Fall 2009

The Fred J. Lewis Society

Nov. 17, 2009—The Lewis Society plays an integral role in the success of the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering. The financial support of alumni, parents and friends helps deserving students receive an exemplary engineering education as well as a wonderful overall academic experience at Vanderbilt.

Focus On the Small Has Big Potential for Energy and Health Care

Sep. 17, 2009—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...

Mission-Critical Systems from Defense to iPhones

Sep. 17, 2009—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...

Computer Models Guide Surgery and Improve Diagnostics

Sep. 17, 2009—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...

ISIS Defends Against Cyberattack, Enemy Forces and Even Disease

Sep. 17, 2009—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...

Resisting Radiation

Sep. 11, 2009—How do you design a sunscreen for a computer chip? For that matter, why would you need to? Lloyd Massengill, professor of electrical engineering and computer engineering, has answers, both simple and complex, to those questions. Radiation from as far away as deep space and as close as our sun poses significant dangers to both space-based and earthbound computers that control an enormous array of commercial and military equipment today.

Opportunity Vanderbilt

Sep. 11, 2009—Rodes Hart and Orrin Ingram answered questions about Vanderbilt’s commitment to replace need-based undergraduate loans with scholarships and grants—and the $100 million philanthropic effort, Opportunity Vanderbilt, that will sustain this historic expansion of financial aid.

Vanderbilt Engineering Magazine