Taking advantage of Vanderbilt's existing strengths in biology, physics, medicine, engineering, and education, VIIBRE has created on-campus collaborations in research areas such as cellular biosensors for cancer research, chemical and biological warfare defense and infectious disease detection, single- and multi-cellular instrumentation and control, biomedical imaging, biological applications of nanosystems, cellular/tissue bioengineering and biotechnology, and bioengineering education technologies.

As of March 2008, VIIBRE has helped bring to Vanderbilt approximately $39 million of new external funding. VIIBRE is now totally dependent upon external grants and contracts for its support.

VIIBRE's mission is to invent the tools and develop the skills that are required to understand biological systems across spatiotemporal scales.

VIIBRE's research and education focus on an integrated multidisciplinary approach to microscale engineering and instrumentation for dynamic control and analysis of biological systems, i.e., instrumenting and controlling the single cell and small cell populations.