VINSE Faculty News

Unless you’re in the .05 percent of the population who enjoyed physics in high school, the term “quantum” probably calls to mind James Bond or Scott Bakula. But researchers at Vanderbilt University are working on a project that could bring the word into the everyday vernacular, and perhaps even have… Read More

The amount of damage that radiation causes in electronic materials may be at least 10 times greater than previously thought. That is the surprising result of a new characterization method that uses a combination of lasers and acoustic waves to provide scientists with a capability tantamount to X-ray vision: It… Read More

In a process akin to belling an infinitesimal cat, scientists have managed to tag a protein that regulates the neurotransmitter serotonin with tiny fluorescent beads, allowing them to track the movements of single molecules for the first time. The capability, which took nearly a decade to achieve, makes it possible… Read More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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