Dean Galloway

First-rate faculty. Talented students. Innovative research. Professionalism. All are hallmarks of the Vanderbilt School of Engineering under the leadership of Dean Kenneth F. Galloway. As he prepares to return to teaching and research—and continues his role as a national leader in engineering education—Galloway sat down with Vanderbilt Engineering magazine to reflect on the School of Engineering’s past and look to the future.

The engineering school is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. When you arrived in 1996, you were only its eighth dean. How did it feel to become part of that long history?

It’s been a wonderful experience. Vanderbilt is truly a great university. I’ve seen it improve in the time I’ve been here—in the quality of students, quality of faculty, in national recognition. So it’s been a wonderful time to be here. I’m happy to have been part of a very large team, certainly in the engineering school, that helped make this happen. No one person can say, “I made this happen.”

Under your leadership, research expenditures from external sources grew from less than $10 million to $60 million annually at a time when federal resources were dwindling. What has spurred such tremendous growth, and what are the prospects for the future?

Overall, I’ve been amazed at what our faculty has been able to do with the resources they have. We have a tremendous, tremendous faculty—who have brought major research dollars to Vanderbilt—and that is improving every year. The young people we hire are among the very best in their fields. The emphasis here is still on teaching, but our faculty is very involved at the forefront of their research fields. They’ve been challenged and they’ve risen to the challenge. There’s a lot of really good stuff going on. Not in any one department and not one small group of people. In every department, there are many contributors, many of whom are among the best in the world at what they do. I’m very proud of our young faculty who won National Science Foundation CAREER Awards. We’ve had 28 since the year 2000.

What is the biggest challenge facing the school?

We’re going to face a lot of challenges in the future in terms of federal funding. It’s impossible to know what the federal government is going to do in terms of providing funding to academic engineering. Absolutely impossible.

What other major challenges do you foresee?

It’s always about people, space and money. The engineering school needs additional space due to the growth of our research programs. We have had some very generous alumni and donors, particularly during the Shape the Future campaign—donors gave $85.4 million to the engineering school alone and added 55 new endowed student scholarships during the campaign. But as the reputation of the university and the reputation of the engineering school have grown, we do have the opportunity to hire very, very talented faculty members, and we have done so, but we have missed hiring some because we had inadequate laboratory space for research programs. Bottom line: The faculty needs to grow and research programs need more space.

What have been some of your most satisfying moments as dean?

One of the most enjoyable things I get to do is see how well our alumni are doing. I’m always impressed by what nice people they are and how they’re still very interested in the university. Just this morning I had breakfast with Sandy Cochran (BE’80), CEO of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. She’s a great example of someone who used the problem-solving skills and analytical skills of an engineer to become a very successful businessperson. C.J. Warner (BE’80), one of her classmates, is the president of Sapphire Energy, a company that’s trying to extract oil from algae. We have a former student who founded Google Earth, Chikai Ohazama (BE’94), and is now a project manager for Google, and another who is the chief technology guy at Facebook, Jeffrey Rothschild (BA’77, MS’79). One of our graduates, David Dyer (BE’71), was president of Lands’ End. He engineered the sale of that company to Sears and is now the president of Chico’s. Joe Dorris (BE’65) is the former president of Futaba Corporation of America. You see Vanderbilt engineers very often moving to leadership positions. I think they get a broader education at Vanderbilt.

How would you describe the current students in Vanderbilt engineering?

Our students are the best at Vanderbilt. We have benefited from the university’s growth in the national perception of its quality. In 1986, the average SAT score of incoming freshmen in engineering was 1280. Today, it is 1485. This year, we had 5,343 applicants for 320 spaces. Vanderbilt engineering is also very fortunate in the sense that it’s always been thought of as a good place for women to study. About one-third of our students are women—that’s about twice the national average.

What do you think is unique about the educational experience at Vanderbilt?

Vanderbilt is not a typical engineering school. We’re not a tech school, so our students have opportunities to take courses in the College of Arts and Science, to be part of the university. It’s a little different place to study engineering.

What’s next for you? We understand it involves a national role in advocating for engineering education.

I have just been elected president-elect of the American Society for Engineering Education, starting in June and assuming the presidency in June 2013. This will occupy a good deal of my time for the next two years. It’s a pivotal time in the leadership of the society as we increase our focus on public advocacy for engineering and engineering technology education with decision makers in academia, industry and government.

My goals will be to continue ASEE’s efforts in communicating the excitement of engineering to students in K-12; in promoting diversity in the engineering workforce; in preparing students for a globalized economy, and in encouraging collaboration between academia and industry.

Also, I plan to return teaching and research within the Radiation Effects Research Group at Vanderbilt. The RER has a strong research portfolio that supports the federal government in radiation effects and microelectronics research for space applications.

Mahadevan-Jansen

More than 100 years ago, the discovery of X-ray revolutionized medical care by opening a window into the human body. Today biomedical photonics—the application of light in medicine and biology—promises to be equally groundbreaking. At the forefront of the revolution is Anita Mahadevan-Jansen, the School of Engineering’s Orrin H. Ingram Professor of Engineering.

“Medical photonics is the use of light to diagnose, monitor and treat disease,” she says. “I work on diagnosing and treatment.”

As director of optical diagnostics research in the Biomedical Photonics Laboratories at Vanderbilt, Mahadevan-Jansen develops technologies that can be used in clinical care. The professor, who joined the School of Engineering in 1997, has received numerous awards and patents on her devices and has pioneered techniques in laser spectroscopy, the interaction of matter with light.

One of her main interests is optical guidance in surgery. Surgeons use her laser spectroscopy techniques during delicate brain surgery—when mistakes can be catastrophic—to better distinguish between healthy and diseased tissue.

Her optical techniques are also used in breast cancer surgery. Following lumpectomies—in which surgeons remove only the cancerous tumor instead of the entire breast—it can take several days for laboratory tests to discover if all the cancerous tissue has been removed. Often, the patient must return for further surgery. Mahadevan-Jansen’s techniques are currently being used to discriminate between the lump’s healthy and cancerous tissue so that all of the diseased tissue can be removed in a single operation.

Shedding Light on Cancer

An acknowledged leader in biomedical phonics, she always has several research projects under way or in development. “I’m excited about all my projects,” she says. However, she’s particularly enthusiastic about two new undertakings: developing a simple and effective method of finding the parathyroid glands during thyroid surgery and diagnosing cervical cancer in ethnically diverse women.

“Four years ago I gave a talk at Vanderbilt’s School of Medicine about using light to detect brain tumors or breast tumor margins,” she remembers. A few days later, surgical resident Lisa White, MD’06, showed up at Mahadevan-Jansen’s office to ask about methods to detect the parathyroid glands during thyroid surgery.

Up to 19 percent of the time when surgeons remove diseased thyroid glands, damage also occurs to the parathyroids, four organs the size of rice grains located at the back of the throat. Such damage can have lifelong negative effects on patients’ health because the parathyroid glands control calcium concentrations in bones, intestines and kidneys.

Working together to image these tiny glands with near-infrared light, the biomedical engineering professor and the surgical resident discovered that the parathyroid glows with a natural fluorescence 10 times stronger than fluorescence from thyroid tissue. The fluorescence is so strong that a simple detector can reveal it, allowing surgeons to see the location of the parathyroid and avoid it. Vanderbilt has recently received an international patent on a detection device and licensed it to a private company for manufacturing.

“This kind of collaborative discovery could only happen in a place like Vanderbilt,” Mahadevan-Jansen says. “There is a close and open relationship between engineering and medicine here.”

Saving Women’s Lives

Another research area she’s pursuing is using light to detect cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable of all cancers, and yet the disease kills thousands of women in the United States each year. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, hundreds of thousands of women die from cervical cancer annually, in part because of the lack of early detection and access to health care.

“In Zambia alone, 1 in 5 women die from cervical cancer each year,” Mahadevan-Jansen says. “I wanted to take the techniques we’ve developed and use them there.”

Mahadevan-Jansen worked with Lisa White, MD’06, to develop a simple method to detect the parathyroid glands during thyroid surgery.

But before that could happen, certain questions had to be answered. Through her research on mostly Caucasian women at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Mahadevan-Jansen found that laser spectroscopy could detect pre-cancerous changes in the cervix 94 percent of the time. But she needed to know if those findings would hold up in ethnically diverse women. Partnering with physicians from Nashville’s Meharry Medical College, she tested the method with African American women and found that race did not change the results. Since then, she has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue her research in this area.

Power of Collaboration

Mahadevan-Jansen’s work often reaches beyond campus. An interdisciplinary Vanderbilt team that includes Mahadevan-Jansen; her husband, Duco Jansen, professor of biomedical engineering; and neurosurgeon Dr. Peter Konrad is working with researchers from Southern Methodist University and other institutions to develop prosthetic arms and legs that work naturally through a two-way optical link with the peripheral nervous system. Supported by a grant from the Department of Defense, the researchers are attempting to use beams of light to stimulate and control bundles of nerve cells, allowing amputees to control and feel the movement of prosthetic limbs.

Mahadevan-Jansen also collaborates with physicians from the medical center on projects as diverse as using optical methods to detect deadly melanoma, identify the quality of bone health, and determine when mothers are having pre-term labor. Such collaboration often results in products to improve patient care.

“The physicians at Vanderbilt Medical Center are always happy to work with us,” she says. “And the next thing you know, our research has the potential to become a (commercial) product. If it weren’t for the relationship between engineering and medicine at Vanderbilt, that wouldn’t happen.”

A Pershing 2 missile on its launcher/erector in the field, circa 1983.

When Terrell Jones graduated from the School of Engineering in 1951, Vanderbilt engineers had their pick of top jobs. Because he was already married at the time, Jones opted for the offer with the highest pay. As it turned out, that job wasn’t at all what he expected, but it did set him on a history-making career path that offered a front row seat to the Cold War.

After working as a “glorified draftsman” in Dallas for a year, Jones made the move to Huntsville, Ala.—Rocket City, U.S.A., to work for Rohm and Haas, the multinational chemical manufacturing giant, doing propulsion work for the U.S. Army. Jones recalls that Huntsville was a true boomtown in the 1950s.

“Things were developing so fast that one day they just completely bulldozed a cane field and poured a blacktop street down the middle of it,” Jones says. “Then they’d put up these little prefab houses that were like shoeboxes. They were just two or three pieces stuck together.”

His first job at Redstone Arsenal didn’t have much room for advancement, so he made the move to civil service and began working for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. The agency was headed by Wernher von Braun, the German-born American rocket scientist and trailblazer for the U.S. space program.

Top-secret

Terrell Jones

Jones, who eventually achieved top-secret clearance, started in the structures and mechanics lab and then moved to the propulsion project office. Shortly thereafter, the Department of Defense requested that the agency begin work on a new missile fueled by a solid propellant. Since Jones was the only one with solid propellant rocket experience, he was assigned to do the preliminary design on what eventually became the Pershing missile.

The scope of the project was broad and unknown to many. People worked on different parts of the missile in different locations.

“People who were limited in their clearance might be working on a graphite nozzle, but they wouldn’t know what it would go to,” he says. “Later on, when I had to meet with the people doing the warheads, they were very selective in what they would let me see. They really didn’t want to give me the weight and size of the nuclear device. I had to design around their restrictions.”

The Pershing was a two-stage rocket and Jones was the agency’s project manager responsible for two rocket motors inside those stages. His parts of the puzzle had to mesh with everyone else’s.

“If I made the thrust too high, then the guidance people griped because the acceleration would be too great, for example,” Jones says. “One group wanted a smaller diameter, but I was able to have my way on that one.”

Nuclear Mobility

As the work continued, it became clear that the Pershing was a one-of-a-kind weapon—the first ballistic missile that was mobile. To understand just how important of an achievement that was, one has to understand the political atmosphere at the time.

The threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union and the fear of communism permeated America. Schoolchildren practiced bomb drills and families built shelters. With the nuclear arms race running full steam ahead, the Pershing missile was vital to U.S. defense.

The missiles had a fairly short range—only about 1,000 miles. They were positioned in Northern Europe, pointed at Russia.

“Each missile was on a big trailer that was pulled by a tractorlike vehicle,” Jones says. “Whenever it stopped, these stabilizing feet would expand. This missile would be raised hydraulically from a horizontal position into a firing position.” Several nights later, the missile would be moved to a new location.

During daylight hours, Soviet satellites were tracking the missiles. According to Jones, the missiles’ movements “drove the Russians crazy” because they couldn’t keep up with locations. That mobility, combined with the threat of nuclear missiles able to breach Soviet borders, was a key U.S. military advantage.

In 1960, Jones departed the Pershing project and moved to North Carolina to work for Northrup Corp. After 10 more years developing ordnance and propulsion systems, he left and started a second career building homes and commercial buildings regionally. After retiring from the construction business in the 1990s, he continued building as an active volunteer and site supervisor with Habitat for Humanity. Today, 61 years after graduating from VUSE, he resides in Palm City, Fla.

Work for Naught—or Not?

Throughout his career—whether working on space-age technology or building homes, Jones has relied on his Vanderbilt School of Engineering education.

“After I started working, I was thankful that I had had to take some courses that I didn’t appreciate at the time,” Jones says. “It turned out that many things I learned through class work and lab work helped me in my field. I couldn’t foresee that when I was in school.”

The Army awarded Jones’ work on the Pershing system, but Pershing missiles were never fired outside of a test situation. They—along with Russian SS-20 missiles—were banned by the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987. The Pershing and SS-20 missiles were destroyed except for a few inert examples in the Smithsonian and other displays. An entire class of nuclear weapons was eliminated.

“I had mixed emotions about that treaty,” Jones says. “I was glad to see anything with the potential to cause death and destruction gone. But from the standpoint of all that work—not just from me but from all the other people who worked on the project—it was a lilttle bit of a letdown. 

“In the end though, I wish we could’ve gotten rid of all the nuclear missiles out there. This was just a small drop in the bucket.”

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Imagine opening a time capsule and finding personal accounts about the School of Engineering from its beginning in 1886 to its youth in the 1930s and up until today. What would those early graduates say? What stories would they tell? What memories would they have in common and what experiences have changed?

To celebrate our 125th year, we asked one alumnus from every decade since 1930 to tell us their Vanderbilt story: how they got here, what they studied, what college life was like. We also asked a current student to do the same as a representative of the 2010s.

Their responses tell tales both personal and representative of their eras. It’s possible to trace the historic changes in the school and in society through their answers. It’s also possible to see a common core: while many things have changed over the years, some things remain consistent—great experiences, quality education, caring professors and a love of Vanderbilt School of Engineering.

Why VUSE?

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After finishing high school at Hume-Fogg, I joined the workforce. I was a hometown boy and after one year I had saved enough money to attend Vanderbilt.Charles E. Harris, BE’34

Long When I arrived at Vanderbilt, I was 23 years old and had been out of high school for five years. The Navy awarded me a scholarship where I received full tuition including room and board. Ralph J. Long, BE’49

My father was an Eastern Airlines pilot based in Miami, and Vanderbilt was the best school in a city that Eastern flew to. Very fortunate for me.Cathy Jo Thompson Linn, BS’74, MS’78, PhD’80

I had an interest in math and science and I was interested in studying engineering. After visiting Vanderbilt during the spring of my high school senior year, I knew it was the school for me.Charles Westfield Coker Jr., BS’81

I chose Vanderbilt to study engineering based on the school’s educational reputation and its location. Being from Arkansas, I wanted to go away for school but not too far away.Ronald A. Lewis II, BE’93

I chose Vanderbilt School of Engineering upon recommendation of my guidance counselor who spoke highly of the university. She thought my personality would fit in well with the university.Roli Kumar-Choudhury, BE’00

Current student Seth Dean and his father, J. Bruce Dean, BE’80. Choosing Vanderbilt was easy. I have lived my entire life in Tennessee, and I have many alumni in my family. Having the opportunity to attend a top-20 school this close to home was a no-brainer. Seth Dean, current sophomore

Classes and Coursework

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Senior-level classes were taught in the Mechanical Engineering Hall where there were fewer than 10 students in a class.Charles E. Harris, BE’34

I enjoyed my civil engineering classes. Most teachers were eager to have veterans in their classes because they were motivated and hardworking compared to the students fresh out of high school.Ralph J. Long, BE’49

My favorite classes involved the actual design of a water system and sewerage system for a fictitious community, “Crockett, Tennessee,” because it gave me a chance to practice engineering. However, I enjoyed all my classes—especially the seminars.Walter A. Casson Jr., BE’56

I enjoyed all of my engineering and math classes and endured the rest. Probably my favorite class was sophomore chemistry. Professor Robert Dilts made it so interesting that I actually enjoyed it, although not everybody did. Once we got past memorizing the periodic table, most of the rest fell in place.M. Timothy Carey, BE’66

It is hard to choose, but I’m going to say Computer Organization. In this course we programmed in assembly language and learned how a computer worked. Suddenly there was no magic—you could see how it all worked. Later in my career I came back to Vanderbilt and taught the Computer Organization course, among others. I always loved seeing the light bulbs turn on in the students’ heads as magic turned into understanding.Cathy Jo Thompson Linn, BS’74, MS’78, PhD’80

My Intellectual Property/Patents class helped me understand the practical applications of what we were learning and why we were studying physics, calculus and thermodynamics.Charles Westfield Coker Jr., BS’81

I took a linguistics class as an elective and the professor made learning about how sounds make up the languages of different lands and groups of people very interesting. Vanderbilt not only gave me a great engineering education but a great liberal arts education. Vanderbilt engineers are not all about the numbers—they can communicate well and a vast majority of us do have personalities.Ronald A. Lewis II, BE’93

Roli Kumar-Choudhury near her Cambridge home. I enjoyed the Design of Biomedical Devices. I still remember learning about submitting a 510(k) and completing a risk analysis for device design. It was nice to see the real-world applications and when I first started in my quality engineering job, I was able to understand these two topics. Roli Kumar-Choudhury, BE’00

That Class Was Torture

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My two most difficult classes were outside of the normal range of civil engineering: Electric Circuits and Machines and Steam Engineering. I had the attitude, “Why do I need to take these classes?” I am sure that the electrical engineering majors felt the same when they had to attend the four-week Vanderbilt Summer Surveying Camp at Sparta, Tenn.Walter A. Casson Jr., BE’56

Cathy Jo Thompson Linn, and her husband, Joe Linn, both hold multiple degrees from VUSE. I hated Saturday morning classes for obvious reasons. As time went on and I was in the more advanced computer science classes, we tended to work all night. Back then you had to share the Xerox Sigma 7 (the computer in that round building) with everyone on campus. You could get lots more done at night, so computer science majors became nocturnal. Getting up to attend an 8 a.m. class on Saturday—most likely in a subject to fulfill a distribution requirement—was torture. Cathy Jo Thompson Linn, BS’74, MS’78, PhD’80

Thermodynamics!Charles Westfield Coker Jr., BS’81

My least favorite class was an introductory mechanical engineering class. There was a reason I chose chemical engineering as my major. I just could not figure out those darn vector forces on a pair of pliers on the midterm exam.Ronald A. Lewis II, BE’93

Although I enjoyed math and calculus in high school, I have found that certain upper-level math courses here are not for me. They are probably a little more abstract than what I would like, which sort of serves as an antithesis to the EE courses.Seth Dean, current sophomore

Memorable Professors

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We spent good times in the basement of the mechanical engineering building with machine shop instructor “Papa John” Lawrence.Charles E. Harris, BE’34

Fred J. Lewis I looked up to all of the faculty members. It would be difficult to select any one of them as my favorite since they all had different personalities. … However, the man that gave me the opportunity to continue my studies after the death of my father, and thereby was most influential in my life at Vanderbilt, was Fred J. Lewis, dean of the engineering school. I will never know where he got the money to pay my expenses. He got me a job in Barnard Hall as the laundry agent. He allowed me to be a teaching assistant in mechanical drawing classes, and I worked as a TA during the summer at surveying camp. I graduated with a BE degree in June of 1956. Walter A. Casson Jr., BE’56

Carey I came to VU to major in chemical engineering but Professor Robert Dilts actually got me interested in chemistry, so he ranks high on my list of favorites. Professor Tom Harris was always available to help in my senior year. I will always be indebted to him for his help getting me through the last semester of chemical engineering so I could go on to an MBA at Stanford the following year. M. Timothy Carey, BE’66

Professor John Williamson taught the Intellectual Properties course. He was a very senior member of the Vanderbilt engineering school faculty and he was passionate about his area of expertise and encouraging of the students. He would hold court after class with a group of us to talk about our ideas and interests.Charles Westfield Coker Jr., BS’81

If I had to choose one most influential faculty member, it would have to be Brock Williams (assistant vice chancellor for student recreation and associate director, student athletics). He helped me find my first on-campus job and convinced me that I did not have to be a sociology or psychology major to live in McGill Hall. I lived with a great group of free spirits for three years and worked as a reeve at the front desk of Towers I and II.Ronald A. Lewis II, BE’93

Professor Bob Galloway was my faculty adviser and was very helpful in guiding me in class choices, answering questions I had from his classes and helping me choose the right master’s program in biomedical engineering.Roli Kumar-Choudhury, BE’00

Major Decision

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Harris My father worked for the Army Corps of Engineers and from 1919 to 1923 we lived in Alabama while he worked on the Wilson Dam in Muscle Shoals. Although he wasn’t an engineer, his line of work influenced my decision to join the Army Corps and become an engineer. Charles E. Harris, BE’34

My father and maternal grandfather were longtime employees of DuPont and I grew up in Wilmington, Del. My father’s advice was “if you have a chemical engineering degree, you will always be able to get a job.”M. Timothy Carey, BE’66

In high school I was good at math, and my older brother (attending Georgia Tech) suggested I try computer science. At the time, the only thing I knew about computers was the jobs for keypunch operators that I saw advertised on T.V. and I didn’t think that was such a good idea. He took the time to explain the difference, and so I checked that box on the application. It was called the systems and information science department and was in the engineering school. Once I took my first course I was hooked.Cathy Jo Thompson Linn, BS’74, MS’78, PhD’80

It really selected me. I enjoyed my mechanical engineering and math classes, yet I wanted to take business electives. The BS in general engineering allowed me to balance these interests.Charles Westfield Coker Jr., BS’81

I knew I wanted to become a chemical engineer since eighth grade. I took an aptitude test and engineering came up as a good fit. I researched the different engineering disciplines and chemical engineering sounded most appealing as it was the most versatile. You could be a lawyer, doctor, scientist, professor, researcher, product developer and work in many different aspects of a large corporation.Ronald A. Lewis II, BE’93

First Impressions

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Casson We arrived at my assigned dorm, Old Kissam Hall. It was a four-story brick building with no elevators. It had wooden fire escapes. When my father saw the wooden fire escapes attached to the building, he said (in jest), “If this is an engineering school, I think we should go back home.” Walter A. Casson Jr., BE’56

My first memory of VU is driving onto the campus in September 1962 to matriculate. Prior to that I had never been west of the Pennsylvania border. I was struck by the beauty of the Vanderbilt campus and Nashville in general.M. Timothy Carey, BE’66

My first memory of the engineering school is walking into the ladies’ room, only to see a line of urinals. After backtracking and checking the sign, I realized that at one point the engineering school hadn’t had a need for ladies’ rooms.Cathy Jo Thompson Linn, BS’74, MS’78, PhD’80

Moving in the dorm the first day, lots of Bee Gees (Saturday Night Fever) music radiating from the dorm windows and girls on campus! Seeing girls on campus was really different for me as I had attended an all-male high school.Charles Westfield Coker Jr., BS’81

During an assembly for the 1989 freshman class, word got out that it was my 18th birthday. A few people started singing “Happy Birthday” and then the entire freshman class of about 1,300 students began singing to me. It was kind of cool but also a little embarrassing.Ronald A. Lewis II, BE’93

My first memory was attending the VUSE Summer Research program. It was nice to get my bearings before the start of the school year and explore the opportunities the university had to offer.Roli Kumar-Choudhury, BE’00

Life on Campus

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Harris During my school days, I was living with my family in Sylvan Park where I would walk to the corner of West End Avenue and catch a streetcar to campus. Charles E. Harris, BE’34

Veterans were considered role models and my younger roommates referred to me as “Pop.” The resident conditions on campus in the ’40s were somewhat primitive. To shower, I had to go down four flights of stairs to the basement. Although coming from a fleet, the dorms seemed quite spacious!Ralph J. Long, BE’49

I spent most of my time the first semester with the NROTC. The engineering curriculum was difficult and we all spent a great deal of time studying. Of course, we participated in campus activities such as the Pajama Parade through downtown Nashville during Homecoming.Walter A. Casson Jr., BE’56

The ’70s were a time of great social change for Vanderbilt. When I was a freshman in 1970 we lived in an all-female quad. We had to sign out if we left at night and sign in by curfew (midnight on weekdays, 2 a.m. on weekends). The big news that year was that now men could enter the dorms during certain hours with an escort. Three years later I was living in a coed dorm (The Towers) and the idea of a curfew was nonexistent. The drinking age was 18 and Saturday night activities included imbibing, dancing and just plain fun.Cathy Jo Thompson Linn, BS’74, MS’78, PhD’80

Life on campus was great—friendly people and a beautiful setting. Dorm life was super as we all had our own single rooms in the Kirkland Quad which I believe had recently been built/renovated. We really had a good group of guys (and gals). A typical weekend might involve a football game and visits to the frat houses, the Exit/In, Rotier’s and Waxies, and most of Sunday in the science library.Charles Westfield Coker Jr., BS’81

Campus life was a lot of fun. My freshman year, I was in Kissam Quad on the third floor of Currey. We had many social activities with the adjacent girls’ dorms. Most weekends, we would make our own parties on the dorm floor until the RAs would tell us to turn the music down. We would also check out the movies at Sarratt. This went on until we discovered Fraternity Row and the occasional sorority crush parties.Ronald A. Lewis II, BE’93

University life included the sounds of the Spice Girls as you walked down the halls of my freshman dorm, plus all of us gathering on a Thursday night in our dorm room to watch Friends. I remember freshman year living in Branscomb Hall with a very spacious room but with the increase in enrollment the study rooms were converted into rooms with six-plus girls living in one room. The weekends included a movie at Sarratt. We would go out to dinner on West End to Chili’s, Calypso Cafe and Las Palmas. Later we would go downtown clubbing.Roli Kumar-Choudhury, BE’00

We certainly have a few more amenities now than I am sure Vanderbilt students had in the past, but it is cool to think about how many other students lived and worked in the same little room I now live in.Seth Dean, current sophomore

Life Lessons Learned at VUSE

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There are many things I learned at Vanderbilt that have been most valuable in my life; three of them are: 1) Work hard—it’s worth it; 2) When circumstances are difficult, don’t give up; and 3) What you do for others gives you the most satisfaction in life.Walter A. Casson Jr., BE’56

The most valuable part of my VU education was the friendships forged during those four years. We all worked and played as hard as we could which resulted in the perfect academic and social growth experience. It set the stage for the next steps which would never have been possible without my Vanderbilt experience.M. Timothy Carey, BE’66

This is a hard one to answer. Probably that there is no magic. No matter how confusing or complicated something may seem at first glance, you can figure out how it all works if you keep after it.Cathy Jo Thompson Linn, BS’74, MS’78, PhD’80

Balance. Balance your work, interests, distractions, friends and relationships and you’ll likely do OK in the long run.Charles Westfield Coker Jr., BS’81

Lewis Vanderbilt taught me many life lessons. I interacted with people from all walks of life and backgrounds. I learned how to find a common thread with anyone to relate with them if only for five minutes. I pride myself on my ability to assimilate into any situation with any group of people and make everyone feel included. Ronald A. Lewis II, BE’93

Vanderbilt teaches you how to multitask and balance education, participation in organizations and a social life. This has been really helpful in balancing a career and family.Roli Kumar-Choudhury, BE’00

To relax. With so many intelligent people vying for a fixed amount of A’s, the stress can start to accumulate. I have really just tried to focus on acquiring knowledge and bettering myself instead of being worried about whether or not there will be a curve.Seth Dean, current sophomore

Alumni through the Decades

1930s: Charles E. Harris, BE’34 Harris As a civil engineer, Charlie Harris had a notable and fruitful career in the hydroelectric branch of the Army Corps of Engineers before retiring with nearly 40 years of service. He specialized in electrical design projects along the Cumberland River and its tributaries, leading projects on the Caney Fork River, Dale Hollow Lake, Obed River and more. Now 100 years old—yes, 100—Harris still lives in Nashville. 1940s: Ralph J. Long, BE’49 Long Ralph Long entered the School of Engineering on an NROTC scholarship and still on active duty from World War II naval service. A 1949 graduate in civil engineering, Long served as senior vice president of Utah International, one of the largest and most successful multinational mining companies in the world at its time. He joined the company in 1956 and was instrumental in managing operations in Arkansas, Utah and in the Blackwater Mine in Queensland, Australia, among others. He lives in California. 1950s: Walter A. Casson Jr., BE’56 Casson Walt Casson started his civil engineering career at a Florida engineering company and later, started his own land surveying and civil engineering consulting firm. Casson Engineering Co. designed local highways, water and wastewater systems, and thousands of residential lots as well as commercial projects in Florida for more than 35 years. He and his wife, Lauzanne Sims Casson, divide their time between traveling and maintaining residences in Florida and Virginia. 1960s: M. Timothy Carey, BE’66 Carey After receiving his chemical engineering degree, Tim Carey earned an MBA from Stanford before serving in Vietnam. His management experience with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion One set the stage for a career in the pipeline construction industry. In 1978, he became president of CRC Automatic Welding, a small pipeline equipment company, and continued to lead the company as CEO when it became CRC-Evans Pipeline International. Thriving amid leveraged buyouts, the 1980s oil downturn and changes in management teams, Carey eventually sold CRC in 2010. He lives in Houston. 1970s: Cathy Jo Thompson Linn, BS’74, MS’78, PhD’80 Linn Cathy Jo Thompson Linn might not consider herself a trailblazer, but she is. After being one of Vanderbilt’s first female computer engineering graduates, she went on to work for IBM, several universities, the Department of Defense and Microsoft. At Microsoft, Linn helped develop object linking and embedding technology before supporting interactions and communications for different Microsoft groups. She retired from Microsoft in the late 1990s after being a program manager for the team that shipped Windows CE 1.0. She and her husband, Joe Linn, BS’74, PhD’80, met at VUSE as undergraduates, and today split their time between Seattle and Hawaii.

1980s: Charles Westfield Coker Jr., BS’81 Coker With an interest in business as well as engineering, Charles Coker found that a bachelor’s in engineering science provided the right mix for his future. After receiving an MBA from the University of Virginia, Coker joined Sonoco Products Co., a global leader in consumer and industrial packaging. Over the next 25 years, he applied his engineering and business knowledge to manufacturing operations, finance, materials sciences and managing processes in industry. Parlaying his skills into a new profession, Coker moved into commercial and residential property development in the late 2000s. Coker says that he would not trade his engineering education and time at Vanderbilt for any other—especially since he met his wife, Sylvia Sparkman Coker, BA’81, on their first day on campus. The Cokers reside in South Carolina. 1990s: Ronald A. Lewis II, BE’93 Lewis Ronald Lewis leveraged his chemical engineering degree and two internships with Procter & Gamble into a job with the top consumer goods company right after graduation. He worked as a development and process engineer on over-the-counter health care products for five years. He then joined Nestlé Purina as principal scientist developing new products and received seven patents for his work. Lewis moved to marketing after earning a master’s in management, and then to Henkel, the multinational corporation behind well-known brands Dial, Right Guard, Soft Scrub and adhesive Loctite. He and his family live in Arizona. 2000s: Roli Kumar-Choudhury, BE’00 Kumar-Choudhury Roli Kumar-Choudhury chose to combine her love of science and math by majoring in biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt. She then earned a master’s in biomedical engineering–biomaterials/biomechanics before joining medical device manufacturer LeMaitre Vascular. She earned an MBA in 2007 and is now director of quality affairs for LeMaitre Vascular, which develops, manufactures and markets disposable and implantable devices for vascular disease. Kumar-Choudhury and her husband reside in the Boston area. 2010s: Seth Dean, current sophomore Dean Seth Dean comes from engineering alumni on both sides of his family. His father, J. Bruce Dean, graduated from the school in 1980. His mother’s grandfather, Allen Dunkerley Jr., earned his Vanderbilt engineering degree in 1934. A lot has changed in the engineering field since his great-grandfather’s time and Dean plans on exploring areas that his ancestor could never have imagined. “There are a lot of undiscovered and exciting frontiers in electrical engineering,” Dean says. “Electric cars have become a reality, computers are able to do more a lot faster, and electronics have become such a huge part of daily life.”

Mechanical Engineering Hall was erected in 1888 and designed specifically for the teaching of engineering. It also produced steam that was used to heat other campus buildings as well as electricity to light them from 1899 to approximately 1918. Today it is part of the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management.

In 1886 President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty and New York City celebrated with its first ticker-tape parade. Closer to Nashville, a pharmacist in Atlanta invented Coca-Cola. Closer still, in Memphis an inventor patented a typewriter ribbon. In Nashville, by vote of the Board of Trust, Vanderbilt University created the School of Engineering. That act separated mechanical and civil engineering from a larger academic unit into an engineering department.

Two years later, a cornerstone was laid for Mechanical Engineering Hall, a handsome building still, and today affectionately dubbed Old Mechanical.

After a precipitous dip in enrollment to 18 students in 1898 (possibly due to a lingering economic depression and the start of the Spanish American War), the school entered the 20th century—transitioning from the practical training of mechanical and civil engineers to educating engineering professionals and enjoying a steep rise in enrollment after World War I and again after World War II.

Featheringill during construction in 2001.

More buildings were needed: Olin Hall in 1974. New Engineering, built in 1950, became Jacobs Hall in 1995. Also in 1995, the school acquired several floors in building 5 of the Stevenson Center complex. After a $28 million renovation/building project in 2002, Jacobs Hall and the new, cojoined Featheringill Hall made impressive additions to the engineering campus and provided an attractive central gathering place for faculty, students and alumni. The newest engineering building was acquired in 2010 and houses two institutes, 130 personnel, and offers about 40,000 square feet of lab, office and conference space on Nashville’s famed Music Row.

Absent a ticker-tape (obsolete since the 1960s) parade, the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering is planning a yearlong quasquicentennial celebration with special commemorative events on campus and stories in Vanderbilt Engineering magazine during the 2011-2012 academic year.

The multi-use, three-story Adams Atrium in Featheringill.

To mark the 125th anniversary, the school’s annual distinguished lecture—the John R. and Donna S. Hall Engineering Lecture—will bring four notable engineering leaders to campus, one each in October, November, February and March. A special Engineering Celebration Dinner is set for October 20 during the university’s Reunion weekend. National Engineers Week in February 2012 will offer opportunities for students and alumni to celebrate, too. Later in May, the quasquicentennial will wrap up with a party for engineering faculty and staff.

Vanderbilt University School of Engineering is moving to the next level after 125 years of growth and transformation. Its alumni, students, parents, faculty, staff and friends have much to celebrate and a strong foundation on which to build for the future.

Here’s to the next 125 years.

Interested in seeing a timeline of the School of Engineering’s milestones? Visit our special 125th anniversary website.

For a look back at the School of Engineering in photos, view our photo gallery.

Engineers work unobtrusively across the street from the Rhinestone Wedding Chapel, Bobby’s Idle Hour bar and recording studios in Nashville, breaking out of the traditional boundaries of computer research at Vanderbilt’s Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) right in the heart of the city’s Music Row.

“In a way it’s synergistic,” says Janos Sztipanovits, E. Bronson Ingram Distinguished Professor of Engineering. “All the creative types come together in this area. It’s a good mingling place for both geeks and musicians.”

The founder and director of ISIS, Sztipanovits recently spearheaded the institute’s transition from smaller, less modern digs to new headquarters on 16th Avenue just blocks away from campus. It was a fitting upgrade for a team that won more than $17.5 million in research funding for 2011. Of that, $12.5 million represented new awards, all in major national research programs.

Rapid Innovations

Fueling its pioneering research are rapid innovations in information technology that drive enormous changes in science and engineering. This information technology growth has an impact on virtually every system encountered by humans: health care, education, transportation, defense and even the environment.

ISIS founder and director Janos Sztipanovits, E. Bronson Ingram Distinguished Professor or Engineering

Since its establishment in the School of Engineering in 1998, ISIS has become an internationally recognized science and technology center for both designing and creating physical and computational systems, from small, embedded devices like pacemakers to globally deployed complex systems such as networks of satellites.

“We are a major source of design methods, and not only that, we create open source tools, which makes our new design technology widely accessible to the public,” Sztipanovits says. “ISIS software tools get serious reviews every day from users worldwide, multiplying the impact of our academic publication tremendously.”

ISIS crosses boundaries without hesitation to find new ways to solve today’s intricate engineering problems, he says. “Our research portfolio reflects that agility completely. The technology core of what ISIS is building—model-integrated computing—is really at the epicenter of this transformation in engineering,” he says.

Patients and Defense

Recent ongoing research highlights the institute’s broad impact. Sztipanovits led an ISIS team, for example, in a collaborative project with the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to develop a patient management system for sepsis treatment. Triggered when bacteria invades through wounds or IV lines, sepsis causes the body to literally attack itself and leads to more than a quarter million deaths annually. Now in clinical trial in the hospital’s intensive care unit, Vanderbilt’s system for rapid sepsis detection integrates with an automated decision support system to help guide physicians through the involved treatment process.

The project is part of a larger collaborative effort with the Medical Center to create a new generation of health information systems that are privacy aware and secure. The effort is supported by the National Science Foundation as part of the Science and Technology Center TRUST (Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology), as well as the Department of Health and Human Services’ Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Project on Security (SHARPS), funded by a $1.6 million federal grant.

ISIS and Vanderbilt University Medical Center developed a system for rapid sepsis detection that helps guide physicians through the complex treatment process.

At the same time that ISIS piloted this innovative patient management system, a national project began that has the potential to transform the manufacturing processes in the defense industry. The Adaptive Vehicle Make research program, a flagship initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), represents a challenge to a large research team that includes representatives of prominent institutes, corporations and universities, of which Vanderbilt is a lead player.

The team must figure out, among other charges, how to build a complex vehicle like an amphibious combat vehicle in one-fifth of the usual time. ISIS’ Ted Bapty and Sandeep Neema spearhead the initial phase of the AVM project, focusing on design languages, automation and flow.

Computer software, hardware and myriads of physical components have to integrate seamlessly to meet DARPA’s challenge, the researchers say. The ultimate goal is democratization of design, where not only major manufacturers can come up with innovations, but small companies, individuals, even student groups have a chance to compete. To test the idea, DARPA will distribute the resulting tool suite to high schools and initiate national competitions where the best designs will be manufactured in automated AVM fabrication lines.

“There’s an incredible number of engineering domains or disciplines that have to be involved to make this happen,” says Bapty, research associate professor of electrical engineering.

The technology base, however, is common, says Neema, research associate professor of electrical engineering. “We should be able to apply these concepts to a variety of vehicles from a submarine to a flying Humvee.” (The flying Humvee only exists in the imagination—for now).

Cyberphysical Interaction

Another high-profile assignment has Sztipanovits and Xenofon Koutsoukos, associate professor of computer science and computer engineering, pairing with General Motors, the University of Maryland and the University of Notre Dame in a project called the Science of Integration for Cyber-Physical Systems.

The five-year, $5 million NSF-funded project tackles the precise and theoretically well-founded engineering of cyberphysical systems. CPS are the new generation of engineered systems built as networks of interacting computational and physical elements to deliver advanced capabilities in cars, aircrafts and spacecraft.

“We do not have a science to do this integration,” Koutsoukos explains. “The problem is extremely difficult and very costly. Companies design new models, and they have to do it fast while managing costs and making sure the product is safe.” At the same time, new design and technologies are rapidly changing.

Most cars and planes combine multiple components from multiple manufacturers and it is not always well understood how the components work together, Koutsoukos says. Further complicating matters is the issue of intellectual property—manufacturers don’t want to provide information that would inform competitors.

That is where ISIS engineers can make a real impact. Their computer modeling techniques help predict and evaluate how different parts—from software to hardware to motors, wires, various materials and moving parts—will interact.

The new integration science (supported by design tools) that the team is charged with creating would ease the integration of all components. In the final phase, the researchers will create virtual prototypes to simulate a vehicle so it can be tested before manufacturing—all while keeping down costs and avoiding errors.

Complex Software in the Air

Another area where ISIS researchers apply model-integrated computing is in creating models that can diagnose faults in systems before they happen. For one such project, Koutsoukos pairs with Gautam Biswas, professor of computer science and computer engineering, on a grant from NASA to improve software health management (the system dependability and prognostics) in modern aircraft.

From left, Gautam Biswas, Xenofon Koutsoukos and doctoral student Daniel Mack. The trio uses algorithms to analyze flight data for a project that could lead to detection and prevention of adverse events in aircraft.

Working closely with Honeywell and a regional airline, Biswas, Koutsoukos and others on the team are developing VIPR (Vehicle Integrated Prognostic Reasoner), a system which seeks to isolate, detect and prevent adverse events in commercial aircraft.

As part of the project, the researchers employed data mining algorithms to analyze years of flight data to uncover where irregularities occurred, find out why they happened and discover ways to detect problems earlier.

“In one adverse event we found, the engine shut down fairly soon after takeoff. The plane was forced to return to the tarmac,” Biswas explains. The FAA considers that a serious event, even though no one was injured.

The researchers went back at least 50 flights and analyzed data for that particular plane. They made an interesting discovery: A small leak had developed in a fuel meter near an engine. The engine, receiving erroneous information that it wasn’t getting enough fuel, began to overcompensate. The meter eventually ceased to function, which led to the engine overheating and shutting down. If the software system had communicated the fuel gauge malfunction earlier, the engine problem could have been avoided. “We are using data-mining algorithms to process data and derive the precise knowledge to catch faults earlier,” Biswas explains.

Challenging and High Stakes

Although ISIS has a partner list packed with household names ranging from aircraft manufacturers to the U.S. Department of Education, some of its most complex projects are part of the security and defense realm.

In one, Associate Professor Koutsoukos works with the Army Research Office in collaboration with MIT; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Memphis on a five-year DARPA-funded project to refine a sensor network for tracking and target recognition in urban terrain.

Gabor Karsai leads the ISIS F6 team and another that creates decision support tools for the military. Image courtesy of DARPA.

In a different collaborative effort, Gabor Karsai, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, leads a team that partners with George Mason University to create decision support tools to help the military determine the best course of action in complex situations. The work, sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory, has implications for disaster preparedness in emergencies like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Evaluating potential problems in action plans means planners can make small fixes now to prevent big problems later.

Perhaps Karsai’s most exciting program is part of the creation of a network in the sky. It is called the F6 project and is funded by DARPA, with NASA acting as technical supervisor and Lockheed Martin and Kestrel Institute as subcontractors. The engineers are challenged to create an advanced space system of many smaller satellites that could communicate with each other while hurtling through orbit at 25,000 miles per hour.

The ISIS team is designing and building the information architecture for the nation’s F6 program, an advanced space system of networked satellites.

“Conventional satellites are single, very expensive and very large, and if something goes wrong, very hard to repair,” Karsai explains. A networked system of smaller satellites creates redundancies that mean the failure or loss of one or two satellites wouldn’t be disruptive. The ISIS team will design and build the information architecture for the $5 million undertaking.

“This is a challenging and high-stakes project. In two years, we are going to do a flight test. Whatever we build will end up on the platform,” Karsai says.

Smartphone for the Defense

Akos Ledeczi, associate professor of computer engineering, and his team are working on a countersniper application for smartphones that will aid soldiers in battle. The app, called SOLOMON (Shooter Localization with Mobile Phones), is funded by a two-year, $500,000 grant from DARPA.

Here’s how it works: A custom headset worn by solders is programmed to collect the sound of gunfire and send the information to the soldier’s smartphone. Neighboring phones share the data, compute the location of the shooter and display it using Google Maps. Building on earlier prototypes built by Ledeczi’s team, this version runs off a single microphone per smartphone and does not require a central computer to work. Vanderbilt has applied for patents for the techniques used in this process.

ISIS has numerous ongoing projects related to applications that can make smartphones even smarter. Some involve creating and improving building blocks of software programs, called middleware. Other projects use the middleware as a jumping-off point. They rely on and share open source systems that make computer code more accessible and easier to use.

Cybersecurity and TRUST

The resilience of today’s software integrated systems depends on more than just combating the wear and tear caused by natural forces, Sztipanovits says. Today corporations, universities, government agencies and individuals have to prepare for cybersecurity issues.

Using Vanderbilt patented technology, troops will be able to use smartphones to locate snipers in the field.

“Now we’re dealing with an intelligent adversary,” he says. “We have to find ways for the system to protect itself.” Sztipanovits leads a variety of cybersecurity projects and is Vanderbilt’s principle investigator with NSF’s TRUST. TRUST partners—Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Stanford, UC Berkeley and Vanderbilt universities—concentrate on the development of new cybersecurity science and technology.

Engaging Students

The imagination and adaptability of ISIS engineers also flourishes in education. Biswas has worked for years with colleagues at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College for Education and Human Development to help students, especially middle schoolers, better learn and understand science.

A recent emphasis has been software-driven teaching aids. Biswas works with colleagues from Stanford University on an NSF-grant project called FACILE (Formal Analysis of Choice-Adaptive Intelligent Learning Environments) that helps students develop learning strategies.

Educators have documented that students learn better when they teach concepts to others, Biswas says. In this case, they will teach interactive computer agents and then use what they themselves have learned to solve challenges that relate to their own experiences, such as how to reduce carbon footprints in schools.

ISIS engineers work in the heart of Nashville’s creative Music Row.

In a different project, Biswas and Peabody’s Associate Professor of Science Education Doug Clark and Assistant Professor of Education Pratim Sengupta are developing new projects where students learn by creating simulations and solving challenges in computer games.

In addition to research, many ISIS investigators are professors or instructors in the School of Engineering, and ISIS projects present opportunities for hands-on learning for engineering students. Currently, ISIS supports 38 graduate students as well as undergrads.

That’s part of the ISIS mission. “What we are doing is fascinating and intellectually challenging,” Sztipanovits says. “We feel all the time that we are at the heart of things. We are part of something big. And we want to attract the best minds to this area of study.”

Matt Lang with one of his custom modified microscopes.

Matt Lang is fascinated by how things work. He comes by that trait naturally. “My father is a civil engineer and he got me started making things, doing house wiring, using tools. As a Cub Scout, I won the Pinewood Derby with the car I built,” says Lang, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

The Machinery of Biology

Fast forward 30 years and Lang works at the crossroads of engineering and biology, exploring how human cells work on the single-molecule level. He has combined his passion for building with curiosity about the mechanics of cells. “We are just starting to understand biological components and how they can be combined to create new biological systems, hybrid [biological and nonbiological] systems and biologically inspired systems,” Lang says. “You can build with biology. The body’s ability to copy cells with few errors is a manufacturing feat worthy of study and imitation.”

But first comes understanding the machine language of the cell, he says. If each cell can be considered a miniature machine, then its machine language is how the cell’s components, mechanics and biological force know how to operate and interact. “Once we understand the machine, we can start targeting how to use or disrupt the machinery,” he says.

Lang, who came to the School of Engineering from MIT in fall 2010, works out of a new, custom-designed and environmentally controlled lab space in Olin Hall. Using a variety of microscopes with lasers and lenses arranged in mathematically exacting configurations, he manipulates and adjusts the shape, position and timing of laser beams to test and study cell molecular activity. The microscopes, custom modified by Lang, rest on tables that float on cushions of air, diminishing vibrations that can alter measurements.

Molecular-level Solutions

“I have a variety of projects surrounding the study of biological motors,” says Lang, explaining how this work could open new vistas for treating disease. “If you approach cell division as machinery, you can explore ways to alter an action—for instance, preventing cancer cells from dividing.”

From left, Lang, senior Richard Stroder and Ph.D. student Juan Carlos Cordova in the Lang Lab in the basement of Olin Hall.

Lang studies malfunctioning groups of proteins called amyloid fibers that are linked to neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. “We’re looking at the strength of these fibers, at what makes them so strong, and looking for ways to understand their underlying structure and weaken them,” he says.

Lang also uses instruments he built to create automated optical traps. They enable researchers to probe the signaling machinery of the immune system. The outcome could be molecular-level ways of altering or enhancing immune response.

Nano in Biology

Lang says that developing the tools for measurement at the single-molecule level and using mathematical approaches to model structures inside cells are key to developing unprecedented advances in health care.

“The ability to visualize and measure activity at a molecular level has the potential to affect how we treat disease,” he says. “Nanotechnology offers a framework from which to understand and move forward in new ways. Biology has its own nanotechnology and it’s going on right before our eyes. It’s fascinating and superior in many ways to anything humanity has created.”

His research in biomolecular systems is international in scope. Building on relationships he established while at MIT, Lang has a lab at National University of Singapore, which emphasizes global partnerships. Lang collaborates with scientists there on biosystem and micromechanic projects; the affiliation also provides research opportunities for his students.

Inciting Inspiration

Lang’s first year at Vanderbilt was intense as he installed his instruments and established his Nashville lab. Adding to that intensity was the arrival of his first child, Phoebe Garden Lang. “At first, it took two of us to change a diaper,” Lang jokes about himself and his wife, Hilary, a synthetic organic chemist turned patent attorney. Lang hopes to inspire Phoebe’s blooming curiosity in a scientific direction. “I haven’t gotten her into the lab yet, but I am looking forward to teaching her what I know about how things work,” he says. “I showed her how to jump-start my car the other day but I’m not sure she’ll remember.”

Lang is passionate about nurturing emerging scientists and supervises both undergraduate and graduate researchers in the Lang Lab. “If I just wanted to do research, I’d be in industry. I like mentoring undergraduates,” says Lang, who credits mentors at the University of Rochester and University of Chicago with inciting his scientific curiosity and providing the lab experiences that have inspired him.

He hopes to draw motivated undergrads into their own research as well as find funding to underwrite the grooming of a new generation of researchers. For one recent project, Lang and his students built a high-velocity pingpong ball launcher that can drive the lightweight ball through a soda can. “Part of the fun of working with undergraduates is teaching them how to approach a problem, to be an experimentalist,” Lang says. “Doing so means I get to have fun in the lab.”

Cornelius Vanderbilt

History remembers Cornelius Vanderbilt as a businessman—the first to be compared to the medieval German robber barons, and a man popularly called the Commodore for ownership of a steamship fleet. But he deserved another title as well: engineer.

With almost no education, young Vanderbilt mastered steamboat design when steamboats were a new technology. As early as 1818, the 23-year-old studied with James P. Allaire, who had purchased the engine works of inventor Robert Fulton. When Vanderbilt began to build his own boats a decade later, he sought to combine speed and comfort with strength and fuel efficiency. Being a businessman, not a professional shipwright, he often defied conventional wisdom.

The Lexington, for example, won acclaim as the first of “an entirely new class of steam vessels” when launched in 1835. “Her shape was very peculiar,” Vanderbilt noted. He made it unusually long and narrow for the era: 205 feet by 22, making it fast and efficient. To address the tendency to “hog,” or bend lengthwise, he designed an arched deck, adapted from a “patent for bridges,” he explained. This small but startling fact suggests that he read a wide array of technical literature as he perfected his designs.

In the 1850s, Vanderbilt built oceangoing steamships for his own lines. Like most contemporary naval architects, he used side paddlewheels, not propellers, but he broke with custom by retaining the overhead walking-beam engine seen in riverboats. For the first ocean steamers, engineers had developed the side-lever engine. Entirely below decks, it was protected from the elements and maintained a low center of gravity. But this involved more moving parts than the walking-beam engine, making it less efficient; it had narrower tolerances, too, requiring more precise machining of parts and a reinforced engine compartment. The results were lower speeds, heavier and more expensive ships and greater fuel consumption. Vanderbilt proved that the simpler, older design could succeed at sea and built some of the fastest and most fuel-efficient ships of the antebellum era.

Vanderbilt’s Lexington was unique and hailed as the first of “an entirely new class of steam vessels” when launched in 1835. This portrait of the Lexington by James and John Bard is in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, and is used with the museum

During the Civil War, Vanderbilt gave the Union navy his largest and fastest ship, the Vanderbilt. He personally supervised its conversion into a warship intended to sink the Confederate ironclad Virginia (or Merrimack). “Her steam machinery has been protected by rails in the most ingenious way,” the London Times reported, “and also by cotton bales and hay. Her prow has been armed with a formidable nose [of steel], with the intention to poke right into the side of the Merrimac [sic].” To enable the ship to survive the ramming of the ironclad, the interior was reinforced, “so as to be little else for many feet (say 50) from the prow than a mass of solid timber,” wrote Salmon P. Chase after an inspection. The Confederates declined to risk their ironclad against it.

In the 1860s and ’70s, as Vanderbilt concentrated on railroads, he stepped back from technical details while serving as a kind of chief systems engineer for his lines. The New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, his main company, ran the width of New York state, and it had two tracks for simultaneous movement in both directions.

Even so, Vanderbilt said, “We have to run freight trains so rapidly to get them out of the way of the passenger trains that . . . it uses up the rolling stock, knocking the cars to pieces without really carrying the freight any faster.” His engineer’s mind had a solution. If he built dedicated freight and passenger tracks in each direction—making an unprecedented four-track railroad—he calculated that he would save much more than the interest on bonds issued to pay for construction. Vanderbilt overrode his own advisers to do it and was proved right again. It gave his railroad an advantage that allowed it to thrive even in the depression that followed the Panic of 1873.

Cornelius Vanderbilt has often been underestimated. In 1853, a credit reporter dismissed him as “illiterate” (not to mention “boorish” and “offensive”). True, he lacked education, but that makes his technical prowess all the more remarkable. He was one of the finest engineers of his day, as self-made in that respect as he was in business.

Vanderbilt researchers working at the smallest scale celebrate a huge milestone this year. The Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (VINSE), seeded from a university-funded $16 million venture capital fund initiative, celebrates its 10th anniversary in December.

Ben Schmidt, PhD’10, research associate in chemical and biomolecular engineering, measures thin film thickness using VINSE’s profilometer.

There is much to celebrate, including the fact that in the past decade, VINSE has attracted more than $75 million in federal funding for nanoscience research, says VINSE Director Sandra J. Rosenthal.

An interdisciplinary institute devoted to the science and engineering of matter on the atomic scale, VINSE proves that even the smallest matter matters. Through nanotechnology, researchers make extremely small materials—far smaller than the width of a human hair—but with enhanced capabilities relevant to everything from energy use to the efficient delivery of medications.

“The fundamental thing that makes nanoscience interesting is that when you fabricate a material on the nanoscale, new properties are discovered all the time. These new properties open up a myriad of possibilities for potential applications,” says Rosenthal, the Jack and Pamela Egan Chair of Chemistry and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, chemistry, physics and pharmacology. “We study those possibilities and figure out what applications you can use for those properties.”

VINSE Director Sandra J. Rosenthal in her lab, surrounded by components and examples of her groundbreaking research into quantum dots, also known as semiconducting nanocrystals.

With partners that include Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Fisk University, VINSE fosters cutting-edge research in biology and medicine, optics, carbon-based nanostructures and sensors, as well as a new emphasis at the interface of nanoscience and energy. Roughly a quarter of Vanderbilt’s engineering faculty are part of VINSE, comprising nearly half of the institute’s researchers.

In recent months, the institute earned a $5 million stake in a $20 million National Science Foundation grant to strengthen research development infrastructure in Tennessee. A smaller but critically important $569,000 grant from NSF’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allowed for the renovation of air-handling equipment in the VINSE clean room and an upgrade of the toxic gas monitoring system.

Power of Research

The core facilities of VINSE, created and equipped with $5 million of the initial investment from the university’s endowment, provide highly specialized instrumentation. “The fact that we have this kind of fabrication and characterization available has allowed us to land some outstanding individuals who are nanoscience researchers,” Rosenthal says.

Among the latest recruits is Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Jason Valentine, an expert on cloaking—hiding objects from view by bending light around them.

While cloaking evokes images from the world of Harry Potter or Star Trek, its more practical applications include the possible creation of ever smaller, lighter and more efficient optical systems and materials for telecommunications and computing.

As a graduate student at University of California–Berkeley, Valentine was part of a research team that created a cloaking technique dubbed a “carpet cloak” made from a silicon sheet and drilled with precisely placed holes. The cloak alters the refraction of light as it passes through the material—thinner than a human hair—making an object appear flat.

“What we are doing is virtually ripping a hole in space,” Valentine says, albeit a very tiny hole. Since naturally occurring materials do not have this kind of flexibility in their optical properties, Valentine and the Berkeley research team used metamaterials—artificial materials engineered with nanoscale machining methods—to achieve material structuring much smaller than the wavelength of light.

While the effect was achieved on the two-dimensional scale, Valentine is continuing the next step at Vanderbilt—working toward the fabrication of such materials on a larger scale and in 3-D. These developments could prove useful in manipulating light in silicon chips, the foundation of modern electronics, to enable more efficient and flexible light-routing architectures.

“Cloaking is a great demonstration of the technology and a great way to pull young students into the science field,” Valentine says of the public interest in cloaking. “Normally, they wouldn’t be aware of scientific breakthroughs.”

Saving Energy, Saving Lives

While Valentine works to manipulate light, Rosenthal’s lab experienced a breakthrough by producing a new nanomaterial that for the first time emits a white light. Rosenthal aims to make the material bright and white enough to become commercially viable.

“A lot of people said this (discovery of white light on the nanoscale) would never happen. Nobody predicted it,” she says.

Rosenthal’s lab uses specialized instrumentation to synthesize semiconducting nanocrystals, also called quantum dots. A building block of nanotechnology, quantum dots are just a few millionths of a millimeter across, exhibiting unique electronic, optical and magnetic properties that can be utilized in a variety of technologies.

A Raith eLiNE EBL (electron beam lithography) system allows researchers to pattern the smallest nanostructured materials. The cutting-edge instrument is housed in VINSE’s Electron Optics Laboratory, supervised by Tony Hmelo, VINSE associate director and research associate professor of physics and materials science (pictured).

Among other projects, Rosenthal also is investigating ways to bind drugs to a cell’s protein, providing a nanocrystal beacon to track the movement of proteins that control serotonin through the brain. This could be a potential breakthrough in mental health, as an imbalance of serotonin is associated with many major mental illnesses.

“My research is a lot of fun,” Rosenthal says. “One day I’m saving the planet trying to develop energy-efficient lighting. Another day I’m trying to do fundamental research that may one day help alleviate the suffering of people with mental illness, and it’s nanotechnology that’s enabling all of it.”

Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering Sharon Weiss investigates nanotechnology that could potentially help a drug cocktail hone in on hard-to-reach tumors in cancer patients, among other potential applications.

Weiss works with porous silicon crystals. Sponge-like material filled with billions of tiny holes, the crystals can be manipulated through an etching process that allows scientists to load the tiny holes with other substances.

Weiss pairs with Paul Laibinis, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, in research that involves synthesizing DNA molecules inside the pores with certain drugs to create a highly selective sensor. By evaluating how light interacts with the porous silicon, it is possible to detect the presence of trace amounts of biological material. This can aid in a number of processes, including the delivery of medicines to very specific areas in the body, Weiss explains.

Cloaking research by Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Jason Valentine (shown in the process of setting up his lab) could lead to ever smaller, lighter and more efficient optical systems and materials for telecommunications and computing.

Looking Ahead

Peter Cummings, the John R. Hall Professor of Chemical Engineering, has been instrumental in shaping the government’s National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategy. He recently participated in a strategic directions workshop to provide input into the government’s blueprint for nanoscience research for the next decade. (For details, see www.nano.gov).

The science of small has quietly revolutionized many aspects of technology and that revolution is continuing, Cummings says.

He notes that researchers at Vanderbilt and elsewhere are making strides in molecular electronics, with the goal of constructing devices with a switch comprised of just one molecule.

This would represent the ultimate miniaturization of electronics. “People are contemplating what’s going to happen beyond silicon,” he says of the material that forms the basis of modern computer chips. In fact, Vanderbilt’s Weiss, who has a secondary appointment as assistant professor of physics, is working with Richard Haglund, professor of physics, on methods to speed computing processes by using light rather than metal to quickly transfer information. (See Vanderbilt Engineering, fall 2010.)

VINSE recently renovated the air-handling and toxic gas monitoring equipment in its clean room, thanks to an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grant. Research Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering Bo Choi works at the eBeam evaporator in the room.

Cummings says that Vanderbilt engineers are using high-performance computing-based techniques, including the use of GPUs (graphical processing units, primarily developed for video games) to research other aspects of nanoscience, including study of nanoconfined fluids, which are important for lubrication of moving parts in nanoscale devices.

Vanderbilt has a grant, led by Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Greg Walker, to build a fast GPU cluster for scientific computation, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where Cummings is Principal Scientist in the Center for Nanophase Materials Science, is building a huge GPU cluster in collaboration with Georgia Tech.

Matter even smaller than that of the nanoscale—at the “femto” and “atto” scale—already is under exploration as well. Tools such as atomic force microscopes allow scientists to measure and watch individual chemical reactions take place, moving far beyond the theoretical stage. Cummings says it was just a short time ago that scientists could barely imagine the innovations happening today in nanoscience. “What was inconceivable a couple of decades ago is a reality today,” he says.

Bob Pitz is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in recognition of his achievements in combustion and laser diagnostics, as well as a GE Star Award. Pitz was also named a Summer Faculty Fellow by the American Society for Engineering Education and the National Research Council. He has chaired the mechanical engineering department since 1998. To support his internationally recognized research, Pitz has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as NASA and the USAF. His commercial clients include Air Products and Chemicals Inc., Gas Research Institute and MetroLaser Inc.

When Bob Pitz studies a problem, it really is rocket science. Vanderbilt’s combustion expert, Robert W. Pitz, professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, explores ways to make aircraft and rocket engines burn more efficiently, safely and powerfully for clients that include NASA and the United States Air Force.

In his current research, Pitz and his colleagues work on fueling what could potentially be the next generation of jet engines: hypersonic (super fast) engines for space and air flight. Most modern fighter jets (and even the Concorde) are supersonic, reaching speeds of Mach 2 to 3 (approximately two to three times the speed of sound); hypersonic crafts could be the faster, better, next step. Capable of speeds at Mach 5 to 10 (or 4,000–8,000 miles per hour), they could be used in space and military applications, as well as possibly civilian aircraft.

These experimental engines are known as scramjets (supersonic combustion ramjets) because they use supersonic combustion rather than rockets for propulsion. In the lab, Pitz and his team study supersonic combustion flow, making measurements to refine computer models that can accurately predict what will happen to such engines at hypersonic speed.

Hypersonic space planes with scramjet engines have the promise to lower the cost of earth-to-orbit flight by eliminating the need to carry oxidizer to burn with fuel as rockets do. In space vehicles, these engines could power the vehicle after liftoff but while still in the Earth’s atmosphere. During this air-breathing phase, space planes would travel at hypersonic speeds but air would be slowed to supersonic speeds in the plane’s scramjet engine intake to burn with the fuel.

Research on this promising but experimental technology is challenging. “When designing such engines, it’s very difficult to predict perfectly how they will behave at hypersonic speeds,” Pitz says, thus velocity research in his Vanderbilt lab and in other study settings is critical.

Traditional methods of using probes to measure velocity can’t be used at hypersonic speeds, as they would burn up or interfere with performance. To solve that problem, Pitz developed nonintrusive laser diagnostic techniques that can measure supersonic airflow for hypersonic propulsion. His pioneering technique uses two lasers that first mark, or “tag,” and then illuminate molecules in the air that can be measured. The data is then used in computer models to predict and simulate the flow dynamics.

Graduate student Marc Ramsey (left) and Pitz use lasers to split, tag and then measure molecules. The goal is to understand how similar molecules would react at hypersonic speeds.

“We use our lasers to measure the velocity of combustion at supersonic speeds in the wind tunnel at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force base in Ohio,” Pitz says. “We then compare our data with computer models developed by researchers at Georgia Tech.”

On Deadline for NASA

Pitz has patented two award-winning molecular tagging techniques to use in measuring velocity: Ozone Tagging Velocimetry (OTV) and Hydroxyl Tagging Velocimetry (HTV). His techniques have wide application in the study of aerodynamics, combustion and fluid dynamics.

In HTV, multiple beams from one ultraviolet laser split the airflow’s water molecules to form a grid pattern of hydroxyl molecules in the combustion chamber. Two microseconds later, the second laser causes the molecules to light up. Next, a digital camera records the movement of the lighted grid of tagged molecules.

“Once the HTV grid is formed, the grid moves with the flow,” Pitz explains. “The displacement of grid over a fixed time period yields the velocity, much like you would judge the speed of a river with a stick.”

The researchers are fabricating an HTV system for NASA to use in testing the J2X engine, a new second-stage rocket engine being developed for the next generation of rockets that will replace the Space Shuttle. The system will be delivered in June to John C. Stennis Space Center, NASA’s large rocket testing center, in Mississippi.

Fueling the Future

Pitz is also working on basic research into the development of hydrogen burners. Calling hydrogen the fuel of the future, he says hydrogen burners could be used in gas turbines, aircraft and possibly long-distance automobile travel.

Demonstrating velocity in the cap shock pattern of a hydrogen-fueled rocket exhaust

That research employs a method called Raman scattering, which uses ultraviolet light to measure fuel concentration and combustion products and then determine how well the fuel and oxygen are blending.

In addition to research and chairing the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pitz teaches undergraduate thermodynamics and several graduate courses. He supervises the studies of five graduate students and directs the research of a Fulbright Scholar from Cairo, Egypt. His former students include researchers, professors and administrators at international universities, military engineers and other scientists.

His current students show equal promise. Pitz points to research being conducted by students, including graduate student Marc Ramsey and senior Kyle Bloemer, as noteworthy. Ramsey and Bloemer are studying cap shock, a specific shock-wave pattern found in truncated rocket nozzles optimized for high thrust and low weight. Unstable cap shocks, which occur when engines are turned on, can damage the nozzles.

“Marc Ramsey has developed a new computer-based template to analyze the HTV grid displacement that gives very accurate velocities,” Pitz says. “This will help improve our existing computer models, which can then be used to design the nozzles more reliably.”

Ralph Gates, BE’47, at the World War II Memorial in Tennessee

When Ralph Gates enrolled in the Vanderbilt School of Engineering in 1942, World War II was raging in Europe and Japan was marching across the Pacific. The 17-year-old Nashville native knew he would enlist when he turned 18.

In the meantime, there was survey camp, a fraternity and chemical engineering classes. For Gates, BE’47, and the other men of Sigma Chi, it was coursework, football games and tea dances with sororities. “There were probably 50 of us in the fraternity in the summer of 1942,” Gates says. “By ’44, there were less than 10 not in uniform.”

When he tried to enlist at 18, the Army and draft board mysteriously told Gates to stay in engineering school and that it would let him know when his service was needed.

In 1944, Gates was finally called to active duty and sent to infantry basic training. Then unexpected orders arrived and Gates wound up in the Army Specialized Training Program for a few weeks. Before long, Gates was sharing a sealed Pullman car with other bewildered young men, heading west. They didn’t know where they were going or why.

“Our car was detached from the train in the middle of the New Mexico desert,” Gates says. “A bus picked us up. Finally we passed through well-guarded gates into the Los Alamos Ranch School for Boys and there we stayed until the war was over.”

“There” was Los Alamos, N.M., and the 20-year-old was soon working on the supersecret Manhattan Project, which developed and built the atomic bombs that ended World War II.

“Los Alamos apparently needed people with at least some technical training to do the grunt work in building the bombs,” he says, explaining that degreed engineers were already overseas or committed to other government work. “I’d had three years of chemical engineering and all the physics that was offered, but essentially no knowledge of radiation.”

Gates helped cast high-explosive lenses designed to compress plutonium to critical mass in the Nagasaki-type (Fat Man) bomb. As the junior member of a group handling explosives, he helped sweep up small bits of TNT at shift’s end. “The first time I stepped on one and it went ‘bing,’ it scared the daylights out of me,” he chuckles.

Telling Their Stories

Gates, now 86, says the story of Los Alamos is only one of many that his generation—and others—can tell. Since retiring, he’s launched Life Stories, a personal mission to record people recounting their personal histories in their own words.

“I want the stories of my generation recorded for their children and great-grandchildren,” he explains. He tapes participants as they recount their memories and stories, capturing the emotions, thoughts and motivations of everyday people. Gates provides DVDs to his subjects so they can give them to family or historical societies.

So far, he’s done 75 Life Stories interviews. “People talk about all kinds of things, frequently personal things or opinions they want their descendents to remember,” Gates says. “A 30-year Marine colonel’s story extended over 12 hours. Another person talked about working as a foreign missionary.”

Friends at Arms

Among his most prized Life Stories are those of his Vanderbilt classmates—Bill Akers (BE’47), Lyt Anderson (BE’48), Bruce Crabtree (’46), John Jeffords (’47), Henry “Buddy” McCall (AS’47), Ernest Moench (BE’47), Ed Winn (’46) and the late Bill Stumb (’46) and Bill Wells (BA’48). Each served in the military and Gates has recorded their wartime experiences.

The men’s friendship continues today and they meet for reunions whenever they can.

“At engineering camp near Sparta in the summer of 1942, we practiced surveying for a theoretical road project up the mountain and through the woods. John Jeffords is well-remembered for placing a large sign over the camp entrance that said, ‘Dean Lewis’ School for Wayward Boys,’” Gates recalls. “A bunch of us shaved our heads, probably because our mothers weren’t there to stop us.”

Dating was a group activity in the era before the war, and few went steady. Hettie Ray’s on Nine Mile Hill was the favored gathering place for dancing and as a watering hole—usually for Cokes. “There was nothing but an empty field between the Sigma Chi House on 21st Avenue and Furman Hall,” he says of campus life. “McTyeire Hall was a new girl’s dorm and the boys were more than happy to help them move in.”

It was a more innocent time, he concedes, and he is committed to documenting it. “On video, people become real and future generations can hear their ancestors firsthand as they talk about their lives and possibly traumatic things that made them who they were,” Gates explains.

After the War

Discharged from the military, Gates finished his Vanderbilt degree and earned a master’s from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined Victor Chemical Co. (later Stauffer Chemical Co.) in product development and sales. He married fellow alum Thaniel Dozier Armistead, BA’52, and raised a family of four.

For many years, Gates’ war work was a closed chapter. Los Alamos workers were told to say nothing of their service. That silence continued through what he calls “the flower power years” of the ’60s and ’70s and anti-war sentiment. “I am aware of a certain feeling of guilt for having involvement in killing so many instantly, even in time of war,” Gates says. “But if you insist on numbers, I am certain the bomb ended the war and saved many more people that would have been killed, both American and Japanese.”

Today, Los Alamos vets—including Gates—have been featured in news articles and documentaries about the Manhattan Project. Gates says like other American veterans, he and his cohorts were there to do their part. “We felt like we’d done something worthwhile—our particular part, so to speak,” Gates says, explaining that the possibility of Germany readying its own atomic weapon increased the urgency of their work. “Did anyone have doubts? Sure. … You can point to the destruction the bombs brought to Japan, but it was nothing compared to the number of lives that would have been lost on both sides if the war had continued.”

Want to know more? Read transcripts of interviews Ralph Gates gave to television station KUED as part of the station’s series on World War II  (interview part 1 and interview part 2).

Adam Anderson (right, with research fellow Ha-Kyu Jeong) studies brain connectivity and development using MRI at the Vanderbilt imaging institute.

A professor from the Vanderbilt School of Engineering talks with a neurosurgeon in a hallway at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Their discussion fine-tunes ideas that the engineer takes forward in implementation. An education researcher at the Kennedy Center meets with a biomedical engineering professor and they brainstorm ways imaging can be used to benefit children. A cancer researcher works with one of the world’s leading imaging experts to characterize tumors and assess the tumors’ response to chemotherapy.

These collaborations occur on a regular basis as Vanderbilt engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists, physicians and students undertake research in advanced methods of imaging and use it in creative and innovative ways to improve patient outcomes, guide surgery, test treatments and advance basic science, along with a myriad of other potential applications.

Technology is Here Now

Imaging — the ability to see inside the body through various technological advances such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), spectroscopy, positron emission tomography (PET), ultrasound and even the basic X-ray — has improved dramatically in recent decades, and so have innovations that allow researchers to use multiple imaging techniques in concert. Advances also have helped meld together images taken at different times, such as before and during surgery.

Mark Does’ research includes studies that aim to improve specificity in MRI. The work could impact the diagnostic and prognostic capabilities of MRIs in a wide array of diseases and injuries.

“Ideas that were around 20 or 30 years ago can now be made to work because the technology is here now,” says John Gore, the internationally known director of the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science. VUIIS is a university-wide research center that brings together engineers and scientists with interests spanning the spectrum of imaging research — from the engineering of imaging techniques to the application of imaging tools to study the brain’s inner workings.

Gore, recently named the Hertha Ramsey Cress University Professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, also holds appointments as professor of physics and professor of molecular physiology and biophysics. Those joint appointments in the schools of Engineering, Arts and Science, and Medicine reflect the imaging institute’s transinstitutional scope.

Thomas Yankeelov, director of cancer imaging research for VUIIS, has a secondary appointment as assistant professor of biomedical engineering. He says Vanderbilt’s university-wide collaborative culture is critical to new discovery. “In order to make progress on the basic science of imaging, we need a lot of expertise,” he says. “To apply and translate those developments requires collaborating with those who are interested in using imaging to advance their own research. That research frequently informs what basic imaging science problems we should be tackling. So being inside a university that actually enables and values collaboration not only makes our jobs easier, it also makes it more fun.”

What Goes on Inside the Brain

Adam Anderson briefs a volunteer before an MRI scan.

At VUIIS, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Adam Anderson and other colleagues are working on imaging projects designed to map brain function. They ask questions about how the brain changes when someone thinks about a certain topic or performs a certain function, such as learning to read or do math. How does brain function change, they want to know, in someone with a psychiatric disorder, learning disability, epilepsy, dementia or Alzheimer’s disease?

The white matter of the brain has bundles of many, many axons that connect the neurons together, Anderson explains. These bundles hold the key to understanding many disease processes. “We use MRI to study the state of these connecting bundles and relate any injury to the bundles to symptoms,” he says.

In patients with schizophrenia, the researchers have found particular pathways where the integrity of the bundles is strongly correlated with disease symptoms, such as hallucinations.

A VUIIS researcher examines a subject’s brain activity.

In one study using imaging, the researchers created a model for language function that can aid not only in patients with trauma injuries but in understanding how children learn language. Preliminary data on a small number of subjects in a different study helped make predictions about how well a child might do when exposed to certain tutoring methods. Anderson, who also has appointments in radiology and radiological sciences, has also conducted studies to better understand brain function in children who struggle with math.

Quantifying and Measurement

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Mark Does pursues projects regarding the nervous system. His brain imaging studies seek to find ways to quantify the amount of myelin around certain axons. Since myelin, which forms a sheath around many nerve fibers, becomes damaged from disease, the researchers are seeking quantitative data so more can be understood about disease processes.

Similarly, Does is working in muscle imaging to find ways to measure inflammation as muscles heal. A bone-density tracing project using MRIs seeks to predict which bones might be susceptible to fracture and why. “There are a number of different disease conditions that are known to relate to broken bones. We are trying to find methods to diagnose fracture probability,” Does explains.

Hope for Parkinson’s

Imaging plays a key role in the School of Engineering’s focus on health care, one of its four strategic research areas. Faculty from several departments within the school work on research that involves imaging.

People with Parkinson’s disease benefit from brain stimulation research by Benoit Dawant and colleagues.

Bennett Landman, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, joined the faculty in January and hit the ground running in developing technologies to study the human brain. Landman extends computer-automated techniques to analyze brain characteristics for large-scale imaging studies. This research targets development of new biomarkers to assist imaging staging, prognosis and treatment guidance in neurological disease. In addition, Landman is working on developing statistical approaches to allow Internet-based collaboration for better medical imaging approaches. Within VUIIS, Landman heads up the new Center for Computational Imaging, which improves the analysis resources available to basic science and medical researchers.

Professor of Electrical Engineering Benoit Dawant uses imaging in his research into innovative deep brain stimulation surgery techniques for patients with Parkinson’s disease and other tremor disorders. An electrode is implanted deep in the brain and connected to a wire on the outside of the body, functioning much like a cardiac pacemaker. The electrode creates an electric field that modifies the way neurons in the brain talk to each other.

Dawant, Research Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering Pierre-Francois D’Haese and colleagues work with Vanderbilt neurosurgeons Dr. Peter Konrad and Dr. Joseph Neimat as well as neurologists, electrophysiologists and physical therapists in a complex process of patient selection, procedure planning, implantation and monitoring of the device.

J. Michael Fitzpatrick developed a three-legged platform used with imaging during cochlear implant surgery.

In this procedure, the target area, called the subthalamic nucleus, is very small. Implanted in the correct spot, the electrodes suppress the symptoms of Parkinson’s. Incorrectly done, the procedure can create side effects for the patient, so precision is critical. The engineering aspect of the procedure involves using images to calculate precise coordinates for the targets, like creating a map or a GPS system for the brain. The implant is then placed using a stereotactic frame contraption, which is attached to the skull.

During the procedure, the patient is awake and immediate feedback can determine whether the probe is stimulating the correct area of the brain in the right way. The small probe is then removed, and the permanent one is inserted and affixed.

Although, in the long term, brain stimulation may be shown to slow the progression of the disease, it is currently used to minimize the symptoms of Parkinson’s. “So far the probe is not a cure, it’s palliative,” Dawant says. The team has been capturing data about the procedure to create statistical models so that surgeons outside Vanderbilt might one day utilize the same methods. “We’d like to create a big central repository for deep brain stimulation cases,” he says.

Innovations for Image-guided Surgery

J. Michael Fitzpatrick, professor of computer science and computer engineering, has partnered with Dawant to translate some of the same ideas to patients with severe hearing loss. Implanting a cochlear device currently requires removing a piece of bone behind the ear. It can sometimes take a month for the area to heal sufficiently for the surgeon to know whether the procedure was effective. Fitzpatrick, Dawant and colleagues, including Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Robert Webster, have been working with ear surgeon Dr. Robert Labadie, associate professor of otolaryngology, on a concept to make the implantation procedure minimally invasive.

To provide the accuracy required for this delicate surgery, they devised a frame, or platform, similar to that used for deep brain surgery. A three-legged stand somewhat like a tiny table, it mounts behind the ear on bone-implanted anchors and is used with the aid of imaging to guide the surgical instrument in making a very small surgical entryway. There are critical areas to avoid during this procedure, especially the facial nerve and the chorda tympani, which regulates taste.

“Benoit finds where the cochlea is. I find out where the anchors are,” Fitzpatrick says.

The instrumentation still is in the testing phase but preliminary data is encouraging. “We have developed algorithms to localize the sensitive structures. We can automatically find the trajectory, the cochlea and the structures to avoid,” Dawant says, explaining that the rest of the team then designs a platform to guide the drill along that trajectory so that it makes a hole into the cochlea through which an electrode can be inserted. Other team members include Ramya Balachandran, MS’03, PhD’08, research assistant professor of otolaryngology, and research engineer and doctoral student Jason Mitchell, MS’02. Taking the research a step even further, the team is collaborating with colleagues at Leibniz University in Germany to develop a robotic arm that one day may perform parts of the ear surgery autonomously.

Fitzpatrick has been involved in implementing engineering innovations for image-guided surgery at Vanderbilt for decades. “Image-guided surgery was significantly advanced here. The systems people use day-to-day are based on what we developed,” he says. “I see my role not so much as a visionary guy but as an engineer who makes the visionary person’s idea work.”

The Bridge to Health Care

Other VUSE professors are also heavily involved in using imaging in their research. Michael Miga, associate professor of biomedical engineering, is a leading researcher in using imaging to develop compensation strategies for soft tissue deformation during image-guided surgery. Miga and Robert Galloway, professor of biomedical engineering, have conducted research to help align preoperative images with images taken during surgery. The task is difficult in organs such as the brain and liver, which tend to shift and change shape due to varying surgical presentations such as draining of cerebrospinal fluid in the case of the brain, or separation from the surrounding ligamenture with the liver. The result is a presentation of the organ that differs considerably from its anatomical orientation during preoperative scanning.

From left, doctoral student Jason Mitchell, Dr. Robert Labadie and J. Michael Fitzpatrick use image-guided programs to fabricate a unique patient-specific drill guiding platform for use during surgery.

“Each organ has its own unique challenges based on the organ’s anatomy, physiological nature, and that impacts the approach that a surgeon takes,” Miga says. His research employs computational modeling techniques that mimic the behaviors of the organ and then modify the presurgical images to reflect deformations that occur during surgery. That allows a surgeon to accurately track the location and behavior of the organ despite soft tissue deformation. (See fall 2009 Vanderbilt Engineering.)

Galloway also works on research that involves finding ways to use imaging to help guide surgeons behind the eyeball while avoiding muscles and other important structures.

“What we are doing started out as image-guided surgery. Now it’s much bigger than that,” Galloway says. He sees surgeons as evolutionary, he explains, following a pathway and seeking to constantly improve their craft and patient outcomes. Engineers working with doctors are the revolutionaries, taking basic ideas and applying them to different problems in an attempt to transform and revolutionize the process.

“Vanderbilt is extraordinarily good as an institution with all kinds of imaging,” Galloway says. “It’s very difficult to find a place that does it as well, and yet we’ve been sort of under the radar. Coupled with the imaging institute, we’re the bridge that takes these therapeutic findings into health care.”

Mark Reuss, BE’86, was named president of GM North America in December 2009, becoming second in command of one of the auto industry’s largest and most prominent companies. Reuss, a mechanical engineering grad, started with GM in 1983 as a student intern. Since then, he has held numerous engineering and management positions across GM brands, including chief engineer roles in GM’s large luxury car vehicles. Before taking over GM North America, he managed GM’s operations in Australia and New Zealand.

Reuss has a love for cars that extends past business. He is a certified test driver on the famed Nürburgring course in Germany and has earned his license for Grand American Road Racing (Grand-Am). He started the GM Performance Division in 2001 and launched associated production and racing vehicles including the V-Series Cadillacs and SS Chevrolets.

Reuss spoke with Vanderbilt Engineering about his new role, how his studies at the School of Engineering helped him in the automotive business, and the soul of the car.

Why did you choose Vanderbilt?

Vanderbilt’s engineering school recruited at Cranbrook, my high school in Michigan. I really wanted to live in a different place and not just go to another big Midwest school.

I had an excellent experience at Vanderbilt. I met people that I never would have met. My relationship with Vanderbilt is still good, by the way. I was just at Vanderbilt for an Engineering Committee of Visitors meeting. There are still people there who taught me.

How did your Vanderbilt education help you start your career?

At Vanderbilt I had the opportunity to work hands-on with engines, which was an experience that was quite different from what my counterparts were doing at other schools. We were learning about fuel systems and thermodynamics, and I’m not sure other places had that.

Also, Vanderbilt was unique (and still is) in that I had a full course load that included ethics, the business of engineering and product development. That was very progressive back then, and I still benefit from that business curriculum that’s enmeshed in the engineering school.

How did that benefit you?

Once I started at GM, I immediately knew that my Vanderbilt experience and the way I had learned to do business were very different. From the start, I wasn’t looked at as “just another GM engineer from the same pattern,” and that’s helped me a lot.

Because of my classes, I was attuned to think about where the competition was going next and how we could beat that. That’s a totally different way of thinking than benchmarking, which was what everyone else was doing. My VUSE education made me think about what people would want next — and that’s a pretty powerful thought. You won’t always be right, but you can anticipate people’s wants and needs. If you’re focused on benchmarking, you’re always going to be following.

Can you map your GM career?

I’ve worked in almost every part of the company — manufacturing, engineering, vehicle development, body shop tooling. I had the chance to put it all together when I was managing GM’s operations in Australia and New Zealand. It was the culmination of all I’ve learned: the general management piece, engine plants, vehicle plants, dealerships, sales and marketing. It was great preparation for what I’m doing now.

My background as an engineer is key to my career. This is still very much a product-based business. You have to anticipate and decide the portfolio of vehicles to produce and market. To do that, you have to know the car and understand its soul.

What is the soul of the car?

It’s kind of a mystical art — the soul of a car, how the vehicle actually drives. You have to integrate all the areas. Is it quieter than the competition? How is the engine and drive quality? You have to think about noise and vibration, ride and handling. Who is your customer? What are the three or four main things that are important to that customer, that will make them walk out of the car they’re in and into yours? That is the soul of the car.

How has the audience of car buyers changed from years ago?

People are much less brand-loyal than they used to be. It certainly makes it interesting, because you can’t rely on the “once a GM, always a GM” concept. Dan Lovinger [BA’87], who is also a Vanderbilt graduate, is a friend of mine who works at MTV. He brought our folks together with some of their folks, and we got a good peek under the curtain about what the millennium generation is, what they like, and what they want next.

Can you tell us about the Volt?

The Volt is a very exciting vehicle. It’s an extended-range electric vehicle. Think about it as a car that is electrically driven with a battery and a little generator on the back. It’s not a traditional hybrid. The Volt runs on electricity that it generates itself. It frees the consumer from being dependent on charging stations — no range anxiety.

The battery is the key to the Volt. It’s a liquid-cooled stack battery cell that’s T-shaped. The battery is actually part of the car. We developed it all inside GM. The mindset in the battery lab is very much science-oriented. There are a lot of young engineers on that project.

What kind of person do you want on your leadership team? Do you look for other engineers?

I want people who love cars. I want people who are passionate about getting the company to win. They have to be willing to leave behind the way that we operated in the past. I believe that if you drive the change of behavior, you change the way we get results.

What’s making you passionate these days?

The new Buick Regal — I really like that car. I also had the opportunity to drive the new V Series Cadillac coupe. That car is about as close to perfect as possible. It’s a rolling piece of sculpture, one of the most dramatic cars I’ve ever seen. When I was driving the car around, I kept finding people taking pictures of themselves with the car. My wife drives a Cadillac Escalade hybrid. We have three kids, and she loves that car.

On the corner of Vanderbilt’s Medical Center Drive and 21st Avenue is a research institute that houses what is likely the single largest, most comprehensive imaging center in the country. The Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science puts the most advanced imaging techniques literally at the doorstep of Vanderbilt University Medical Center physicians who want to find new ways of advancing medicine, education specialists at Peabody College looking to improve learning methods, and engineers researching new technologies.

John Gore

One of the most highly regarded research groups in the world in biomedical imaging, the imaging institute explores virtually every aspect of imaging science, from the underlying physics of imaging to applications of imaging techniques to detect, diagnose and treat disease.

“We have the tools that provide the right information and we don’t have the constraints of being spread around,” Gore says. “We were fortunate that the administration had a vision for how everything should be knit together.”

That vision was implemented by Gore, the renowned imaging expert who came to Vanderbilt from Yale in 2002 to set up the institute. Gore assembled a team of the best imaging scientists to develop advanced research using the latest, most powerful imaging equipment available.

In summer 2010, the center received a $3.45 million federal stimulus grant to purchase a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner to study small animals. The 15 Tesla scanner (one Tesla is roughly 20,000 times the strength of the magnetic field of the Earth) can produce detailed images of the brain and body, as well as measure minute levels of key compounds. It will be used in noninvasive studies of genetically engineered mice and other small animal models, creating opportunities for breakthrough research in basic understandings of cancer, diabetes and brain disorders, along with other possibilities.

The institute already houses seven powerful magnets including a 7 Tesla human scanner, one of only 13 in the world being used in human studies. Built in 2006, the building includes four floors of research, classroom and office space. Great care and planning went into every facet of the $19.7 million facility, including creating a mock MRI scanner so human research subjects can adjust to the feeling of lying prone in the cylindrical tube. The center also houses other advanced imaging devices, including a 3-T whole body scanner, X-ray, ultrasound, PET, optical and CT scanners.

The state-of-the-art center provides ready access to the latest equipment while facilitating constant communication among potential collaborators.

“We’re not a lab living in a bubble,” says Mark Does, associate professor of biomedical engineering. “(Interaction is) how we identify the relevant questions. We were built from day one for greater collaboration.”
Currently, 24 faculty members and 50 graduate students, mostly engineering majors, are associated with the institute. In addition to addressing questions brought by “visionaries,” institute faculty conduct their own research, much of it designed to improve imaging technologies and methods and to use them in new applications.

“We’ve got the hammer and we’re often looking around for the right nail,” says Adam Anderson, associate professor of biomedical engineering. “We rely on the rest of the university to bring us novel questions. We develop methods, and use them to provide new knowledge, but there are many physicians or educational researchers who study problems with which imaging can help. We rely on them to describe what they need.”
Among the research projects ongoing at VUIIS are studies furthering understanding of the human brain and how it functions, including asking why gray matter is gray and white matter is white, and building tools for understanding how the brain is organized. Other work involves better understanding blood flow in tumors, how the brain changes when a psychiatric disorder is present, and the impact of certain medicines on brain function.

“A lot of projects here draw heavily on engineering and the applied sciences to make them work,” Anderson says. “There are a lot of algorithms being developed to help the interpretation of information from different modalities.”

Doug LeVan and doctoral student Amanda Furtado examine nanoporous carbon adsorbents.

Can the world burn fossil fuels for energy in a way that doesn’t contribute to global warming? What can be done to protect people from the release of toxic chemicals? How would NASA care for a sick astronaut during long-duration space explorations like a manned mission to Mars?

These are some of the problems that drive M. Douglas LeVan, J. Lawrence Wilson Professor of Engineering and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering.

A leader in the field of adsorption, LeVan seeks to improve air quality both on Earth and in space. Working at the interface between pure research and its applications, he and his team of researchers are developing new materials and striving to understand old ones better.

Adsorption involves the use of solids to filter substances from either gases or liquids. It differs from absorption, in which a fluid permeates or is dissolved by a liquid or solid.

“My research has focused almost entirely on gas phase adsorption onto different materials,” he says. The results have implications for the environment, space exploration and the military.

New Developments for Greenhouse Gases

Currently, his research group studies adsorption of gases on nanoporous materials. Such materials contain pores smaller than a nanometer (one billionth of a meter). In addition to applying theory, the team uses models and experiments in air separation, gas storage, the removal of trace contaminants and other applications.

For example, the researchers are working on developing new metal organic framework adsorbents to remove carbon dioxide from the flue gases of coal-fired power plants. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, this research may help reduce the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

“The object is to capture carbon dioxide and concentrate it enough to store in old wells or use it to drive oil and natural gas to producing wells for enhanced recovery,” he explains.

LeVan has received continuous research support from the U.S. Army for more than 20 years. Currently, his group is working with the Army to develop new adsorbent materials and to study equilibrium and rate properties of new and existing adsorbents.

Into Space and Back

During the past 15 years, LeVan’s NASA research has involved many aspects of advanced life support and in situ resource utilization. Current collaborations include the development of small medical oxygen concentrators that will help keep astronauts healthy during long-duration space missions.

“Our goal is to take air from the spaceship cabin and enrich part of it in oxygen for astronauts who might become ill during the mission,” LeVan says.

Another project involves compressing oxygen to very high pressures using adsorption technology. The oxygen could then be used by astronauts on extravehicular activity expeditions from the International Space Station and on future manned missions to Mars, where resupply is impossible. The pressurized oxygen could also be used in propulsion to burn fuel.

LeVan is also investigating the improvement of systems for the removal of trace contaminants and carbon dioxide from spacecraft cabins. This research could help prevent situations like that experienced by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970 (and depicted in the movie Apollo 13), in which CO2 levels became too high in the space capsule, threatening the astronauts’ lives. LeVan says that by using adsorption and hydrogen, the CO2 could produce water and methane. The water, in turn, could be converted into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel.

Teaching and Research

Formerly a member of the engineering faculty at the University of Virginia, LeVan came to Vanderbilt as Centennial Professor and chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering in 1997. He has been a Fulbright Scholar to Portugal and France and a visiting professor at Perpignan University in France and the University of Queensland in Australia. Considered one of the top experts on adsorption processes, he also has edited and authored numerous books and articles and consulted with international clients, including fuel cell innovator Bloom Energy. In 2008, he stepped down from department chair to devote more time to teaching and research.

It is in those arenas that LeVan prefers to be. When he speaks of research, the world-renowned leader in chemical engineering sounds like an artist, using phrases like “beautiful structures” and “exquisite frameworks.” When he speaks of teaching, he admits, “I’d much rather work with students on these types of projects for the joy of it.”



Philip Reitinger, BE’84, leads the charge to protect the nation’s computer security.

Reitinger is the Department of Homeland Security’s deputy under secretary of the National Protection and Programs Directorate and director of the National Cyber Security Center.

Those are big titles and increasingly important roles to both the American public and to the government. In Homeland Security’s quadrennial review of the nation’s security, cybersecurity joined weapons of mass destruction, violent extremists and terrorism, transnational crime and natural disasters as the most pressing issues threatening homeland security.

Security in the Connected Age

“We’re putting computers into everything now,” says Reitinger, who earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science at Vanderbilt School of Engineering. “We’re building a broad array of highly complex devices. Most of these things are connected in deep ways to one another and to the Internet. These computers can reach from anywhere to anywhere, which is great. We no longer just say, ‘I use my computer to type documents.’ Now we watch TV, listen to music, send emails, all using computers. Increasingly we’re using computers to keep our food cold and do banking. So this network of computers is moving toward greater complexity, greater connectivity and greater criticality.”

Despite the importance of computers to everything from power plants to home refrigerators, “there are huge, grand challenges,” he says. “How do we actually make security easier for people?” Reitinger believes that even as people and companies try to keep their computers secure, there are others trying to undermine that security. “We’re in an environment now where if someone devotes the time and resources, they’ll find a way,” he says. “That’s not a sustainable place to be.”

The potential harm has grown along with the sophistication of the hackers Reitinger has seen throughout his career. “When I first got involved in working on cybersecurity, we were at the tail end of the ‘hacker and cracker’ [phase] of somebody seeking a reputation,” he says. “They’d attack a webpage and scrawl across it. That’s not where we are anymore. Cybercrime is about getting access to real money or information of value and there are individual hackers and groups. It runs the gamut and some elements are highly organized.”

Though cybersecurity is his main focus, as deputy under secretary he’s also concerned about the full range of dangers to the nation, including protecting federal facilities, infrastructure, risk management and analysis, and US-VISIT, the biometric program that identifies people entering the United States.

En Garde

Reitinger has had a front-row seat as cybercrime has shifted, but it was never a seat he intended to take when he graduated from the School of Engineering. The self-described computer geek came to Vanderbilt with a straightforward career path in computers in mind — though an extracurricular activity might have been a clue to his future. He was a member of the fencing team, a “broad group of people who were all quirky in some way,” he says. “It may be a sport that draws quirky people.”

(Though he gave up fencing — a sport he admits he wasn’t very good at — his future wife was a member of a national championship women’s team. “I make sure that I don’t make her angry,” he says.)

Late in his senior year, he took the LSAT just to see how well he would do. He did well enough to be accepted to Yale, and that led his thoughts to a future in patent law.

Reitinger quickly found another path, one that would allow him to bridge technology and policy: He entered government service. Jobs followed at the Department of Justice, where he was deputy chief of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property division, and executive director of the Department of Defense’s Cyber Crime Center. He also spent six years at Microsoft, becoming chief trustworthy infrastructure strategist before returning to the federal government in 2009.

Experience with both government and corporations has helped Reitinger understand the critical role that each plays in cybersecurity. “You learn different things in government and industry, and both of them have their advantage,” Reitinger says. “The pace of change in this space far exceeds most areas with which government or industry has to deal.”

Helping Defend Your Country

He sees the importance of cross-pollination between government and industry. “The biggest piece of getting the job done is having the right people. Making sure that we can keep bringing in the right people, people from the private sector, is also a significant challenge since we don’t pay what the private sector does,” he says. “But it’s a way of helping to defend your country. You’ll get responsibilities that you’d never get in the private sector.”

His ability to understand the technology, via his engineering degree, and policy, aided by law school, has made Reitinger a rarity in Washington. That position is familiar to the Jacksonville, Fla., native, who still builds the occasional computer at home as a hobby.

“I have tried to be somewhat interdisciplinary in my career. Though I have a technical degree from Vanderbilt, it is a university that, even for people who are deeply mired in the technical side, gives experiences that are much broader. It is a liberal arts university for engineers as well,” he says, noting his VUSE education gave him a much broader educational experience to bring to law school.

“I’ve done things that involve both technology and policy,” Reitinger says. “If you find things that you’re passionate about, you’ll have a great career no matter what.”

“I love being involved in fast-paced, high-risk, high-reward startups,” says Limp, BS’88, a successful entrepreneur and chief operating officer of BrightKite, a social networking Web site. Limp, who earned his degree in computer science from the School of Engineering, specializes in ventures in the high-tech arena.

Good entrepreneurial ideas abound, he says. The tricky part is crossing the space between an idea and getting to market with a product no one else has, one that customers need. “To be a successful engineer/entrepreneur you have to have experience in all parts of business,” the Silicon Valley veteran advises, as well as a willingness to stake your name and reputation on a product.

No Shortcuts

Limp has made a career of such experiences. Just out of VUSE, he spent eight years at Apple Computing. Then he was at Liberate Technologies, serving as vice president of marketing, later chief strategy officer. Next he was vice president of business development for PalmSource and then a venture partner with Azure Capital Partners, which backs entrepreneurs, including BrightKite.

“Having a holistic view of what it takes to run a business is fundamental. That’s where my Vanderbilt engineering education is an asset. It’s provided a balance between theoretical and practical,” Limp says. “The practicality of the curriculum has paid dividends countless times as I apply core problem-solving skills to startups that are changing dramatically daily.”

Taking Risks

Currently, Limp is also collaborating on a Web site called Education.com, which provides a consolidated reputable resource for parents about educating children in the same way WebMD consolidates medical information. “It’s averaging 2 million hits a month,” he says. “Advertisers love it because they can get to customers they want—moms and dads interested in saving time.”

But Limp says not every hit is a home run. He helped develop a palm-sized computer that fell flat. “It was a brilliant piece of electrical engineering. It failed because consumers went to lower price points with bigger keyboards,” he says philosophically. “In the end, we sold the assets. Yet I wouldn’t trade time there for anything.”

The hallmarks of the engineer/entrepreneur are a combination of courage and unrelenting focus, he notes. “Don’t chase the next shiny penny,” he advises. “Sure, the next idea is out there, but its success is predicated on doing everything you can to make the current one a success.”

Things break. Forbes magazine says breakage costs American manufacturers $30 billion a year in warranty payments. If manufacturers could predict breakage and adjust warranties, they could save more than double that amount—not to mention the other benefits they’d reap from improved reliability, performance and quality.

Robert Tryon, PhD’96, holds scaled-down aircraft turbine disks before and after testing by VEXTEC.

Anticipating breakage on everything from jet engines and health care devices to energy technology is the entrepreneurial niche that gave birth to VEXTEC. Founded by Bob Tryon, PhD’96, chief technology officer, and Animesh Dey, MS’94, PhD’96, chief product development officer, along with CEO Loren Nasser, VEXTEC is a front-runner in using a computational framework for simulating and predicting the breakdown of manufactured products—and the potential impact on a company’s finances.

“Like the DNA of any living cell, every material has a microstructure that determines its behavior. This is the key to predicting how and when failure will happen,” says Tryon, a material science engineer who previously worked at General Motors and Ford. At the core of VEXTEC’s success is a patented system that simulates the life expectancy of a part, an engine or an entire product fleet. The system then combines that information with data from other components in a product to predict the product’s overall reliability. Clients range from manufacturers to oil and gas, aerospace and electronics companies.

In 2009, Forbes lauded VEXTEC as America’s most promising company, predicting its Virtual Life Management (VLM) product for forecasting failure will hasten the pace of innovation in its market niche.

Entrepreneurs in Reliability

“It’s hard to be an entrepreneur at GM,” shrugs Tryon, who worked first in the gas turbine division at GM. Concerned about product reliability, GM sent him to Vanderbilt for a doctorate in engineering and to study under Thomas A. Cruse, then H. Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the guru of probabilistic structural analysis methods. At VUSE, Tryon met fellow doctoral candidate and computational reliability modeling expert Dey, studying under Professor Sankaran Mahadevan. Under Cruse and Mahadevan’s tutelage, Tryon and Dey saw a future ripe with possibilities.

When Tryon and Dey graduated in 1996, the sale of the GM division in which Tryon had worked made him a free agent. Initially, he and Dey honed their chops as consultants. Their first customer? Chrysler.

Their work took two paths: material science experts focused on developing a virtual material simulation tool, while computational experts focused on correlating the simulation from material behavior to predicting fleet performance and business impacts. In 2000, the two joined with Loren Nasser to found VEXTEC. Nasser husbanded the management and infrastructure of the self-funded firm while Tryon and Dey focused on refining the VLM product. Today, the three still own 100 percent of the company, which has 28 employees and posted $3 million in sales in 2008.

Animesh Dey, MS’94, PhD’06, shows a mini-aircraft engine used to test for structural failure of the disks.

Custom-tailored Sales and Service

In providing the only accurate and efficient computational framework for simulating and then predicting product behavior, VEXTEC’s VLM has the potential of eliminating the need for trial-and-error product testing. It also provides insight about products and how to make them better.

Dey says listening to individual customers is critical in helping those customers improve their products. “Don’t tell customers what you know,” he says. “Tailor your message to what they need and want to know.” Dey customizes VLM to meet the exact needs of each client and industry. The challenge is to focus, identify need and create a solution in ways that positively affect clients’ operations and bottom line.

Although their pioneering technology, management team and huge market potential led to the Forbes honor, Dey and Tryon say that the personalized approach is key to the company’s success. It’s not enough to have a great product—VEXTEC must meet customers’ needs to grow.

“Fundamentally, to be successful, your product has to make someone’s day-to-day life easier,” Tryon says.

Blake Jones, BE’96 (left), discusses solar energy with Vice President Joseph Biden and President Barack Obama.

A solar company president who introduced President Barack Obama at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, showcasing how the sun powers the museum’s environmental system.

Two engineers who lead what Forbes magazine named the most promising company in America.

A president and CEO whose company saves money for commercial building owners through modular-based energy efficient heating and cooling recovery systems.

A spine surgeon who created health beverages.

What do they have in common? They’re all Vanderbilt engineers who launched successful businesses. Their methods?

Creativity and collaboration, a focus on giving people what they want, plus access to capital, savvy management and a singular passion for making great ideas reality.

Opportunity is Everything

Blake Jones, BE’96, says opportunities are everywhere for entrepreneurs who are motivated and willing to learn. His Boulder, Colo.-based company, Namasté Solar, emerged from his 10 years as a civil engineer and project manager in the U.S. and Egypt for an oil services company. Later, he was engineering and service manager for a renewable energy company in Nepal. His return to the United States in 2004 coincided with Colorado’s passage of legislation mandating that a portion of the state’s power come from renewable resources.

“I realized that everything I’d been doing had led me to this point,” says Jones, who credits his Vanderbilt engineering education with turning him on to the potential of solar energy. He says that Colorado’s abundant sunshine—along with Boulder’s educated, affluent residents—reinforced the choice of location for Namasté Solar.

In February 2009, Jones introduced President Obama at the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvest­ment Act in Denver. Since clean energy and the creation of green jobs were a large part of the president’s stimulus package, the connection was natural.

Presidential connection aside, Namasté Solar still faces the challenges of being an entrepreneurial startup. Jones advises rising entrepreneurs to do work they love, to network continuously with other professionals and in their community to find new opportunities, and more important, “never be too proud to ask for ideas and help.”

Blake Jones, BE’96, introduces President Obama at the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Chris McKinney, director of the Vanderbilt’s Office of Technology Transfer and Enterprise­ Development (OTTED) and adjunct professor of engineering management, says that is good advice. “Entrepreneurship is a team sport. The best entrepreneurs look for the best people to complement their skills. It’s about leveraging your assets and finding others to help with the rest.”

OTTED is Vanderbilt’s own entrepreneurial link. It protects the intellectual property assets of Vanderbilt, licenses technology developed by Vanderbilt inventors and innovators, and assists in the startup of companies that commercialize Vanderbilt technology.

McKinney says the myth of overnight success falls flat under close examination. “An entrepreneur is willing to knock his head against the wall. Try. Fail. Try. Fail,” he says, adding that he believes VUSE students are predisposed to entrepreneurship through the depth and breadth of their education, work with entrepreneurial faculty, and ability to manage and communicate.

Spirit of Entrepreneurship

Management was one of the elements that recently led Forbes magazine to name VEXTEC (see sidebar) the most promising company in America. The pioneering company founded and led by Bob Tryon, PhD’96, chief technology officer; Animesh Dey, MS’94, PhD’96, chief product development officer; and Loren Nasser, CEO, beat out thousands of other companies for the Forbes honor. Forbes selected VEXTEC for the quality of its management, technology and opportunity, stating that the Brentwood, Tenn., company represented the very spirit of entrepreneurship in America.

Mark Platt, BE’87, has grown his company, Multistack, 700 percent since 2002.

VEXTEC uses computer modeling and materials science to predict the reliability of a product or product component. One of its greatest assets is the way its technology and leadership bring together the resources and people across an organization. “Each market sector has its own challenges,” Dey says. “Success for us comes from recognizing that the objective is the same—understanding when something is going to break and helping the client translate that to improved reliability.”

Hot and Cold

There’s a lot of wasted energy in the cooling of commercial buildings. To take advantage of this issue, Mark Platt, BE’87, used his own money, plus funds he raised, to buy and expand Multistack, a modular chiller and cooling products manufacturer. Focused on innovative air conditioning technology, the company has grown 700 percent since 2002; its compact equipment has been installed in facilities such as manufacturing plants, blood banks and even the notoriously cold Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City, where The Late Show With David Letterman is taped.

Recently, Platt and Multistack were finalists for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. “Multistack’s success comes from our ability to recognize new, disruptive technology and leverage it into products that save customers money,” Platt says.
He confesses Multistack’s maturation has been a learn-as-you-go enterprise, one in which he raised $3 million of seed capital. “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t know it’s impossible,” he quips.

He credits close relationships with customers and employees with fostering a home run. “We’re always looking for the next big idea. We fight the drag of our success. Our philosophy is do the right thing for customers quicker, rather than later,” the company’s president and CEO explains. “Life is relationships. Everything else is noise.”

In the Classroom

The groundwork for entrepreneurship, say Vanderbilt University School of Engineering faculty, is laid in the classroom and occurs on many levels; the multidisciplinary senior design project course brings it all into focus.

“This required class is a launching pad and an opportunity for students to go through the normal design frustrations, where they spark off each other’s ideas and learn teamwork,” says Paul King, professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering, emeritus, who has taught the yearlong class since 1991. “Teams learn to work inside and outside the box, to solve real problems, to follow a structured approach and how to brainstorm.”

Hughes

For those who want an edge and more of the tools entrepreneurs need, VUSE also offers an engineering management minor. The interdisciplinary program teaches business management as it relates to engineering, with a special emphasis on issues involving technology development and innovation.

“The challenge is learning to manage implementation of their creative ideas so they’ll generate positive cash flow quickly,” says David Berezov, adjunct professor of engineering management. That, in turn, attracts capital and growth. “It’s eye-opening for students to see firsthand how an idea, its financing and operation come together, and to see the relationship between technologies and the underlying financial profit.”

Dr. Alex Hughes, BE’99, MD’03, agrees. A spine surgeon who developed a line of health drinks under the brand name Function Drinks, he puts it this way. “You need to be realistic, know what the market opportunity is, and have accounted for the back-of-the-envelope costs,” the biomedical engineering graduate advises. “Look at the trends and the potential legal issues and do due diligence with competitors. Sure you have an end vision but also know it’s not religion—that you have to approach it like science.” Function Drinks, available in stores such as Target and Whole Foods, was named the best new product of 2007 by BevNet, a leading beverage industry authority.

Dr. Alex Hughes, BE’99, combined his engineering and medical knowledge to create Function Drinks, a line of health drinks.

Serial Entrepreneurs

An entrepreneur who now works in consulting services, Gary York, BE’81, has been involved in launching several successful software companies. “Ten people see the same problem you see but seven won’t do anything about it. Three will and they’ll be your competitors, so you have to execute it better,” says York, who advises less experienced entrepreneurs and who has been described as a serial entrepreneur. Key in launching a new product, he says, is partnering with a paying customer whose business serves as both a proving ground and validation for investors (and the market) that your product has potential.

Limp

David Limp, BS’88, a Silicon Valley veteran associated with multiple entrepreneurial successes including PalmSource, says it all comes down to two things. “You’ve got to articulate and execute an idea that captures the imagination of customers,” says Limp, who has worked both on the development and financing side of entrepreneurial ventures (see sidebar). “If you can do that, you can find someone to write you a check.”

But that check, he warns, isn’t technological or creative carte blanche. “Your inclination as an engineer may be to solve a problem in the most creative way, to strive for perfection,” he cautions. “You have to understand that what the customer wants and needs may not be the perfect way of solving a problem, but it is the right way. To be successful, engineer/entrepreneurs must learn to balance those dynamics.”

Entrepreneurial ventures often occur when engineers combine interests with a challenge. Chikai Ohazama, BE’94, developed the product that became Google Earth by combining interests in 3-D graphics, medical imaging and geospatial data. Sunil Paul, BE’87, co-founded two successful Internet firms and today is a venture capitalist with interests in clean energy technology. His wife’s frustration with spam emails sparked Paul’s development of Brightmail Inc., an anti-spam computer software firm later purchased by Symantec.

Jordan Eisenberg, BS’04, pursues similar success and personal interests. Eisenberg has developed and licensed a medical device concept to a major manufacturer, authored and applied for two patents, and launched a company to market and distribute his products. He credits his widespread entrepreneurism with the problem-solving skills he learned at Vanderbilt. “Would you rather have several small businesses that are profitable or one large one that isn’t?” he says pragmatically.

Sankaran Mahadevan, professor of civil and environmental engineering

When you take a plane trip, drive across a bridge or ride the commuter train to work, you trust that those structures and systems are safe. Likewise, pilots flying combat missions depend on their planes and astronauts hurtling into space depend on the rockets propelling them.

Sankaran Mahadevan, professor of civil and environmental engineering, works on ways to increase the reliability and decrease the risks of those and other complex structures and systems. His research regarding railroad wheels, spacecraft, dams, bridges and even nuclear waste dumps has the potential to save human lives and millions of dollars.

In the past, engineers had to test multiple samples of something to see how many failed. They would then add more material and components than needed to increase the reliability of their designs. That approach doesn’t work with today’s large structures and complex systems.

“Skyscrapers and bridges can’t be put through full-scale testing as can small mechanical and electrical devices,” Mahadevan says. “You can’t test the reliability of large systems like space shuttles and warplanes by waiting to see what fails. No matter what the system, we have to be concerned about how reliable it is.”

Mahadevan and his colleagues in the Structural Reliability Research Group are developing computer models that can predict with a high degree of confidence whether a system will fail, when failure is likely to occur and how to prevent such failure.

Computer Programs Take the Risk

Dr. Maha, as he is known to his students, also directs the Vanderbilt Risk and Reliability Engineering and Management doctoral program, the largest and most prestigious of its kind in the world. “It began in 2001 as an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) grant from the National Science Foundation,” he explains. “That focused on studying and developing multidisciplinary computational and experimental methods for assessing and managing risk and reliability.”

Today, the program is self-sustaining, with governmental and private partners that include the Transportation Technology Center, Sandia National Laboratories, Federal Aviation Administration, NASA, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Department of Energy, Boeing Co., Bell Helicopter Textron and Union Pacific. Those organizations and others provide about $1 million in funding each year for research projects on structural reliability and durability, optimization and decision making under uncertainty, structural health monitoring, and reliability and risk engineering and management.

Mahadevan is currently applying his expertise to NASA spacecraft. His team is working on calculating risk and uncertainty in such large systems by incorporating multiple disciplines like structures, aerodynamics, propulsion, mass and geometry into the computer programs. An acceptable risk for spacecraft is typically about one in 10,000.

“The question then becomes how good are our models?” Mahadevan says, noting that there are many assumptions and very little data on which to base such predictions. “It has been shown that different models will yield very different predictions. So we’re developing rigorous methods to verify and validate our computer models.”

“We are also monitoring the health of large systems by placing sensors on the vehicle that will detect real-time damage, diagnose the problem, and offer a prognosis as to how long the vehicle can be used before repair or grounding,” he continues. “One research question is to determine how many sensors are needed and where they should be installed.” Another concerns the reliability of the sensor itself.

Planes, Trains and Nuclear Waste

Mahadevan’s reliability methods can be used in the design, manufacture, operation and maintenance of equipment and systems in many fields. Engineers and scientists call that life-cycle risk management. His research for the Federal Highway Administration, for example, identified which 2,000 bridges throughout the country should carry advanced structural health monitoring instrumentation. The team also developed a cost-effective way to inspect train wheels that demonstrated a 400 percent return on investment for partner Union Pacific.

Current research includes a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory project to develop rapid diagnosis and prognosis methods for warplanes. The group is also working on applying risk and reliability management to large complex systems like homeland security and transportation. Through a consortium of universities known as the CRESP project, the Department of Energy funds an effort to model the durability and uncertainty of concrete storage facilities for low-level nuclear waste. The team also has received a five-year, $1.2 million award from the FAA to develop advanced methods to predict fatigue and fracture, and the related uncertainty, in helicopter rotor components.

Mahadevan joined the Vanderbilt engineering faculty in 1988, after earning his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech. His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Distinguished Probabilistic Methods Educator Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers and the Outstanding Professional Service Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers. In 2006, he received Vanderbilt’s Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished University Professor Award for his achievements in developing significant new knowledge from multidisciplinary research.

Fran Presley, BS’79, near her home on Alki Beach in West Seattle.

Back when Fran Schwaiger Presley, BS’79, was a small-town Alabama girl, a full scholarship to the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering did more than crack a door to opportunity—it threw open the gates of resoluteness.

“Everyone has a story,” Presley says easily. But most stories don’t begin with a highly unsupportive parent, a time of sleeping in the car, and a traumatic freshman year that led Presley to drop out and then beg her way back. Even if they do, they don’t usually end with the kind of success that has allowed Presley to bring it full circle, bequeathing a multimillion dollar scholarship to the school that gave her a start.

“I love the fact that people think I’m that amazing,” says Presley, a longtime project engineer with FedEx Express nearing retirement. “I just did what I felt like I had to do.”

Packing In the Middle of the Night

Presley’s construction-worker father never made more than $100 a week. Her mother suffered heart problems and a stroke that left her paralyzed and insecure. Fran’s older sister was mentally unstable and eventually committed suicide. Presley knew that there had to be more.

“I loved school, and I knew I could do a lot,” she says. A guidance counselor agreed. The counselor introduced the teen to the idea of the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering. News of a scholarship thrilled Fran’s father, who had already offered everything he could: $200 a year toward the then-$5,000 tuition. Fran’s mother, however, presented her daughter with a choice: She could go away to college or she could be part of the family.

“At the time, I was devastated,” Presley admits. “She thought I was being highfalutin, that I was denying my humble beginnings. But I was going. I had to pack in the middle of the night. Looking back, I have no idea where I found that strength, courage and persistence at 17, but it was there.”

The challenges were far from over. Unable to afford the $50 dorm fee, Presley was placed in a communal lounge with five other students and no privacy.

She discovered a love for engineering almost immediately—she had originally planned on computer science—and that major led her to a work/study position in the dean’s office. Pressure continued from home, however, and she cried daily. Fran’s 8-year-old sister thought she abandoned her by going away to college. Her mother told her not to call or come home for the holidays because she didn’t want to be reminded of Presley’s existence. It was too much. By the end of her first year, Presley headed back to Alabama to try to work things out.

Though Presley’s mother preferred her daughter work at a local bank, she allowed Presley to continue courses at a nearby school. Then, at some point during the first semester of her sophomore year, Presley says, revelation struck. “If there is such a thing as a higher power telling you something, that’s what happened,” she says. “And it told me, ‘This is your life. You’ve got to live it.’”

The Defining Point

At VUSE, Presley had found allies in Assistant Dean Roger Webb and Registrar Eleanor T. (Totty) Hughes, both of whom knew she had major family issues; they had wished her well as she headed home, but secretly hoped she would return.

When Presley called Webb that day, he was ready. She confessed she had made a mistake. Webb, in turn, admitted that the school had held her enrollment open. But there was a catch: She’d missed a semester, so the scholarship money would now only cover three and a half years total.

“I said, ‘I’ll be there tomorrow.’ I never looked back. It was a defining point in my life,” she says.

Lacking money for a hotel, Presley camped in her car in Centennial Park until the dorms opened. Thanks to heavy class loads and summer school, she graduated on time summa cum laude with a degree in engineering science. Her dad came to Commencement; her mother did not. Hughes stood in for her at the ceremonies. Presley says she and her mother made peace before her mother’s death in 1996, but even so, Presley was in her 30s before thoughts of her didn’t bring tears.

Giving Back

Presley worked for several companies before landing at FedEx more than 27 years ago. When she arrived for her interview, she asked to speak to another female engineer at the company and was told there wasn’t one. It wasn’t the first time; a previous job positioned her as the only woman working with 100 tradesmen.

Upon graduation in 1979, Fran Schwaiger Presley received the Engineering Science award from Howard Hartman, dean of the School of Engineering. Registrar Eleanor T. (Totty) Hughes (in background at left) filled in for Presley’s mother during Commencement activities.

“But I always felt like if I could go to Vanderbilt and do what I did there, I could handle anything,” says Presley, whose job in Seattle entails staffing, logistics planning and more.

It’s that attitude that has endeared her to the current administration of the School of Engineering. Two years ago, Presley contacted the school about giving back. David Bass, associate dean for development and alumni relations, was thrilled to hear of Presley’s intent. Her easy manner—and her penchant for Harley-Davidsons—told him from the start it would be a nontraditional interaction. Bass helped her work out the details of a scholarship for needy students, preferably a young woman from Presley’s high school.

Dean Kenneth F. Galloway points out that today, 30 percent of the students in the School of Engineering are female—a far cry from when Presley attended in the 1970s. “That’s much higher than the national average,” Galloway says. “We’re very committed to that, and this helps us offer assistance to those female students who want to be a part of what we do.” 

Presley, in the meantime, remembers when $5,000 for a year of school seemed an incomprehensible amount.

“But now I realize I can send several people,” she says. “I don’t even know what to say, other than things do come full circle. Vanderbilt took a chance on me. Who was I? It’s time for others to have a chance, too.”

Cummings

Peter Cummings may know the roads between the Vanderbilt campus and Oak Ridge National Laboratory better than he knows his own neighborhood. Cummings divides his work and time between the two institutions 170 miles apart, focusing on fundamental research in two areas with enormous potential: energy and cancer.

At the same time, as the principal scientist at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge, Cummings leads planning of the research agenda for a team of 95 researchers and support staff. The center is a U.S. Department of Energy/Office of Science Nanoscale Science Research Center.

And there’s more. In April 2009 the White House announced the establishment of a new multimillion-dollar Energy Frontier Research Center at Oak Ridge. The Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures and Transport (FIRST) Center is one of two planned for the facility. Cummings, the John R. Hall Professor of Chemical Engineering at Vanderbilt, now serves as a member of the FIRST leadership team and as a co-principal investigator. “The center represents an important investment in the basic research that will underpin new energy sources, energy storage methods and energy production techniques,” Cummings says.

The technology projects share a core intent. “The work we’re doing to understand what happens at the interfaces of different materials is crucial to a huge range of energy problems,” Cummings says. “Our work is not very applied—we’re working at a level that focuses on understanding very fundamental things that can lead to completely new energy technologies.”

Part of Cummings’ research focuses on developing theories that will become design tools for molecular electronic devices, which have the potential to replace silicon in future computer chips. Current chip manufacturing methods, based on lithographic etching of silicon, have enabled computer speeds to double every 18 months by carving ever smaller computing elements into the silicon. These methods will reach their limit in the next decade or two, when the etched structures will be too small to be stable.

“With molecular electronics, instead of trying to etch features into silicon, you make devices using a bottom-up technique called self assembly, with computing elements consisting of single molecules,” Cummings says. “Our goal is to understand how bottom-up self assembly works and can be controlled.”

Understanding from the bottom up is also at the core of Cumming’s cancer research. With colleagues in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s cancer biology department, Cummings upends the traditional model of understanding cancer at the tumor level and instead predicts tumor behavior by understanding and modeling how individual cells within the tumor move and interact with each other and their environment.

Using computer modeling, the researchers focus on the point at which cancer begins to move around the body. “We’re trying to understand how the properties of cells and nature of the environment impact whether a tumor will become invasive or not,” he says.

“Philosophically at the root of everything I do is the idea of understanding large, complex entities by understanding how the component entities move and interact with each other and their environment.”

Schmidt

With an enemy missile hurtling toward their aircraft, fighter pilots shouldn’t have to wonder whether their defense systems will work in time. Testing how such systems perform before they’re used in a hostile environment is just one of the many projects that Professor Doug Schmidt directs using building-block middleware computer software he, his students and staff developed.

“Our work relates to making it easier to develop and test these large-scale information systems to make sure they perform the right functionality at the right time,” Schmidt says. “These are very large, complex software applications and we use middleware platforms—reusable software that coordinates the application and infrastructure components of an IT system—and tools to validate and enhance confidence in mission-critical systems.”

Schmidt, professor of computer science and computer engineering and associate chair of computer science, oversees a team that currently performs such computer testing for a wide range of sponsors, including the U.S. Navy, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BBN Technologies, the U.S. Air Force, the Australian navy and Northrop Grumman.

Through an Air Force Research Laboratory grant, for example, Schmidt works with several companies to help develop a system to link defense fighters seamlessly to the Defense Department’s Global Information Grid (GIG). The goal of the GIG is to enable military personnel in the field to securely and reliably connect to needed information whether via Internet, cell phone, e-mail, GPS or technology yet to come.

Applications for his team’s work are not just defense-related: The European Space Agency is using Schmidt’s middleware technology as a building block for the Galileo global satellite navigation system, the continent’s own global positioning service. Europe’s new CoFlight air traffic management system, which will modernize and unify European air traffic, also uses his middleware technology.

Health care applications exist as well, particularly for medical imaging and picture archiving. Siemens and GE have been shipping medical imaging products based on Schmidt’s middleware for over a decade.

“Our ACE and TAO middleware are distributed using an open-source licensing model, similar to the widely used Linux operating system,” Schmidt says. Users can also customize ACE and TAO or consult with Schmidt’s R&D team for help in converting the baseline open-source middleware into specific applications.

“Smart” is the operative word for another area of research interest. As part of a new course, Schmidt is working with students to build applications that connect smart phones (such as Google Android and the Apple iPhone) to smart communication systems (such as cloud computing, where computing services are provided via the Internet). The project uses hardware and software provided by Google and Apple.

“We’re always asking ourselves how to keep students’ interest in computing. This is it,” Schmidt says. “We give them something technical they can hold in the palm of their hands. We teach them the fundamentals and then we allow them to build on these by developing interesting applications. We want to unleash the creative power of smart students.”

Miga

Image-guided surgery enables skilled physicians to perform difficult operations. But the images used for guidance are generally taken before surgery begins. How do surgeons account for changes that take place in tissue while the surgery is ongoing—changes brought on by the pressure of an instrument, a shift due to an incision or other factors?

That is the primary work of Michael Miga, director of Vanderbilt’s Biomedical Modeling Laboratory and associate professor of biomedical engineering. Miga and his colleagues produce computational modeling techniques that mimic these effects and are then used to compensate for tissue changes during surgery.

Miga’s computer modeling techniques so far have chiefly focused on brain, liver and kidney surgery. His lab is developing a novel computational framework that interacts with current operating room systems. It uses software and computer and measurement equipment to make calculations that modify the images for deformations during surgery.

This is important in brain operations, for example, as certain drugs shrink the brain during surgery, or when tissue is retracted during removal of a tumor. The computer modeling would cost-effectively augment the image-guided surgery techniques already in place and account for the tumor’s new location.

Miga says that unlike the brain, which is largely held in position by the skull, other organs are more flexible and can move during surgery.

Each organ has unique characteristics and different surgical approaches, requiring that the engineers apply separate research methods, new approaches to computation and different algorithmic design. Research done by Miga using laser-range scanning to capture the liver shape for image-guided liver surgery has already been incorporated into a new product that has received FDA approval. It is available in the marketplace and is being tested clinically (see Engineering Vanderbilt, spring 2009). Miga is currently focused on using the changes measured by the laser-range scanner to incorporate deformation correction into the product. It is expected to be the first of its kind available commercially.

Computer modeling also affects medical imaging. With breast cancer detection, current imaging modalities cannot document a tissue’s stiffness, an important biomarker of disease. Miga and his team are researching ways to use new noninvasive imaging methods to detect changes in tissue stiffness.

Using similar methods, but in a very different context, Miga also focuses on bone fractures. In this work, models and algorithms attempt to determine how well a fracture is healing by looking at the stiffness of the tissue at the fracture site.

“The common thread is that these are all mathematical model-based analysis approaches with a characterization, or interventional, aspect,” Miga says. “Strewn throughout each research project is the integration of computer models, soft tissue mechanics and analysis, with a central focus at translating the information to direct therapy or characterize tissue changes in an active way.”

Sztipanovits

As director of the Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS), Janos Sztipanovits oversees more than $10 million in systems and information science and engineering projects involving more than 100 researchers, staff and graduate students.

These projects engage ISIS, and Sztipanovits, the E. Bronson Ingram Distinguished Professor of Engineering, in information systems, health care, and defense and national security.

Currently the development of projects on high-confidence system design with defense applications are ongoing, particularly for avionics. High confidence systems (those that developers and users have a high degree of assurance that they will not fail or misbehave) need to be secure and durable. “We are also interested in investigating the resilience of large information systems against cyberattacks,” says Sztipanovits, who chaired a study on the operational readiness of the U.S. Air Force against cyberattacks last year.

The largest effort in the defense area at ISIS, Sztipanovits says, is the development of a battle command system for the U.S. military’s Future Combat System program. This initiative uses ISIS-pioneered, model-integrated computing design principles that combine various technologies into a consistent and reliable system.

“This whole area of model-integrated design of systems and software is really rapidly moving into the mainstream and that creates a quite new approach to engineer, integrate and operate large networked systems,” he says. “It is also the foundation for new system design methods and tools that go beyond the conventional programming languages.”

Other projects range from the development of online training materials for homeland security purposes to creating a countersniper system. This cost-effective sniper location system detects when weapons are fired and the direction of the bullets. The countersniper technology would allow soldiers or police officers to react rapidly and minimize injuries.

ISIS’s expertise in understanding and incorporating complex privacy, security and systems integration issues dovetails into its work in health care. Currently ISIS researchers work with Vanderbilt University Medical Center toward creating trustworthy health information systems. Vanderbilt is joined in this National Science Foundation partnership by scientists from Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell and Carnegie Mellon universities.

A patient management system for managing sepsis is another program developed with medical center colleagues, Sztipanovits says. In May initial capabilities for the system were deployed in the medical center for testing, where it has already demonstrated viability. “We also are discussing how to extend that system toward other areas, such as home-based management of congestive heart failure patients,” he says.