Features – VMAGAZINE

The Vanderbilt Fusion Project, an initiative involving 40 undergraduates from 22 majors across three schools, is seeking to build a miniature nuclear fusion reactor—and make history. Read More

Psychologists and psychiatrists have sometimes struggled to keep up with the multiplying mental health challenges posed by the pandemic and other recent events, but through studies and interventions, Vanderbilt faculty members are providing new insights into the crisis—as well as the best evidence-based solutions for overcoming it. Read More

Karl Zelik, associate professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering and of physical medicine and rehabilitation, is using smart technology to tackle one of the most common and often debilitating problems for millions of people: back pain. His work includes a partnership with the U.S. military. Read More

This past May, despite skeptics, politics and a global pandemic, Ingram’s Nashville SC opened the doors of the largest soccer-specific stadium in North America: Geodis Park, a 30,000-seat facility. Already a success in the league, having made the playoffs in their first two MLS seasons while playing elsewhere, the “Boys in Gold” finally have a home of their own, where they hope not only to become a community institution but also someday lift trophies. Read More

Megan Piphus Peace, BA’14, MSF’15, is an accomplished ventriloquist and puppeteer who has performed in front of audiences across the nation, including on The Tonight Show and America’s Got Talent. In 2021, she made history as the first Black female puppeteer to work on the long-running children’s television show Sesame Street. Read More

In two unique courses offered by the Divinity School, students explore issues around incarceration and punishment alongside 14 death row inmates at Tennessee’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Read More

If you play tennis against Vanderbilt this spring, you will likely see a Ross on the other side of the net. Men’s or women’s tennis, it doesn’t much matter. And whether it’s Anna, a junior, or Michael, a freshman, you’re also likely to be on the wrong end of the score.   Read More

Kate Daniels has long been captivated by the connection between writing and the healing process. After earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, Daniels worked as a nurse’s aide at UVA Medical Center while she was in the process of applying to graduate school. The job was grueling,… Read More

Photography by Marc Olivier Le Blanc The opening poem in Focal Point, the debut collection by Jenny Qi, BA’11, navigates the fraught emotional space between a loving daughter’s grief over her mother’s death and a scientist’s clear-eyed inquiry into the disease-cancer-that caused it. Qi writes of “nights at a microscope in… Read More

Illustrations by Gary Bates From the Civil War to the battle over civil rights, the United States has seen levels of conflict in the past that have threatened to tear the country apart. But watching the violent attack on the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, Professor of Political Science… Read More

Brothers André, Keith and Kevin Churchwell, who were together for 15 years at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, are among the most accomplished physicians and administrators in the country. All three credit their father, Robert Churchwell, the first Black reporter at the Nashville Banner newspaper, as the inspiration for their success. Read More

From The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. Used under license. The last live performance I attended before the lockdown last year featured excerpts from Nkeiru Okoye’s gripping 2014 opera Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom. The score takes listeners… Read More

In a spirit of expanding our knowledge, I offer the following observations about how we made decisions as an organization, built trust within our community, and bolstered Vanderbilt’s reputation as an institution willing to confront difficult circumstances with hard work, compassion and commitment. Read More

General Motors' announcement that it would phase out combustion engines—the heart of its cars and trucks for more than 100 years—and move to an all-electric fleet by 2035 could have monumental implications for the global auto industry and broad efforts to combat climate change. The success of the initiative will depend on Vanderbilt alumni who hold key positions in the company. Read More

By Graham Hays As an otherwise unremarkable women’s soccer practice at the University of Pennsylvania came to a close more than a decade ago, Darren Ambrose was frustrated. Maybe even ticked off.The Ivy League program’s coach at the time, Ambrose wasn’t mad about a defensive miscue, an errant… Read More

The remarkable success of the COVID-19 vaccines began in a Vanderbilt lab decades ago, with the groundbreaking research of alumnus Dr. Barney Graham. Read More

The VBI recently marked its 20th anniversary, a span that has seen the institute’s wide-ranging missions—including administering the university’s Neuroscience Graduate Program, as well as postdoctoral training and community outreach—steadily coalesce under a single umbrella. Read More

The past decade in particular has been marked by a dramatic increase in music cognition inquiry, as about 100 laboratory groups around the world, including at Vanderbilt, are working across disciplines to understand music’s relationship to the brain, behavior and health, and to develop effective intervention strategies. Read More

As the combination of neuroscience and law—or “neurolaw” as some call it—has been gaining traction in courtrooms in recent years, Professor Owen Jones and his colleagues have used the burgeoning field to ask deeper questions about the criminal justice system itself. Read More

VU319, an investigational drug product developed by Vanderbilt researchers, targets one of medicine’s most bedeviling challenges: improving memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Read More