Janell Lees

  Can you measure electricity generated by simply shining light on a solar cell? On Wednesday, November 19, VINSE welcomed 15 students from Station Camp High School to the Cleanroom Solar Cell Lab. Inside the VINSE… Read More

On Wednesday November 5th, VINSE welcomed 15 students from White House Heritage High School to our Forensics Lab. Imagine arriving as the first detective at a murder scene – how do find the hidden clues? The students became forensic scientists for the day, using a range of advanced spectroscopy… Read More

Join VINSE Director, Sharon Weiss to discuss new initiatives, pilot funding, tech crew, and other ways VINSE can help support your research. Wednesday, September 10, 2025 9:30-10:30 AM 226 ESB, VINSE Conference Room… Read More

Are you interested in gaining hands-on experience in a cutting-edge lab environment? This is an excellent opportunity to be an integral part of maintaining a clean and efficient lab space within the VINSE cleanroom, supporting high-quality research, education, and outreach. What You’ll Do: Lab Maintenance: Ensure clean floors, surfaces,… Read More

VINSE has implemented a real-time safety monitoring system in the VINSE Cleanroom. This system displays a live roster of individuals currently inside the Cleanroom-visible from both within the lab and the Pregown area. Utilizing the barcodes on the back of existing user nametags, the… Read More

When precise control of dielectric film thickness is required, plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) may be a solution.  ALD is a chemical vapor deposition technique available within the VINSE Cleanroom core facility on the Picosun R-200 Advanced tool.  The major advantages of ALD compared to other deposition techniques are thickness… Read More

VINSE has recently added a JA Woollam M-2000DI spectroscopic ellipsometer to the Cleanroom core facility, providing an additional option for users to quickly characterize thin films when developing recipes for deposition, etching, and spin coating processes.  This instrument complements the existing JA Woollam M-2000V ellipsometer in the VINSE Analytical Lab. … Read More

Congratulations to Dr. Marjan Rafat, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, biomedical engineering, and radiation oncology, on receiving a Seeding Success internal grant. This award will support her project, “Developing Novel Extracellular Matrix Hydrogels to Study the Impact of Obesity on Breast Cancer Recurrence,” research at the intersection of… Read More

Congratulations to all of the students who presented at the 2025 VINSE Undergraduate Research Symposium! Our undergraduate researchers were able to share everything they accomplished during their individual research projects at Vanderbilt University over the past ten weeks. The symposium, which was held in collaboration with the Chemical Biology/Chemistry NSF-REU,… Read More

The program introduces students to core concepts in nanoengineering, including nanoparticle behavior, materials science, and nanoscale problem-solving. Students will participate in lectures, hands-on labs, and research activities alongside Vanderbilt faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers. The course is led by instructors Greg Walker and Sarah Ross, with teaching support from… Read More