Research

Amy Owen The Tennessee Education Research Alliance, a research-practice partnership between the Tennessee Department of Education and Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, is pleased to announce Dr. Amy Owen as its new executive director. Owen succeeds Dr. Laura Booker, who will transition into… Read More

Ultra-thin layers of gold and copper sulfide developed by Vanderbilt doctoral student Yueming Yan with Associate Professor of Chemistry Janet Macdonald and Stevenson Professor of Physics Richard Haglund could revolutionize medical imaging and environmental sensing. The energy exchange between the metal and semiconductor particles—resonant energy transfer—can convert infrared light into visible and ultraviolet colors. The nanoscale films "could replace bulky optical sensors with flexible, wearable or even implantable devices, thus transforming health and safety technologies." Read More

The Vanderbilt Biophotonics Center, led by Professor Anita Mahadevan-Jansen, developed a device called the PTeye that can help surgeons see patients' parathyroid glands—which have unpredictable locations—better during neck surgery by making the tissue glow! A large, multicenter clinical trial has provided evidence of its effectiveness, which the team hopes will improve the accuracy of endocrine neck surgery and improve patient outcomes. Clinical implementation of the device was pioneered by Dr. Carmen Solórzano, director of Vanderbilt Endocrine Surgery at VUMC. Read More

Three Vanderbilt faculty members are diving into a "chicken-and-egg" problem of type 2 diabetes: Does the disease change beta-cell subtypes? Or do changes in the cells cause diabetes? Guoqiang Gu, Emily Hodges and Ken Lau have come up with a new method of studying the subtypes that can track them through different stages instead of just once when they're fully developed. "Thanks to this and other research, it may be possible to one day create a diet supplement for pregnancy that could reduce the risk of diabetes for babies," Gu said. Read More

The Vanderbilt Center for Sustainability, Energy and Climate has a new director—Hussam Mahmoud. Mahmoud, professor of civil and environmental engineering, joins Vanderbilt from Colorado State. VSEC's mission is to investigate energy, infrastructure, climate and systems to address the grand social and scientific challenges to ensuring a sustainable planet. The center was established in 2024 as a part of Discovery Vanderbilt; Associate Professor Hiba Baroud was the inaugural and interim director. Read More

When bacterial pathogens enter our bodies, they’ve got one goal—hunt for food to multiply. And during the process, they make us sick. Eric Skaar, Ernest W. Goodpasture Professor of Pathology and director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation, is uncovering how pathogens compete with healthy microbes for essential nutrients. Read More

Vanderbilt University may nominate up to three tenure-track faculty per department for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's 2026 Sloan Research Fellowships. Read More

Vanderbilt University may submit only one application to the South Arts 2025 Arts in Community Grants. Read More

Vanderbilt University may nominate one candidate for the 2026 Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholars Fellowship Award. Read More

Tracy Sharpley-Whiting's research explores the interior lives of historical figures whose artistic influence shaped their worlds. Her impressive accomplishments led to her recent election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. Read More

Xiaoguang Dong, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award that will support research on magnetic miniature soft robots for precision medicine that could facilitate early disease detection and treatment. Read More

In a scientific first, researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of California, San Diego, have generated a high-resolution metabolic “map” of how cells orchestrate glucose processing, revealing a hidden world where organelles and molecular complexes collaborate when responding to a rush of nutrients. This new study, published in Nature Communications, has redefined how glucose metabolism is visualized at the single-cell level. Read More

The announcement of the recognition of VMAC as an NIH Center of Excellence comes nearly five years after the creation of an exploratory NIA-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Read More

Vanderbilt University School of Nursing has received a $250,000 Innovation Grant from the Bedford Falls Foundation for a pilot program designed to equip nursing students and new registered nurses with tools that increase their job satisfaction so that they remain vitally needed members of the nursing workforce. The grant is the first awarded by the Bedford Falls Foundation. Read More

Vanderbilt (VU and VUMC, collaboratively) may nominate one candidate for the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award Program. Read More

Vanderbilt University may nominate one candidate for the 2026 Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholars Fellowship Award. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have received a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a smart microscope system that uses artificial intelligence to help scientists better understand how cells behave, particularly in diseases like cancer. Read More

In this episode of Quantum Potential, Ganesh Sitaraman, New York Alumni Chancellor’s Chair in Law, professor of law, director of the Program in Law and Government, and director of the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation, joins Provost C. Cybele Raver to explore why businesses that provide essential services—like energy, transportation, communication and banking—should be governed differently than small businesses. Read More

Pet parrots often outlive their owners, and Vanderbilt researchers want to know why—because uncovering the biological mechanisms behind exceptional longevity could one day help safely extend the lives of humans. With the support of a new $1.3 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, Vanderbilt biologist Gianni Castiglione is taking a bold approach to aging research: reverse-engineering how birds live three to four times longer than similarly sized mammals to identify safe, effective genetic targets for human aging therapies. Read More