Research

Biomedical engineering nets more than any BME department in the country with 10 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. NSF Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 allowance for tuition and fees... Read More

Combining genetic testing with information from electronic health records revealed undiagnosed heart rhythm disorders and new conditions associated with inherited cancer gene mutations. Read More

For the first time since the Vanderbilt Poll–Nashville was established in 2015, more than half of respondents say they believe the city is headed in the wrong direction. Davidson County voters are concerned about affordable housing and crime, but give positive marks to Mayor John Cooper and other local leaders. Read More

Quentin Millora-Brown, a senior forward on the men’s basketball team, had his best individual season this year. A starter in 30 games, he led Vanderbilt in blocked shots and was second in rebounding. Perhaps even more importantly, he helped create the culture of succes. Off the court, Millora-Brown knows that camaraderie alone won’t solve society’s most pressing issues, such as the climate crisis—a problem he is passionate about. But he believes the same team approach in pursuit of a larger goal will make a difference. Read More

When digging into a scientific challenge, biomedical engineering major Lucy Britto aims to do more than solve a problem. She also wants to open doors to the scientific community by helping others understand the solution and broadening access for traditionally underrepresented groups. Read More

Vanderbilt Kennedy Center researchers, as part of the CDC Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring network, report an increase in the number of children in Tennessee with autism spectrum disorder. Read More

Vanderbilt University legal scholar Michael P. Vandenbergh has been named a 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and has been awarded $200,000 to support his research into overcoming political polarization to address the causes of climate change and the issues it is creating. Read More

Vanderbilt Climbing Club teammates Michael Finn-Henry and Olivia Busk are taking collaboration and innovation to new heights with a breakthrough medical device—and a possible trip to the 2024 Paris Olympics. Read More

Prothena and the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery have entered into a collaborative research agreement to develop new small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease in individuals with Down syndrome. Read More

A collaborative project between William Tansey and Stephen Fesik has laid the foundation for pre-clinical and clinical trials for rare childhood tumors that are diagnosed in 25 children per year in the United States. Read More

Growing up in California, where lacrosse had yet to take hold to the same extent as on the East Coast, Bri Gross discovered her athletic passion almost by accident. But the first time she picked up a lacrosse stick was far from the first time she was intrigued by how something worked. Never far from her dad’s side in his garage workshop, she was and remains an inveterate tinkerer. Read More

Robert Barsky will be recognized at a reception honoring the 2022 Guggenheim Fellows on June 7 in New York.   Read More

Justus C. Ndukaife, assistant professor of electrical engineering, has received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for foundational research in cell-to-cell communication. His CAREER project, “Resonant Dielectric Optical Metasurfaces for Single-Cell Extracellular Vesicles Analysis,” will enable Ndukaife to associate the properties of extracellular vesicles directly to their cell sources—up to the resolution of single cells—a capability that... Read More

Evelyn J. Patterson The effects of racism and sexism lead to higher maternal mortality rates among Black women in the U.S. than previously realized, according to new research from Associate Professor of Sociology and Law Evelyn J. Patterson at Vanderbilt University. Even after controlling… Read More

Ahmad F. Tata, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, has received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for fundamental research in new approaches to network sensors and controllers scheduling. His CAREER project, “Scheduling Driving Sensing and Control Nodes in Nonlinear Networks with Applications to Fuel-Free Energy Systems,” offers a novel framework for the exploration of... Read More

The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy will host “Democratic Erosion and How to Prevent It,” an online panel discussion, April 28 at noon. Vanderbilt political scientist Josh Clinton and professor Susan Stokes of the University of Chicago will explore the tactics and conditions to which democracies are most vulnerable during a conversation moderated by Noam Lupu, political scientist and associate director of the Vanderbilt Latin American Public Opinion Project. Read More

Class of 2022: Growing up, Dillon Pruett didn’t know anyone who stuttered like he did, but he was well aware of how widely misunderstood the disorder was, both among children and adults. As he learned more about the science behind it, he became determined to dispel those misconceptions. Today the Basic Sciences Ph.D. candidate is conducting novel genetic research to provide a better understanding of stuttering and ultimately develop new therapies to treat it. Read More

David Braun, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for foundational research in mechanically adaptive robotics. His CAREER project, “Mechanically Adaptive, Energetically Passive Robotics,” will enable the creation of new-generation industrial robots, transportation systems, and devices that can assist and augment humans. The five-year, $600,000 grant will support work on robot... Read More

Jad Abumrad, a public radio icon, podcast pioneer and founder of Radiolab, will join Vanderbilt University to lead and advise on several areas of work, including the launch of a new podcast institute designed to become a national center of excellence for the evolving profession of digital narratives. Read More

By Marissa Shapiro THE IDEA The human brain is organized in functional networks—connected brain regions that communicate with each other through dedicated pathways. That is how we perceive our senses, how the body moves, how we are able to remember the past and plan for the future. The “default mode” network is the part of... Read More