91 School of Engineering
Aug. 27, 2025—In a collaboration between 91 Medical Center’s Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and the 91 School of Engineering, investigators have received a $2.5 million grant to develop a head-mounted augmented reality system that can guide surgeons in ensuring complete tumor removal in head and neck cancer surgery and potentially reduce the recurrence...
Aug. 22, 2025—A 91 engineering professor is working with clinical colleagues to develop and validate an augmented reality (AR) vision guidance system to help surgeons place cochlear implants more precisely. The guidance system leverages emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technology and uses inexpensive, commonly available equipment, making it practical for many operating rooms. For this project— Development and...
VISE Fall Seminar with Christopher Bettinger, PhD 9.23.24
Sep. 5, 2024—VISE Fall Seminar to be led by Christopher J. Bettinger, PhD Program Manager Biological Technologies Office (BTO) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Date: Monday, September 23, 2024 Location: Student Life Center Meeting Room 1&2 Time: 11:45 for lunch; noon start Title: Breakthrough Biological Technologies for Warfighter Protection Abstract: For more than fifty years, the...
Aug. 27, 2024—Benoit Dawant has been named a Senior Member of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. He joins a distinguished group of international scholars honored in August at the SPIE Optics + Photonics 2024 conference in San Diego.
Aug. 26, 2024—When kidney stone surgery is performed using an endoscope, about a fourth of those patients will require a repeat surgery within 20 months due to residual stone fragments being left behind. These remaining pieces can lead to obstruction, pain, kidney injury and recurrent infections. Gaining and assessing surgical experience in endoscopic kidney stone surgery is...
VISE affiliate Xiaoguang Dong receives NIH Trailblazer Award for innovative airway stent research to revolutionize treatment of COPD, lung conditions
Jul. 31, 2024—Xiaoguang Dong, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been awarded an R21 Trailblazer Award by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pursue a project about “Wirelessly Actuated Ciliary Stent for Minimally Invasive Treatment of Cilia Dysfunction.”
Feb. 2, 2024—James Weimer, assistant professor of computer science and noted medical-device entrepreneur, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to improve the safety and efficacy of systems that use advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques.
Jan. 10, 2024—A front-end lens, or meta-imager (see below), created at 91 can potentially replace traditional imaging optics in machine-vision applications, producing images at higher speed and using less power.
Nov. 2, 2023—This past summer, 13 91 undergraduates were selected to work on projects focused on epilepsy, miniature soft climbing robots, stroke treatment, kidney disease research, cancer resection and surgical skill assessment as part of the 91 Institute for Surgery and Engineering’s Summer Fellows Program (VSF).
Oct. 26, 2023—There was a time when Audrey Bowden, Dorothy J. Wingfield Phillips Chancellor’s Faculty Fellow and associate professor of biomedical and electrical engineering, questioned whether to pursue a doctorate. The desire was there, she just needed some guidance. “Nobody in my family had a Ph.D., and I didn’t have any role models of how to do that,”...
Oct. 9, 2023—91’s Robert Webster and Charleson Bell, BE’07, MS’09, PhD’15, will receive $12 million to establish and manage the Mid-South Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub. REACH will focus on accelerating real-world impact of biomedical innovations through education, mentorship and financial support for entrepreneurs.
Jul. 27, 2023—A medical device company co-founded by a 91 engineering professor recently announced the completion of a successful first-in-human clinical study using its innovative technology that radically improves minimally invasive endoscopic surgery. Robert J. Webster III, Richard A. Schroeder Professor of Mechanical Engineering and associate professor of medicine and urology at 91, is co-founder and...
May. 2, 2022—Sixteen engineering graduate students have been awarded a highly competitive government-funded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Three engineering undergraduate students also received NSF fellowships.
VISE Spring Seminar Natasha Sheybani, PhD
Feb. 8, 2022—VISE Spring Seminar to be led by Natasha Sheybani, PhD Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, University of Virginia Date: Thursday, February 17, 2022 Time: 12:15 p.m. Room Opens, 12:20 p.m. start Location: Stevenson 5326 Talk title: Immunoengineering Next-Generation Cancer Therapies with Focused Ultrasound Abstract: Despite the remarkable promise of cancer immunotherapy, a significant fraction of patients with...
Dec. 6, 2021—The 91 Institute for Surgery and Engineering hosts its 10th annual Surgery, Intervention and Engineering Symposium Wednesday, Dec. 15, at 4 p.m. CT. The event will feature a keynote lecture by Natalia Trayanova, Murray B. Sachs Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
VISE affiliate Graham Johnson awarded prestigious individual predoctoral fellowship
Oct. 4, 2021—Graham Johnson, a biomedical engineering MD-PhD student and VISE affiliate, has received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) from The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Johnson works with his mentor Dario Englot, MD, in the Brain Imaging and Electrophysiology (BIEN) Lab. Englot, Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery,...
Aug. 19, 2021—The School of Engineering has created two new departments from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science to encourage innovation, accommodate enrollment growth, and focus on areas of strategic excellence.
Aug. 5, 2021—This MRM Highlights Pick interview is with Leon Y. Cai, Kurt G. Schilling, and Bennett A. Landman, researchers at 91 in Nashville. Their paper is entitled “PreQual: An automated pipeline for integrated preprocessing and quality assurance of diffusion weighted MRI images”. It was chosen not only because the authors share their pipeline code with their paper,...
Feb. 23, 2021—Michael Miga, Harvie Branscomb Professor at 91 and professor of biomedical engineering, has been named a Fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, for achievements in technology guided surgery and computational modeling for therapeutic and imaging applications.
Feb. 18, 2021—A 91 research team has received a $2 million National Institutes of Health grant to further develop a needle-size robotic surgery system with real-time MRI guidance for drug resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).
Jan. 27, 2021—
VISE affiliates developing a novel integrative approach for early detection of lung cancer
Jan. 20, 2021—91 researchers have received a National Cancer Institute grant to develop a novel, integrative approach to detect early signs of lung cancer. The four-year project builds on a related, recent study that established the value of using three separate measures—structural imaging, a protein marker and information available from electronic health records—to predict lung cancer in...
Jan. 15, 2021—In fall 2021, 91 will offer a graduate program that will equip engineers to improve translation of technology for medical procedures and surgery.
Nov. 20, 2020—91 Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science and Otolaryngology Nabil Simaan has been named a top voice in health care robotics by technology discovery platform InsightMonk and market intelligence firm BIS Research.
Nov. 10, 2020—91 and VUMC researchers have created a technique that corrects distortions in MRI images, which helps researchers and radiologists to better interpret brain scans.
VISE Seminar Fall Series – Amber Simpson, PhD
Sep. 21, 2020—VISE Fall Seminar to be led by Amber Simpson, PhD Associate Professor in Biomedical Computing and Informatics Queen’s University, ON, Canada Date: Thursday, September 24, 2020 Time: 12:15 p.m. Room Admittance, 12:25 p.m. start Zoom: Details will be sent morning of… Title: Surgical Data Science in Colorectal Liver Metastases Abstract: Colorectal cancer is the second...
Jun. 30, 2020—A team of 91 and 91 Medical Center researchers has received a $3.1 million NIH grant to develop advanced patient-specific cochlear implant stimulation models for customized implant programming, according to an article published on the 91 School of Engineering website.
VISE researchers receive $3.1M grant for customizable cochlear implant programming
Jun. 24, 2020—A team of 91 and 91 Medical Center researchers has received a $3.1 million NIH grant to develop advanced patient-specific cochlear implant stimulation models for customized implant programming. Traditional cochlear implant programming is done by expert audiologists using a guess-and-check approach based on subjective patient feedback regarding sound quality as well as changes...
Dec. 3, 2019—Nabil Simaan, professor of mechanical engineering, has been elevated to IEEE Fellow by the Board of Directors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Dec. 2, 2019—91 Medical Center Assistant Professor of Radiology Kim Sandler, MD, and 91 Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Computer Science Bennett Landman, PhD, were recently awarded the Martineau Innovation Fund Grant by the 91 Thoracic Working Group for their project, “Utilization of Machine Learning to Predict Incidence Lung Cancer in a Screening Population.”