Research

Gov. Bill Lee has appointed Vanderbilt University’s Jesse Spencer-Smith to the Tennessee Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council, which was established last year to guide the ethical and effective use of AI in the state.  Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich Meghan Burke, professor of special education at Peabody College Only about 20 percent of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities currently access formal support services. Meghan Burke, professor of special education at Vanderbilt Peabody College, has built a career around growing that number, helping… Read More

Kevin Murphy, Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities and professor of history of art and architecture, and Mary Anne Hunting, BA’80, have uncovered the histories of female architects in the American Modernism period of the U.S. in new research. Read More

By Jenna Somers and Krystal Schmidt Tennessee’s Education Freedom Act of 2025 takes effect in the 2025-2026 school year. In the first year, the Tennessee Department of Education will award 20,000 state-funded scholarships, commonly known as vouchers, to eligible families to support their children’s attendance at scholarship-accepting private schools. Read More

In this thought-provoking fourth episode of Quantum Potential, Vanderbilt University Provost C. Cybele Raver hosts renowned developmental psychologist David Yeager, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, co-founder of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute, and author of 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, for a closer look at how older adults can connect with and empower the next generation. Read More

Vanderbilt University may submit one application to the June 2025 cycle of the Conservation, Food and Health Foundation (CFH) Grants program. Read More

Vanderbilt (VU + VUMC, collaboratively) may choose up to two nominees for the V Foundation 2025 Pediatric Cancer Research Grant Program: one V Scholar OR Translational nominee and one All-Star nominee. Read More

The laboratory of Ege Kavalali, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology, published a new paper in Nature Communications that determined that liquid-liquid phase separation plays a key role within the nanostructure of synapses, and that its disruption affects evoked but not spontaneous neurotransmission. Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich More than 60 percent of American students aged 12-18 are interested in a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, according to a 2023 Walton Family Foundation survey. On the road to a life in STEM, proficiency in high school math has been identified by researchers as… Read More

The scholarship, with funds provided by Vanderbilt University, will support students in the Next Steps at Vanderbilt program. Based in Peabody College of education and human development, Next Steps is a four-year, postsecondary certificate program for neurodiverse students. “This scholarship is an exciting development that aligns with the… Read More

Vanderbilt University may submit up to five applications to the 2025 Incyte Ingenuity Awards in graft-versus-host-disease. Read More

In the third episode of the Quantum Potential podcast, Provost C. Cybele Raver welcomes chemist Brian Bachmann, who is the principal investigator for the Vanderbilt Laboratory for Biosynthetic Studies. Read More

The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center invites parents/caregivers and their infant (~6-12 months old) to participate in a music class/parent education opportunity. Read More

Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries have announced an open access agreement with Springer Nature, a global leader in research publishing. The agreement, the first of its kind in North America, enables Vanderbilt-affiliated authors to maximize the dissemination and citations of their research without incurring article processing charges when publishing in Nature, the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journal, and 38 other Nature hybrid journals that are part of the publisher’s portfolio. Read More

Learn about the path that brought dynamic engineering duo Dan Work and Jonathan Sprinkle together and how they're using AI to prevent traffic jams and make highways safer. Read More

A recent pair of papers from the Vanderbilt University labs of Benjamin Spiller, associate professor of pharmacology, and Scott Smith, associate professor of medicine, dig into how peanut allergies are provoked and providing support for the use of a potential treatment option: hypoallergens. Both papers were published in February in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Read More

Medicine often takes a one-size-fits-all approach, but a disorder’s root cause can vary. Vanderbilt researchers have found that, for people with long QT syndrome, a heart condition that causes an irregular heartbeat, a more tailored approach could be beneficial. The research, led by Vanderbilt University Professor of Biochemistry and Vice Dean of Basic Sciences Charles Sanders and Northwestern University Professor and Chair of Pharmacology Dr. Al George, was published in PNAS in February 2025. Read More

Vanderbilt University may submit one application to The Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust grant program. Read More

Vanderbilt University may select one nominee per major school/division for the William T. Grant Foundation Scholars Program. Read More

The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy has asked Republicans in a quarterly national poll since June 16, 2023, if they consider themselves supporters of the Make America Great Again or MAGA movement. In that first poll, 37 percent of respondents identified more with the MAGA movement than with the traditional GOP. Now, the share of MAGA identifiers within the GOP has swelled to 52 percent—a majority—for the first time in the poll.  Read More