External Story

Soldiers in Afghanistan are experimenting with smartphones engineered to better protect operational data designed by scientists at Vanderbilt University’s Institute for Software Integrated Systems. Douglas Schmidt, professor of computer science, is quoted. Read More

Some scholars still believe that romantic love was invented by European troubadours in the Middle Ages, and that people outside of the western tradition don’t really experience it. Ted Fischer, professor of anthropology, decided to test that theory. The verdict? Everybody loves. Read More

John Gass, BE’74, former vice president of Chevron Corporation and former president of Chevron Gas and Midstream, has been appointed to the board of directors of Suncor Energy, Canada’s leading integrated energy company. Read More

YP, the largest local search and advertising company in the U.S., announced that Allison Checchi, BS’99, has been appointed chief marketing officer. In this role, Checchi will be responsible for leading YP’s marketing, advertising, branding and communications efforts to improve the way the company connects consumers with local businesses. Read More

Over the past 28 years with the parent company of the Grand Ole Opry and Ryman Auditorium, Steve Buchanan, BS’80, MBA’85, the president of Opry Entertainment Group, has resurrected the Ryman into a beloved performance space. Buchanan used his rebranding and rebuilding skills to lead the Grand Ole Opry into… Read More

Former AmeriCares president and CEO Curt Welling, JD’75, has joined Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business as a senior fellow in its Center for Global Business and Government and the Center for Business and Society. Welling assumed the joint appointments Jan. 1, following his 11-year tenure at the nonprofit global health… Read More

Robert T. Means Jr., MD’83, has been named dean of the James H. Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University, effective March 1. He comes to ETSU from the University of Kentucky where he currently serves as executive dean and professor of internal medicine and is a member… Read More

Hannah Stahl, BA’12, received Vanderbilt’s Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award, allowing the means for travel and independent art activity for one year. She visited Italy, Amsterdam and Poland—where her trip to Auschwitz inspired 10 paintings of the faces of female prisoners, shortly before execution. The display is currently on view… Read More

Following a nationwide search, Dr. Christine Benz Smith, BSN’76, has been selected as the Director of the UTC School of Nursing.   She has served in several capacities at the university since she joined the UTC School of Nursing faculty in 1997. Read More

Kristin Lemkau, BA’89, will become Chief Marketing Officer for JPMorgan Chase. In this role, she will oversee brand strategy and advertising, sponsorships, market research and event marketing across the firm. She will work closely with each of the businesses on their product strategies and marketing approaches, and work to build… Read More

Combining their love of college football and knowledge of the New York Stock Exchange – and some savvy and sophisticated technological skills – Will Schreiber (BA ‘13, economics) and McArthur Gill (BE ’13, mechanical engineering) developed Stadium Stock Exchange during their final semester. In one year, the venture has… Read More

Vanderbilt alumna Leslie Labruto’s early career trajectory illustrates just how many ways a young civil environmental engineer can accommodate both her heart’s leaning and her tangible talents – in as many places as possible. Before she graduated from the School of Engineering in 2011, Leslie’s studies and service work had… Read More

“The truth is this: We have allowed a human-rights nightmare to occur on our watch,” she told a packed house at Langford Auditorium back in January while delivering the keynote address for Vanderbilt’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration. “In the years since Dr. King’s death, a vast new system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and Jim Crow.” Read More

The Vanderbilt Aerospace Club will outfit its NASA Student Launch Project rocket with a modified camera to capture landing hazards. Read More

Evan Mack, B.Mus’03, is the recipient of one of the newest awards presented by the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board of Directors — the Young Alumni Professional Achievement Award. Read More

A paper first-authored by Vanderbilt graduate engineering student Michael King concludes that electronics designed to operate with ultra-low power likely will exhibit high sensitivity to electron-induced single-event upsets due to interference from solar flares, cosmic rays and the like. Read More

On a quiet street just off of Nashville's historic Music Row, a dedicated team of more than 100 researchers are developing software systems that may very well revolutionize the modern world. Read More

Long before there was a Student Recreation Center or any of the adjacent outdoor facilities, Sam Hirt was doing what he could to promote sports activities on campus, initially as Vanderbilt’s first full-time intramural director and then as head of the physical education department. In short, Hirt was Campus Recreation before there was even such a thing. Read More

What would you do if you were out with your family one day and suddenly you found yourself in the middle of a personal horror and an international news story? Where would you be, physically and reflectively, nine months later? Kevin White, MBA’10, can tell you. Read More

As Lolita Olivo carefully feeds the Vanderbilt T-shirt through her sewing machine, she dreams about building a decent house for her elderly father and three small children. Her dream soon may come true, thanks to the efforts of Joseph “Joe” Bozich. Read More