VINSE Faculty News

The Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research is Vanderbilt’s most prestigious faculty honor for achievement in research. This award honors a faculty member who has garnered significant critical recognition on a national or global scale. The award is accompanied by a cash prize of $10,000 and an engraved pewter julep… Read More

Developing atomically thin graphene membranes used to separate salt from water is extraordinarily complex and the effort grows more crucial as population growth, industrialization and climate change strain freshwater resources. Vanderbilt engineers have designed a simple defect-sealing technique to correct variations in pore size in graphene membranes. Vanderbilt engineering researchers… Read More

Cynthia Reinhart-King is one of five Vanderbilt professors who received a Chancellor’s Award for Research at the Fall Faculty Assembly Aug. 27, 2020. This award recognizes faculty excellence in works published or presented in the last three calendar years. Honorees each receive a cash prize $2,000 and an engraved pewter julep… Read More

In 2018, one-half of the Nobel Prize was awarded to Arthur Ashkin, the physicist who developed optical tweezers, the use of a tightly focused laser beam to isolate and move micron-scale objects (the size of red blood cells). Now Justus Ndukaife, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Vanderbilt University, has… Read More

Craig Duvall, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Engineering, has been elevated to the rank of Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society. Duvall and his research program focus on development of technologies for controlled drug release, tissue regeneration and therapeutics, and delivery of intracellular-acting biologic drugs such as siRNA and peptide therapeutics. Read More

A bold engineering approach by a Vanderbilt University researcher to sort breast cancer cells based on their behavior first has produced compelling data that show less migratory cells create more metastases, contradicting the prevailing hypothesis on how cancer spreads. Expanding this ambitious research by Cynthia Reinhart-King, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of… Read More

Two VINSE faculty received 2020 Discovery Grants, which are two-year awards of up to $25,000 each year for pilot or feasibility studies in areas with the potential to make significant breakthroughs. Florence Sanchez, professor of civil and environmental engineering, for Storing energy in 3D printed functionally graded concrete structures; Jason Valentine,… Read More

A new innovation incubator will amplify existing collaborations among researchers and soldiers, building on Vanderbilt’s partnership agreement with Army Futures Command. The project, Soldier-Inspired Innovation Incubator for Discovering Research-Based Solutions, is one of six cross-disciplinary programs to be funded by Vanderbilt’s Trans-Institutional Programs (TIPs) initiative, a hallmark of the university’s Academic… Read More

Vanderbilt professor Joshua D. Caldwell has been selected as a 2020 Materials Research Society Fellow. The MRS Fellows will be recognized at the society’s spring meeting in Phoenix in April. Caldwell, associate professor of mechanical engineering, has merged his prior work in wide band gap semiconductor materials with his efforts… Read More

Kelsey Hatzell, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship, an honor given annually to the brightest researchers early in their careers. “To receive a Sloan Research Fellowship is to be told by your fellow scientists that you stand out among your peers,” said foundation president… Read More