bulb fading rapidly, the holy grail of the lighting industry is to develop a highly efficient form of solid-state lighting that produces high quality white light. One of the few alternative technologies that produce pure white light is white-light quantum dots. These are… Read More

    May. 8, 2012

  • Vanderbilt students, faculty and staff share discoveries at USA Science & Engineering Festival

    Vanderbilt students, faculty and staff share discoveries at USA Science & Engineering Festival

    A group of Vanderbilt students, faculty and staff will share their research and passion for science and technology with middle and high school students at the nation’s largest science fair April 27-29 in Washington, D.C. The second annual USA Science & Engineering Festival and Book Fair, held… Read More

    Apr. 25, 2012

  • Five Minutes with Anthony B. Hmelo

    Five Minutes with Anthony B. Hmelo

    Tony Hmelo’s research has taken him from NASA to nanoscience and from New York to Nashville. Hmelo is associate director for operations and outreach for the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, the interdisciplinary group researching new science and technology based on tiny—nanoscale—materials. (Nanotechnology is widely considered… Read More

    Apr. 9, 2012

  • Vanderbilt University

    Paul Laibinis wins Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching

    Five faculty members were recognized for their achievements in and out of the classroom by Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos at the Spring Faculty Assembly. Professors Paul Laibinis, Emily Nacol, Sohee Park, Suzanna Sherry and Janos Sztipanovits were selected for the awards by… Read More

    Mar. 29, 2012

  • Barrier to faster graphene devices identified and suppressed

    Barrier to faster graphene devices identified and suppressed

    These days, graphene is the rock star of materials science, but it has an Achilles heel: It is exceptionally sensitive to its electrical environment. This single-atom-thick honeycomb of carbon atoms is lighter than aluminum, stronger than steel and conducts heat and electricity better than copper. As a result, scientists around… Read More

    Mar. 13, 2012

  • Science comes alive for middle school students during Vanderbilt lab visit

    Science comes alive for middle school students during Vanderbilt lab visit

    During a visit to campus on March 12, members of the Joelton Middle School Art2STEM club – an after-school organization for middle school girls that highlights the importance of creativity in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics – got to see what a real future… Read More

    Mar. 13, 2012

  • Ultrafast sonograms shed new light on rapid phase transitions

    Ultrafast sonograms shed new light on rapid phase transitions

    Vanadium dioxide crystal lattice (A. Julia Stähler / Fritz Haber Institute) An international team of physicists has developed a method for taking ultrafast “sonograms” that can track the structural changes that take place within solid materials in trillionth-of-a-second intervals as they go through an important physical… Read More

    Mar. 7, 2012

  • VINSE member wins Sloan research fellowship

    VINSE member wins Sloan research fellowship

    Physicist Kirill Bolotin has won a two-year, $50,000 research fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation aimed at encouraging promising young scholars. He is one of 126 researchers from 51 different colleges and universities in the United States selected to receive the Foundation’s … Read More

    Feb. 28, 2012