The Department of Energy has renewed its partnership with the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation. The IACMI is a community of industry, universities, national laboratories and government agencies working together to accelerate the development and adoption of innovative manufacturing technologies. The funding connected with the renewed partnership will be used over five years to further technological R&D and accelerate commercialization in the domestic composites manufacturing sector. Vanderbilt’s Laboratory for Systems Integrity and Reliability is funded by an investment from IACMI. As a part of IACMI, Vanderbilt faculty and students can be part of advancing composites manufacturing technology, which has a significant positive impact on people’s lives and the economy. Every IACMI project is highly collaborative, featuring industry partners from across the composites manufacturing supply chain. Vanderbilt’s contributions to IACMI are in the general area of manufacturing quality control. MORE

The cultural evolution of a population depends not only on size but also on the degree of specialization within a population, according to a new study published last month by a team of scientists including Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Nicole Creanza. The study found that populations can increase their cultural repertoire by subdividing knowledge into smaller groups, but the total group must be sufficiently large for specialization to be advantageous. Specialization in smaller communities may create vulnerability to loss of cultural knowledge if dynamic events like environmental change or illness occur. The authors reached these conclusions by developing a model in which tools, which symbolized cultural traits, were divided amongst populations with varying degrees of specialization. As time increases, new tools are invented, and the rate of invention is linearly related to population size. [Funding for this study was provided by NSF.] MORE

A team of engineering seniors has designed an embedded thermoelectric generator to convert that wavy shimmer of heat that rises from hot asphalt—waste heat radiation—into electrical energy. To protect soldiers’ hands from heat burns while rappelling from helicopters, another team has created ‘fast rope’ insertion gloves. These design projects and 52 more will be on display at the Vanderbilt School of Engineering’s Design Day 2023, Monday, April 24, from 5-7 p.m. in Featheringill Hall. Student teams will demonstrate their projects to external judges as well as to those who attend. Several design prizes will be awarded at the end of the spring semester. Seniors have spent the 2022-2023 academic year on multifaceted capstone projects that serve as a culminating academic experience for engineering students. The Design Day catalog table of contents features interactive links to projects’ descriptions. [Design projects were completed in partnership with a multitude of companies and institutions, including NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Naval Surface Warfare Center-Panama City Division, the U.S. Army, and many more.] MORE

Research conducted by Tong Li, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Social and Natural Sciences and professor of economics, shows that Tennessee’s expansion of testing policy during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have decreased the number of cases in the state relative to what they would have been if the policy had not been implemented. When Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced on April 15, 2020, that free COVID-19 tests were available for any Tennessean, regardless of traditional symptoms, Li saw one of the most unique opportunities of his career. Once the state’s open testing policy was announced, more than 23,000 individuals were tested at 67 sites in the next three weekends. Relative to Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and North Carolina (all states that border Tennessee), by the end of March, Tennessee was conducting more per capita tests per day than any of these states, the authors stated. MORE

Kevin Leach, assistant professor of computer science, has won an Amazon Research Award in the fall 2022 awards cycle. Leach will receive gift funding and Amazon Web Services (AWS) promotional credits to support his project, “DocumentNet: iterative data collection for building a robust document understanding dataset.’’ The Amazon funds will allow him to advance the state-of-the-art in robust document understanding by developing new iterative methods for collecting and labeling training data.  Document understanding is a critical application of machine learning, impacting human resources, legal documents, and medical records.  This project will help to improve the performance of machine learning models that classify or extract information from documents like resumes and contracts by drawing attention to the quality of the data used to train these models. Amazon Research Awards provide unrestricted funds and AWS promotional credits to academic researchers investigating various research topics in multiple disciplines. Leach is among 79 2022 fall award recipients who represent 54 universities in 14 countries. MORE

In a world where sustainability is becoming increasingly relevant, many consumers are shopping with sustainability in mind. However, with sustainable shopping often comes the influences of personal preferences and financial restrictions. In the study, Seeing the World Through GREEN-Tinted Glasses: Green Consumption Values and Responses to Environmentally Friendly Products, Kelly L. Haws, Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr., Professor of Marketing at Vanderbilt University, Karen Page Winterich, Penn State University, and Rebecca Walker Naylor, Ohio State University, evaluate “green” consumption habits with a goal of better understanding consumers’ decision-making process and influences. These habits, described as “the tendency to express the value of one’s environmental protection through one’s purchases and consumption behaviors” are demonstrated to be part of a network containing not only environmental concerns but concerns and consciousness regarding personal physical and financial goals. MORE

Vanderbilt University and the Freedom Forum celebrated the legacy of legendary journalist and First Amendment champion John Seigenthaler at an April 25 event discussing A Word on Words: The Best of John Seigenthaler’s Interviews, published in March by Vanderbilt University Press. Seigenthaler, a longtime editor, publisher and chairman of The Tennessean newspaper and the founding editorial director of USA Today, died in 2014. For more than four decades, he hosted the Nashville Public Television program A Word on Words, conducting in-depth interviews with some of the most notable authors of the day and sharing insights into their creative processes. The new book, edited by Vanderbilt alumni authors Pat Toomay and Frye Gaillard, collects and transcribes a selection of the most iconic interviews from Seigenthaler’s time helming the series until 2013. The book will also be the subject of an upcoming segment on WNPT. MORE

The Vanderbilt University community has engaged with Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee in myriad ways over the past decade. Recently, hundreds of students from around the globe convened on the Vanderbilt campus for the Clinton Global Initiative University annual meeting. During the Day of Action, more than 100 of these students participated in a mobile food pantry hosted by Second Harvest, where 20,000 pounds of food was available for distribution to the neighboring community. On April 26, members of Vanderbilt’s Government and Community Relations division will join other community partners at Second Harvest to look at ways to collaboratively work to overcome food insecurity in the state. One of the ways the Government and Community Relations division has demonstrably supported Second Harvest has been through facilitating a multiyear sponsorship of Generous Helpings, Second Harvest’s annual fundraising event. MORE

Vanderbilt University announced today that Thomas J. Steenburgh, a senior associate dean at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, will be the next dean of the Owen Graduate School of Management. Steenburgh will succeed M. Eric Johnson, who led the Owen School through a period of momentum and growth in innovative programs, research collaborations, world-class facilities, alumni engagement and more, said C. Cybele Raver, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. Steenburgh’s scholarship involves analyzing sales and marketing strategies and their effectiveness. Steenburgh earned his Ph.D. in marketing from Yale University. He is currently Richard S. Reynolds Professor of Business Administration and senior associate dean for the residential MBA program at the Darden School. There, he is the course head for the first-year marketing course and the faculty chair for the strategic sales management program in executive education. MORE

Layan Ibrahim, Master of Public Health Class of 2023, was named to the 2023–24 class of Luce Scholars. The Luce Scholars Program is a nationally competitive fellowship program launched by the Henry Luce Foundation to enhance the understanding of Asia among potential leaders in American society. The Luce Scholars Program aims to provide young scholars who have great potential, but little previous exposure to Asia, with an immersive experience through which they can learn to “be comfortable being uncomfortable.” The program provides stipends, language training and individualized professional placement in Asia for up to 18 Luce Scholars each year, and it welcomes applications from college seniors, graduate students and young professionals in a variety of fields. MORE