Features – VMAGAZINE

From corporate boardrooms to statehouse chambers to the halls of academe, sustainability is one of this century’s biggest challenges. Read More

Willie Geist is a natural on camera because he comes by it honestly. His father, Bill, is a longtime Emmy Award-winning correspondent for CBS News, and some of the younger Geist’s earliest memories have to do with his dad’s profession. Read More

Innovative Method Takes Aim at ‘Undruggable’ Proteins The fruitfulness of Vanderbilt’s drug-discovery effort depends in large part on its willingness to invest in research, infrastructure, and the collaborative nature of its scientists. There is no better example than Vanderbilt’s cancer drug-discovery program. Since he arrived at Vanderbilt in 2009, “we… Read More

Compounds Offer New Options for Diabetes Treatment One of the hottest areas of drug discovery involves the search for new treatments for diabetes, obesity and other metabolic disorders. Last year Vanderbilt signed a collaboration agreement with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for the discovery, development and commercialization of novel therapies for… Read More

‘Laboratory in a Box’ Conducts Thousands of Experiments Simultaneously David Weaver is out to help drug discovery “bloom” at Vanderbilt University. Weaver came to Vanderbilt in 2004 from the pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb to develop and lead its High-Throughput Screening (HTS) facility, used today by about… Read More

From Bomb Disposal to Painless Colonoscopies, These Precocious Partners Boldly Go Where Man Prefers Not To By David F. Salisbury In the foreseeable future, robots will stick steerable needles in your brain to remove blood clots, and capsule robots will crawl up your colon to reduce the pain of… Read More

America’s Drug War Has Led to a ‘New and Improved’ Racial Caste System, Argues Michelle Alexander By Arnie Cooper Portrait of Michelle Alexander © Robert Shetterly / Americans Who Tell the Truth Michelle Alexander didn’t set out to do her undergraduate work at Vanderbilt. As a high… Read More

If You Really Want to Improve Health Care, Start by Asking Those Who’ve Spent Sleepless Nights in Family Waiting Rooms By Nancy Humphrey Richard Mia During a recent clinic visit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Lynn Ferguson and two other patients were simultaneously called back… Read More

By Kathy Whitney From Africa to Asia to South America, Vanderbilt is represented by hundreds of School of Medicine faculty members, medical students and alumni who leave the comforts of home to endure danger, political strife, homesickness, language barriers, and substandard living and working conditions for the greater good. Some… Read More

By Jennifer Johnston Although Crystal Finley, BS’13, entered Vanderbilt with a clear plan for success, her life mission would soon change when she became a volunteer mentor with Next Steps at Vanderbilt, a postsecondary program for students with intellectual or other disabilities. As a freshman at Vanderbilt four years ago,… Read More

By Brier Dudley Illustration above by Otto Steininger Credit: Tristan Elwell Forty years after Atari’s digital table tennis game Pong bleeped onto the scene and made video games mainstream entertainment, we’ve become a nation of video gamers. We’re playing games on phones, tablets, computers, game consoles, social networks, and even… Read More

BY JIM PATTERSON PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL DUBOIS, ANNE RAYNER, JOHN RUSSELL AND SUSAN URMY You might expect to find a game ball from Vanderbilt’s 41–18 defeat of Tennessee last season in the spacious, wood-paneled office of Vanderbilt Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos. Sure enough, it’s there. In fact, Zeppos… Read More

BY ROD WILLIAMSON ILLUSTRATION BY SHAW NIELSEN In December 2010, a relatively unknown Maryland assistant football coach named James Franklin arrived in Nashville to occupy a hot seat that had scorched a long list of more seasoned men—that of Vanderbilt University’s head football coach. In the football-crazy… Read More

[gofullscreen][featuresection] BY JOHN HOWSER AND KATHY RIVERS After Colleen Conway married in 1984, she signed an informal written agreement with her husband, Ted Welch, stating that she would resign as dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing after five years. Eight years later… Read More

James Patterson, MA’70, breathes rare air. His books line the walls in airport shops. They’re tucked into beach bags amid the towels and sunscreen. They’re on sidewalk kiosks and bedside tables around the world. In 2010 he sold more books than John Grisham, Stephen King and Danielle Steele combined. Read More

Fauchet says human needs can be grouped into four core basics—medicine and health; energy and natural resources; security; and entertainment—and engineering is part of each. Read More