Thank you to the the students, families and colleagues who visited us at the USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo and Book Fair, and its Sneak Peak Friday, in Washington, D.C. April 27-29, 2012. View an album of photos from the event on Facebook.

Explore this site to learn more about the discoveries taking place inside and outside of the classroom at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

Find Your Place at Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt offers the depth and breadth of education required to solve real-world problems. Students thrive in a dynamic but close-knit learning and research environment.

Visit Undergraduate Admissions to to learn more about how you might become a part of the discoveries happening at Vanderbilt >

Something Big from Something Small: Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering

Visitors to this booth explored how engineering materials at the nanoscale leads to exciting new properties with applications in energy, electronics, transportation, and medicine. Students and parents alike experienced hands-on demonstrations with nanomaterials such as ferrofluid, aerogel, shear-thickening fluids, and quantum dots. They saw how iron can flow like ink one minute, and then become as stiff steel the next, and experienced glass that is lighter than a feather, but able to insulate against extreme cold and heat. They also played with a fluid that acts like a solid and saw how changing the size of the same material causes it to emit different colors of light.

Visit VINSE >

Visit Vanderbilt Student Volunteers for Science >

Visit the Aspirnaut Program, a partnership between Vanderbilt University Medical Center and rural K-12 schools to help recruit and develop the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce necessary for the 21st Century. Currently, there are 10 “beaming” or videoconferencing of hands-on inquiry-based STEM weekly lab sites in 3 states (Arkansas, Maine, Tennessee) impacting over 500 students per year. Aspirnaut(tm) also has summer research internships for high school and undergraduate students (6-8 weeks) that provide stipend, room and board for the student to join a NIH/NSF funded basic science research lab team at Vanderbilt University. Go >

Visit  TNSCORE – Tennessee Solar Conversion and Storage using Outreach, Research and Education  – a National Science Foundation-funded program to advance the capacity of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) research at all Tennessee academic institutions. Go >

Vanderbilt Engineering is Personal: The School of Engineering

At this booth, visitors checked out a sampling of engineering expertise from Vanderbilt School of Engineering – from a mobile app that simulates guidance of a robotic capsule through your GI track, to robots that perform surgery, to a rocket designed and built by students.

Visit the School of Engineering >

What Do Seabirds Eat? The Center for Science Outreach

What happens to that flyaway kite, the left behind plastic shovel, and all those water and soda bottles on the beach? Unfortunately, they often become part of dinner for an albatross. The Center for Science Outreach helped visitors discover exactly what seabirds are eating, how plastics are classified, and what you can do to keep the oceans clean.

Visit the Center for Science Outreach >

Holly Tucker – Blood Work

Holly Tucker is an associate professor of french and is a member of the Center for Medicine, Health & Society. Tucker teaches courses on the history of medicine as well as courses on French history and culture. She discussed her book Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine & Murder in the Scientific Revolution (Norton, March 2011) at the festival book fair.

Her writing has appeared in the New Scientist, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Journal and others.

Visit Professor Tucker’s website >